Below The Boards

The discovery of love letters under the floor got Jessie wondering how the story had unfolded…

Jessie pushed a pair of Perspex goggles onto her forehead. “I have dust in places I don’t want to think about,” she said. “I swear it looks worse than when we bought it.” She looked around the room and frowned. Oliver hooked his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in for a hug.

“It may look like a dump, but it’s our dump. See this?” he said, kicking the ankle-deep debris on the floor. “You own this broken tile.”

“Lucky me.” Jessie sighed.

For the past month, she’d done nothing but create mood boards for colour palettes, door knobs, and light fixtures, but the reality of owning a ‘do-er upper’ had so far centred on her wages disappearing in B&Q every weekend. The smallest bedroom had become a time machine, each layer of wallpaper revealing a fresh, horrible pattern that Jessie painstakingly steamed and scraped until her arms ached.

She wiped her brow with the back of her arm, her clothes sticking to her skin.

“The next job has to be getting those windows open.” She nodded to the back of the room, where an unseasonably hot day had made the already foisty room radiate with warmth. Summer had kicked in late this year, prompting weathercasters up and down the country to enthusiastically report it as the “hottest September since records began”. Ordinarily, it would be reason to celebrate, but not when faced with twelve hours of manual labour in a room with the windows painted shut.

“I’ll add it to the never-ending list. Here, grab this,” he said, passing her a crowbar.

“As desperately hot as I am, I’m sure there’s a less dramatic way to tempt a breeze into the room without smashing a hole in the wall.”

“Let’s think about the floorboards first,” said Oliver, bending over to shake his hair free of powdered plaster. “I need to find a cable and I think it’s under your feet. Give me a shout when you see it.” He grinned, planted a kiss on her forehead, and picked up a sledgehammer as he left, ready to tackle the next demolition job.

As she shuffled along the length of the room, Jessie wished she hadn’t inherited her father’s knobbly knees. She tapped and wiggled until she found a board that was baby tooth loose, hooked the crowbar into a groove, and pushed down. The wood creaked, splintered, and split, sending Jessie onto her backside with a thump. Once the dust had settled, she pulled a bike light out of her rucksack pocket to use as a makeshift torch, switched it on, and carefully lowered her head into the cavity.

“See it yet?” shouted Oliver from behind a partition wall.

“No! There’s nothing except for… wait!” She grappled in the dark, her fingers catching the corner of a sagging cardboard box. “Help me up, I’ve found something.”

Oliver came back, gripped her hand, and pulled. Jessie emerged from the floorboards cradling a shoebox in the crook of her elbow.

“That… doesn’t look useful.”

“No, this is way better,” said Jessie, brightening. “Treasure!”

She carefully lifted the lid, the Sellotape yellow and brittle. Inside, a row of postcards were tied into neat stacks with parcel string, a sage green shirt folded beneath like a cushion.

“They’re messages, look. Sandringham,

London, Dover, Montpellier.”

Jessie sat back on her heels as she flicked through seafronts, landmarks, and caricatures, the colours vibrant despite their age, cheeks round and apple-pink like old Disney cartoons.

“I think they’re a bit more than just messages…” said Oliver, a smile playing in the corner of his mouth as he passed a postcard to Jessie. “I dare you to read that down the phone to your gran.”

She cleared her throat and squinted at the writer’s looped calligraphy, the letters smudged in part as though the writer had no time to let the ink dry before slipping it in a postbox…

“You can’t imagine the pace my heart started beating when Mother asked why I came home without my stockings. I invented a story about the tom cat from Leather Lane scratching at my knees and tearing them straight off, but of course

I had no mark to prove it. Next time, we musn’t be so cavalier. Yours, Clemmie.”

Oliver raised his eyebrows and took the postcard from her.

“What does the date say?” she asked. Oliver squinted and held the postcard up to the window. “1941.”

Jessie gasped and inspected the others. “They must have been down here that whole time.”

“You’d get some decent money if you sold them online. Collectors go wild for this sort of thing.”

“No way! Look, they’re all for the same person. Roger, Roger, Roger… Roger Ainsworth, 32 Beafort Street, London. Oliver, that’s here. We’re in his house. Do you think this might have been his room?”

Oliver stood up and pointed at her with a gloved finger. “I know what you’re thinking, Jessie…”

“What?” said Jessie, sliding the lid back on the box.

“Don’t keep them. Think of the money they’ll fetch! Those postcards could pay for a dining table.”

Jessie folded her arms protectively around the shoe box.

“If these are long-lost love letters for Roger Ainsworth, wouldn’t he want to know they’re still here?”

Jessie emerged from under the floorboards cradling a shoebox in the crook of her elbow – “Treasure!”

Oliver cupped his ear. “Did you hear that?” “Hear what?” “It’s the sound of old cracked tiles screaming to be chipped off the wall.” “I should find Roger.” Oliver stood up and offered her a hand. “You’ve got a look in your eye,” he said, pulling Jessie to her feet.

“I don’t have a look.”

“You do. It’s your ‘I won’t stop until I’ve jumped down this rabbit hole’ look.”

Seeing as we’ve only ever received bills up until now, I’m assuming this has something to do with you and those postcards,” said Oliver, holding up a brown envelope with Jessie’s name written across the front in a spidery hand. Her stomach lurched. She found a record of seven Roger Ainsworth’s in the online Yellow Pages directory, but hadn’t held out much hope that one of them would be Postcard Roger.

“I feel a bit starstruck,” said Jessie, taking the letter from him.

“How did you find him? He must be in his nineties now. He could be anywhere.”

“I suppose so, if he’s still kicking about.” She slid her finger beneath the envelope flap. “I’m dying to know what happened to Clemmie. I wrote and said I’d give him all the postcards back, but if she dumped him for a handsome American soldier who had a good accent and knew how to lindy hop, this might have been a terrible idea.”

“I did warn you…” Oliver looked over her shoulder as she unfolded the letter, curiosity getting the better of him. “You know when people say that it’s nice to make friends with the neighbours? Usually they exist in the same decade.”

“Shh! It’s him! Oh god, I can’t read it,” said Jessie, pressing the pages against Oliver’s chest.

“Neither can I, his handwriting is awful.” “He’s old, cut him some slack,” said Jessie, snatching the letter back. As she read, her heartbeat quickened. His words bore the hallmark of handwriting lessons, each letter square and neat.

Dear Jessie, To say I was surprised when your letter came through the door is an understatement.

Written from my old house and all! Is there still a grease mark by the hear thin the little bedroom? That was me, tinkering with engine parts when I was al ad.

I don’ t know how much you’ ve read, but I do apologise if you’ ve seen anything that has made your hair curl! There’ s a reason I had to tuck them away, no less so because Clemmie’ s mother was a snob who thought I was no good for her.

My mother cleaned her house and we got to know each other as teenagers. I never stopped getting to know her. She’ s still a mystery tome, but that’ s the way it is with someone you love, isn’ t it?

I’ d love to have them back, for nostalgia if nothing else. I’ ll meet you at The Nightingale Café on Saturday at 2 pm if you’ re able to come. They do excellent Chelsea buns, if you’ ve got a sweet tooth. Roger.

“Well? Did they end up together?” “I can’t say one way or the other. Looks like I’m going to find out.”

Jessie had forgotten what it was like to wear normal clothes, having spent so long in baggy tracksuit bottoms covered in paint smears and Polyfilla.

She bought two Chelsea buns from behind a glass counter and sat at a table outside, hoping that it would make her easier to recognise. After forty-five minutes, only a few currents remained.

She had never been stood up before, let alone by a pensioner in his nineties.

Jessie picked up her bag and tucked her chair in, an anxious knot forming in her stomach like tights in a washing machine. As she tapped her card to pay, a man leant over to catch her eye.

“Are you Jessie?”

She tucked her purse away and nodded. This couldn’t be him. The man in front of her was hollow-eyed and flustered, as though he’d run a marathon and hadn’t slept for a week.

“Oh, I caught you! Thank god for that,” he said, clutching the counter top.

“Sorry, who are you?”

“Dan. Dan Ainsworth. Roger’s son.” “Oh my God! Hi! I thought I’d been catfished for a minute. Is Roger coming? I’m supposed to give him these,” she said, shaking the box.

“He’s not, no. It’s a bit complicated. Would you walk with me? I’ll explain on

the way…”

Dan reached over a gate to unlock it from the other side. “I’ve been planning this for months,” he said.

He led Jessie down a side passage, the noise of chatter growing as they reached a walled garden strung with bunting and balloons. “It’s hard to pin down platinum as a colour, so I went with silver and white,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “Seventy years. Can you believe it? Here, come meet Dad.”

Sat in a camping chair, his arm clutching the hand of an elderly woman with candy floss hair and glistening earrings, was Roger. Jessie waved, unprepared for a very public delivery of his teenage love letters.

“Jessie!” he said with the hint of an East End accent. “We got our surprises muddled up. Dan planned this party and I’d planned to meet you.”

“Oh, please don’t worry about it, I’m just happy to reunite you with these,” she said, transferring the shoebox to his trembling hands. Roger smiled, his eyes crinkling like crepe paper. He took the box from Jessie, leant over, and kissed the woman beside him, his chin reaching her before his lips did.

“Happy anniversary, Clemmie. You always were my story, but now we can re-read the beginning.”

Discovering a long-lost sister is supposed to be an intimate affair, instead journalist Ava discovers her halfsister in a live stream watched by 100,000 people! When Ava travels to a remote Scottish village undercover, to meet her half-sister, she soon realises how opposite they are! Uplifting, warm, with wellies full of wit. The Sister Surprise by Abigail Mann, One More Chapter, PBO, £8.99. Out now.