A Family Secret by Josephine Cox

Author:Josephine Cox [Cox, Josephine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: 0e, Mary, Helen, Wilma
ISBN: 9780007420001
Google: QfFyrgEACAAJ
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

TONY AND EILEEN had settled back into their normal post-holiday routines, Eileen out playing skittles or bridge or shopping, Tony pottering around, mostly getting underfoot. He liked a long walk to get his morning paper, and next door was his favourite greengrocer’s shop. It was a nice traditional place, not in the part of town where he and Eileen lived, but a good walk on a fine day.

He’d often half-noticed the pretty young woman who worked there on previous visits. She wasn’t always behind the counter, but she was there often enough for him to have come to recognise her. Over time he saw the young woman in the shop and at other times she wasn’t working. Tony eventually worked out when she was there and his walks to that part of town became more regular on those days.

One particular morning, soon after he’d returned from Blackpool, it was she who packed his paper bag and added up the bill. Tony smiled and wished her a ‘Good morning’ as he prepared to leave. The strange thing was that when she smiled back he felt he had met her before – not just here, but that he actually knew her from somewhere else. He racked his brain to think where that might have been, but concluded he must have imagined it. Where on earth would an old buffer like him have met a vivacious and pretty young woman like that?

Then, the next time he went in, the same girl was there again, and again he had a curious feeling that they had once known each other well.

The feeling would not leave him and he started thinking of this young woman often and spending every idle moment trying hard to remember where they had met. The memory seemed just out of reach but the need to know grew in Tony until he felt it like an itch that needed to be scratched. For some reason that he couldn’t quite explain to himself, though, he didn’t mention any of this to Eileen.

A few days later, he returned from his walk to the greengrocer’s with a bag of salad to find that Eileen had been going through the desk in the drawing room with a view to clearing out one or two of the over-stuffed drawers and had unearthed some old photograph albums from the bottom drawer, then put them aside to have a proper look at while she put her feet up later. However, she hadn’t been able to resist a quick flip through, drawn by the carefully posed, sepia-tinted family groups with their half-familiar features and their elaborate old-fashioned clothes, and it was then that Tony came in and found her kneeling on the floor, an album in her lap.

‘Look at these wonderful old photos, Tony. I’d forgotten what was in this album and I think you’ll want to keep these. They’re pictures of your family from way back. This one must be your grandmother – am I right? Heavens, what

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.