**Diary Entry 18th June**
“No, Mr. Thompson, I can’t have it ready by morning! Its physically impossible! My team already works eight-hour daysnot twenty-four!”
I paced the tiny kitchen, pressing my phone so hard against my ear it might as well have fused to my skull. On the other end, my bosss gruff voice rumbled with displeasure.
“Emma, I dont care about excuses. The project is your responsibility. Motivate them. Pay overtime. The client presentation is at nine tomorrow sharp. If we fail”
“We wont fail,” I gritted out. “Itll be done.”
I stabbed the end-call button and hurled my phone onto the sofa. My hands shookfrom anger, from exhaustion. This was my life now. Five years of relentless deadlines, brutal presentations, and quiet breakdowns. Project manager at a top firm, a solid salary, yet I felt like a squeezed lemon. No joy. Just fatigue.
A photograph on the shelf caught my eyemy grandmother, Margaret. White-haired, crinkly-eyed, smiling like she knew secrets the world had forgotten. Suddenly, I ached to be with her, in that quiet cottage in Devon. Far from London, from the snarling emails and sleepless nights.
The decision hit me like lightning. I grabbed my phone.
“Nana? Hi, its me. How are you? No, no, everythings fine. Just missed you. Listencan I come stay for a bit? Yes, tomorrow. Ill take leave. This citys choking me.”
Within an hour, Id submitted unpaid leave, booked a train ticket, andfor the first time in yearsfelt stillness. The project? Done by dawn, my team half-dead. But by morning, Id be gone.
The train rolled south, lulling me with its rhythm. Fields, hedgerows, sleepy stations blurred past. With each mile, the tension in my shoulders eased.
Devon met me with warm wind, cut grass, and the neighbours barking collie. Nanasmall, wiry, but still strongcrushed me in a hug that stole my breath.
“Look at you, my city sparrow,” she clucked, though her eyes sparkled. “All skin and bones. Come in, Ive made pea soup. With nettles.”
The house smelled of childhood: pastry, dried lavender, something indefinably safe. I dumped my bag and collapsed onto the carved wooden bed in my old room. Silence. Thick, honeyed silence, broken only by bees outside and the grandfather clocks steady tick. Bliss.
The first days slipped by. I slept. Ate Nanas scones. Walked the village lanes, waving to elders who still remembered me knee-high. I weeded her garden, watered beans. Simple work under open skiesbetter than any therapist.
“Emma,” Nana said one evening over mint tea. “Help me clear the shed. Fifty years of clutter in there. Best sort it while Im still kicking, eh?”
“Nana, dont talk like that,” I frowned. “Youll outlive us all. Of course Ill help.”
The shed was a sagging thing, smelling of damp wood and rust. Sunlight speared through cracks, illuminating stacks of mildewed tools, cracked flowerpots, yellowed newspapers tied with twine.
“Bloody hell, Nanathisll take weeks,” I exhaled.
“Start small,” she said, handing me gloves.
Hours passed. We hauled out broken chairs, a pram, a chipped washtub. Dust tickled my nose, but there was satisfaction in itlike clearing my own clogged mind.
Then, behind rotted planks, I found it: an oak chest with an iron latch. Unlocked.
“Nana, whats this?”
She peered over, lips pursed.
“Oh. Your grandfathers. He made it young. After he died, I couldnt face it. Just shoved it here.”
Grandad George died when I was four. My memories were foggyjust a tall, quiet man with rough, warm hands. Nana rarely spoke of him, and when she did, her voice carried shadows.
“Lets look,” I said, curiosity flaring.
She nodded silently.
The hinges groaned. Inside lay stacks of papers, leather-bound journals, a small rosewood box. I lifted a journal. Faded ink on the cover read: *Diary*.
“He kept diaries?”
“Wrote most evenings,” Nana murmured. “Never showed me.”
I flipped to a random page. Neat script filled the yellowed papernot mundane notes, but poetry.
*”Your eyestwo forest pools, deep and still,
Where my soul drowns, willing, hushed.
The world halts, breath caught, time undone,
When your hand brushes mine, a wings graze”*
I gaped at Nana. “He wrote *poetry*?”
She took the journal, adjusted her glasses, and read. No surprise crossed her face. Just a quiet, familiar sorrow.
“Yes. But not for me.”
“What?”
“Take these inside. Read if you like.” She turned. “Ive goats to milk.”
That evening, I devoured the journals. This wasnt the stern, silent Grandad Id heard of. Here, he was passionate, vulnerable. He wrote of love, stars, lifes meaning. And one name*Clara*inked on every other page.
*”Saw Clara at the well today. She laughed, sunlight tangled in her hair. The whole village brightened. Why am I such a coward? Why cant I just say hello?”*
*”Clara leaves for university tomorrow. Medicine. The valley will be grey without her. I shouldve spoken. Shouldve”*
*”No reply to my last letter. Shes found her life there, I suppose. And I remain here, with my unsaid words and poems no one will read.”*
My throat tightened. This was a love storyunrequited, lifelong. Had he married Nana after?
Next afternoon, tea in hand, I asked.
“Nana what was Grandad like when you met?”
She gazed at the apple trees, silent so long I thought shed ignore me.
“Decent man. Hardworking. Came back from the war quiet, distant. Id just finished school. He barely noticed me at first.”
“Was he in love with someone else?”
Her eyes flicked to me, sharp.
“Clara Bishop. Doctors daughter. Pretty thing, all the lads mooned after her. Your grandad too. But he just wrote his poems, too shy to speak. She left, married some lecturer.”
“Then how you and he?”
She snorted. “Village life, love. Families arranged it. He was steady, didnt drink. I was respectable. We made do. He never loved me, but he was kind. Built this house. Raised your mum. Never mentioned Clarathough sometimes Id catch him on the porch at dusk, staring at the road to town. Like he was waiting.”
The silence that followed held decades of unspoken grief.
“Werent you angry?”
“At twenty? Yes. Thought if I baked enough, kept house well enough but you cant force hearts, pet. Loves like summer rainfierce, then gone. Respect? That stays. We had a good life. Quiet.”
I saw her thennot just a village widow, but a woman of steel, whod loved silently, forgiven deeply.
Days passed. I unearthed morethree letters from Clara, polite, dismissive. (“*Your poems are sweet but Im engaged now. Please dont write again.*”) In the rosewood box: a single photo. A serious-eyed girl, hair in a high roll. On the back, Grandads writing: *Clara. Always.* Beneath it, a pressed cornflower.
Now I understood why Nana avoided the chest. It wasnt junk. It was a shrine to a love that never was.
One evening, I asked: “Nana is Clara still alive?”
“Aye. Widowed fifteen years. Worksworkedat the clinic in Tavistock. No children.”
My pulse jumped. “Shes *here*?”
Nana studied me, then smiledreally smiled. “Fancy meeting her?”
The next day, the bus rattled to Tavistock. My palms sweat. Nana, though, was serene.
Claras cottage had roses out front. She answeredtall, silver-haired, those same serious eyes.
“Yes?”
“Clara,” Nana said simply. “Im Margaret. Georges wife.”
Clara blanched. “Come in.”
Her kitchen was neat, sunlit. Hands shaking, she poured tea.
“George hes gone, then.”
“Long while,” Nana said.
“Emma found his poems,” I added. “The ones he wrote you.”
Claras cup clattered. “I was a fool. Young, vain. Thought life meant cities, grand things. His letters I kept them.” She fetched a ribbon-tied bundle. “*These* were real. The only real thing.”
Three women sat, steeped in shared regret. No blame. Just sadness for roads not taken.
On the bus back, Nana squeezed my hand. The weight shed carried? Gone.
I placed Claras letters beside Grandads diaries. The story felt complete.
My leave ended. London loomedendless deadlines, Thompsons snarls. But panic didnt come. Something had shifted. Grandads love, Nanas wisdom, Claras regret it rewrote my lifes script.
That last evening, I called Thompson.
“I resign.”
No fear. Just certainty.
Nana raised a brow. “What now, sparrow?”
“Dunno. Stay the summer? Help here. Then maybe write. Not poetry. Just stories like yours.”
The sunset painted the sky peach. London felt like a distant dream. Here, in the hush of Devon, I was home. Truly.
