The Postmistress by Maggie Sullivan

Author:Maggie Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-12-07T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The more Claire became embedded in the Barker household, the more she began to question whether she had done the right thing in coming all this way to be with people who were tantamount to strangers, even though her mother insisted on calling them ‘her family’. There was no denying that she enjoyed working in Aunty Sylvia’s shop and she was grateful to her aunt for giving her the opportunity to develop her own sewing and knitting initiatives. That was something she would never have been allowed to do at home and she appreciated Sylvia entrusting her with what she considered to be such grown-up responsibility. Aunty Sylvia had done her best to make Claire feel at home; Claire knew that. She was kind and generous and she always tried to be helpful, but somehow their association had not progressed beyond the superficial. Whenever she was alone with her aunt, or her cousin for that matter, she still worried that somehow they didn’t feel like real family.

The main problem was Rosie, who never passed up a chance to remind Claire how much she resented having to share her bedroom, and try as she might, Claire never felt able to make a true connection with her cousin. In addition, it had come as a shock to discover that neither Sylvia nor Rosie shared her religious beliefs and she wondered why her mother had never seen fit to mention this before she came. Hannah must have known that Sylvia had renounced any religious affiliation when she had married outside of the Jewish faith, something that was frowned upon in the religious community Claire had grown up in. Indeed, it was the only explanation for why her mother had never met Sylvia’s husband but it wasn’t something Claire had ever been able to discuss with her aunt.

Uncle Archie was more distant – a shadowy figure even within his own household. Claire had met him briefly on only a few occasions and from the little she had seen of him he seemed to be a complete enigma. He was rarely at home, was referred to infrequently, and it seemed that neither Sylvia nor Claire saw much of him either. He stayed in rented digs in Derbyshire during the week when he was working and even some weekends when he was not. At first Claire had thought it might be her fault and that he objected to having a stranger living under his roof, but as time went on she began to doubt if that were true, though she didn’t feel it was something she could talk about with Rosie or Sylvia.

The only place Claire heard mention of Archie’s name was when she’d overheard gossip about him – which she had on more than one occasion – when she had been out shopping locally. Most of it implied that he drank too much, that he was quick to lose his temper – and even worse, that he actually hit his wife. But mostly these

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