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Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
Rosie Thomas
A collection of four stunning ebooks from the author of the runaway bestseller, THE KASHMIR SHAWL.STRANGERS: Annie and Steve are from different worlds and do not know each other exists until one morning, they become victims of a bomb blast, thrown together to fight for their lives. As they lie in the darkness, the hours slowly tick by. To ward off fear and death they talk of everything, and so a bond is created that binds them deeper than family, than friends, than lovers. With such strange intimacy, how can they get through the future without each other?BAD GIRLS, GOOD WOMEN: In London, on the brink of the Sixties, two runaways plunge into Soho nightlife. Mattie faces the hard slog of a sleazy strip-club in search of fame. But when it comes, stardom is not enough, and the love that Mattie desires seems to elude her. Julia choose marriage and Ladyhill, a beautiful Dorset manor house. But when tragedy strikes, she realises that she must risk her marriage and her child for true freedom…A WOMAN OF OUR TIMES: Harriet Peacock has everything. From shopkeeper and betrayed wife, she has made herself the City's darling, her name linked in gossip columns with film stars. She has come a long way from Simon Archer, the man who invented a brilliantly simple game of chance and skill in a prison camp forty years ago, a game that is the foundation of Harriet's business empire. But when things start going wrong, Harriet finds that in love, as in the game, the quickest way to a goal can be the riskiest…ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED: Jake, Clio and Julius and their cousin Lady Grace Stretton formed a charmed circle in those lost innocent days before the Great War, before circumstances tore them apart: Jake's wartime experiences as a doctor; Clio and Grace, flappers flitting through bohemian Fitzrovia; the music that drowned out the crash of jackboots in Berlin for Julius. But Clio remembers a different story. Desperate lies, bitter secrets; hopeless love and careless betrayal. And above all, the truth about Grace, beautiful, destructive siren at the centre of the circle.
ROSIE THOMAS 4-BOOK COLLECTION
Strangers
Bad Girls, Good Women
A Woman of Our Times
All My Sins Remembered
by Rosie Thomas
Copyright (#ua1805556-2aca-5716-a814-36ae52b0e0bc)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 1997, 1988, 1990, 1991
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, downloaded, 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: 9780007560639, 9780007560561, 9780007560646, 9780007560578
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008115371
Version: 2015-02-25
Contents
Cover (#u31b61252-7c80-5834-ab0d-be7ffd6099c6)
Title Page (#u4fef411f-8729-5b75-9749-ed39a9e538ad)
Copyright
Strangers (#uc2c3eef1-4908-5a65-b52d-4e1d5bb3a2f2)
Bad Girls, Good Women (#u26407c2a-9db0-59e7-9cb4-79cb1775f7b8)
A Woman of Our Times (#ucadbad1b-9fe4-5374-a9da-9c299e7d7d32)
All My Sins Remembered (#ue4a7d4b2-ab2f-57c1-9fd0-18a0a058b011)
Keep Reading Daughter of the House (#u36a90fdf-db59-51aa-a683-8a922012c798)
Keep Reading The Illusionists (#ub1b3b9a8-c88b-55ad-80e3-501547d74a78)
Keep Reading The Kasmir Shawl (#ufa0fa517-fa3f-5125-bbe3-c8367edbe350)
About the Author
Also by Rosie Thomas
About the Publisher
Strangers
BY ROSIE THOMAS
Copyright (#u9b4ffc70-a5bf-55a2-a1b0-bb2e729008f9)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the United Kingdom by William Collins and Company 1987
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 1987
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, downloaded, 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.
Ebook Edition © MAR 2014 ISBN: 9780007560639
Version: 2014-02-18
Contents
Cover (#uc2c3eef1-4908-5a65-b52d-4e1d5bb3a2f2)
Title Page (#ucea6effd-0e90-5e9a-917a-f90a90ae3950)
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
One (#u9b4ffc70-a5bf-55a2-a1b0-bb2e729008f9)
It was just starting to snow.
Annie stood beside the row of coats hung untidily on the pegs and looked out of the glass panel in the back door. The dark grey specks fell out of a paler sky, and the wind caught them and blew them up into a spiral before letting them drop on the path. They changed from grey to white, and then vanished. In a minute, Annie thought, the flakes would stop melting. The snow would stick. She would need to wear her boots to go shopping. She opened the door of the cupboard under the stairs and rummaged for them, sighing as she always did at the sight of the tangle of family belongings. Then she took her coat off the peg, disentangling it from a red anorak with the sleeves pulled wrong side out.
A boy came down the stairs, two at a time, thumping his feet. He swung around the banister post and vaulted the last four steps down to the lobby. ‘Careful,’ Annie said automatically. ‘You’ll break a leg doing that, one of these days.’
The child looked squarely at her, and she knew that he was wondering how forcibly to contradict her. Then he shrugged. ‘No I won’t.’ He went to the door and pressed his face against the glass. ‘Look, Mum, it’s snowing. Can’t I come out with you?’ She buttoned up her coat and picked up her handbag, flipping through the contents to see if she had everything.
‘Can’t I?’
She smiled quickly at him, then glanced past him into the kitchen to see if her chequebook was on the table. She felt her attention being pulled two ways, fixing nowhere. It was often like that, nowadays.
‘No, you can’t. You hate shopping and you’ll only nag me to come home as soon as we’ve got there. And I’ve got a lot to do today.’
She found her chequebook in her coat pocket, and put it into her bag with her purse. The boy was sitting on the bottom step now, still staring longingly out at the snow. A thought occurred to him and he looked up at her.
‘Buying presents for me? For my stocking?’
His earnest gaze, a perfect replica of his father’s, made her smile.
‘That depends. And Tom, you may have grown out of Father Christmas, but Benjy hasn’t. You won’t spoil it for him, will you?’
Over the boy’s head she saw the snow beyond the window, falling faster now, powdering the garden wall with the faintest rim of white. Perhaps it would be a white Christmas. She breathed in the scent of pine needles, tangerines, log fires. ‘Okay,’ Tom said grudgingly. ‘He’s such a baby.’
Annie gathered up her scarf and gloves. There were a thousand things to be done before Christmas, faithful preparations for the family myth of a perfect holiday. She hugged Thomas and went to the foot of the stairs.
‘Martin? Where are you? I’m off now.’
There was a muffled thud from upstairs, two seconds of silence, and then the sound of a child’s full-throated yelling.
A moment or two later Annie’s husband appeared at the top of the stairs with Benjy in his arms. The little boy’s face was scarlet and crumpled, but he opened his eyes for long enough to make sure that his mother was watching. The crying went on undiminished.
‘He fell off the end of the bed,’ Martin said.
Annie ran up the stairs, already hot in her outdoor clothes. She rubbed Benjy’s head, feeling the round hardness of his skull under the silky hair. How resilient children are, she thought. Tougher sometimes than their parents.
‘Poor old Benjy,’ she said. Martin stood holding him, rocking him slightly, waiting for the noise to abate.
‘You’re going, then? What time will you be back?’
Martin was tall, with the rounded shoulders of someone used to stooping to reach the more general level. Annie was standing on the step below him and she had to stretch up to press her cheek against his. She didn’t see his face, but she noticed that the label was sticking out at the back of his jersey. He patted her with his free hand and Annie turned and ran back down the stairs.
‘What shall I give them for lunch?’ he called after her.
‘I don’t know. Look in the fridge for something, can’t you?’
The little ripple of domestic irritation washed after her all the way to the front door.
‘Or take them to McDonald’s, if you like.’
Thomas appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘Yeah, McDonald’s. Dad? Are you listening? Mum said McDonald’s.’
Annie turned back to look at the three of them.
It wasn’t like Annie to turn back but today, for some reason, she did.
She saw Martin at the head of the stairs, his face so familiar that the features seemed to have been rubbed smooth, like a pebble by the sea. Benjy sagged in his arms, his head against his father’s shoulder. He had stopped crying, and his thumb was in his mouth for comfort. A few feet below them Thomas swung in an impatient arc from the newel post.
And all around them, like an over-detailed picture, the evidence of family life came crowding in. There was a broken plastic car overturned in the hallway, a dim grey line of handprints all along the shabby paint of the wall, a basket of clothes waiting to be ironed, on the hall table a sheaf of Polaroid snapshots of the boys.
‘What time will you be back?’ Martin repeated mildly. Annie’s irritation was disregarded. Sometimes it increased her annoyance, but she found herself smiling now.
‘I’m not sure. The crowds will be awful, probably. But I want to try and finish the last of the Christmas shopping today. Expect me when you see me.’
Annie opened the front door, and the cold wind blew in.
‘Bye,’ she called cheerfully. ‘See you all later.’
