Sublime

It would be her home for the next seven years, until the Great Storm brought Charlie to her door. The cottage had been derelict in those days, and she’d had no money to restore it, not that she’d wanted to. She had only wanted the windmill. She’d moved right in. She only had a couple of bags, and nowhere else to go and she’d simply slotted herself

More people who did not belong, she thought wearily, more defilement and chatter. Last year one of the girls had worn a two-piece bathing costume and Miss Somerville’s early morning viewing through her binoculars had revealed the completely exposed midriff of a girl from Surbiton.

Full of kindliness and sympathy, St Cyres persuaded June to give up her flat in town and to come with her small boy to live at Manor Thatch. June had acquiesced at first. She was lonely and frightened and in debt. June St Cyres was one of those young women who can never live within their incomes, but she was shrewd enough to know that she could liv

Auntie too opened her door. She had been busy sorting out her magazines, putting them neatly together in bundles and tying them up with string – ten years’ worth of issues, they were valuable items.

Reared to regard foreigners as, at best, unfortunate, the ladies had stoutly resisted the demands of the refugees who increasingly thronged the district. The Gloriette in St John’s Wood might serve cakes with outlandish names and slop whipped cream over everything, the proprietors of the Cosmo in Finchley might supply newspapers on sticks and permi