Hello.

Anastasiia de Franckelle mails a letter she’s saved for years to Katherine Eldon, the godmother of Harry Salazar.

Hello. I’m sorry to do this publicly but neither you nor your staff have responded to previous calls and I am trying to warn people pre-exposé. The young man that you claimed as your adoptive godson in the early winter of 2022, the lucky winner: he snuck me into your Hampstead Heath guest cottage on March 29 of that year, when he had returned from the frontlines and you refused to lend him the car because he was so exhausted but still wanted to see me.

It was, then, the most important night of my life. I have regretted it daily, hourly, since the dawn of April 1, when he apparently met the real love of his life at the Sun Valley Film Festival. Although we spoke daily, and I was then pregnant with his first child, and he had sworn to me on your lawn in March that he just had to finish a few jobs then would be home to marry me, he did not inform me of his new official girlfriend until the first week of June.

Although at that time, he was a twenty minute drive away from my mother’s house, he chose to inform me of this new woman over text.

I began miscarrying almost immediately.

So little Frankie Lazarovicho was a prayer then dream then maybe the size of an apricot then he was bloody rags and chemicals in my system. Then he was ashes to ashes, buried in my mother’s backyard next to the loquat tree.

The same tree I picked so I could feed your adoptive godson something sweet that night, so he could learn a little more about London and how I grew up. Was raised.

And he said that it was perfect and I was perfect and he was so grateful to have survived the war long enough to see me again, to have more time, to live the rest of our lives together.

I had just had my wisdom teeth removed. I was on antibiotics. Antibiotics sometimes counteract birth control.

I didn’t know I was pregnant until it was all over.

I know that you have lost a child, a boy. My hurt is nothing compared to that. He barely had a heartbeat. He was still mostly me, and now he is in the loquats.

Your godson said that you remembered me reading poetry for your organizations and galleries when I was a teenager. He said you thought I was a brilliant writer, a lovely young woman. That you’d be happy to hire me again.

I am so, so sorry to be speaking to you under these circumstances.

I would give anything for a different life but I believe that I already have. I must hope that God will not ask me to sacrifice anything more for my peace of mind.

I am a poet. I am also a journalist, neuroscience researcher, screenwriter, musician, and minor diplomat.

I will say this once publicly: I was raised to be an intelligence operative.

I have seen the dossiers on your godson. They are not good.

I do not recommend continuing the relationship.

Happy holidays.