At Home with the Templetons

Dear Nina

I know Henry has written formally to ask you to continue to take care of the Hall for us until the end of the year, but I just wanted to add my thanks. As you know, we’d hoped to be returning by now, but life is always unpredictable, isn’t it? Fortunately, things appear to be settling down a little now. I have taken a short-term teaching contract at a local school and am enjoying it more than I expected. The children are as stimulating as always, in their different ways, although I’m sorry to say Audrey still hasn’t recovered her speech. I had hoped a change in scenery would help her, but sadly not as yet. Gracie misses Australia very much, but is slowly settling into London life, I think. Spencer at least seems happy to be here. Henry’s work is going well. Hope also seems to be in much better health. I’m glad to say Charlotte is having the time of her life in Chicago.

Thank you again, Nina. I hope you know how much we appreciate your understanding.

This comes with all best wishes to you and Tom from all of us,

Eleanor

Dear Nina

I’m sorry not to have written for so many weeks. We’ve had to move again. We’re in a new part of London and I don’t like it. Spencer has started misbehaving all the time and this week he broke Mum’s favourite cup and he said it was an accident but I was there, and it looked to me like he pushed it off the table.

Audrey still isn’t speaking and hardly ever leaves the house except to go to school. She still writes a lot of notes though. Mum has tried to get her to see a doctor but I said to her what’s the point? If she doesn’t talk to us, her own family, she’s hardly going to talk to a doctor, is she? Charlotte rang to talk to her last week (to tell her off, from what I could gather – she still thinks Audrey is making the whole thing up) but Audrey just listened for a few minutes and then hung up on her. Charlotte was furious about that, as I’m sure you can imagine!

Dad is so busy all the time, we barely see him any more. He is now working with another friend of his, cataloguing the contents of three stately homes. Right up his street as he said, but they are all a long way from London so he doesn’t stay here at night much, once a week at the most. I asked Mum if she missed him and she just laughed, which I didn’t think was very nice of her.

At least it’s the Christmas holidays soon so I’ll have a break from trying to understand algebra and physics. But I wish I was back at Templeton Hall with you.

Love Gracie xxx

Dear Nina

I feel like we covered so much when we spoke on the phone yesterday but I wanted to put it in writing once again how much we appreciate your flexibility and good humour regarding our ever-changing situation. I know you went to pains to tell me that continuing our arrangement for another year suits you and Tom as well, and I hope you are being truthful.

Would you please reconsider our offer to move into the Hall itself though? It seems very unfair to ask you to extend your caretaking for a second year and yet still be crammed into the small apartment when the whole Hall is there at your disposal. Please take your pick of any of the bedrooms and treat the whole Hall as your own home. But if you truly do prefer to stay in the apartment, we will of course understand your decision.

You did make me laugh with your stories of the more persistent visitors. Yes, I’m sure you did get as big a surprise as they did to find you in your pyjamas feeding the chickens! Please do feel free to put up another sign at the front gate, and as usual, charge it to our account. I do apologise again for that difficulty with the last cheque we sent you. Please rest assured Henry has rectified that and there should now be sufficient funds in the account to cover all your expenses.

I hope you’re enjoying that lovely late summer weather. It’s very cold here at present.

With warm wishes to you and Tom,

Eleanor

Happy Christmas Nina and Tom!

With love from all the Templetons in England.

Henry, Eleanor, Audrey, Gracie, Spencer (and Charlotte in Chicago) xxxxx

Happy New Year Nina and Tom

We will see you this year, we promise! It doesn’t feel like more than two years since we saw each other but then sometimes it feels like it’s five years, if that makes sense??

That is wonderful and amazing news about Tom getting the scholarship to that school in Melbourne!! He must have written an incredible essay. As Spencer said when Mum told him, ‘That’s not fair. How come he got brains as well as the cricket stuff?’ You will miss him during the week, won’t you, but I’m sure he’ll come home most weekends. I asked Audrey if she had ever known anyone who went to that school and she wrote me a note to say it was the private boys’ school in Melbourne, and that it shows Tom is super smart if he got an academic scholarship there. But you must know that already. I hope he knows we are all very proud of him. I’m going to send him a congratulations card today. Charlotte’s just been home for a visit – her first since she went to Chicago, can you believe it? (Between you and me, she’s got a bit fat but she said she doesn’t care, the food in America is so great it’s worth it.) The good news is Audrey has actually started talking a little bit again, but only to us, her family, so far. She doesn’t say much, hello and good morning and please and thank you, and when Charlotte was here she went completely quiet again, but I think she did it deliberately to upset Charlotte, and let me tell you, it worked! I am fine at my school. Not deliriously happy, but fine.

The other big news is that Hope has a boyfriend! I don’t know where she met him – a drinking den, Spencer said, but I think he was joking. If anything, I think it was in one of those AA meetings. (That is short for Alcoholics Anonymous, in case you didn’t know.) I heard Mum telling Dad about it. (It was nice to hear them talking for once. Lately they only seem to fight on the phone to each other.) Mum said she doesn’t believe in miracles any more, but if she did, this would be one. She’d been about to kick Hope out again, had even packed up all of her things. Hope went off, in tears and still a bit drunk and was gone for hours and Mum had started phoning the police and the hospitals, when Hope turned up again. I couldn’t hear a lot of what she said to Mum, but she seemed to be making a lot of promises and saying that this time something felt different to her too, she really was going to try, that something had ‘shifted in her thinking’. She’d seen a sign outside a church hall or something and gone in and started talking to this man and he’s become her mentor, if that is the right word. I saw him drop her off here the other night (his name is Victor) and he seemed very old to me, but she is definitely much happier and seems to have stopped drinking again and the best thing of all is she spends a lot of her time at his house rather than with us.

Sorry this has mostly been about Hope. She’s been all we’ve talked about here lately. I’ll write again with more news about the rest of us soon.

Love Gracie

xxx

Dear Nina,

This fax idea is a marvellous one, thank you for thinking of it. And may I say again in writing how grateful Eleanor and I are that you have agreed to stay on for a third year. Life has taken some unexpected twists and turns since we arrived back, but please let me assure you that we have absolutely no intention of leaving you in the lurch, responsible for the Hall and its grounds for the term of your natural life, if you’ll pardon my colonial pun. I have all sorts of positive leads or irons in the fire or whatever the terms are these days, so Eleanor and I are both still optimistic that we shall be Australia-bound again very soon. We are all missing our Australian life very much, as I’m sure you would imagine, Gracie in particular, of course.

Please don’t hesitate to write to me – sorry, fax me – at this number should any problems, no matter how small, arise and we will be back to you as swiftly as possible.

Yours gratefully, as ever,

Henry

Dear Nina

Thank you for your most recent fax to Henry. I’m sorry if I appear over-controlling, but from now on could you please write directly to me at this fax address as well as Henry on any matters to do with the Hall?

I also apologise again on behalf of us both for not warning you prior to the arrival of the valuation expert. I can understand that you might have thought he was pretending. I wasn’t aware Henry had been in touch with a local firm, or indeed that he had considered selling the contents of the Hall. You were well within your rights not to let them in. Henry has telephoned the head office in Melbourne and they now assure us we won’t be charged for what they called a wasted journey.

I’ll also arrange separately for a shipping company to pack the ornaments, vases, crockery and smaller items of furniture as outlined on the fax attached.

I will call you soon to answer the many questions I’m sure you have. Thank you again, as ever, for all you do for us.

Eleanor

Dear Nina

I wish you were here. I know I probably write to you too much but you feel like a Dear Diary except unlike a Diary you write back to me. Nina, it’s been so horrible here lately. Mum said I had to learn to keep family talk to myself, to stop broadcasting it to everyone, but how am I supposed to keep news like this to myself? Mum and Dad have split up. I don’t know yet if they are going to get divorced.

He’s going away for good and he won’t say where, and Mum won’t tell me where either, but he’s my father and I should know, shouldn’t I? Hope and her boyfriend have moved into a new house a few streets away and Spencer has started spending all his time there. He says it is much more fun, but I’m worried. He’s only thirteen and I’m sure he’s smoking or drinking or both (even though Hope and her boyfriend don’t do either of those things any more). Mum’s teaching full-time in a different local school and we have to go to the same one now, and I keep being teased and Spencer won’t stick up for me, not when he’s got a whole cool gang that he hangs out with. All the girls my age knew each other for years before I arrived and no one talks to me. Except for one girl, but she is so weird I can see for myself why no one talks to her either. I asked Mum if she would please be able to teach me at home again, but she got upset and told me to stop wishing all the time that things were different and that it’s time I accepted that life isn’t always sunny and carefree. I know that, but I just wish it was more cheerful.

Audrey is still not talking to anyone but us. She’s mostly fine at home but as soon as she goes outside, nothing. Mum’s still taking her to hundreds of psychologists (or maybe the other one that is harder to spell) to try and get to the bottom of her problem. It’s called ‘selective mutism’, apparently. Charlotte rang from Chicago to say she’d read a newspaper article about something called Munchausen syndrome, which is when someone pretends to be sick to get attention. Mum just got mad at her and told her to start showing some compassion, so this time Charlotte hung up on Mum.

I am too unhappy to write any more. I keep thinking there’s something I could have done to keep Mum and Dad together and to help Audrey talk again. Everything in my family seems like a big mess at the moment. I miss you, Nina. I wish you lived nearer to us.

Love Gracie xxx

Dear Nina

Thank you so much for your letter. I know you also faxed something to my mum about me being unhappy because she came and had a talk to me even before your letter arrived in the post and she let it slip that you’d mentioned something to her about me wishing I could fix things between her and Dad. She told me that there was nothing I could have done and also that I must never think their splitting-up was my fault. They split up because they couldn’t stop fighting over lots of different things, all the overdue bills especially, and Mum thought it might do them some good to spend some time apart while Dad went off to try and sell as many antiques as he can (including all the ones you shipped over from Templeton Hall for us, thank you). We need a lot of money by the sound of things. Mum told me everything. Well, not everything, but a lot of it. I suppose she has no one else to talk to at the moment. If you ever had a spare minute, would you be able to ring Mum now and again? I’m not always sure I am giving her the best advice. And I’m biased, of course, because all I want is for Dad to come back, Audrey to talk again, Spencer to come home and stop smoking, Charlotte to decide she hates Chicago and wants to be with us again, and then for all of us to come back to Templeton Hall and run the tours and be happy again. Is that too much to ask, do you think?

Love from your friend,

Gracie xxx

Dear Nina

Thank you for your latest letter. You helped me so much. You’re right. Life is like the sea sometimes, big waves and then calm days, but I am sick of the waves. I want some calm days. Thank you also for agreeing to look after the Hall for us for yet another year. It feels like a dream sometimes, doesn’t it? All of us there, and Tom and Spencer and the dam and that raft they never finished making. I wish we could have seen Tom being interviewed on the television after that cricket competition. You made it sound so exciting and you must be so proud of him.

School is okay, thank you for asking. I still don’t have any close friends. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I seem to get to a certain point in conversations with most girls my age and then I run out of things to say. I’m not very good at talking about clothes or make-up or boys and that seems to be all most of them want to talk about. But I’m not lonely, I promise, or feeling sorry for myself. I read a lot and spend my breaks in the library and I like it there.

I’ve started doing babysitting on the weekends to try and save up some money for when I go to university. I’m also doing voluntary work after school. It was quite funny how it happened, actually. I saw a poster in our corner shop asking for people to visit the local old folks’ home for a Share-A-Skill Hour. I was curious what it meant, so I went along – I’m glad I did. I was the only person who turned up. There was a group of about ten old men and women there wanting to pass on a skill each of them had, and only me to pass it on to. So I stayed for the whole afternoon, not just an hour, and came back the next two nights too, listening and talking to as many of them as I could, and it was so much fun I’m going back next week too. So far they’ve taught me how to play whist, juggle three lemons, say hello in ten different languages, play the spoons and sing ‘Jingle Bells’ backwards! They’re all so lovely and such good company, I think I’ll keep going to visit them even after I’ve learnt all their skills.

Dad is abroad travelling a lot but he sends me postcards all the time. (He sends all four of us postcards all the time, actually. It’s become a bit of a joke among us.) But on the positive side he does include an interesting fact about each city or country, so it’s been helpful with my geography studies. He makes it sound exciting, that he’s learning all the time about whole new areas of antiques and getting to use his French (which he says is already good) and Spanish (not so good). He said there’s a possibility that he might also get to travel through the USA and that his first stop will be Chicago to visit Charlotte. I don’t know whether to tell him that Charlotte is still furious with him for the mess he got us all into and has declared she won’t talk to him again until he has paid off all our debts, with interest. Charlotte loves making these pronouncements, but she does actually stick to them. She still hasn’t spoken to Hope in all these years. So perhaps I’d better tell Dad and save him a wasted journey.

I’ll write again soon. Lots of love to you and to Tom, and please thank him again for the beautiful photograph he took of the sunrise over the paddocks behind the Hall. I felt so homesick to see it. I’ve stuck it above my desk and I’m looking at it now. I miss you both very much.

Love Gracie xxxxxx

Dear Nina

Thank you for the beautiful card and scarf. I know, sixteen, imagine! I don’t feel any older yet. Or wiser. Though I’m pleased to tell you I’ve discovered the secret to managing my hair. It’s grown long enough that I can now just tie it back into a plait. Spencer of course says I still look like a deranged kewpie doll but I like it, and it has got darker lately, I’m sure of it. More blonde than white, finally.

Thank you for your congratulations card too. Yes, I was so happy with my GCSE results too. I was worried beforehand that I wouldn’t get all nine, so it’s been a huge relief. Now all I have to do is pass my A Levels and then after that decide whether I want to study history or classics at university. Perhaps both. There’s the next five years of my life mapped out …

Yes, Dad is now based full-time in America, in San Francisco at the moment. He rang last week to talk to Mum (not that she always takes his calls – I have to act as their go-between most of the time) but she was out so I got the news from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. He’s moved on from buying and selling antique furniture to vintage cars. There’s a fad for expensive English cars in America apparently and he’s at the front of the pack, he tells me. As Charlotte would say, if I was to tell her, which I won’t, ‘Here we go again.’

Can you please thank Tom for his latest photograph? No, don’t. I will write and thank him myself. If he ever decides to stop being a cricket champion or an academic genius, he could be a champion photographer, don’t you think? The latest photos of the Hall and the trees in that misty autumn light were so beautiful. If/when the Hall ever opens to the public again, I am going to ask Tom to be our official photographer and make souvenir postcards of all his beautiful photographs.

More soon and love til then.

Gracie

PS Spencer’s got a girlfriend. It’s quite funny. She pretends to be a punk, swearing all the time, but I heard her on the phone talking to her mother and she was very upper-class. Audrey’s still not completely cured yet, though Mum must have taken her to every clinic and psychologist in London so far, but nothing has worked. She’s now decided to go down the alternative therapy route, so perhaps there’ll be a change there one day soon. I’d never tell Mum but I’d quite miss Audrey’s note-writing if she started talking full-time again. As for Charlotte – she’s still trying to take over the world, starting with Chicago. We spoke last week and she started dropping hints about the next stage of what she is calling her ‘ground-breaking career in childcare’ – I’ll let you know what she’s talking about as soon as I find out myself …

Dear Nina

This is a brief note just to confirm our phone conversation that yes, we are happy to agree to lease the bottom rooms of the Hall for the purposes of a meditation retreat. We can’t thank you enough again for your part in this, not just in minding the Hall for us (can you believe it is now nearly five years since we left?) but for somehow engineering this excellent solution to our current situation and ongoing financial difficulties. I promise I will fill you in on everything, one day, when we are face to face, but it’s not something I feel comfortable writing about.

On the plus side, yes, Gracie is doing wonderfully at school. I am so proud of how hard she works at her studies, and she deserves every one of her good marks. She also seems to have taken over the old folks’ home up the road as well. I don’t know if she told you, but for the past year she’s spent nearly every afternoon up there, reading to them or chatting away or organising book discussion groups and concerts apparently! I was talking to the matron last week, who said all the residents love her and think she’s a breath of fresh air. Hopefully it’s a breath, and not a hurricane …

Not so brief after all! I will try to call soon. Thank you again, for everything.

Eleanor

Dear Nina

I’m so sorry it didn’t work out with the host family the cricket association arranged, but of course Tom can stay with us instead. We’d love to have him! Please excuse me using the fax instead of our usual letters, but Mum thought you’d both like to know straight away. We’re all just sorry you can’t come with him. But that is so exciting that you have started teaching too. You don’t need any advice from Mum. I bet your students are already in love with you. I always thought you were the most fantastic artist and now all those lucky children will get to learn to paint like you too.

Mum is working two jobs at the moment, teaching in the day and tutoring at night, but she’s also happy that Tom is coming over. Thanks too for sending over the newspaper cutting of Tom with the rest of his team. He’s got so tall, hasn’t he? Please tell him not to expect another Templeton Hall when he comes to stay, but I’ll make sure our spare room is really comfortable and I’ll be sure to meet him at the airport or the tube station too, whatever is easiest for him.

Spencer has moved back home again. (I never did find out exactly why he left in the first place, but I heard Mum and Hope have a rather tempestuous conversation about it the evening before he turned up. Hope is still sober, but there’s still quite a lot of tension between her and Mum at times.) As for Spencer, he’s got very good at blaming everyone else for anything that goes wrong for him. His latest excuse is that his misbehaviour and bad marks at school are all due to Dad’s absence, that he missed the steadying influence of a father figure, or some nonsense like that. As I pointed out to him, he managed to ignore Dad’s steady hand for the first ten years of his life, so why he would have started paying him any more attention now, I don’t know. He’s smoking all the time, in his room too, unfortunately. It stinks but he doesn’t care, he says.

Audrey is doing so much better since Mum found the new therapist for her, and between you and me, I think he is becoming more than her therapist. His name is Greg and he’s from New Zealand and he’s started taking Audrey out on what she calls ‘excursions’ and I would call ‘dates’ most weekends. He’s shorter than Audrey but has a nice kind face and he really does seem to know what he’s doing. It’s amazing to see (or should I say hear?) Audrey talking to people besides us. Charlotte (of course!) is still sceptical. She thinks that Audrey has just switched her attention-seeking behaviour from Mum to this Greg but I don’t know if she’s right. Mostly I think it’s good for Mum to have one less of us to worry about.

Speaking of Charlotte – she’s decided to go into business with Ethan’s dad, setting up a nanny-training business of all things. I’m glad for her but sad for us. I really thought that now Ethan was getting too old to need a nanny she’d come back to London permanently, but not yet it seems.

Congratulations again on Hilary’s news. You must be so excited to be about to become an aunty. (No chance of that for me yet – Charlotte says she’s a career woman, not mother material, though I’m getting hopeful it might be serious between Audrey and Greg … ) I told some of my friends at the old folks’ home and they’ve started knitting furiously so I will have quite a parcel of matinee jackets to send Hilary by the time the baby arrives!

We’ll ring you closer to the date to make the arrangements about meeting Tom but for now, please tell him we can’t wait to see him again. I wish you were coming too. I miss you very much.

Lots of love,

Gracie xx

Dear Nina

This fax is just to confirm that we will ALL be at Heathrow on Tuesday next to meet Tom. No banners, though, we promise. I only wish he could stay with us for longer than five nights.

Congratulations again on the wonderful news of your sister’s baby daughter. It has obviously been a long, difficult road for her and her husband (it hardly seems possible that it is six years since we had Tom to stay at the Hall when you went to Cairns to be with her) but I can imagine the joy they are now feeling. Please give her our warmest congratulations (and I will also pop something in the post to her, care of you).

All our best wishes for now,

Eleanor

Dear Nina

Thank heavens for school computers and my apologies if this seems brief. I am always terrified I am going to press the wrong button and the whole email message will be erased before I’ve sent it.

We’ll talk soon I hope, but I just wanted to let you know that Tom has arrived safe and sound. What a fine young man he’s become, and he is so tall for an eighteen-year-old (or perhaps it is that Spencer is so small for a sixteen-year-old??) And I still can’t believe all that is happening to him with his cricket – to think we were there the day it all began!

I’ll get him to call or email you as soon as he is settled in. (I do like that he calls you Nina now. How grown-up of him! Spencer announced this morning that he now wants to call me Eleanor. I wonder where he got that idea from?)

Love from all of us until next time,

Eleanor

Dear Nina

Hello from London!

Everything’s going well. We’ve already done a tour of the Lord’s Cricket Ground and met Test umpires and coaches and even some of the Australian players based here in England.

Things are great with the Templetons too, but very different. I thought Gracie was joking at first when she brought me to the house. I suppose I expected it would be another big mansion, even bigger than Templeton Hall, but it’s an ordinary London terrace house. Spencer hasn’t been around much. Eleanor (yes, she asked me to call her Eleanor) told me he lives with Hope (yes, she is still sober) and her boyfriend most of the time. It’s strange Henry not being around either. He’s in France or America working, Gracie said. She also told me I had to tell you her hair isn’t like a dandelion any more. It’s not. She looks great.

It’s cold here, though. Not what I’d call summer!

See you soon.

Love Tom

Dear Nina

I’m so glad we decided to keep writing to each other the old-fashioned way, rather than faxing or emailing, aren’t you? I love hearing the post land on the mat and wondering if there will be one there from you.

Now I not only miss you but I miss Tom as well. I loved having him here to stay. I don’t know if he told you anything, but Spencer went off the rails again while he was here and went back to live with Hope again, so poor Tom had only me for company most of the nights. He was so nice about it and it was great to be able to show him a little bit of London. I’ll write and tell him myself, but I wanted you to know as well that he’s welcome to come and stay with us any time he feels like visiting England again, cricket trip or no cricket trip.

Apart from missing Tom and missing you still, of course, all is well here. I spend all day and what feels like all night studying. (Everyone tells me that A Levels are harder than university, but surely that can’t be true?) If you need to know anything about Greek mythology, ancient Rome, the division of plant cells or the irony to be found in Shakespeare’s sub-plots, please just ask!

Lots of love,

Gracie xxxx

Dear Nina

Hi from Charlotte-in-Chicago!! Thank you SO much for sending all the Australian bits and pieces over. My now not-so-little charge Ethan’s presentation at his high school was fantastic. He went straight to the top of the class. Yes, I can hardly believe I’m still here myself. When I took the job I thought it would be for a couple of years before I got sick of him and he got sick of me, but we’re great friends still. Not that he needs me looking after him as much these days. He’s growing up so fast. (He’s fourteen now, a teenager. I can hardly believe it.) I don’t know if Mum told you, but I’ve branched out a bit in the past year. I had lots of spare time when Ethan was at school and so I started to think what would be the best way to fill it. Nothing like having an internationally successful businessman as your boss! The long and the short of it is, Mr Giles and I have gone into business together. Well, I’m doing the work and he’s funding it, but it’s still a partnership. I told Mum it’s all her and Dad’s fault. They’re the ones who gave me this English accent and it turns out an English-accented nanny is quite the thing here in Chicago. Very posh and lah-di-dah, it seems. I’m no expert, I made it up as I went along with Ethan but we spent so much time with other nannies I found out all the horror stories as well as all the best things. So I’ve started training nannies myself! I’m going to take it slowly, just do it via word-of-mouth to begin with, but then that seems to be the way the nanny network operates.

You’ll have heard all the rest of the Templeton news from Gracie, I’m sure. You do realise you are her surrogate mother and big sister and best friend rolled into one?? I should be grateful to you, and I am. Sorry if this sounds sour. I always felt a bit guilty leaving Gracie back then, especially after they went back to London and things, well, fell apart with Mum and Dad. But she sounds so happy at the moment. Her school results have been so brilliant and she can’t wait to go to university next year. She hasn’t stopped talking about your Tom either, by the way. The local London boys don’t stand a chance with her compared to him. (I keep asking her about her love life and she tells me all the boys she meets seem too immature and anyway, there’ll be plenty of time for that when she’s finished her studies! Gracie really does amuse me sometimes.) She sent me over a bunch of photographs she took when Tom was staying with them – you’ve produced quite a hunk, haven’t you, if you’ll excuse my American slang! The female attendances at cricket matches will skyrocket the second they put him on the national team.

Mum tells me you still refuse to move into the Hall. Unbelievable. If it was me, I’d have been in there like a shot. But she also told me you’ve managed to rent some of the rooms out. That will help matters, I’m sure. Every little bit helps.

I’m getting worse than Gracie now, divulging family secrets. Better shut up while the going is good!

Thanks again for all the koala and kangaroo toys, and especially the didgeridoo. You should have seen the postman’s face when he delivered that!

Love from Chicago,

Charlotte xx

Dear Nina

I could feel your pride bursting off the computer screen! What incredible news for Tom, and for you too, for him to be offered a placement at the national cricket academy – many, many congratulations from us all! And I think it is a fantastic idea of his to do some travelling at the end of his eight months there, and how wonderful that he plans to head in our direction again. I do hope he makes it to London and please tell him there is always a bed here with us. Lots of the sons and daughters of my fellow teachers at school have done the solo-backpacking-around-the-world thing, and survived to tell amazing tales, so please don’t worry too much.

We spoke about it on the phone, I know, but I also wanted to say again how grateful I am for the way you handled the situation with the meditation clinic people. How ironic that people concerned with peace and clarity in modern life should turn out to be sneaky businesspeople. Henry assured me via his lawyer (sadly that is the only way we communicate at present) that he has deposited another sum of money in the Hall account this week, so please be sure to use that to pay for any cleaning or maintenance work you feel needs doing to set the ground floor rooms to rights again.

We are all fine, I’m glad to say. Audrey continues to make wonderful progress. Her therapist (a very nice young man from New Zealand) coaxed her into a new form of treatment based on dramatic and artistic crafts such as puppetry, pottery etc. As I’m sure you can understand, we were concerned and sceptical at first, in light of the fact it was her unfortunate experience with stage fright that triggered her speech problems. However, it has had a very positive impact. She’s like a different young woman, not only talking easily outside the home now, but eager to head out and about with him every weekend. Gracie is convinced there’s more than therapy going on between them, but she always did have a romantic heart.

I’m sure you feel we are just sounding like broken records by this time, but yes, I assure you that from my point of view at least, the plan still IS to come back one day, to get Templeton Hall up and running again, even to prove something to myself. I can’t speak for Henry. I don’t want to and I wouldn’t dare and he has obviously moved on with his interests in any case (a combined vintage car and limousine-hire business in San Francisco is his latest venture, if you can believe it) but I am determined to see the Hall’s beauty open to the general public again one day. I know the mind plays tricks and memories can seem rose-coloured but our time there does seem bathed in a warm glow to me sometimes. Then again, that could be because the sky is grey outside, the neighbours behind us have been doing renovations for the past four months and all we hear are the squeals of drills and circular saws and it feels like years since I felt a warm breeze on my face rather than biting icy wind.

Enough of my complaining! Congratulations again, Nina, to Tom and to you. We feel as proud as if we had coached him ourselves.

Love,

Eleanor

Dear Nina,

We have a card and a present on the way to Tom for his birthday but Gracie is worried they’ll arrive late – could you please pass on this email to Tom so he definitely gets something from us all on the day!

All good wishes to you both,

Eleanor

Happy 20th birthday Tom from all the Templetons!

Henry, Eleanor, Charlotte, Audrey, Gracie, Spencer and Hope

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dear Nina,

I’ve written to Tom already (he and I have also decided to ignore modern technology – real letters are so much better than emails) but I just wanted to tell you as well that it’s brilliant news he’s definitely coming to London as part of his big trip. It will be fantastic to see him. We’ve moved house (again) since he stayed with us last. That one turned out to be too big and this one is possibly too small, but it’s close to a great park so if he needs to go jogging or anything else to keep fit, then it will be handy. We all wish you were coming too – though you wouldn’t have to do all the backpacking through Asia first, of course.

Mum told me she’s told you the incredible news about Audrey announcing her engagement to her therapist – Charlotte has had plenty to say about it, as I’m sure you can imagine. Audrey is so happy now though, talking normally again, and he seems very nice. I really like his New Zealand accent too (though not as much as I like your Australian accent, of course). Audrey’s second piece of bombshell news was that she and Greg are moving to Manchester. He’s apparently been headhunted by a clinic there. Audrey is quite funny now. After not talking for so long she now talks non-stop, mostly about Greg and how wonderful he is …

I’m sorry this is briefer than usual. I have three essays to finish before Monday. And I thought the life of a university student was supposed to be all sleeping-in and doing nothing??

I hope all is well with you and that you are just as busy. I feel like we haven’t been writing to each other as much as usual – that’s my own guilt there, I’m sure. I promise I’ll write much more as soon as I get all my studies out of the way.

Lots of love,

Gracie xxxx

Dear Nina

Please excuse this brief postcard but I just had to give you the latest in the Audrey & Greg Romance Saga – they’ve eloped! Well, to be precise, they secretly got married in a registry office in Manchester. Audrey said neither she nor Greg wanted the fuss of a wedding, and she especially didn’t want the tension of Mum and Dad under the same roof. Charlotte thinks Audrey just did it to try and seem all bohemian and interesting. I’m staying neutral!

Love for now, and don’t worry, we’re all counting down the days until Tom arrives in London. I hope all is well there. Please do write when you get a chance. I feel like I haven’t heard from you in ages.

Gracie xx

PART TWO