The letter

I’ve been stuck in the one mindset for so long, unable to look back and fighting to move forward, it was eight nearly nine years ago, when I packed up my home of 15 years in boxes. To be honest, we packed in such a rush; and I was still in a complete daze; I had long since forgotten what was actually in there, my frame of mind after you passed, didn't leave room for taking a marker to the cardboard and writing kitchen, bedroom or paperwork on the side to make my life easier when I arrived at the other end. I simply instructed the removal men to put the boxes down in the main lounge. It was my daughter and her friend who finally unboxed and filled the kitchen with all that we would need. The rest of the boxes and their contents didn't bother me at all, so my husband took the rest of our packed up lives and stored them in the garage. Then this past week, my husband has been going through the last remaining boxes, he puts four boxes in the movie room and says they're yours you must go through them; he hands me a bag for rubbish and a box for the keeps. I come across my business cards, some still neatly packaged in the original box, my wedding cards, birth of my first child, her first birthday and then there are keepsakes, trinkets and such, a book which I am definitely sure isn't mine! The front cover alone, says it's not mine, and then the title, ‘HOW TO DRIVE YOUR MAN WILD IN BED’ not a title that would be welcome in the 21st century! And I do not know how it came to be mine, I open it, it seems to fall open on chapter two titled your Vagina-Pleasure your greatest Treasure- I laugh out loud! I can only think that someone must have gifted it to me on my hen night way back when, as it was with the of box of wedding cards, I Turn to the back, ironic that the writer lives 2 mins away from my new home town! Even more ironic, it was written by a man with a man's pleasures in mind. A letter falls from one of its pages, the distinctive handwriting is a familiar site, It's that of my Grans, Gran H as she was lovingly known, one of her many letters that she wrote weekly, always including a five-pound note, and she would always write £5 included followed by the words five pounds, I always laughed at this, this was in case the postal worker had intercepted my letter and stolen her precious fiver, she was big on security and would sleep with her handbag under her pillow, I always wondered if she slept at all. The letter dated 25l10/90, she had written about our last visit and told me how smart I looked and how proud of me she was about my new job, as I was reading all I could think was If she had known that her letter had just fallen out of such a book, she would have turned in her grave. A woman of her stature, straight out of Holland park, her parents and grandparents from Gentry. The Lavington’s would have had no such vulgarities in their library, that's for sure. I flicked through the chapters looking for more letters, I couldn't bear to think of my gran, the lady, who elegantly wrote such letters that were now filed between such erotica. Chapter 25 ‘seventy-five things you can do for him today’ Gran H would probably say, there simply isn't time dear.