The Stars’ Tennis Balls

and I love you to heaven.

picture your hair flopping down as you write, which is enough to make me writhe and froth like a… like a … er, I’ll come back to you on that one. I think of your legs under the table and a million trillion cells sparkle and fizz inside me. The way you cross a ‘t’ makes me breathless. I hold the back of my envelope to my lips and think of you licking it and my head swims. I’m a dotty dippy dozy dreadful delirious romantic and I love you to heaven.
Ned let the wind whip it from his hand.

They came from the last century, an age when lovers wrote letters to each other sealed up in envelopes. Sometimes they used coloured inks to show their love, or they perfumed their writing-paper with scent.

Home, where they understood him. Home, where there was peace and ease and gentleness and love. Home, in every language that he spoke, it was the best and strongest word. Home. His Swedish island. Where his friends lived and where the ghost of Babe would come to him and teach him more.
He stood on the deck looking back towards England

Ned knew exactly what he had to do. He had to go home. It was so simple. So obvious.

Ned went into the kitchen to find some milk. The light of the fridge shone onto the table and that is where he saw the envelope.

sat in the car and wept. Nothing for him. Just the old letters.

He remembered her handwriting! From all those years he remembered her handwriting. He held the envelope to his cheek.

Wait till you meet Joyce, old lad!
And next week, Faraday and magnets – prepare to be astounded!
The Battle of Lepanto tomorrow, Ned my boy! Wagner. Richard Wagner! Once in your system, never out.
The Marshall attack. Not an opening for the fainthearted.
Let’s say Heil to Herr Schopenhauer, shall we?
Russian verbs of motion, Ned. They’ll drive you mad.

There is nothing but a single fir cone’s difference between them, sometimes just the one lonely only little cone telling us that it represents the difference between heaven and hell.’