22 July, 1930

Dear Anna,

Anna, Anna, sunshine and starlight. Why do I still begin my letters with your name? I know I’ll never send them, that you’ll never read my silly scribblings. You’d laugh, I’m sure- you’re always laughing, and that’s what I love best about you. What could a maid find cheerful in a house like Haverfall, you wonderful, illogical thing? But I’ll write my letter all the same, I’ll write it a thousand times if I must, until I no longer feel the things I do.

I swear Anna girl, for all my stories and poems, I’ve never found the words that lived up to you. Heaven knows I’ve tried; each dreary year that I was sent off packing from Killarney to my godfather’s. You were the only bright spot in my stale summers, and you made my words alive with color and fire… but they can't come close to all the bright shimmering things you are. If I had those words, and if you did not make such a confounded nervous fool of me, I'd have spoken to you the very instant I saw you. I’m sure I must have seemed only a silly rich boy, thoughtless and cold with his books.

There’s so much I wish I could tell you. How I think of you every day. How much it aches that you surely cannot think of me. I sit with my letters, writing solitary in the slant-light corners as you pass silent through the house. Perhaps you think I do not notice. I notice. I see you in every room, I watch as you flick in and out through the dust. The sway of your hand and the curl of your lips. I see the secret things you laugh at behind those lowered eyes.

Well girl, I've written you all these things time and time again, so enough of my ramblings. You’ll not see them and they’ll change nothing. But still, I’ve no one to talk to, Anna. Since you’re stuck in the dark now, I’ll write you the things that are happening by daylight:

The whole household seems silly and dreary, an absurd sort of sham. The eldest lady Rathod is collected and cold, finds fault with everything, and becomes stricter by the day. I get the feeling she’s a sort of sleeping Vesuvius, all stone outside but fire underneath. The younger sister seems to have convinced herself she’s some kind of musical prodigy (piccolo this time) and that we all must be dying to hear her perform. She cornered poor Picton the other day and forced him to endure near an hour of her wheezing out Mozart. The Rathod brother is always moving about, wiring someone or flirting with the staff or trying to rope the others into a billiards game. Restless and scheming something, I’d guess.

There’s nothing to remark about the staff, save for old Walter, who has somehow managed to grow even more unlikable. It’s hard to imagine what he occupies his hours with – mostly slinking about, leering and listening at doors, from what I can figure – but it certainly isn’t doing his job. The grounds are in shambles, the walls crumbling, and Walter, greasy old fool, couldn’t give a fig.  He's also superstitious as ever (or says that he is), and well on his way to convincing the cook that this place is haunted. He insists that he’ll not tend to the east wing of the house during August, and certainly not to the sea wall. That he should take what he knows of the tragedies from Haverfall's past and turn them into little more than an excuse to shirk his work… It makes me sick to think about. Haverfall by-the-Sea is full of heartless folk.

I’ll exclude the young secretary in this (goes by "Northwind"). That one seems bright, and determined to find something or perhaps to become someone without being certain of what (reminds me of you, really).  That curiosity of a typist has been poking about every corner of the house, and while it doesn’t bother me I fear the others will soon become annoyed; why I even stumbled across Northwind rummaging about in old Walter’s shack. Of course I asked the nature of the visit, but the secretary brushed past me in an excitement, babbling something about evidence and supper complaints and missing flour.

Well, there's the news for you, Anna girl. Know you're in my thoughts, know you're all the things too lovely to be written. I'm still here, trying to find the right words.  

Another day and another letter I'll not send.

Yours always,

Ciaran