Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

Copyright © Sally Bayley 2018

Cover photograph © Arcangel Images/Adam Bird

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Sally Bayley Shipman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780008226855

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008226879

Version: 2018-04-27

Dedication

For Angela Christine Bayley,

Soul of a Rose

Epigraph

‘Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.’

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (English edition, 1952, translated by Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Preface: The Reader’s Backstory

PART ONE

1 Miss Marple

2 Grandmothers

3 The Village

4 Jane Eyre and Verity

5 Di

6 Behind Closed Doors

7 Poor Sue

8 Rocks from the Sky

9 David Copperfield

10 Peggotty

11 Betsey Trotwood

12 Hand-Me-Down Histories

PART TWO

13 Aunt Jayne

14 The Silver Jubilee

15 The Beach Hotel

16 A Murder is Announced

17 Margaret Thatcher Moves In

18 The Estate

19 A Few Facts

20 Wedgwood in the Front Room

21 Learning to Speak Nicely

22 The Major and His Wife

23 The Body in the Library

24 Bertha

PART THREE

25 On Her Small Brown Wings

26 Expert Opinions

27 Social Workers and Souls

28 A Momentous Interview

29 The Inexorable

30 Colwood

31 An Angry Goblin’s Cell

32 The Story of Sue

33 Crossing the Meadow

34 A Winter’s Tale

35 The Great Gig in the Sky

36 The End

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Credits

Also by Sally Bayley

About the Author

About the Publisher