November 4, 1998 AD
All Our Love
Two days after their parents' funeral, a postcard from Zermatt arrived at 19 Hobart Road addressed to Oscar and Sarah. Pip had written it over breakfast on the morning of the crash. It was the last thing either parent sent them.
A postcard from Zermatt arrived at 19 Hobart Road in the Wednesday afternoon post, addressed in Philippa Lahey's handwriting to Oscar and Sarah. It had been written over breakfast and posted on the morning of the crash, fourteen days earlier. The picture side showed the Matterhorn under clear skies.
Jane Lahey found it in the letterbox. She read it standing at the gate and then sat with it at the kitchen table until the children came home from school, deciding whether to give it to them. She gave it to them.
The message was short. Pip described the view of the mountain from their hotel room and promised stories about glaciers and altitude when they got home. She signed it with love from both of them, as Mummy and Daddy, and added a postscript instructing Oscar to make sure his sister ate her vegetables.
Sarah read it aloud at the table. She laughed at the postscript and then cried, and then read the whole card again from the beginning. Oscar read it once, silently, handed it back, and said that it should be Sarah's. Later that evening he asked to read it again.
Sarah kept the postcard. It went into the drawer beside her bed at Hobart Road and moved with her each time she moved house afterwards.
