An air vent, he thought, with a troubling sensation of guilt. It was clear that whatever was in the box was of great importance to someone; something personal that they wanted to keep hidden.
He put the lid on the floor, careful not to get dust on the pale furniture, although his trousers were now streaked with long flecks of it. Inside the box was a pile of papers and envelopes. He picked up one of the envelopes, cream vellum, addressed simply to ‘B’. There were two sheets of matching paper inside. Jim began to read.
No one forgets a summer spent at Casa D’Or. You remember them so clearly you don’t even need to close your eyes to recall the heavy warm breeze, the smell of azaleas, and the air that sticks to your sun-kissed skin.
At first he wasn’t sure what it was. Some poetry, perhaps, or creative writing. But as he read on, it became obvious that it was a love letter. One written with great intensity and in the sort of overblown language that would sound odd if you tried to say the words out loud, but that on paper was romantic and lyrical like a sonnet.
I can feel a storm in the air, and dark clouds are gathering over the lake. The light in your room is on – I spot it twinkling across the water, and if I narrow my eyes I can make out your outline tempting me with your forbidden promise. I want to see you before it rains.
The letter stopped abruptly, as if it was not finished. It wasn’t signed off with a name, or even properly addressed to anyone. But as Jim stared at that ‘B’ on the envelope, a sad resignation overwhelmed him and he knew with absolute certainty that this letter was meant for his father. As for its author . . . he remembered Jennifer telling him once how she relished the idea of writing love letters.
He gulped in misery. Bryn and Jennifer’s confession that they had been intimate with one another had crushed him underfoot, but he’d gained some consolation from the fact that it was a one-off occurrence. Yet there were at least a dozen letters in this box. How long had their relationship been goin
g on? he wondered, feeling himself shiver with shame. What a fool he’d been. All that time he’d spent with Jennifer, trying to pluck up the courage to do something, say something.
He could remember that evening they had been to Tybee Island as clear as day. He’d almost kissed her then, but had been disturbed by a disapproving Sylvia Wyatt on the steps to the house. He’d driven home and stayed up all night to write Jennifer a song, a song that would leave her in no doubt about how he felt, then spent every penny he had hiring a four-track Tascam Portastudio to record it. And yes, the night he’d given her the compilation tape was a night he had never forgotten, never would forget.
But all that time it had been his father she had been interested in.
He picked up another letter with masochistic curiosity.
This one didn’t have an envelope. It was a plain piece of paper folded into quarters, and it was typed rather than handwritten, which immediately gave it a more clipped efficiency than the soulful letter he had read a minute before.
An electric summer fades. It’s one that I will always remember. The very thought of you across the lake has made my words bloom and my heart smile. Your touch, the secret taste of you, has kindled a passion for love and life I thought had long been extinguished, and for that I will always be grateful.
But my flight home leaves tomorrow and please accept that we must part. Your plan for a future together is bold, reckless, flattering, but as I told you at the party, my life is in London and yours is here. Let’s not wring out what has come to its sweet conclusion and ruin the fun memories of what we had. Let us preserve this summer, our secret, in amber.
Yours, Bryn
Jim’s heart was beating hard as his eyes trailed to the top of the page.
The letter was dated the final day of his summer in Savannah. And it was addressed to Sylvia.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The party was packed to the rafters with the great and the good. Everyone was here, New Yorkers, Hollywood stars and Georgia’s richest and most celebrated. A walkie-talkie in Jim’s pocket kept him up to date with problems – so far there had been few niggles to deal with. American Vogue had sent a photographer, who said the hotel was one of the most picturesque places he’d ever seen and he would be recommending it as a location shoot to the magazine, whilst Richard Steel had reported a five hundred per cent increase in forward bookings.
Flitting between rooms, Jim checked that everyone was happy. Celine Wood was here, and had teased him that she might ask him to organise her wedding to Richie Hawkins. Their stay in Baruda had gone swimmingly well. Not only had her boyfriend proposed after his one-hour acoustic set for the mayor’s daughter’s birthday party, held around the swimming pool at RedReef, but Celine had had a meeting with Gregor Bentley, who had agreed that the range of swimsuits and sarongs she had been developing over the past year could be sold at the hotel’s on-site boutique.
‘I’m fucking forty,’ she’d told Jim over a glass of champagne on the terrace. ‘I don’t want to be a model any more. I want to be the new Diane von Fürstenberg.’
Jim thought it was an excellent idea, and they pencilled in an appointment to discuss Celine taking a small unit at every Omari property to start her empire, which seemed like a win-win situation for everyone.
Elizabeth Johnson and her sister were sitting at a table by the lake with an expensive bottle of wine. Jim knew that his mother wasn’t in the mood to party, but it had been good to see her all dressed up: a smart new outfit, some make-up on her face and a softer, happier expression than she had worn in the weeks since Bryn’s death. In a flash of recklessness, he had also invited Sarah Huxley.
‘How are you, Johnson?’ she grinned as she came towards him holding a bottle of Krug.
‘Are you going to drink all that, or is it just a fashion accessory?’
‘Swig?’ she asked, offering it to him.
He shook his head.
‘Thanks for inviting me,’ she said after a moment. ‘An evening’s worth of quality gossip might make up for the way you broke my heart. Celine Wood told me she’s launching a fashion company in the new year and has a chain of stores raring to go. She says I can even sell the story to the New York Times.’
She grinned at him playfully and he felt a note of sadness. Sarah looked great tonight, he thought with a fleeting moment of desire. With her long red hair and wearing an emerald-green dress, she looked like a very sexy leprechaun. He didn’t doubt that with another bottle of Krug and a few choice words he might be able to win her round again, but that wouldn’t be fair to anyone. No, he was married to his work now. That was the way it had been for the past twenty years and it was a way that worked.
He had planned a week’s holiday in the new year in Patagonia, where he planned to trek and walk and climb, something he had wanted to do for years. Then he had the Santai empire to launch and the Omari group to expand, and perhaps in a few months, when the wounds had healed, he might be able to start dating again. Maybe one of his football mates knew someone nice. In fact, in the days after his father’s funeral, a couple of them had taken him out for a drink in Highgate and one of them had mentioned that his wife had a friend, a single mum at the school gates, a cracker by all accounts, who they thought Jim might get on with. ‘You know, when you’re ready.’