ON THE COVER The Secret Letter By victoria Fox

Caroline knew she would return to Vistacombe one day, its familiar presence stirring so manymemories

Ihave come this way so many times, but each time it feels new: the bright September sun hitting the cliff edge, or else the rolling clouds; winds or storms or open blue sky.

We come over the hill, there’s a curve in the road then a glittering wide stretch of silver sea – and, at last, the house comes into view.

Vistacombe. The people of Saltleigh consider its façade as much a part of the landscape as the spread of dark cedars in the cemetery, or the old lighthouse at Marley Point. I consider it at once beautiful and dreadful: an unreachable bastion of turrets and towers, its windows huge and glaring, its gardens wild and overgrown.

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” asks Jack. I watch his strong hands on the wheel, hear the concern in his voice, and not for the first time wonder if I took this job less for the money and more for the handsome man who employed me. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I say. Granted, the house isn’t our usual spot. We’re normally called to terraces and cul-de-sacs, bringing our words of comfort and gentle purpose to ordinary families. Our task is to clear those possessions too painful to sort, to collect and catalogue a loved one’s belongings, to make cups of tea and listen to stories until we’re as woven into this person’s life as the ones they’ve left behind. It’s fulfilling and fascinating, a window into another world.

Vistacombe is bigger, grander – and the person who lived here a mystery.

Yet it’s the same, really, in all the important ways.

“No reason,” says Jack, as we pass through the gates.

Inside, it’s vast and draughty. Jack drops his bag in the hall. He runs a hand through his messy dark hair and glances up the twisting staircase to the vaults beyond. He whistles. “This place is unbelievable,” he says. It is. I’ve always likened Vistacombe to a fairytale castle, a labyrinth of chambers, most of them locked away: sculleries and ballrooms, libraries and cellars, an endless chain of exquisitely wrapped boxes, never more empty than now.

“I’ll start with her office,” volunteers Jack, “if that’s good with you?”

He knows it is, that I prefer not to do that part. I’m less adept at paperwork. I prefer those clues found in a jewellery box or closet, in the books a person read or the records they listened to. Clues.

Well, nobody knew her, did they? Not really. It was all supposition.

“Go ahead,” I say, turning so he can’t see my face.

What strikes me as I climb the stairs is how clean it is: she must have had help until the end. The banister is gleaming mahogany. There are pictures on the wall, black and white shots of her on stage, in the studio, on magazines, laughing with the glitterati at one of her outrageous soirées, her head thrown back, cigarette pluming.

I go into her bedroom. The linens are immaculate, pulled tight, white and smooth as a pearl; the air smells of violets. I watch the view from the window, the late-summer sea like glass, broken only by an occasional frill of surf.

All at once I jump, startled by the sound of flustered wings; a bird dives out of the curtains and I try to capture it but it’s too hectic and fast, and in a flash it’s dashed into the hall, flapping and darting, then silence.

My heart beats hot and quick. I listen for Jack in a distant reach of the house,

Nobody KNEWHER, did they? Not really. Itwas all SUPPOSITION

eased by the thought of him unpacking our cases, setting out the papers with their neatly ordered tables, but hear nothing. Stillness. Quiet.

I begin with her wardrobe. She was renowned for her scarves, at home and in Hollywood. Whenever she returned from America, she would flaunt her beauty down on the parade, loving to be the centre of attention, the epitome of exotic style, a silk scarf at her neck like a ripple of blood, flickering behind her light as a candle flame.

Now, their peacock greens and purples spill throughmy fingers; I fold them into squares and try not to take in their scent, like musky roses at the close of summer.

I see their labels – Liberty, Selfridge’s, a Paris atelier – and order them by vintage and colour. As ever, I like to think of such treasures being passed into new owners’ hands, worn and cherished and embarking on another life.

I picture them scattered across the globe, flown across oceans and carried over deserts: away from the quiet, from an old cupboard in a house in Dorset where a famous woman once lived.

My HEART beats hot and quick and I listen for JACK, but hear nothing

Next, her dressing table: gilt-edged hand mirrors and phials of perfume, a coffer of brooches studded with gems and a soft, talcy cushion of face powder.

Later, sipping wine in a bar, my friends will ask me what I found. They’ll lean over their glasses, eyes alight with curiosity, eager to know this woman’s secrets – and I’ll give them something to sate their appetites, an invention about a picture I unearthed or a diary I read, to avoid having to disclose any real truths, like the pill packet my fingers now close around, or the half-drunk mug of aspirin at the bed side, or the support rails mounted on the walls because she was too frail to stand on her own. They don’t know the truth. Only Jack does.

When Jack interviewed me for the job, he asked me how sensitive I was. Did I get attached to things, to people, to the past? I sat in his office – if a mass of squishy armchairs and a snoozing dog in the corner can be called that – and thought, I should say no; I should say I’m hard-edged and competent and not about to let my emotions run free. Instead, I was honest.

“Great,” Jack said, with his friendly, sexy grin. “Then you’re perfect.” He told me we had to care at every turn, for the items, their stories, their families, the places they came from. Otherwise, what was the point?

For the next three hours, I open drawers and clear rails, empty cabinets and dust shelves, lift lids and close caskets, pack boxes and haul cases, never pausing, never slowing, as I toil my way across the first floor and up to the next.

Perhaps we will not need to come

The WORDSWERE a blur. Itwas just like her to WAIT until itwas too LATE

back tomorrow. Perhaps it can all be done in one day. And then I need never come back. She never wanted me here anyway. I tried at the end but she didn’t want me to see her like this. Vulnerable. Beaten.

Outside, the weather turns; grey mists creep up against the windows and I know autumn is coming. A fine drizzle sprays the windowpanes and the iron-grey sea disappears from view, engulfed by fog: the position of Vistacombe, high on the hill, makes it feel like the full stop at the end of the county, that last punctuation mark before nothing. I hear the lighthouse sound its horn, a deep, low call. “Caroline?” I look up from my task. Jack is at the door to the reading room, holding twomugs of soup.

“Found much?” he asks as I take a cup, warming my hands.

“Like I anticipated,” I say, “this is going to be one big auction.” Jack picks up a glimmering ring. “You’re sure you want to sell everything?” he asks. “What else am I going to do with it?” “There’s so much. I thought you might not want to.” I blow on the soup. “Here.” Jack reaches in his pocket for a piece of paper. It’s a letter, folded in half. It takes a moment to register that it’s my name written there. He passes it over.

“I found it downstairs. It was meant for you… She was hoping you’d come.”

There is a strange throbbing sensation in my throat. I open the letter.

My darling Caroline… I’m sorry. I love you. Tears swim to my eyes. I can’t read it. “Shall I leave you alone?” asks Jack. I shake my head, unable to speak. “Do you want to go home?” Home. I am home… Aren’t I? She knew Iwould clear Vistacombe. I would never have let anyone else do it.

“I’m fine.” But the words in front of me are a blur. So many truths, so many apologies, all the things I longed to hear in life and it was just like her to wait until it was too late, until I wouldn’t have the chance to say any of them back.

What I want in this moment is for Jack to take me in his safe arms and tell me it’s OK: that this hard, unknowable woman who was barely there when I was growing up, who never remembered birthdays or Christmases because she was off across the Atlantic at a stream of dazzling parties, or in London with a lover, or in Rome on a yacht, who left me with her sister each time because “it’s as good as the same thing – it’s not a one-woman job, you know,” who never hugged or kissed me, who refused my help when she fell ill because shewas too proud and difficult and selfish and brilliant – that, deep down, she had loved me.

But the letter tells me this. It’s why I cannot read it, not here, not now.

“I’ll finish up,” says Jack kindly, and this time he does reach for me, his thumb beneath my chin, tilting my head so I’m forced to look at him. He’s so solid, so here, in a house full of ghosts.

I feel warmth on my back: across the hillside, the sun reappears. I used to play in these rooms as a child, ever amazed at how the skies changed above the sea, like two mirrors, blue to silver to black, scattered with glittering sunshine. I’d gaze out, wishing to be like her, wishing to be anything but…

There is a lightening in my heart. A lifting. As if all these years a fist of regret has held it tight, only to unclench now… I read the letter. I smile. “No,” I tell Jack, and my voice sounds different. “We’ll do it together.”

It’s evening by the time we finish. Lilac brushstrokes smudge the sky, a blush of sunset, and the moon is rising.

I’m glad I returned to Dorset after so many years away. I knew I would. Like her, I couldn’t stay away; something always brought me back. Vistacombe always brought me back.

“Can I take you for something to eat?” says Jack, as we gather our things. He asks it casually, but there is a note in his voice that suggests it is anything but.

“They’ve opened a new restaurant by the water,” he goes on, when I don’t answer. “I can see you there – glass of wine in hand, Vistacombe behind you…”

We both realise the significance of this, though neither of us says it.

I can feel the outline of the letter in my coat. Thank you, I think. “That sounds perfect.” Jack and I smile at each other. As we open the door to leave, there is a clatter above us, and the fast-flash outline of a bird, before a burst of wings shoots out ahead of us and into the sky.