In Her Shadow Read Online Free PDF

occasions at functions and events, and she was the kind of woman who made me feel uncomfortable – all cleavage and innuendo. She was a keen and apparently competent showjumper and, as far as I could tell, she only had two topics of conversation: horses and sex. Everything about her was loud and colourful, she was a peacock of a woman, and she was happiest when she was surrounded by admirers.
    I’d heard her talking about John at the launch of the museum’s summer exhibition. ‘He’s so obsessed with his job that I honestly think he’d pay more attention to me if I was a fossil!’ she had said, with wide eyes and a melodramatic shudder. ‘I bought some new lingerie for his birthday and was draped in the doorway like so …’ she adopted a provocative pose, ‘and when I asked him if there was anything he fancied, he said: “Yes, the Panorama special”!’
    Everyone had laughed; everyone except me.
    Worse still, it was impossible to be part of a team that worked so closely with the University staff and not hear the rumours about Charlotte. I didn’t know what was true and what was not, and a person who flirted as obviously and as much as Charlotte did was bound to be the subject of gossip, but I believed there must be some substance in the speculation that she had had, and was still having, a series of affairs. John was one of the most honest and honourable people I’d ever known. I could not bear to think of him being hurt and humiliated. That was why I avoided Charlotte where possible. That was why I could not stand her.
    That evening, he had taken the roof off his little sports car and I felt more like myself as he drove me through the quietening streets of St Paul’s and into the centre of Bristol.The city wind was warm in my hair. I closed my eyes and felt it on my face and I smelled the smells of the city and was grateful to be out with John and not in the flat, on my own.
    When we stopped at the traffic-lights, I looked at him. He turned to smile at me and I smiled back. His gentleness was balm to me. That evening, and not for the first time, I wished he and I were together, a couple, so that I could reach my hand out and take hold of his. If he was mine, he would tether me. He wouldn’t let me go. In a world of inconsistencies, John was a constant, somebody who could be relied upon. For the thousandth time I wished he and Charlotte had never met, never married, never had children. If things had been different, if it had been me instead of her, then perhaps …
    ‘Don’t even think about it, Hannah! ’ Ellen’s voice whispered in my ear. ‘ He wouldn’t look at you twice.’
    I turned away from John and intertwined my fingers, and as he pulled away from the lights, I concentrated on watching the city go by. I did my best to ignore Ellen, but she was there; all the time she was there, with me like a persistent ache. I sensed her presence in the golden stains seeping across the twilight sky; I glimpsed her reflected in the glass panes of shop windows; I heard her voice in the breeze.
    ‘ I won’t go away, Hannah ,’ the voice whispered. ‘ You know I won’t. Not now. Not ever .’

CHAPTER SIX
    THAT FIRST SUMMER , the summer the Brechts moved into Thornfield House, I went there almost every day during the school holidays. My parents were both out at work, Jago was helping at the farm and I was bored at home. There was nothing for a young girl to do in Trethene, and anyway I loved going up to the house to call on Ellen and her parents. I liked seeing how they were settling in, how the rooms were being redecorated and the garden cleared, and how traces of Mrs Withiel were being painted over and scrubbed away. Mr and Mrs Brecht were different from other adults. They made me feel welcome in their home, as if I were special. They were more sophisticated than the Trethene people I’d known all my life. They didn’t have mud on their boots, their skin wasn’t red-raw from being outdoors too much and