‘I don’t care. I just want her to have it.’
‘Down there,’ said Jim, pointing from the window, ‘is where I’ll have my vegetable patch. Alf can help me. And I thought we could plant violets for your sister.’
‘Oh, yes,’ breathed Nell. She forced a laugh before her throat could clog with sorrow. ‘I’d like that. She’d like that.’
‘More than she’d like having the cat named after her?’ Jim suggested and this time Nell’s laugh was real.
‘Let’s go round the garden,’ she said. She was going to live in a house with a garden. Her children were going to grow up with a garden.
‘In a minute,’ said Jim. ‘There’s something I want to tell you first. I need to know if I’ve done the right thing. I can cancel it if I haven’t.’
‘Should I be alarmed?’ Daft question. She trusted him far too deeply to be alarmed.
‘It’s to do with our honeymoon. You’ve been happy to leave arrangements to me so it would be a surprise, but you ought to have the chance to prepare yourself.’
‘For what?’
‘I’ve been in touch with the Imperial War Graves Commission.’
Her skin tingled all over; her heart forgot to beat.
‘I want to take you to visit the war graves in France. I can show you the final resting places of three of your brothers, but I haven’t been able to track down Tom. It may be that his remains will never be formally identified. If that is the case, then I want you to know that official memorials to the missing are also going to be constructed; and visiting one of those in due course will be our way of paying our respects to him.’
‘Oh, Jim …’
‘I’ve also found the village cemetery in Picardy where your sister was laid to rest. We’ll take her flowers.’
Vi, dear stage-struck Vi. What fun the children would have had with her. What love and support Nell had had to live without.
‘Is that what you’d like?’ he asked.
She couldn’t speak. She walked into his arms and he held her for a long time. Then he kissed away her tears.
‘Come along,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see our garden.’
‘And choose where to plant the violets,’ said Nell.
Acknowledgements
I should like to express my gratitude to: Laura Longrigg, my agent, and Lesley Crooks, my editor; Fliss and Simon Bage, whose superb copy-editing of The Deserter’s Daughter taught me a thing or two about planning A Respectable Woman; Christina Griffiths, who has an eye for the perfect cover; Susie Dunlop and all at Allison & Busby, especially Kelly Smith and Ailsa Floyd; Becky Curtis, Aimée Hogston and all at Isis Soundings; Julia Franklin, who knows how to tell a compelling story; Carol Rivers, for her support and encouragement; Kirsten Hesketh, Karen Coles, Christina Banach, Catherine Boardman, Maddie Please, Jane Ayres, Chris Manby and Vanessa Rigg, for support, advice, being excited at all the right moments and generally making the world of writing a better place; Jen Gilroy for naming the cat; but please note, Jen: I have been asked to suggest that next time, you choose Elsie; and Wendy Martyn, who is, of course, a highly respectable woman.
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About the Author
SUSANNA BAVIN has variously been a librarian, an infant school teacher, a carer and a cook. She lives in Llandudno in North Wales with her husband and two rescue cats, but her writing is inspired by her Mancunian roots.
susannabavin.co.uk
@SusannaBavin
By Susanna Bavin
The Deserter’s Daughter
A Respectable Woman
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
12 Fitzroy Mews
London W1T 6DW
allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2018.
This ebook edition published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2018.
Copyright © 2018 by SUSANNA BAVIN
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2134–4
A Respectable Woman Page 41
