Read Online The Wedding Cake Tree by Melanie Hudson - Free Book Online Page B

during his military career, but he never did – not face-to-face. However, I did manage to persuade him to write a journal (I bought it for him – a beautiful leather-bound notebook). He felt a little odd about it at first, but I told him to write the entries as if he was writing a letter to me – maybe you will see him writing in it while you are away? I hope so.
     
    I never kept in touch with any of the other servicemen, but there was something about Alasdair. Maybe I wanted to mother him as he has never had a proper mother of his own, not a good one at any rate. He spent most of his childhood bunking off school, fishing or poaching. At seventeen he quite literally ran away to the Royal Marines to find a family. He then became educated and progressed through the ranks quickly – you will have noticed by now that he is a very capable man.
     
    Enough from me. The best way to understand your companion is to read his own words. Overleaf is an email I received from him the last time he returned from Afghanistan. I have learned that the best – if not the only – way to get Alasdair to talk about his emotions is through the written word.
     
    Mum xxx
     
    I turned the page over.
     
    From: Major Alasdair Finn
    To: Rosamund Buchanan
     
    Dear Rosamund,
     
    Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve been in touch. I could reel off a long line of excuses, but you would see right through them.
     
    Your request for me to escort Grace on this bizarre journey has been playing on my mind, and you can’t know how many times I’ve intended to contact you and call it off (she’s going to think I’m nuts). But you played your I’m going to die, Alasdair trump card on me, and coughed a bit, and now there’s nothing to be done but take off work for a few weeks and trip around Blighty with Grace (tell Jake I’m not doing it because she’s a looker, by the way).
     
    I think you were right when you said I could do with a bit of a break. I’m knackered. The bags under my eyes are getting worse. I’ve been applying that moisturiser you gave me (do not tell ANYONE) but it’s a lost cause. The thought of one more trip to some rancid shithole in the middle of a desert makes me want to vomit, and just lately I’ve been wondering if the intelligence/special forces route was the best option for me. I’ve also been thinking about our last discussion (the one about my marriage) and you were bang on the money when you suggested that my marriage failed because I put the job ahead of my ex-wife, Jane; she made the right decision to leave. My biggest regret is that I never gave her children, but ‘what’s done is done and cannot be undone’ – a bit of Shakespeare for you. See, I did go to school (sometimes).
     
    Listen to me! All your chats have turned me soft. Note to self: pull yourself together, Finn, you big bloody softie.
     
    I have a briefing to give in five minutes so must be off. Hopefully I will see you soon, but just in case I don’t, I do have something I need to say. I want you to know that you’ve been a mother, a sister and a friend to me, and from the moment I walked down the lane to St Christopher’s, I felt like I had finally found a home – thank you.
     
    Yours aye.
     
    Alasdair
     
    I closed the letter and turned to look at my companion. Seemingly in a world of his own, he was standing with his back to me a few feet away, on the edge of a crag that balanced like a cantilever over the hilltop. His body was strong against the breeze.
    ‘Alasdair, ’ I shouted into the wind, ‘I’ve finished reading.’
    Broken from his reverie, Alasdair took a few steps down the hill and handed me a small colourful container, like an old-fashioned tea caddy with a hinged lid.
    ‘ I know this is a sensitive moment,’ he said with a warm smile, ‘but remember to keep your back to the wind when you tip out the ash.’

 
    Chapter Nine
     
    As we turned to leave the summit I remembered the wild garlic Alasdair had picked.