LITMIR.BIZ

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157

      Lesson 158

      Lesson 159

      Lesson 160

      Lesson 161

      Lesson 162

      Lesson 163

      Lesson 164

      Lesson 165

      Lesson 166

      Lesson 167

      Lesson 168

      IX

      Lesson 169

      Lesson 170

      Lesson 171

      Lesson 172

      Lesson 173

      Lesson 174

      Lesson 175

      Lesson 176

      Lesson 177

      Lesson 178

      Lesson 179

      Lesson 180

      Lesson 181

      Lesson 182

      Lesson 183

      Lesson 184

      Lesson 185

      Lesson 186

      Lesson 187

      Lesson 188

      Lesson 189

      Lesson 190

      Lesson 191

      Lesson 192

      Lesson 193

      Lesson 194

      Lesson 195

      Lesson 196

      Lesson 197

      Lesson 198

      Lesson 199

      Lesson 200

      Lesson 201

      X

      Lesson 202

      Lesson 203

      Lesson 204

      Lesson 205

      Lesson 206

      Lesson 207

      Lesson 208

      Lesson 209

      Lesson 210

      Lesson 211

      Lesson 212

      Lesson 213

      Lesson 214

      Lesson 215

      Lesson 216

      Lesson 217

      Lesson 218

      Lesson 219

      Lesson 220

      Lesson 221

      Lesson 222

      Lesson 223

      Lesson 224

      Lesson 225 – The Last

      

      Other Books by Nikki Gemmell

      About the Author

      Copyright

       About the Publisher

      PROLOGUE

      You begin.

      It feels right. At his desk. On his chair. His typewriter is the only thing left of him in the room. The ink ribbon is fresh – the metal letters cut firm and deep – as if he has placed it for this moment, just for you. You start slow, clunking, getting used to the heft of the old way. Working laboriously on the beautiful, antique machine for if you make a mistake you can’t go back and you need these pages methodical, neat. You type with his old Victorian volume by your side, that he gave you once – A Woman’s Thoughts About Women – that logged within its folds all that happened in this place, that breathed life, once. You relive the dialogue of his handwriting and yours jotted in the margins and the back, don’t quite know what you’re going to do with all the work; at this stage you’re just collating, filching everything that’s needed from this notebook whose pages are bruised with age and grubbiness and life, luminous life: sweat and ink and rain spots; sap and dirt and ash; the grease from a bicycle and a silvery snail’s trail and a cicada wing, its fragile, leadlit tracery. You reap his words and yours and then the Victorian housewife’s, her lessons about life, her guiding voice. She will lead you through this. Tell the truth and don’t be afraid of it, she soothes. Yes.

      Writing to understand.

      And as you work you feel a presence, a hand in the small of your back, willing you on. Every person who’s ever loved and lost, every person who’s ever entered that exclusive club – heartbreak. Your little volume always beside you, the book you came here to bury, to have the earth of this valley receive as one day it will receive your own flesh, you are sure – lovingly, gratefully, because it is so, right, you are part of it.

      But first this book must serve another purpose.

      You feel strong, lit.

      Whole.

      Writing to work it all out.

      You have never told anyone this. No one knows what you really think. It has always been extremely important to never let them know; to never show them the ugliness, brutality, magnificence, selfishness, glory; never give them a way in. It has always been important to maintain your equilibrium, your smile, your carapace at all times. You could not bear for anyone to see who you really are.

      But now, finally, it is time. With knowing has come release. It has taken years to get to this point.

      I

      ‘Even in sleep I know no respite’

      Heloise d’Argenteuil

      Lesson 1

      Let everything be plain, open and above-board.

      Tell the truth and don’t be afraid of it.

      You think about sleeping with every man you meet. You do not want to sleep with any of them. Couldn’t be bothered anymore. You are too tired, too cold. The cold has curled up in your bones like mould and you feel, in deepest winter, in this place that has cemented around you, that it will never be gouged out. You live in Gloucestershire. In a converted farmhouse with a ceiling made of coffin lids resting on thatchers’ ladders. It is never quite warm enough. There are snowdrops in February and bluebells in May and the wet black leaves of autumn then the naked branches of winter clawing at the sky, all around you, months and months of them with their wheeling birds lifting in alarm when you walk through the fields not paddocks; in this land of heaths and commons and moors, all the language that is not your language for you were not born in this place.

      Your memories scream of the sun, of bush taut with sound and bleached earth. Of the woman you once were. She is barely recognisable now.

      You do not know how to climb out, to gain traction with some kind of visibility, as a woman. To find a way to live audaciously. Again.

      Lesson 2

      The house-mother! Where could you find a nobler title, a more sacred charge?

      Your

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