Ashes in the Hearth
 

Miss Peeg carefully took out the bundle of letters tied with a faded blue ribbon. Billy had been good about writing her; sometimes she would get two or three letters at a time depending on the reliability of the carrier. He could never tell her exactly where he was or what he was doing; his letters came in a diplomatic pouch. She ran her hand lovingly over the letters; she wouldn’t read them again, even after thirty years some of them she knew by heart.

“We saw rhino’s today and gave them a chase and were we glad they didn’t return the favor. I don’t know when I’ll be back close enough to see you things being what they are Winnie, but not a day goes by that I don’t think of you. Stay close to the compound and don’t take any chances in Rosie’s car. When we get out of this you and I are going to London and do it up right. I Love you Winnie…Billy.”

That was the last paragraph from the last letter she ever received from him. Billy Redfern the only man she ever fell in love with and after him there would not ever be another.

She looked in the box, a printed dinner menu from the diplomatic black tie dinner they’d attended together. A silk scarf he’d given her, beer mats from the bar in Kenya where they’d spent a fortnight on holiday. She took a breath, why had she held onto these things, not one thing in that box was ever going to bring him back to her. Down in the bottom of the box was his death notice her boss had given her a copy of it; she couldn’t look at it and closed the lid. Staring across the room she noticed her fireplace and got up and removed the screen, she took the contents of the box and dumped them on the hearth and lit a match to them.

There would be no memories here in this cottage, nothing sad it was to be a happy place and she put a smile on her face, tomorrow she would clean the ashes from her hearth.