The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes
Page 26
But it’s not just friends and family who can help, there are also amazing organisations that can provide support and information when you most need it. I wanted to include the contact details of three of them here, ones that are most relevant to the storyline of my novel.
Macmillan Cancer Support
At Macmillan they know how a cancer diagnosis can affect everything. They provide support to patients and their families, and help them to take back some control in their lives. Macmillan can also help with money worries and advice about work, and if you just need someone to talk to, they’ll be there.
macmillan.org.uk
Cruse Bereavement Care
Cruse Bereavement Care is the leading national charity for bereaved people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. They offer support, advice and information to children, young people and adults when someone dies and work to enhance society’s care of bereaved people.
cruse.org.uk
The Lullaby Trust
The Lullaby Trust is an organisation that is working to reduce the number of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) deaths, and supports bereaved parents and families.
lullabytrust.org.uk
Acknowledgements
For most authors their second book is a tricky beast and so it was for me: I worried that I’d already used my best plot, most engaging characters and cleverest phrases. But once The Keeper of Lost Things was published, something wonderful, and to me completely unexpected, happened. Readers from all over the world started sending me messages. They told me how my words had touched their lives; they told me about their own experiences with cancer; they sent me pictures of their rescue dogs, and one lady even sent me a picture of her rescue donkey. And they told me how much they were looking forward to my next book (no pressure!)
So, the first people I want to thank here are my readers – for all their support and encouragement, and for sharing small but important parts of their lives with me. You have all inspired me to keep telling my stories and, hopefully, to keep getting better at what I do.
I’d also like to thank all the booksellers for their wonderful support. Thank you for allowing my readers to find my book: it is very much appreciated.
I want to thank my parents for their shameless publicising of ‘Their Daughter, the Author’. My dad is always bringing me copies of my books for me to sign from people he meets dog walking, and my mum has pinned every single PR photo I’ve had taken on their living room wall. Well, I suppose it saves them redecorating . . .
Thank you to my brilliant agent, Laura Macdougall for her wisdom, straight talking and for always being there when I need her, and to the teams at Tibor Jones and United Agents for looking after me so well.
I want to thank Fede, my fabulous editor, who makes editing so easy and fun, and always knows how to reign in my writing excesses with tact and humour. Working with him is a joy.
Thanks also to the team at Two Roads, particularly Auriol Bishop, Kat Burdon, Sarah Clay, Hannah Corbett, Nick Davies, Rosie Gailer, Ben Gutcher, Lucy Hale, Alice Herbert, Lisa Highton, Jamie Hodder-Williams, Lizzi Jones, Jess Kim, Maiko Lenting, Grace McCrum, Peter McNulty, Emma Petfield, Susan Spratt, Ellie Wheeldon, Ellie Wood, and everyone at Hachette Australia and New Zealand. Thank you to Amber Burlinson for her awesome copyediting skills, and to Diana Beltran Herrera and Sarah Christie for their incredible work to produce another beautiful cover.
When I was writing The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, I spent a lot of time wandering and pondering in Bedford’s Foster Hill Road Cemetery, and also Highgate Cemetery. The upkeep of these beautiful places is dependent on volunteers and I should like to thank Sue and Rowan and all the other Friends of both Foster Hill Road and Highgate cemeteries for doing such an amazing job.
Peter at The Eagle Bookshop in Bedford continues to be my writing buddy and has even sold (new!) copies of my book alongside his antiquarian stock. He still hasn’t finished writing one of his own books yet, but I live in hope.
Once again, I want to thank the staff at Bedford and Addenbrookes hospitals, and particularly the staff at The Primrose Unit for their care and support.
And finally, I want to thank Paul and my beloved dogs, Duke Roaring Water Bay and Squadron Leader Timothy Bear, for so many things, but mainly just for being there.
Bedford, September 2017
The feel-good novel of 2017,
recommended by thousands of readers
A Richard & Judy Book Club selection
*****
‘Restores your faith in humanity’
*****
‘A ray of sunshine of a novel’
*****
‘Hogan is a genius’
Available in paperback,
ebook and audio digital download
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Chapter 1
ART
Charles Bramwell Brockley was travelling alone and without a ticket on the 14.42 from London Bridge to Brighton. The Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin in which he was travelling teetered precariously on the edge of the seat as the train juddered to a halt at Haywards Heath. But just as it toppled forward towards the carriage floor it was gathered up by a safe pair of hands.
He was glad to be home. Padua was a solid redbrick Victorian villa with honeysuckle and clematis framing the steeply pitched porch. The cool, rose-scented, echoing space of the entrance hall welcomed the man inside from the relentless glare of the afternoon sun. He put down his bag, replaced his keys in the drawer of the hall table and hung his panama on the hat stand. He was weary to the bone, but the quiet house soothed him. Quiet, but not silent. There was the steady tick of a long-case clock and the distant hum of an ancient refrigerator, and somewhere in the garden a blackbird sang. But the house was untainted by the tinnitus of technology. There was no computer, no television, no DVD or CD player. The only connections to the outside world were an old Bakelite telephone in the hall and a radio. In the kitchen, he let the tap run until the water was icy cold and then filled a tumbler. It was too early for gin and lime, and too hot for tea. Laura had gone home for the day, but she had left a note and a ham salad in the refrigerator for his supper. Dear girl. He gulped the water down.
Back in the hall, he took a single key from his trouser pocket and unlocked a heavy oak door. He retrieved his bag from the floor and entered the room, closing the door softly behind him. Shelves and drawers, shelves and drawers, shelves and drawers. Three walls were completely obscured and every shelf was laden and every drawer was full with a sad salmagundi of forty years gathered in, labelled and given a home. Lace panels dressed the French windows and diffused the brash light from the afternoon sun. A single shaft from the space between them pierced the gloom, glittering with specks of dust. The man took the Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin from his bag and placed it carefully on a large mahogany table, the only clear surface in the room. Lifting the lid, he inspected the contents, a pale grey substance the texture of coarse-grained sand. He had scattered the like many years ago in the rose garden at the back of the house. But surely these could not be human remains? Not left on a train in a biscuit tin? He replaced the lid. He had tried to hand them in at the station, but the ticket collector, cocksure that it was just litter, suggested that he put it in the nearest bin.
‘You’d be amazed at the rubbish people leave on trains,’ he said, dismissing Anthony with a shrug.
Nothing surprised Anthony any more, but loss always moved him, however great or small. From a drawer he took a brown paper luggage label and a gold-nibbed fountain pen. He wrote carefully in black ink; the date and time, and the place – very specific:
Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin containing cremation remains?
Found, sixth carriage from the front, 14.42 train from London Bridge to Brighton.
Deceased unknown. God bless and rest in peace.
He stroked the lid of the tin tenderly before finding a space on one of the shelves and gently sliding the tin into position.
The chime
of the clock in the hall said time for gin and lime. He took ice cubes and lime juice from the refrigerator and carried them through to the garden room on a silver drinks tray with a green cocktail glass and a small dish of olives. He wasn’t hungry but he hoped they might awaken his appetite. He didn’t want to disappoint Laura by leaving her carefully prepared salad. He set the tray down and opened the window into the garden at the back of the house.
The gramophone player was a handsome wooden affair with a sweeping golden horn. He lifted the needle and placed it gently onto the liquorice-coloured disc. The voice of Al Bowlly floated up through the air and out into the garden to compete with the blackbird.
The very thought of you.
It had been their song. He released his long, loose limbs into the comfort of a leather wing-backed chair. In his prime, his bulk had matched his height, and he had been an impressive figure, but old age had diminished the flesh, and now skin lay much closer to bones.
His glass in one hand, he toasted the woman whose
silver-framed photograph he held in the other.
‘Chin-chin, my darling girl!’
He took a sip from his drink and lovingly, longingly kissed the cold glass of the photograph before replacing it on the side table next to his chair. She was not a classic beauty; a young woman with wavy hair and large dark eyes that shone, even in an old black and white photograph. But she was wonderfully striking, with a presence that still reached out from all those years ago and captivated him. She had been dead for forty years, but she was still his life, and her death had given him his purpose. It had made Anthony Peardew the Keeper of Lost Things.
About Ruth Hogan
Ruth Hogan was born in Bedford, in the house where her parents still live. As a child she read everything she could lay her hands on: her favourite reads were The Moomintrolls, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the back of cereal packets, and gravestones.
She studied English and Drama at Goldsmiths College and then got a ‘proper’ job, but when a car accident left her unable to work full-time, she decided to start writing seriously.
In 2012 she was diagnosed with cancer: as chemo kept her up all night she passed the time writing, and the eventual result was her debut novel The Keeper of Lost Things, now a #1 bestseller and a Richard & Judy Book Club selection.
The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes is Ruth’s second novel.
She lives in a chaotic Victorian house with an assortment of rescue dogs and her long-suffering husband.
ruthhogan.co.uk
twitter.com/ruthmariehogan
instagram.com/ruthmariehogan
facebook.com/ruthmariehogan
Table of Contents
Praise for Ruth Hogan and her debut novel
Also by Ruth Hogan
Title Page
Imprint Page
Dedication
Epigraphs
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Epilogue
Author’s note
Acknowledgements
The Keeper of Lost Things
Chapter 1
About Ruth Hogan