It made her so sad that Adam had trusted her father with his most beloved work. She knew that Henry probably hadn’t even bothered to read it.
One of the few things that Robin took, before she fled her home in London, was the box of anniversary letters she had secretly been writing to Adam every year. She still missed him – and Bob – every single day. She reread those letters that night, along with Adam’s screenplay, and a new idea formed in her head. The idea seemed too crazy at first, but she realised that there was a way to rewrite her own life story, and give herself a happier ending than life had so far chosen to.
Steel
Word of the year:
insouciant adjective free from worry, concern or anxiety; carefree.
28th February 2019 – what would have been our eleventh anniversary
Dear Adam,
It isn’t our eleventh anniversary, of course, because we didn’t last that long. I now live in a thatched cottage in Scotland, and you’re in our London home. With her. But I still wanted to write you a letter. I’ll be keeping this one to myself, along with all the other secret anniversary letters I wrote over the years. I know it might sound crazy – especially now that we’re divorced – but I sat out by the loch and read them recently. All of them. My goodness, we had our ups and downs, but there were more good times than bad. More fond memories than sad ones. And I miss you.
Firstly, I wanted to say sorry for the lies. All of them. I grew up surrounded by books and fiction – it’s hard not to when your father is a world-famous author. My mother was a writer, too, but I never told you about her either. I don’t expect you to understand, but I couldn’t talk about them with you.
When we first met, I believed in you and your writing, but I was impatient, and I wanted your dreams to come true too quickly so that we could concentrate on ours. Having not spoken to Henry for years, I called him and asked him to let you adapt one of his novels. It was only ever meant to be one adaptation. I thought it would lead to success with your own screenplays, but by trying to help your career, I sometimes worry that I killed your dreams. Henry used you as a way to try and get close to me. He wasn’t interested in me at all when I was a child. But I think his own mortality made him realise I could be useful as an adult – someone to look after his precious books when he was gone. My father cared about each of his novels far more than he ever cared about me.
These last two years have taught me a lot about myself. Now I’ve left it ‘all’ behind, I’ve realised how little I had. It’s too easy to get blinded by man-made city lights, even though they could never shine as brightly as the stars in a cloudless sky, or white snow on a mountain, or sunbeams dancing on a loch. People confuse what they want with what they need, but I’ve realised now how different those things are. And how sometimes the things and people we think we need, are the ones we should stay away from. My hair is more grey than blonde these days – I haven’t visited a hairdresser since I left London, and it’s grown very long. I wear it in plaits to avoid too many tangles and knots. I do miss our home, and us, and Bob, but I think the Scottish Highlands suit me. And I’ve realised I have more in common with my father than I used to admit, even to myself.
Henry liked his privacy so very much that he bought everything in this valley, along with the old church and cottage, before I was born. The Scottish Laird Henry purchased the land from had a few too many gambling debts, and just happened to be a fan of Henry’s books, so sold it for a ridiculously small sum. Henry even bought the nearest pub a few years later, so that he could close it down. He just wanted peace and quiet and to be left alone. Completely alone.
The locals had been unimpressed by an outsider owning so much of the valley. There were petitions to stop Henry converting the church – even though nobody had used it for half a century – but he did it anyway. He was a man who always did what he wanted and got his own way. When local interference continued, he made up ghost stories about Blackwater Chapel, so that anyone who didn’t already know to stay away, would. Why he wanted to live such a lonely life, hidden away from the world in self-isolation used to baffle me. There are no shops, or libraries, or theatres, or people for miles, there is nothing here except the mountains and the sky and a loch full of salmon. The man didn’t even eat fish. But now, I think I finally understand.
I have almost nothing but almost everything I need. My father’s love of good wine meant that the crypt was crammed full of it, and his old housekeeper left a seemingly endless supply of home-cooked and hand-labelled meals in the freezer. Henry’s personal library is stocked with all of my favourite books, and the ever-changing views here take my breath away every single day. But it can be hard to enjoy the good things in life when you don’t have someone to share them with. I miss our words of the day and words of the year. I don’t eat especially well – I’m a little too fond of tinned food these days – but I feel better than I ever did in London. Maybe it’s the taste of fresh air in my lungs, or the long walks I take exploring the valley. Or maybe it’s just feeling free to be me.