c2f30d-7908-57cd-8463-7079d961bb7a">
ROSIE THOMAS 4-BOOK COLLECTION
Other People’s Marriages
Every Woman Knows A Secret
If My Father Loved Me
A Simple Life
Rosie Thomas
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 1994, 1996, 2004, 1995
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and 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.
Source ISBN: 9780007560653, 9780007560523, 9780007560554, 9780007560516
Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008115364
Version: 2014-10-15
Contents
Copyright
Keep Reading – THE ILLUSIONISTS
Keep Reading – THE KASHMIR SHAWL
About the Author
Also by Rosie Thomas
About the Publisher
Other People’s Marriages
BY ROSIE THOMAS
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
It was the end of October. As London receded and the motorway bisected open country they saw the flamboyant colours of the trees. Autumn in the city was a decorous affair of fading plane trees and horse chestnuts, just one more seasonal window display, but here the leaves made fires against the brown fields and silvery sky.
‘Look at it,’ Nina said. ‘There’s no elegant restraint out here, is there? That’s real countryside. Where I belong now. How does the poem go?’
She knew it perfectly well, but she shifted cautiously through the layers of her memory that contained it. Memory could still play tricks on her, bringing her up against some scene or a view or simply some remembered words that would make her cry. She had cried more than enough for now.
‘“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,”’ Patrick supplied for her.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
The poem brought to mind completion, or rather the conclusion of
