1During the renovation of the old central post office, the workers discovered a dusty canvas sack behind a wall.
2Most of the letters inside were nothing more than ordinary bills and greetings, long since rendered meaningless by time.
3But one faded envelope, addressed in an elegant and unusually careful handwriting, caught the archivist's attention at once.
4It was a love letter, written by a young soldier to his sweetheart, a girl named Eleanor, in nineteen forty four.
5The letter had been posted in the final frantic days before his regiment was sent across the channel to the front.
6In it, he begged her to wait for him and promised, on his honour, that he would return to her.
7The archivist, acting against every regulation that she had ever been taught, quietly resolved to find Eleanor herself.
8After many weeks of patient searching through records and registers, she discovered her at last in a seaside care home.
9Eleanor, who was now ninety two years old, trembled visibly as she recognised the familiar handwriting on the envelope.
10Believing him either dead or faithless, she had eventually married another man and built a good life with him.
11The long lost letter finally revealed the truth: he had been killed within weeks of writing those tender words.
12She kept the letter on the table beside her bed, where it remained for the rest of her days.