The Secret Letter. Kerry Barrett

Чтение книги онлайн.

       To the strong women in my life who are the living embodiment of Deeds Not Words: my fabulous aunts, Pauline and Norma; my godmother, Linda; my second mum, Les; and of course, my amazing actual mum, Dorothy.

       Prologue

       Esther

       December 1910

      I picked up the letter I’d written and read it over to myself. I knew he’d never see it, but it made me feel better, just putting my feelings down on paper. Putting everything that had happened behind me.

      ‘Sometimes the fight is part of the fun,’ I’d written. I smiled sadly. That was exactly how I felt, and why everything had gone so wrong between us; there had just been no fight.

      Picking up my pen again, I signed the letter with a flourish and then wafted the paper, waiting for the ink to dry. I wouldn’t send it. There was no need. But I wanted to keep it somewhere safe, somewhere I could find it if I ever needed to remember why I’d done what I’d done.

      I glanced round my small bedroom, looking for inspiration, and my eyes fell on my fabric bag, stuffed under the bed. I pulled it out and opened it and found inside the wooden photograph frame holding the only photograph I had of my former love. Perfect. But first I had to change something else. On my bedside table was my journal and tucked inside was a photograph of myself. It had been taken at a recent suffragette rally and vain as it sounded, I loved the way it made me look. I had my chin raised slightly and a flash of fire in my eyes. I looked like a woman to be reckoned with.

      Smiling, I opened the back of the picture frame and took out the photograph that was in there. Should I throw it away? No, he was part of my past no matter how horribly things had ended. Instead I put it into the bag and pushed it back under the bed. Then I put the photograph of myself into the frame, folded up the letter and put it in an envelope, carefully tucked that behind the photo and fixed the back on securely. I proudly stood the photograph on my bedside table. I would keep that picture with me, wherever I ended up, and every time I looked at it I would remember that I had been made stronger by everything that had happened.

      ‘The fight goes on, Esther,’ I said to myself. ‘The fight goes on.’

       Chapter 1

       Lizzie

       August 2019

      I stared at the building where I would spend most of my time for the next year, or even two, with a mixture of hope, fear and resentment.

      ‘Just a few months,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Just a few months, and then you can get back to normal.’

      I pushed my sunglasses up on top of my head so I could see better and squinted in the brightness. It was an old-fashioned school building. The sort of building that in London would have been converted into luxury flats years ago. It had black iron railings, a paved area at the front with hopscotch markings and two entrances, over which in the stonework was carved “boys” and “girls”. I knew that at the back was a more modern extension, but staring at the front I felt like I’d gone back in time.

      My stomach lurched with nerves and I took a step backwards, lowering my sunglasses again like a shield.

      ‘Chin up, Lizzie,’ I told myself sternly. ‘You’ve got this.’

      But I wasn’t sure I did have it.

      It was mid-morning but it was quiet. No one was around and I was glad. School didn’t start for another ten days though I’d come to Elm Heath early so I could move into my new house, get settled in, and generally find my feet a bit. It was very different here from my life in Clapham and I knew it was going to take some getting used to.

      I took a deep, slightly shuddery breath as I thought about my ex-husband, Grant, who was – as far as I knew – still living in leafy South-West London. Predictably, he’d managed to emerge from the disaster of the last couple of years smelling of roses despite being asked to leave Broadway Common School before he was pushed. Never had the phrase “men fail up” seemed truer than when I’d discovered he’d walked into a fancy job in some think-tank, advising local councils on education policy and was earning more now than he’d ever done as a head teacher. Which was ironic considering one of the many, many things he’d done wrong was being creative with some of the school budgets.

      Under my sunglasses, I felt a tear start to dribble down my nose and I reached up with one finger to wipe it away. I had to stay strong or I would fall apart. And yes, it wasn’t fair that I’d been treated with suspicion too, even though an investigation had proved that I hadn’t been involved in Grant’s misdemeanours whatsoever. СКАЧАТЬ