Lorna Gray

Mrs P’s Book of Secrets


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      Mrs P’s Book of Secrets

      LORNA GRAY

      One More Chapter

      a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

      Copyright © Lorna Gray 2019

      Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

      Cover images © Shutterstock.com

      Lorna Gray asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008368258

      Ebook Edition © December 2019 ISBN: 9780008368241

      Version: 2019-10-10

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       A note on the text

       Author’s Note

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

      For all the people who have contributed to the making of this book

       Chapter 1

       December 1946, Moreton-in-Marsh

      My grandmother and mother performed a rather unusual war service. Through the medium of regular séances, they worked – and still do work – to guide the wandering souls of poor lost soldiers out of the filthy quagmire of war.

      There were some, they say, who found the shock of their violent end so sudden and so disorientating that it bewildered their soul. The living senses might have made the switch from the roar of bombs to the silence of the hereafter, but the shadow of the men they had been would sometimes remain there still. Detached from the nightmare of the battlefield, but bound to it; staggered and confused.

      The process of reaching them called for no miasma, no rattling tables. My grandmother and her little gathering of fellow spiritualists simply treasured the serious belief that they were extending a kindly hand to those rudderless souls, before steering them first towards acceptance, and secondly into peace.

      When my husband was killed, I refused flatly to let them do it.

      I couldn’t bear to think of his soul being stranded in those dismal terms. And not because I was selfish, or enjoyed the kind of superior cynicism that masquerades as lucid reason. Everyone has their own way of dealing with loss. But for me it felt as if real selfishness would dwell in that sort of calling out of his name. I would never stand by while they did it without me, but if I joined them and some part of it worked, my husband might learn the truth from me – that I didn’t want to let him go.

      Because, real or not, it would never feel like whispering a tender farewell to him across the divide. It would be like calling him back.

      It would feel like I was telling him flatly that I can grasp him wherever he is, and that I mean to shackle him to me, when surely, of all things, I have to trust in the deeper workings of my heart and believe he has already found his release.

      So, for now, I keep to life and leave my husband well alone.

      I was first carried home to this place by that feeling eight weeks ago. This was the time, after all, when our newfound peace was stumbling towards its second Christmas in all the monotony of rationing. And in the spirit of the year’s end and the time of darkness and so on, it has lately seemed to me that nowhere was a better light shining for me than in my uncle’s little book printing business in the north Cotswolds town of Moreton-in-Marsh.

      I was enjoying the process of reacquainting myself with his busy little first floor office, above the street front shop and the narrow printworks in the outbuildings behind. My uncle wasn’t staid, but his building was.

      The rooms for Kershaw and Kathay Book Press Ltd ought to have belonged to a legal office or an academic’s study. Every surface was made of dark wood, and quiet studiousness had taken root in the dry corners behind the cabinets.

      There were three of us working up here on the first floor. Robert Underhill was my uncle’s second-in-command, and he had the office that ran in a narrow line along the end wall from front to back. He also had possession of one of the fireplaces and the first of the windows that overlooked the street. For the few hours when the winter’s day outside grew bright enough to have any effect, white lines showed in the warped gaps between the wooden panels that divided his space from mine.

      My