One Winter Morning by Isabelle Broom

Author:Isabelle Broom
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405935517
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

26

Bonnie

After she left London in 1992, Bonnie had tried her best not to think about Seth Cooper. Even if she had wanted to contact him, she wouldn’t have known how. Nobody had a mobile phone in those days, and the only number she’d ever had for him, which was the landline in the shared flat he rented in Shadwell, was out of service the one time she had tried it.

As the years progressed and everyone moved their lives online, Bonnie had begun a search for him, but it had been half-hearted at best. The fact of it was, she didn’t really want to locate him. She just needed confirmation that she had not dreamt the whole thing.

But it was Seth she was thinking about now, as she sat in the hard-backed chair in the corner of the library, her notebook and pen on the table in front of her. She had told Tracey that she would write in a café for once, but it was Christmas Eve, and every coffee shop in the local area was teeming with stressed-out parents, excitable children and groups of insolent teens. Seeking solitude, Bonnie had wandered the streets of Boughton-under-Blean until she discovered this place.

It was morning now, not yet ten, but the woman behind the desk had warned her that they would be closing at midday. Bonnie had two hours in which to tell the next chunk of her story, which should have been plenty, but she found herself delaying. She had reached the part where everything had begun to spiral out of control, and reliving it now, trying to recall all the emotions she had felt, was making the pitter-patter of anxiety tap-dance its way through her chest. Picking up her pen, she wrote, ‘Isn’t it extraordinary how much power love can have over you?’ And then scribbled it out.

Because it wasn’t love that was to blame for what happened; it was someone else’s abuse of it.

Seth and I had been dating, I guess you’d call it, for about a month when he invited me to spend a weekend with him in Brighton. It was quite a big deal, because the two of us had yet to actually sleep in the same bed together, and I had yet to sleep in a bed alongside any boy. There was just no way my folks would ever have let me do such a thing, and I guess I wanted to wait to respect their wishes – at least that’s the excuse I used. I didn’t want Seth to think that I was frigid and lose interest, but I was also reluctant to do the deed with him in case he then worked out how inexperienced I really was.

Doesn’t that sound absolutely bloody dreadful? I know it does – but at the time, that warped logic made sense to me. And anyway, Seth didn’t put all that much pressure on me – he told me that he was happy to wait. But I knew once

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