The Promise Read Online Free PDF

gossips, more like.’ Ben sighed, remembering how it should have been a quick call over train times for Karen’s visit, but had found himself embroiled in a row over his ex-wife’s demands that she have sole custody of their child, supported by half the profits from his joinery business. No wonder he’d lost his temper. He’d no intention of losing Karen, nor being left near-bankrupt. Not wishing to relate any of this to his interfering mother, he diligently reapplied his attention to the door hinge.
    Hetty Gorran, however, was not one to let things go, once she’d set her mind to something. ‘Wanting another chance, is she?’
    ‘Something of the sort.’
    ‘Is this her idea, or Karen’s?’
    Ben took a gulp of tea, then picked up the screwdriver again. ‘What do you think?’
    Hetty allowed her gaze to drift back to the girl in yellow. ‘The lass will be gone some weeks, then?’
    ‘For most of July, but you can never be too certain with our Sally.’
    ‘Long enough, lad.’
    Following the direction of her gaze, he quickly responded. ‘Don’t start your matchmaking, Mother. You’re getting as bad as Mrs Cowper, thinking you can organise a person’s life for them.’
    Hetty Gorran adopted a wounded air of innocence. ‘What, me? Never! But since that good lady has driven half her family away, maybe I’d best take care.’
    ‘Aye, maybe you had.’ Ben was smiling now, but as his mother hurried back to her kitchen his gaze searched again for that small portion of sunshine.
     
    The sun was slipping low over the mountains, turning the lake to a molten gold as Chrissie let herself into the loft. She knocked the dust from her sandals, tossed her straw hat on to the sofa and moved instantly to the window to look out again upon the shoreline. Chrissie had been in Windermere for less than twenty-four hours and already knew that she wished to stay for ever. She was in love – with the town, with the woods that clustered the shores of the lake, the circle of brooding mountains, the air that was as pure and sweet as wine, with the whole magic that was Lakeland. How tempting it would be to create a new life for herself here. Was this the place she could follow her dream and open a bookshop, build a new future for herself? Did she even possess the confidence to try?
    This journey was mainly about discovering her roots, about finding answers to the mysterious family quarrel that had blighted her mother’s life. If she succeeded, then perhaps Vanessa too could finally put the past behind her and come home. It could be a new beginning for them both.
    Chrissie began to set out her ‘treasures’ on the window sill: a pine cone, pebbles and pieces of slate of every hue and colour that had shimmered like jewels beneath thewater. She arranged the buttercups and pink campion she’d picked into a jug and filled it with water. Later she would press them, perhaps stick them on to cards. Maybe she could sell them in this bookshop she might one day own. She smiled at this fanciful notion, not really believing it could ever happen as her mother would never agree to come back here. And Chrissie couldn’t leave her alone in London. It was all a fanciful dream, nothing more.
    Was it also a dream that she’d visited the Lakes before, years ago when she was small? Walking along the shore she’d had a sudden image of herself as a small child before the war paddling in the shallows, skirt tucked up her knicker legs, the air filled with sunshine and laughter. Is that why she loved the place so instinctively? Where had all that innocence, that happiness, gone? When and why had those long-ago Lakeland holidays stopped? Who was the shadowy figure she imagined walking with her by the lake, protectively holding her hand? Was that her grandmother? Chrissie’s recollection, if that’s what it was, of this supposedly crabby old woman was decidedly hazy, clouded by her mother’s bitter descriptions.
    But what would she be like in the