Windfallen
Page 45
Outside, two lobstermen had unloaded their boats, hauling their catch over the side with a well-practiced ease. Along the shore the first dogwalkers left meandering tracks on the sand, a temporary history.
“He’s known. He’s always known. But he never resented me for it.”
She had looked at her son-in-law then and stood, a hand pushing back her graying hair, a girlish, tentative smile.
“I think it’s time Joe got himself a wife, don’t you?”
EPILOGUE
I had to stay in a hospital for a while afterward. I forget how many weeks. They didn’t call it a hospital, of course, not when they were trying to persuade me to go there. They just said it would be a visit home to England, a chance to spend some time with Mummy.
A “little stay” would make me feel better, you see. Lots of girls had the same problem as me, even if no one really talked about it. It wasn’t the sort of thing one talked about, even then. They knew that I never liked living in the tropics, that if it hadn’t been for Guy I would have come home.
I had wanted that baby, you see. Wanted it so much. I used to dream that it was inside me; sometimes, if I put my hand on the bare skin of my stomach, I could even feel it flutter. I used to talk to it silently, willing it into life. Although I never told anybody. I knew what they’d say.
Because Guy and I never spoke about it. He was rather good like that, Mummy said. Sometimes the less attention one paid to something, the better. Less damage all around. Then, Mummy always was one to turn a blind eye. She never really spoke about it either. It was as if I embarrassed her.
When I came out, everyone pretended I hadn’t been there at all. They just got on with things and left me to my dreams. I didn’t tell them anything. I knew from their faces they didn’t believe half of what I said. Why should they?
But you can’t escape your past, can you? Just like you can’t escape your fate. Guy and I were never really the same afterward. It was as if he carried it around, rotting inside him, and could never look at me without the smell of it, the taint of it, coloring his reaction. He was as full of it as I was empty.
Eighteen apples I did, the day that I told you. Eighteen apples.
And still they came out the same way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOJO MOYES is a British novelist and journalist. She is one of only a few authors to have twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association and has been translated into eleven different languages.
www.jojomoyes.com
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PRAISE
JOJO MOYES’s
stunning and unforgettable first novel
Sheltering Rain
“This is a remarkable first novel, rich and deep
and full of wonderfully realized characters.
Oh, these women!”
—Anne Rivers Siddons
“[An] accomplished debut . . . fluidly paced and
cast with engaging characters . . . In style
and substance Moyes is a worthy addition
to [Rosamunde Pilcher’s and
Maeve Binchy’s] ranks.”
—Booklist
“Impressive and absorbing.”
—Sunday Express Magazine (U.K.)
“This perceptive debut novel does the
mothers-and-daughters thing
in page-turning style.”
—Elle (U.K.)
“I enjoyed [Sheltering Rain] very much.”
—Rosamunde Pilcher
ALSO BY JOJO MOYES
Me Before You
The Last Letter from Your Lover
The Horse Dancer
Night Music
Silver Bay
The Ship of Brides
The Peacock Emporium
The Girl You Left Behind
Sheltering Rain
CREDITS
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © by Sandra Cunningham/Arcangel Images
Author photograph © by Lizzie Sanders
COPYRIGHT
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf to reprint from Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WINDFALLEN. Copyright © 2003 by JoJo Moyes. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First HarperTorch paperback printing: April 2004
First William Morrow hardcover printing: May 2003
First William Morrow Paperback
ISBN 978-0-06-001291-9
EPub Edition JUNE 2013 ISBN 9780062311603
13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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