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Back Whisper Cottage Save as PDF
Chapters (28)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Prologue
  5. CHAPTER 1
  6. CHAPTER 2
  7. CHAPTER 3
  8. CHAPTER 4
  9. CHAPTER 5
  10. CHAPTER 6
  11. CHAPTER 7
  12. CHAPTER 8
  13. CHAPTER 9
  14. CHAPTER 10
  15. CHAPTER 11
  16. CHAPTER 12
  17. CHAPTER 13
  18. CHAPTER 14
  19. CHAPTER 15
  20. CHAPTER 16
  21. CHAPTER 17
  22. CHAPTER 18
  23. CHAPTER 19
  24. CHAPTER 20
  25. Keep Reading …
  26. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  27. About the Author
  28. About the Publisher

Mrs Barley must have been a very troubled woman, keeping this to herself for all those years. I knew only too well myself what a long-held secret could do to someone, how it could eat away at you. I wondered how she could have been so uncannily accurate about me and it left me with a dark, restless feeling; like someone walking over my grave – isn’t that how the saying goes? It was as though she had been able to see into my very soul.

I wondered now about the baby, little William, for that is how I had come to think of him. That is how I’m certain his mother must have thought of him, too. Was it possible that Joseph was responsible for his death and that this was the ‘terrible thing’ that Mrs Barley felt unable to share in her letter? It was unthinkable.

But how would it have affected a child, keeping him behind closed doors, locked away from the outside world like a dirty secret? Maybe the Barleys had done it with the best of intentions, but it had been a very unhealthy arrangement. I felt completely torn about the whole thing.

CHAPTER 20

As we now had a confirmed date and time for the funeral, I rang to discuss the finer details of the ceremony with the vicar of the Barleys’ local parish in Dorset. I was not prepared for what I was about to learn. And how everything that the people of Avoncote had ever believed about Mrs Barley – Jack and myself included – had been so far from the reality.

‘From the information passed on to the undertaker, she was quite emphatic about wanting to be interred with her parents and brother,’ he said. ‘There aren’t any details about other specific requests, however; no mention of preferred hymns or Bible readings. It isn’t the type of thing you usually bring up in general conversation, is it? I don’t suppose she discussed her feelings on such matters with you?’

‘I’m sorry – I think there must have been some sort of mix-up. I’m certain she would have wanted to be buried with her husband. They were completely devoted to one another.’

There was a noticeable inhalation of breath from the other end of the line.