Still Waters by Emma Carlson Berne

Author:Emma Carlson Berne [Berne, Emma Carlson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Social Issues, Love & Romance, Horror, Mysteries & Detective Stories, Fiction, Recovered Memory, Horror Stories, Juvenile Fiction, Adolescence
ISBN: 9781442421158
Google: mSl_PZ-tByEC
Amazon: 1442421142
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2011-12-19T14:00:00+00:00

Eleven

January 1940

IT WAS BITTERLY cold. Outside the Old House snow lay thick, piled against the windows where the wind had carried it, drifting six feet deep along the lane so that even someone on a bicycle would have had difficulty making their way along it. But the worst of it was, Tess reflected, digging her way down the front path with her father’s huge old coal shovel, that beneath the snow the ground was iron hard with frost. The wind might move the snow around as it gusted icily about her ears, but it was unable to bring about a thaw, and that meant winter was here to stay – for a while, at least.

It’s a good thing I’m still here, she told herself as she dug, because if I weren’t, Marianne and Cherie would just sit inside the Old House and slowly starve. Despite the fact that it was Saturday, and her day off, she had been first up today, as usual. Not that you could blame Cherie for lying in on such a morning – the snow had been bad now for over a week and the buses ran when they could, which wasn’t often. Marianne, of course, no longer bothered to get up to cook breakfast. Why should she? Peter was not there to appreciate her sacrifice.

So when the postman abandoned his bicycle at the top of Deeping Lane and came down, swearing, with the mail, Tess grinned up at him and straightened her back, leaning on her shovel for a breather.

‘Well, fancy meetin’ you, Miss Delamere,’ George Broxton said, grinning at her and resting his bag on the mound of snow she had thrown up to one side of the gatepost. ‘You’ve been snowed in for quite a while, by the looks of it. Well, you’re in luck, I’ve got through an’ there’s a letter for you. You’ve got nine days’ post there, mostly for your ma, but I’d best not stand here gossipin’. This is the fust time I ha’ got through, see, since the snow come down bad. Oh, and I’ve give you the Throwers’ letters an’ all, save my old legs, ’cos I know you’ll be down there some time today. Cheerio!’

‘Wouldn’t you like a cuppa?’ Tess asked, taking the letters. ‘I’m going down to the Throwers all right, but I can make you some tea first.’

‘I would, but I dussen’t stop,’ George said. He was old but hale and hearty, with a shock of white hair which pushed his postman’s hat up at an odd angle in front, and a cheery though toothless grin. ‘As I telled you, that’s the fust time I got down here since the snow so there’s folk other than you waitin’ for ’portant letters. Never mind, I’ll hev that cuppa some other time.’

So Tess trudged up the path with the letters, took a cursory glance at them as she slung them on the hall table – there was a letter with a French stamp and another from

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