Reading Part 6 2: Mind the Gaps

While walking along the beach one morning, my sister found a small waterproof camera half-buried in the sand. [1] She took it home, dried it carefully and, to her surprise, discovered that the memory card still worked. [2] Most of them showed a family on a sailing holiday, and one showed the name of their boat. My sister posted that photo online and asked if anyone recognised the boat. [3] The camera, they told her, had been in the sea for almost two years.

When we bought our house, it had not been decorated since the 1970s. Every room was covered in brown, orange or purple wallpaper, and the first job was to take it all down. [1] Behind the wallpaper in the smallest bedroom, my husband found an envelope stuck to the wall. Inside was a letter dated March 1958, written by a girl called Edith to her best friend, Joan. [2] Edith described her new school, complained about her little brother and asked Joan to write back soon. She ended by saying she hoped they would stay friends forever, even though they now lived in different towns. The letter had obviously never been posted, and we could not stop wondering why. [3] Our house had been built in 1955, so Edith must have lived in it as a child. Perhaps she had hidden the letter herself, or perhaps it had simply fallen behind a piece of furniture and been papered over. With the help of the local history society, we found the names of the family who had lived in the house in the 1950s. [4] The family's surname was Barraclough, and in the 1960s they had moved to Canada. The society even found an address for Edith's daughter, who still lives near Toronto. I wrote to the daughter, explaining what we had found and enclosing a copy of the letter. For weeks I heard nothing. [5] It was from Edith herself, now in her late seventies, who said that reading her own childhood words had made her laugh and cry at the same time. Edith also told us something we had not expected. Joan, the friend she had written to, was still alive and lived only twenty miles from our house. [6] Last spring, more than sixty-five years after the letter was written, the two old friends finally met again, in our kitchen, under the new wallpaper.

For three years, I worked as a night receptionist at a large hotel near the airport. My shift started at ten in the evening and finished at seven the next morning. [1] People often imagine that the job must be boring, with nothing to do but watch the clock. In fact, the opposite was usually true. Most of my guests arrived late, after long flights, and they fell into two groups: business travellers and families. [2] The latter were a different story. Tired parents, crying babies and lost suitcases were part of almost every night. Then there were the emergencies. In my first month alone, a guest locked himself out of his room wearing only a towel, a pipe burst on the fourth floor and the fire alarm went off at three in the morning. [3] By the end of my first year, very little could surprise me. My favourite time, though, was the quiet hours between three and five, when the building was completely still. [4] Some of them simply wanted company; others wanted to tell somebody their story. One elderly man, whose flight had been delayed for three days, came down every night to show me photos of his first grandchild. The job also had a cost. Working nights changed my sleep, my diet and my social life. [5] Eventually, I realised that I was seeing my friends only in photos online. Last year I moved to a day job in the same hotel, and I do not regret the decision. [6] I learnt more about people in those quiet hours than in any job before or since.