Please Come Home by Elaine Johns EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Elaine Johns
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical World War II Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
WATFORD, ENGLAND
JULY 1939
Anna’s mother was dead. Her father might as well have been. He was a
cold, unapproachable man – at least with her. She had heard him laugh with
others, but he had never given his daughter a smile, let alone any affection.
Ten years ago, when Anna was only eight years old, he had handed her over
to the sole charge of his sister, Beatrice, a grim-faced woman who wore
long, stiff black dresses with tight collars that looked as if they might choke
her.
Her father, a wealthy businessman, had moved to Ireland, leaving Anna
behind. He had sold the family home. The place where she was born. An
impressive Manor house in Reigate with its retinue of servants. Then Anna
had been callously thrust into the puritanical and church-going arms of
Aunt Beatrice in Watford.
Her father’s total indifference towards her had hurt and puzzled Anna as
a child, until Aunt Beatrice had heartlessly explained exactly why her father
could never love her.
Her mother had died in childbirth, giving birth to her. She had killed her
mother.
The cruel thought that she was to blame made Anna wretched and a fog
of sadness had followed her for weeks. It was her fault that her mother had
died, although she didn’t understand how.
Aunt Beatrice may have taken over Anna’s care but any care that
Beatrice had given had been applied with a heavy hand and a smack that
left a mark for days. It seemed to Anna that her aunt was an unhappy
woman, a tyrant who made it her business to make those around her
unhappy too.
Anna always wished she had known her mother. She remembered her
photograph, in pride of place on the grand piano in her father’s drawing
room. Elizabeth Golding, her mother. She had looked like a gentle woman;
the kind of woman not afraid to smile, when most people looked so stiff and
posed in photographs. The black, lustrous hair that framed her face in
Marcel waves had the sheen of silk, unlike Anna’s, which was like her
father’s: tough and wiry. But Anna’s hazel eyes came from her mother, and
she was glad of that, for her father’s piercing blue eyes were ice-cold when
they had trapped her in their unfriendly glare.
As she grew older, Anna became certain of one thing. That her father
and Aunt Beatrice were wrong, and that a child, a baby in her mother’s
womb, was an innocent. Blameless. Now, in her late teens, Anna Golding
was convinced that her strange upbringing had strengthened her, made her
mentally tough. Self-reliant and resourceful. She had learned a valuable
lesson from an early age: that love was not always freely given, or an
automatic right. Her aunt had grudgingly provided food, clothing, and an
education. Everything that a body needed to survive. But never love.
Not that she had been totally starved of affection. Ruby, the
housekeeper in her aunt’s large Watford townhouse, had taken pity on her
and throughout the years had shown her small acts of kindness. And Ruby’s
daughter, Edna, had become a friend over the past three years since she’d
been a housemaid there.
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