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ANDREW TAYLOR
The Leper House
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2016
Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Andrew Taylor 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.
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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008171230
Ebook Edition © JULY 2017 ISBN: 9780008179762
Version: 2017-06-19
Table of Contents
Somewhere along the way, Mary mislaid her religion. The funeral was a humanist affair in a chapel, or whatever they call it, attached to a crematorium. There must have been nearly two hundred mourners. She had been only thirty-eight when she died, which is why her death touched so many lives – and why there was a sense of outrage in the air, rather than resignation.
Alan himself acted as master of ceremonies. He was used to public speaking and chairing meetings – he was the headmaster of a school about fifteen miles from Norwich. He kept his emotions as firmly in check as the timing.
‘How brave,’ whispered one of my neighbours.
‘He’s bearing up wonderfully,’ said a friend. ‘Especially when you think—’
‘He has to be brave for the children.’
The friend nodded. ‘At least her poor parents are dead.’
The coffin was at the end of the room. It was one of those environmentally friendly ones, designed to make a posthumous statement of faith in the possibility of a greener world to come, as it slid towards its complete destruction in the furnace. It had nothing to do with the Mary I remembered most vividly: the sideways glances, the grazed knees and the shrill giggles.
Alan took us through Mary’s life at a brisk pace – we had a time slot at the crematorium, and death
