The Letter in the Book

Lucy found the first letter on a Wednesday, and Wednesdays were usually the most boring day of her week, so it was quite a nice surprise. She was a governess. She had been a governess at Marlow House for almost a year now, teaching the two Marlow children their letters and their sums and trying to stop the little boy putting beetles in his sister's hair. It was not a bad job. The family were not unkind to her, which Lucy knew was more than a lot of governesses got. But it was a lonely job. That was the thing nobody told you about being a governess. You were not a servant and you were not family, you were a sort of in-between person, and in-between people did not really have anybody to talk to. So Lucy spent a lot of time in the library. The Marlow library was her favourite room in the whole house. It was big and quiet and it smelled of old paper, and Mr. Marlow had said she was welcome to borrow any book she liked, which Lucy thought was the nicest thing anybody had said to her in ages. In the evenings when the children were in bed she would go to the library and pick a book and read by the fire, and for an hour or two she did not feel like an in-between person at all. On that Wednesday she picked a book of poems. She liked poems. She sat down by the fire and opened the book, and a piece of paper fell out onto her lap. Lucy thought it was a bookmark at first. But then she unfolded it, and it was a letter, and it was written in lovely careful handwriting, and at the top it said *To whoever finds this.* Lucy's heart did a funny little jump. She looked around the library even though she knew it was empty. Then she read the letter. *To whoever finds this,* it said. *I do not know who you are. But I have noticed that someone borrows the poetry books in this house, and brings them back, and is gentle with them, and I think a person who is gentle with books is probably a person worth knowing. I am not brave enough to say this to anyone's face. So I am saying it to a book of poems, and trusting the book to find the right hands. I hope your week has had at least one kind thing in it. If it has not, then let this be the one.* It was not signed. Lucy read it three times. Then she pressed it flat against the front of her dress, like you might hold something to keep it safe, and she found that her eyes had gone a bit blurry. Nobody had written Lucy a kind thing in a very long time. Her mother used to, before she passed away, but that was four years ago now. Since then Lucy had got used to nobody writing her anything except the family, telling her the children needed new boots or that lessons would start late. Kind things did not really come in the post for governesses. And here was one, hidden in a book of poems, written by somebody who did not even know who would find it. Lucy thought about it all night. She lay in her narrow governess bed and looked at the ceiling and thought about the careful lovely handwriting. Who would do such a thing? It could be anybody. It could be Mr. Marlow, although Lucy did not think so, his handwriting was big and bossy. It could be one of the servants. It could be a visitor who had come to the house months ago and would never come back, in which case Lucy would never ever know. But then she thought, no. Whoever wrote it said they borrowed the poetry books too. That meant they were still here. That meant they were somebody in this house, somebody who walked past Lucy maybe every single day, somebody who had noticed her without her noticing them. In the morning Lucy did something she had never done before. She got up early, before the children, and she went down to the quiet library, and she sat at the writing desk and she took a clean piece of paper. She did not know who she was writing to. But the letter had said *I hope your week has had at least one kind thing in it,* and Lucy's week had, now, it really had, and it did not seem right to just keep that and say nothing back. So she dipped the pen, and she thought for a long time, and then she began. *To whoever wrote to me,* Lucy wrote. *You were right. My week had not had a single kind thing in it until your letter. Now it has had one, and I have read it more times than I will admit to. I do not know who you are either. But I would like to. So I am putting this back inside the poems, and I am trusting the book, the same as you did.* She folded it up. Her hands were shaking a little bit. She slid it carefully inside the book of poems, right where she had found the first one. And then Lucy went up to teach two children their sums, with a secret in the library and her heart beating much too fast, and for the first time in four years she could not wait to see what tomorrow would bring.