The Very Thought of You Read Online Free PDF

meet her – like water draining fast down a plughole, the light rushed out from her.
    She struck her head on the floor as she fainted, and the girl beside her called out for help. Elizabeth Ashton appeared and knelt down. She called for a napkin and, wincing, covered the wound. Crouching on the floor, she raised Anna in her arms. The other children were sitting down now, eating and watching.
    Anna emerged from deep, sweet oblivion to a strange room. She saw a high white ceiling edged with intricate patterns, like cake icing. Her body was limp and damp. She looked up into the face of a stranger – a stranger with an anxious face and dark glossy hair.
    Elizabeth looked down at the pale girl in her arms. She was so slight, yet her eyes, relit, shone with life. This was a clean child, a pleasure to hold.
    “What’s your name?” she asked softly.
    “Anna Sands.” She wanted her mother, and stifled a sob.
    “We’re going to take you upstairs, Anna. How did you cut your knee?”
    “I banged into the railings,” said Anna. She felt obscurely guilty about the mess of blood. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
    “Don’t worry about anything. Just breathe calmly for a few moments until you’re ready to move.”
    The matron, Miss Harrison, appeared with a damp cloth, and Mrs Ashton vanished with a smile. When the matron examined the wound, she realized that it would require stitches, and the village doctor was called for.
    Anna was left waiting in her dormitory. She lay on her bed, pressing the cloth against her knee, worrying about her bloodied socks because she only had three pairs. Nobody came, and she missed home. She wished she had brought her teddy with her, after all. She gazed up at the crack lines on the ceiling and felt cut off from everyone.
    At last the doctor appeared with the matron, and checked her over.
    “We’ll need to sew you up, my dear,” he muttered. He looked like a severe doctor from the card game
Happy Families
, all whiskers. But his eyes were crinkly-kind as he undid his black bag and made his preparations.
    Anna looked away when he produced the needle, and winced with pain as the matron held her leg; she had never known such shocking sharpness. Tears seeped through her screwed-up eyes.
    After the wound was dressed, the doctor smiled, showing his gummy teeth.
    “Have a rest, and then you can run out and play with the others. But be careful not to bump yourself.”
    Anna counted to a hundred many times, then went downstairs, warily, this time. Breakfast was long over and she joined the other children in a great panelled room called “the saloon”. Someone blew a whistle and Mrs Ashton appeared.
    “We’re going to divide you into classes now, so please come up, one by one.”
    Anna was put into a class with Miss Weir, who had come with a group of children from Pimlico. She was young and pale, with sandy hair. And a gentle face. There were fourteen children in her class, boys and girls. Anna had an eye for Katy from her dormitory, who seemed to know things.
    Another whistle was blown, and they all followed their new teachers. Miss Weir led them to their classroom, but itwasn’t like a normal school room. It was tall with carved ceilings and there were marks on the yellow wallpaper where furniture was missing. Some simple wooden tables and chairs had been laid out in rows, and a blackboard rested on a stand. On one wall hung a darkly varnished portrait of a man with his dog; in the distance behind him was a great house, and Anna wondered if that was Ashton House.
    “The summer is over, but you can look forward to a new term now,” said their teacher as cheerily as possible, before outlining their lessons. Anna listened, but looked out of the window too, watching the sheep move slowly across the parkland. She had never seen so much grass.
    “Write a few sentences about you and your family,” said Miss Weir, handing them books and pencils.
    My name is Anna Sands. I am an only child.