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

pitchfork and standing by another stable door. He was wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a waistcoat and dark trousers. Emily had always wondered who he was. At first, she had thought he might be Norah’s brother but later photos had ruled that out and she decided he must have worked on the farm.

It was the following page which had contained the bombshell. Emily remembered her shock as she had stared at the photograph alone in her bedroom almost ten years ago. It was peculiar in the first instance because it was only half a picture. The long-jagged edge down one side made her think that someone had torn the photograph in two. It depicted a tall, older man and a young woman. Both looked serious and unsmiling as they stared out of the photograph. The man was an older version of the man in the first photographs whom Emily had always assumed to be Norah’s father. He was wearing a suit, waistcoat, shirt and tie and his left arm was entwined with a plump, feminine arm which disappeared tantalisingly off the edge of the photograph. It seemed to bear no resemblance to the frail limbs of the woman who was probably Norah’s mother. There was no other photograph on that page and no caption or dates written underneath.

Who had torn the photograph? Was it Norah? Where was the missing half? What did it contain? She had asked these questions over and over again but Molly had never replied. She had watched Emily with sorrowful eyes but remained stubbornly mute as Emily had looked up with a gasp that first time and stared at her in shock. The young woman in the photograph and Molly were the same person.

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Chapter 6

Norah - October - December, 1925

Angrily, Norah ripped the photograph she was holding in half and let one side flutter to the floor. She was sitting upstairs in her bedroom on a rainy autumn day with her scrapbook open in front of her. Seeing the photographs of her at the horse show had brought the memories flooding back. It had been her birthday, she recalled - such a happy day. There she was, in her best riding breeches and tweed jacket, beaming atop Rusty while her mother, slim and elegant in a floral dress, stood proudly beside her, smiling at the camera. Norah struggled to remember the colours of the dress from the black and white image. Blue, she thought, with white and yellow flowers. The next photograph depicted her father, tall and handsome, grinning broadly as he was giving Rusty a pat. Then there was a photograph of the three of them together. Arthur had taken it, she remembered, and it was her favourite. All three of them were smiling and looking so happy. Norah wondered if she would ever be that happy again. At that moment, it seemed unlikely.

With a sigh, she traced a finger over her mother and then her father. The photo brought home to her just how much he had aged in the past four years and how he had changed. Previously, he had always liked a laugh and a joke and, although he worked hard, he had always made plenty of time for his family. Now he never smiled and seemed to be rarely at home. Despite her best efforts, she'd been unable to help him recover from his grief.

Then, over the past year, he'd started to seek other female company. Norah had thought this was a good sign, that he was ready to move on, but that had not been the case. He remained desperately unhappy and withdrawn.

She carefully stuck the torn half of the photograph in her scrapbook. Her own face, serious and unsmiling, looked back at her. She was wearing her best cotton frock and her hair hung in waves around her shoulders. Compared to the earlier pictures, she looked very grown up and, at sixteen, she supposed she was now considered a young woman. She did not feel like one, though, and she certainly did not behave like one. She was still a tomboy who liked nothing better than riding her horse Trojan – she had long outgrown Rusty who still lived a spoilt, pampered existence in his retirement.

Sighing again, she picked up the discarded half of the photograph. That had been the problem, she realised. George Dunn had listened to the ladies of the village telling him that she needed a civilising influence and decided that she needed a stepmother. Not only that - a stepsister too! Vehemently, she ripped the offending half of the picture into shreds and threw them onto the fire. It had been a wedding photograph, taken at the start of the summer, on the day that her life had suddenly become so much worse.

George’s new wife, Adele Gatting, had flattered and simpered her way into their home and had managed what so many other village matrons had unsuccessfully tried to do – ensnared the most eligible widower in the district. She was a widow of two years herself, having previously been married to the Reverend Robert Gatting of the parish of Thaxford, a village six miles west of Great Chalkham, and lauded herself as a model of social propriety and Christian values. She was a slightly plump, attractive woman with dark, only slightly greying hair always worn in a neat bun. Her daughter, Hope, was a moon-faced girl of fourteen with blue eyes and silky, corn-coloured ringlets. She dressed in lace and frills and prided herself on her accomplishments - singing, playing the piano, embroidery and painting.

When Norah had first met Mrs Gatting, she'd considered her a definite improvement on the two women George had previously introduced to her. Adele had smiled, taken an interest in Norah and displayed a refreshing, self-deprecating sense of humour. However, as soon as she'd become George’s fiancée, her attitude to Norah had become far more critical and Norah found herself unfavourably compared to the