‘Oh, wow! That’s fantastic news.’
‘Isn’t it? I’m so pleased for them both. It’s exactly two years today since she arrived in Willowdale to stay with me. Dane cycled past as she was driving into the village and he was captivated by her. Autumn coming here completely changed both of their lives so proposing on the anniversary was perfect.’
‘That’s so lovely. Did she have any idea he was going to ask her?’
‘She hadn’t a clue. The plan was always to get married at some point but they wanted to focus on securing a publishing deal first.’
After Rosie left, I picked up my book once more, but I didn’t open it. Autumn and Dane were a great couple and I was so pleased for them. How lovely that Autumn hadn’t seen it coming. Flynn’s proposal had taken me by surprise too and he’d also gone for an anniversary – my twenty-fourth birthday and exactly a year since we met. We’d taken the day off work and planned a hike up nearby Blencathra if the weather was kind, which it was – blue skies and sunshine but not too hot. Blencathra, also known as Saddleback thanks to its shape, was one of the most northerly fells in the National Park and, with an elevation of 868 metres, was also one of the highest. We set off in the morning with a picnic lunch and were a good hour into our walk when Flynn spotted a Scrabble tile on the track. Amused to see that it was the letter ‘M’ for Mel, I slipped it into my pocket. A little later, we spotted another one – an ‘R’ this time. By the time we made it to the summit, I’d picked up six Scrabble tiles.
Flynn and I paused by the summit stone – an engraved stone ring on the ground – to admire the incredible views across nearby Keswick, Derwent Water and several other Cumbrian fells, and further afield to the Cheviots in Northumberland and the Southern Uplands of Scotland. Despite the beautiful weather, there was quite a breeze so we dropped down a little to a more sheltered point for our lunch.
‘Can you spell anything with those Scrabble letters?’ Flynn asked after we’d eaten.
I removed the tiles from my pocket and spread them across my left palm.
‘I’ve got an M, R, E, L, another M and a Y. Ooh! I can spell my name.’ I laid one of the Ms, the E and the L together on the ground. ‘And the word “me” if I take the L away, but I think that’s it. Not enough vowels for anything else.’
‘What if you had four more letters?’
I looked up at him, my eyebrows knitted. What was he up to? ‘That’s very specific. Do you happen to have four more letters?’
‘I might have. Close your eyes and put your other hand out.’
I did as instructed and felt him place some more tiles on my right palm.
‘Open them.’
I glanced down at the letters. ‘Another M, another R, an A and an E.’
‘What can you spell now?’
‘Arm,’ I said.
‘Anything else?’
Suddenly I saw it. If I moved the A and the R from my right hand to join the M, R and Y in my left hand… My heart was pounding as I looked up at Flynn.
‘Show me,’ he said.
With shaky hands, I formed the two words on the ground above my name to create a short but wonderful sentence.
MARRY ME MEL
When I looked up at him once more, he was holding out a ring box in front of him. Dipping one knee to the ground, he opened up the box and I laughed at the wooden Scrabble tile inside with a heart drawn onto it and the infinity symbol at the bottom right instead of a letter value.
‘I love you, Mel. Always have and always will so, if you’ll accept it, here’s my heart which will be yours forever.’
I couldn’t speak. Flynn had done several romantic things over the year we’d been together, but this eclipsed them all. Blinking back happy tears as I nodded, I removed the heart tile.
‘There’s something else that belongs in this box.’ He removed a ring from his pocket and held it out towards me. ‘Will you marry me, Mel?’
I swear I floated back down Blencathra on cloud nine that afternoon. I asked Flynn whether he’d been worried about me sussing what he was doing before we made it to the summit but he’d laughed and pointed out my inability to notice anything subtle.
‘Even if the tiles had spelt outmarry mein order, I still don’t think you’d have realised.’
He was very likely right about that. He’d been right about a lot of things and, when it counted, I hadn’t wanted to listen. I’d walked away instead.
Sitting on my bed in Willowdale Hall twenty-nine years later, I felt overcome with emotion as I remembered that special day. I still had all of those Scrabble tiles in a velvet pouch in my jewellery box.
