The Girl in the Scrapbook, Carolyn Ruffles [iphone ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Within six months, Emily had moved into his flat and nine months later, they were married and had bought their first home together. At the time, Adam had been working for a wine importer and, after they got married, he set up his own business. He was ambitious, worked hard, wine producers liked his genuine, easy going personality and the wholesalers he supplied respected his professionalism. The business had quickly grown and now commanded a small staff team but it had meant that Adam was now working harder than ever. He was frequently away on buying trips abroad and Emily found herself left at home with her young son. She hadn't returned to employment after Alex’s birth. There had been lots of talk of it but somehow it had just never happened. It would have been difficult in terms of childcare with Adam away so much but that was an easy excuse. The truth was that she really had no enthusiasm for returning to office work which she'd always found tedious but she didn't know what else to do. Her dreams of being a journalist had long since died and any professional ambitions she'd previously held had stagnated. The ‘planner’ Emily of the past had morphed into someone far more indecisive and lacking confidence.

The trouble was that staying at home with Alex, whom she adored, had gradually left her feeling isolated and slightly useless. Many of her friends were also married or had partners but most did not have children and those who did seemed to juggle parenthood successfully with a career. They told her she was lucky she had the choice to stay at home and look after her son. For them, it was not a viable option financially. But she couldn't help feeling slightly envious when they talked enthusiastically about their work or quite disregard the feeling of underachievement in her own life. The sense of specialness she had experienced as a child now taunted her with a sense of failure - of settling for less than her best. Adam and Alex had helped her rebuild her life but she felt, deep down, there was something missing.

Then, this morning, Molly had returned to her life. She had looked just the same as she always had with her dark, auburn hair, sad, green eyes and dark clothing. Emily had been clearing away the breakfast things and, when she looked up, there she was, standing by the sink, watching her with doleful eyes. ‘Have you forgotten?’ those eyes seemed to be saying. Emily sighed. The past was still haunting the present.

‘I know, I know,’ Emily said. ‘But I’ve been busy with other things.’

‘Who are you talking to, Mummy?’ Alex had asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway.

‘Oh, no one. Just talking to myself,’ she had replied, scooping him up and carrying him through to the room they had designated the playroom because it had been taken over by Alex’s toys. ‘Now, what shall we play with?’

It had been later, when Alex was having his afternoon nap, that Molly had reappeared and Emily could feel her reproach. She had immediately searched for the box containing the scrapbook but, by the time she had found it and sat down with it by the fire, Alex had woken up. She had been busy with him and with preparing food and then, in the evening, Adam had returned and had provided his own brand of distraction.

So, it was not until the following day that she had the opportunity to return to the book. Alex was sitting on the kitchen floor playing with his toy garage, cars, lorries and tractors and Emily sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the book in front of her. As she had done hundreds of times before, she started to turn the pages, working through slowly, trying to absorb every detail.

The first two pages contained the black and white photographs of the girl on the pony. She was perhaps eleven or twelve, Emily had always thought, as her smiling face still retained a childhood chubbiness. Some of the pictures also contained a man and a woman, presumably the girl’s parents but the poor quality of the photos made it difficult to see any family resemblance.

The next page contained a newspaper clipping. It contained a brief story about someone called Lydia Turner, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of solicitor Felix Turner, who was one of the first women from Suffolk to be awarded a place at St Hilda’s, Oxford. She was going to read medicine, the report said, and hoped one day to become a surgeon. There was also a photograph of the woman looking very serious and formidable as she stared from the page, her hair scraped back from her face in a tight bun. She was wearing a smart, light-coloured blouse buttoned to the neck with the hint of a frill around the collar and a dark skirt. Emily had googled Lydia Turner and also contacted St Hilda’s but had been unable to find out any more about her. She wondered if she was a relative of Norah’s or maybe a family friend.

The next page contained two photographs of a house, slightly blurry but quite large with a thatched roof and a number of windows. It looked a typical farmhouse with ploughed fields in the background.  Emily had always thought that this was Norah’s home. These were followed by two prints of the same woman who had appeared in the earlier photos. These showed her sitting in a garden surrounded by roses. The woman was smiling but looked very frail and was sitting with a blanket tucked around her knees.

Turning the page again, Emily smiled at a picture of the pony with its head over a stable door. It was holding its head at an angle and showing his teeth in a cheeky grimace. The next photograph was of a tall, thin, very serious young man holding a