Till We Meet Again by Lesley Pearse Read Free Book Online

maybe it was just because Mother kept saying jokingly that she was going to restore it ‘to its previous elegance’. Of course Susan had always known it was very old and must have been built for someone grand, by the carved oak staircase and the wooden panelling in the hall. But she had always wished they lived in one of the pretty Tudor thatched cottages in the village, or even in one of the modern bungalows and houses on the road into Luddington, for people often said The Rookery was creepy, because of the way it was hidden behind trees.
    Suddenly she found herself looking at it then with new eyes, admiring the mellow red brick, the lattice windows, the tall chimneys. It was great to be able to run down the garden and watch boats coming through the lock, to see early-morning mist rising over the weir. She could hardly wait for Beth to come and stay because she had a feeling she would find it all magical.
    The house had never seemed that big while Granny was alive, for all the four main bedrooms were in use, and the two attic rooms were full of junk. But now, as the wheelchair, old trunks and pieces of furniture Granny had brought to the house with her were disposed of, suddenly there was space and airiness.
    ‘I never wanted all her clutter here,’ Mother said one day as she added a couple of ugly chairs to an already large pile of furniture in the front garden which was due to be collected for a jumble sale. ‘But she insisted, even though they were all worthless. My goodness, it’s good to see the back of it all.’
    Downstairs there were three reception rooms, plus the kitchen. The drawing room had French windows opening out on to the garden which sloped down to the river Avon and the lock. Susan had always loved the garden, the many fruit trees and flowering shrubs, the winding paths she played hopscotch on, the little pond always full of frogs.
    She could see the drawing room so clearly in her mind’s eye as it was on sunny afternoons: flowery chintz-covered settees and armchairs, the pink and green patterned carpet with a cream fringe which had to be brushed straight. Her mother’s collection of Worcester porcelain figurines was displayed in the glass cabinet, and an embroidered screen stood in front of the empty fireplace during the summer.
    They seldom used the dining room, and the furniture there had come from Father’s family. Susan used to run her fingers along the lovely rosewood table, examine the pie-crust effect around its edge, admire the vast china cabinet and the graceful chairs, and wonder at their value because Father said they were antique.
    The third room was Father’s study. It was lined with books and there was a huge oak desk under the window. Susan did her homework in there until they had central heating installed in 1964. Her mother used to light a fire in the big stone fireplace just before she got home from school, as she always said it was a nice quiet place where Susan could concentrate on her work. What her mother never realized was that Susan mostly just sat in Father’s leather armchair and stared into the fire, glad to be in warm isolation, well away from Granny.
    Susan found herself smiling. It was so long ago now, and so much had happened since, but that was a good memory. Like all the ones in the four months after Granny’s death.
    It seemed to her, looking back, that that was when she broke out of the gloom she’d been wrapped in for so long, looked around her and saw how much she had. Not only did she live in a lovely home in a pretty village, but her parents were good to her and shared things. Suddenly her mind was alight with possibilities. During the last summer she and Beth had spent together they’d talked of sharing a flat in London one day. That seemed possible now. Susan was going to go to secretarial college, learn to dance, find a boyfriend. She would overcome her shyness, she would be somebody.
    A year earlier, when things were very bad at home with Granny,