An Ordinary Life Read online

  PRAISE FOR AMANDA PROWSE

  ‘Amanda Prowse is the queen of family drama’

  Daily Mail

  ‘A deeply emotional, unputdownable read’

  Red

  ‘Heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure’

  The Lady

  ‘Amanda Prowse is the queen of heartbreak fiction’

  The Mail Online

  ‘Captivating, heartbreaking and superbly written’

  Closer

  ‘Uplifting and positive but you may still need a box of tissues’

  Cosmopolitan

  ‘You’ll fall in love with this’

  Cosmopolitan

  ‘Powerful and emotional drama that packs a real punch’

  Heat

  ‘Warmly accessible but subtle . . . moving and inspiring’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Magical’

  Now

  ALSO BY AMANDA PROWSE

  Novels

  Poppy Day

  What Have I Done?

  Clover’s Child

  A Little Love

  Will You Remember Me?

  Christmas for One

  A Mother’s Story

  Perfect Daughter

  The Second Chance Café

  Three-and-a-Half Heartbeats

  The Food of Love

  I Won’t be Home for Christmas

  Another Love

  My Husband’s Wife

  The Idea of You

  The Art of Hiding

  Anna

  Theo

  How to Fall in Love Again

  The Coordinates of Loss

  The Girl in the Corner

  The Things I Know

  The Light in the Hallway

  The Day She Came Back

  Novellas

  The Game

  Something Quite Beautiful

  A Christmas Wish

  Ten Pound Ticket

  Imogen’s Baby

  Miss Potterton’s Birthday Tea

  Mr Portobello’s Morning Paper

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Lionhead Media Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542017299

  ISBN-10: 1542017297

  Cover design by Ghost Design

  This book is dedicated to all the young servicemen who died during ‘Exercise Tiger’ at Slapton Sands, Devon, on April 28th 1944 and to all the incredible Miss Mollys who were at home waiting for them . . .

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ‘The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,

  That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best.

  The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,

  The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.’

  —‘I Vow To Thee My Country’

  by Sir Cecil Spring Rice

  ONE

  Chelmsford, Essex

  December 24th 2019

  Aged 94

  Her hand shook and her breathing was a little laboured. It was time for Molly to write the letter, just as she had said she would: a promise made in haste, but a promise nonetheless. A task she had avoided through fear, nerves and a worry that she might just get the wording wrong. But enough now – for the love of God, she was ninety-four! The time for putting this off had long passed. She reached for the weighty book entitled A Study of Flora from her bedside cabinet. Her slender wrist flexed under the weight of the hardback edition, sending a shooting pain up her forearm.

  With the book propped on her raised knees, she selected a sheet of paper from the open sheaf beside her on the bed and carefully unscrewed the lid from her fountain pen.

  Holding the pen up towards the halo of light from the bedside lamp, she gazed captivated as the mother-of-pearl inlay shimmered with faint flecks of iridescence that grew no less beautiful with each passing year. The pen had been a gift from her father, one of the few things she knew with certainty had felt the touch of his broad hand; it had no doubt been the instrument via which he let his thoughts tumble from mind to sheet, and all the more precious because of it. She hoped it might do the same for her, a fancy conduit to bring clarity and fluency to a jumble of unexpressed truths that sat knotted in her head like an old ball of yarn, woven of guilt, hesitation and a gut-churning uncertainty. She sighed, finding it far easier to voice the words in her head than to commit them to paper.

  Dear . . .

  ‘No, no, no, not “Dear”, that’s far too formal, for goodness’ sake! Start with “Hello” or something more familiar!’ She tutted as she scrunched the sheet of paper, crumpling it between her palms before tossing it onto the floor by the side of her bed.

  Taking a deep, slow breath, she closed her eyes briefly before opening them again with a welcome sense of clarity. Resting the heel of her palm on the paper, she took her time, forming each word with juddering loops and an abundance of dance on the line. Her heart raced as she wrote the words that had lined her gut and sat under her tongue for decades.

  Darling Joe,

  Well, they say better late than never and so here we are . . .

  Where to begin?

  Where to end?

  I’m not going to overthink this letter – I paused there for a moment to chuckle to myself. Not going to overthink it? I’ve been overthinking this letter for decades. I was asked to write it a while ago and I do so now with mixed feelings. Here I sit with the moon peeking through the curtains and the still of the early hours engulfing me and I shall let my thoughts tumble; the circumstances, the explanations, the rationale, feelings and consequences that have been shut away, boxed, taped and shelved for much of my life. And trust me when I tell you that it is a box that has weighed heavily in my thoughts. Weighed heavily in my heart.

  Molly let her words flow onto the page and, as they did so, felt the burden of secrecy ease from her shoulders. A quick glance at the clock that ticked on her bedside cabinet told her she had been writing for an hour. She was quite parched. Putting the lid on her pen, she rubbed her knuckles to relieve them of their arthritic ache.

  Very carefully she opened the heavy book and placed the unfinished letter between the pages, next to the unopened envelope already hiding there, marked ‘Personal Correspondence’, and then closed it, placing it by her side on the mattress. She pulled her soft blue cardigan from the corner post of her brass bed. It was snug over her nightgown and provided just the right amount of cosy. Reaching for a tissue from the box on the nightstand, she wiped her eyes, another
wonderful facet of ageing against which she had not been pre-warned: the fact that her baggy eyelids, no longer fitting so neatly against her eyeball, could not contain her tears. She wouldn’t have minded so much if this were the only baggy, once close-fitting area that leaked, but alas, it was not.

  ‘A quick cup of tea and then I’ll finish it off.’ She patted the book.

  Living alone, she did this. Spoke aloud small words of encouragement or motivation that in another time and another life might have been offered up by a relative or a lover. Not that she keenly felt their absence, having learned over the years to be self-reliant in all aspects.

  It might have been the season of goodwill, but she saw no reason to add sparkle and gaudiness to her home, already filled with clutter. The only exception was the rather fragile and misshapen lump of gold-painted, salt-baked dough that had started out in life as a star before age and clumsy storage saw it eroded to this rather ugly nub. Ugly, that was, to everyone apart from her. As was customary, it hung at this very moment from an old branch of pussy willow on her mantelpiece. It was all the decoration she needed.

  Pulling back the bedcovers and despite her desire to get the letter finished, Molly took her time. Manoeuvring slowly, as any haste on her part seemed to invoke dizziness, she swung round her skinny legs with their overly large knees until she was sitting on the edge of the mattress. Flexing her toes inside her bedsocks, she stared down at the network of proud purple veins that ran in tributaries over her legs, visible through the thin skin, and tried to remember a time when her pins had been smooth, lump-free and shapely – a long, long time ago, that was for sure. Beauty, she had learned, despite everyone’s apparent preoccupation with it, was but fleeting and also relative. It fascinated her how aesthetics seemed to have become the most important thing, remembering a time when the phrase ‘it’s what’s on the inside that counts’ was the mantra of the day and when women in particular seemed too preoccupied with all that life threw at them to worry about wrinkles, imperfections and liver spots.

  ‘A different life, different times . . .’ She looked at the book with the letters enclosed within and pictured handing it to her son. How would he react? A shiver of nerves ran along her limbs at the very thought. These nerves, however, were shot through with something akin to excitement. As though she was finally going to take her place on the podium, having waited a lifetime for the honour.

  In the half-light and clutching her teacup, Molly made her way with caution along the narrow corridor of her cottage, its walls lined with heavily framed works of art, redolent of another life, lived in a four-storey house in Bloomsbury. She walked to the top of the stairs, her slender build enough to cause the floorboard on the landing to creak. The noises of her home were to her a conversation of sorts, a reminder that this little building too had a life, a history and a voice. Her home for life . . . She found it comforting. The very bricks and mortar were not only her haven but also her companion.

  . . . feelings and consequences that have been shut away, boxed, taped and shelved for much of my life. And trust me when I tell you that it is a box that has weighed heavily in my thoughts . . .

  ‘What else do I need to say?’ she asked aloud, revisiting the words of the letter in her mind.

  There was a moment when her concentration wandered: her mind fixed on the secrets that lay between the pages of her book and it was in that second that she took a step. It was a movement of mere inches, a small thing, but one that would change the rest of Molly’s life.

  Time stood still while her brain continued to whir, and Molly knew exactly how things were going to unfold, a minuscule window of warning too brief to act upon. Ludicrously, she clutched the dainty, porcelain cup and saucer, decorated with forget-me-nots, to her chest, as if protecting this was of far greater importance than protecting any of her aged bones. Molly was aware of her feet lifting from the ground as her socks slipped from under her, sending her frail body horizontal for a beat, before she felt the first crack of the back of her head against the lip of the two-hundred-year-old wooden stair and then of every crack on the back of her head against the subsequent twelve steps over which she thumped. There were only two thoughts rattling around in her brain as it shook back and forth, back and forth . . .

  The first:

  This was my grandmother’s teacup! I don’t want it to get damaged!

  And the second:

  I am really, really hurting myself. This may in fact be how I die . . . and this simply will not do. I must finish my letter!

  When it was finally over, she found her reaction to be an equal mix of shock and relief. It was a shock that she had fallen and a shock that she had survived; relief came at the realisation that her ordeal was over, all seven seconds of it, before she welcomed the dark cloud of oblivion which now wrapped itself around her.

  ‘Auntie Molly! Oh shit! Oh no – Auntie Molly!’

  Molly opened her eyes and saw the jowly face of her great-niece, Frances, hovering over her upside down. As the middle-aged woman lowered her rather bulky frame onto the floor beside Molly, her broad knee came down on the dainty cup and saucer on the floor and crushed it. The same cup and saucer that had once belonged to Frances’s great-great-grandmother and had survived two world wars and, miraculously, the tumble down the stairs.

  With the crunching sound Molly felt the first jarring bolt of pain, in her legs, arms, ribs, head . . . everywhere! She opened her mouth to speak and what came out was a long, creaking whine of nothingness, like a laboured yawn or the scrape of wood from a barn door unused to opening onto cobbles, a rasp. Nothing more than a dry echo of irritation where her once lubricated vowels had slipped over a tongue loaded with words both whip smart and razor sharp.

  The fact that her voice had gone frightened Molly more than the physical pain, the headache, the confusion.

  Not only her voice, but apparently her words too, with only a tangle of letters in her brain, like an upturned tin of Alphabetti spaghetti. A muddle from which she could decipher only two words:

  Igloo . . . igloo . . . igloo . . . igloo . . . over and over in a pointless, maddeningly frustrating monologue, and then a new addition, which came from nowhere: paws . . . paws . . . paws . . . paws . . . And the crazy thing, the craziest thing, was that even if she had been able to get the words out, the very last things she wanted to say out loud were either ‘igloo’ or ‘paws’, when what she actually wanted to do was shout at the top of her voice: ‘My letter, my letter to Joe! I haven’t finished it – it’s in the book . . . the book on my bed! ’

  The urgency of her desire left her breathless and frustrated as again she slipped from consciousness. The offer of dark escape, too tempting to resist . . .

  Molly peeped gingerly through her tender eyelids. She hated the harsh overhead strip lighting of the hospital corridor. It offended her senses with its glare, doing nothing to beautify anything it touched, quite unlike the soft lamplight that filled the rooms of her cottage. The place was noisy, chaotic. Busy with preoccupied people coming and going. Her visible bruises, she noticed, sat in clumps, as if someone had inserted bundles of blackberries under her skin. She could feel the swelling of her eyes and face and her head pounded. The only way to keep the intense nausea at bay and to ensure any level of comfort was to lie perfectly still. This was made easier by the plaster cast that encased her arm, the bandages that tightly bound her ribs and the clumpy boot-like contraption on her right leg. It came as no surprise to her that she was more than a little broken. It took all of her energy to move her head, while inside she was shouting, ‘There’s a letter in a book on my bed – it’s for my son! It’s very important. Please! I need to get it to him!’, but what left her mouth was a low whine that anyone listening might have mistaken for a howl of physical pain.

  Frances was somewhere off to her right, her niece’s voice loud enough to break through the fog of semi-consciousness as she chatted on her mobile phone.

  ‘Yep, yep, she’s still here, aren’t you, Au
ntie Molly? Hanging in there. Yes, yes, a stroke, apparently. Poor old thing. They don’t know if she had a stroke and then fell, or fell and then had a stroke. I’ve called everyone I can think of and they’re all phoning around too . . . I’m just going to go and grab a coffee, actually.’

  Molly locked eyes with her and willed her to concentrate, to understand: ‘Frances, I’ve written a letter to Joe – please see that he gets it!’ Her tears fell as what left her mouth was akin to a growl, with the words ‘igloo’ and ‘paws’ repeated randomly.

  Molly felt the rumble in her gut of utter frustration.

  I made a promise!

  Growing old had not been something she detested, like some did, but neither had she revelled in it in the way she had heard others do – those irritating souls who liked to repeat their age as if it were a badge of honour or an achievement: ‘I’m seventy-four! Can you believe it? I am seventy-four!’ Molly thought particularly of Mrs Ogilvy, her disagreeable neighbour.

  For her it had been more of a calm acceptance that this simply was how things were and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it, other than the obvious. Although she did sometimes consider the frail state in which she lived, wondering if it was universal: the dulling of adventure in both palate and music? The desire for soft food, less noise, low light, easy landings and slow movement. Was it the norm: to have taken comfort in her dotage from the familiar, the routine and the predictable? And whatever happened to that thirst for adventure and her curious mind? Spontaneity! When had it all settled?

  It would be disingenuous to say that in recent years she hadn’t disliked her physical weakness. In her younger days, she could never have imagined a time when what she considered to be a Herculean task – the climbing of a mountain or the chopping of a log – would be replaced by taking the top off the toothpaste tube or the putting on of tights. All of these, however, had become equally impossible for her. It was not only a lack of strength, but a lack of dexterity too, as everything – everything – became fiddly and so time-consuming! It drove her absolutely crackers. She was not a person used to relying on others, much preferring to be self-sufficient in all matters.