The Suffragette's Secret: A Morton Farrier Short Story (The Forensic Genealogist Series) by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

Author:Nathan Dylan Goodwin [Goodwin, Nathan Dylan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-09-10T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

29th September 1911, Brighton, East Sussex

Grace noticed the figure walking up Victoria Street towards the house. She was certain that it was him. She released the net curtain that was bunched in her hand, allowing it to fall back over her bedroom window. Her view now partly obscured, she leant closer and squinted hard. Yes, it was certainly him: Cecil—returned to check up on her again. She smiled at his persistence as he drew closer to the house. Then she noticed the bunch of flowers that he was holding and her smile widened and lit her eyes.

She moved away from the window and checked herself in the mirror. There was no rush to get downstairs, as there had once been when he had come to visit. Olivia and Minnie’s initial misgivings about him had dissolved and he had won them over after taking the lodging room opposite Holloway Prison. They had been delighted to have a window from which they could, night and day, shout messages of solidarity through a megaphone to the imprisoned suffragettes. It was not the taking of the room, though, that had endeared him to Grace, as it had the other women, it was his motives. ‘I know it’ll be tough in there,’ he had shouted up to her cell window. ‘I just wanted you to have a friendly face nearby—to know that whatever happens, I’ll be just across the street. Every night there’ll always be a light on for you.’ His kind-heartedness had made her cry more than any of the harsh treatments that had been metered out during her sentence; as much as she searched her past, she failed to find a single recollection of anyone doing anything as compassionate for her before. And, he had been true to his word: a light had remained on each night in his room for the entirety of her incarceration.

Grace picked up her walking cane and calmly left her bedroom. The injury sustained to her right leg on Downing Street had still to heal and navigating the three flights of stairs was a painful undertaking.

‘Grace, Cecil’s here for you!’ Olivia yelled up.

‘I’m on my way,’ she called back. ‘Tell him to pop back in a few hours, by which time I’ll be there.’

She reached the final flight of stairs and saw him waiting at the bottom, cradling the red roses.

‘Hello, Grace. How are you?’ he asked.

‘Better, thank you,’ she answered. ‘I won’t be joining the circus acrobatics team anytime soon, though.’

‘I got you these from the market,’ he said, offering the flowers.

‘Thank you,’ she said, touched. It was another first for her—nobody had ever bought her flowers before. ‘I’ll put them in water. Tea?’

‘If it’s not too much trouble. Do you need a hand?’

Grace nodded. ‘Thank you.’

Under Grace’s guidance, Cecil placed the flowers in a vase of water and made two cups of tea, which he carried out to the terrace at the rear of the house.

Outside, the sun was high and hot, beating down onto the large parasol raised above a white cast-iron table and set of four chairs.

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.