The Beach Hut Read Online Free PDF Page A

there would be fewer problems in the world.’
    No, thought Jane, Forever Amber wouldn’t be in that category. Terence Shaw wouldn’t consider it proper on any level.
     
    When she came to go back to her little room, her head was swimming slightly, but she was glad her new employer seemed to have thawed, and wasn’t quite as curt as he had seemed initially. She was surprised to find herself picking up his manuscript eagerly. Anita Palmer had just met the young lad from chapter two, Joe Munden. Jane had a feeling she knew what might happen next.
    She stopped typing with a start when Terence Shaw came in.
    ‘It’s five o’clock,’ he told her, and she wasn’t sure if he was annoyed she had outstayed her welcome or impressed by her conscientiousness.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered. ‘I wanted to find out what happened . . .’
    The smile he gave her lit up his face, in fact the entire room.
    ‘That’s good,’ he told her. ‘That’s . . . good.’
    He plonked a book on the table. Lady Chatterley’s Lover . Jane’s cheeks flushed pink. She’d heard about it - who hadn’t?
    ‘See what you think of this.’
    And he walked out. Tentatively, she picked up the book, expecting it to be hot. The papers were still full of the court case.
    She couldn’t take it back to the beach hut. Her mother would flip if she saw her reading it. Actually, blow her mother. She was the one who had organised the job. And Jane couldn’t help it if her employer had forced the book upon her.
    Anyway, she could slip another cover on it. She looked at the bookshelves and selected another volume of the same size, removing the dust cover, her heart thumping.
    As she left, she realised it was Friday. Was he expecting her over the weekend?
    ‘Mr Shaw?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Do you want me over the weekend?’
    He leant back in his chair, smoking his cigarette thoughtfully.
    ‘No such thing as time off for a writer, when they’re in full flow,’ he informed her. ‘But you needn’t worry, I suppose. See you first thing Monday.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘And it’s Terence. Mr Shaw makes me sound like a . . . schoolmaster. Or a magistrate.’
    He shot her a dazzling smile. He looked entirely different when he smiled.
    Jane just nodded. She couldn’t imagine having the nerve to call him Terence, but she didn’t say so. She’d just have to avoid calling him anything for the time being.
     
    She spent most of Saturday trying to read Lady Chatterley , lying on a scratchy car rug on the sand. She was careful to make sure her mother didn’t cotton on to what she was reading. She found it a struggle, it was terribly wordy, but she was determined to persevere. Something inside her wanted if not to impress Terence Shaw, then at least to prove to him that she wasn’t just a silly little girl with no thought for anything other than boys and dresses.
    Even if that’s what she had been up until now.
    By teatime she found lying in the sun concentrating had made her head throb. Against her better judgement she agreed to take part in a rounders match with some of the other children on the beach, and was surprised to find she enjoyed it.
    ‘You see,’ said her mother triumphantly. ‘You just needed something to do.’
    Maybe, thought Jane, and found herself glancing along the beach to Terence’s house, wondering how many more words he had managed to scrawl out over the weekend.
     
    On Monday morning she scurried along the beach and up the cliff path.
    ‘I don’t think he writes as well as you,’ she told Terence of D.H. Lawrence, solemnly, and was flustered when he laughed long and hard, and patted her on the shoulder.
    ‘Thank you,’ he managed eventually, and she wasn’t sure what he found quite so hilarious. It was true. Lawrence waffled on, while Terence got straight to the point - he made you feel exactly what the characters were feeling, even if he did occasionally use words she’d never heard of. She was slightly unsettled by