Fair Exchange Read online

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Jennifer Smethurst 2013

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Jennifer Smethurst to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47113-414-2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  Contents

  Fair Exchange

  The Silent Tide

  A Gathering Storm

  A Place of Secrets

  The Glass Painter’s Daughter

  The Memory Garden

  The Dream House

  The charity shop was crowded. The rain had produced a mixture of holiday-makers killing time and locals sheltering until the bus came. A woman in a bright pink top was simultaneously talking on a mobile phone and buying a pair of evening sandals from the elderly volunteer on the till.

  Ben liked it in here. It was warm, and he enjoyed looking through the videos. But today he had no money. He’d paid the rent for his room, then spent the rest down the pub. There was no more now until he got the social on Monday. And today was Friday.

  Ben sighed. What he really needed was a nice warm sweater to see him through the winter. Idly he flicked through the rails. Grey Marks & Spencer sweatshirt – no, that was too big. Pringle V-neck jumper in – pink! No way. This was more like it: a dark brown polo-neck. New looking. Ben unhooked it from the rail. Heavy. That would really keep him warm. He felt the soft wool with his stubby fingers. The price ticket said £6 and he didn’t even have 6p. Still, no harm in trying it on. You were supposed to ask the lady on the till – but she looked busy. She was helping a girl in a wheelchair who couldn’t reach the blouses on the top rail.

  Ben slipped into the fitting-room. Once he’d latched the door, he took off his grubby sweatshirt and dropped it on the floor. Then he pulled on the brown jumper and looked at himself in the mirror.

  It fitted him a treat. It was surprising what a difference clothes made.

  Ben wasn’t a bad person; just one of those who seemed to fall through the cracks in society. He didn’t remember his dad, who left when he was two, and who obviously didn’t consider himself in any way responsible for a child. Ben’s mum had a long succession of jobs, and an even longer succession of boyfriends.

  School had been a waste of time and, in the end, he didn’t bother going. What was the point? No one was going to give him a job. Although – maybe if he turned up for the interview in the brown jumper . . .

  Suddenly Ben was angry. Rented room, on the social, bumming drinks down the pub: he’d never had anything decent out of life. Why couldn’t he have just this one thing?

  He peered through the crack in the fitting-room door. The assistant was still busy. Ben had seen her before: smart, a bit bossy, looked like a retired school teacher. Volunteering here to make her feel good. Going home to a nice centrally-heated semi. Holidays abroad. Maybe a little car. Just one nice thing . . .

  Quickly Ben pulled the price ticket off of the jumper and put it in his pocket. He picked up the dirty sweatshirt from the floor and carefully put it on the hanger. Fortunately the Gents’ section was at the back of the shop away from the till. He hung his old sweatshirt on the rail and sauntered casually out into the street. No-one challenged him: his secret was safe.

  * * *

  Marjorie was beginning to wish she’d never volunteered at the charity shop. It had seemed such a good idea: she had given up her job as a senior buyer in a department store to care for her elderly father. His death last winter from pneumonia had left her not only with time on her hands, but with a desire to be useful.

  ‘Can’t you just take for these, love?’ A tarty blonde in a tight pink Lycra top dangled a pair of gold sandals and a £20 note in one hand. The other held a mobile phone firmly clamped to her ear.

  ‘Yeah, right, babe. I’m just in this – like – charity shop. Shouldn’t be long. Ooh, gold evening sandals. Dead sexy, babe. Where are you?’

  Marjorie put the transaction through the till and handed over the change. Pink Top stuffed the shoes into an already overflowing beach bag and carried on talking to Babe. It was a wet day and the shop was crowded with people idly filling time until the bus driver came or the rain stopped. Marjorie noticed a scruffy young man looking at the Gents’ sweaters. He was a frequent visitor, and hardly ever bought anything. Should she tell someone?

  Helen, the manager, was pleasant enough, but always had too much to do. The other volunteers were very much a clique, their lives centred around Bingo, reality TV, and wanting something for nothing. She had no desire to be like them.

  The scruffy young man was now examining a brown polo-neck. If he’s a thief he’s got good taste, she mused. Her father had only worn the sweater once.

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ it was a young girl in a wheelchair. She was pointing at the blouses, which were on the top rail.

  ‘I need white blouses in a size 10. I see two there; could you reach them down for me?’

  It was while she was taking the girl’s money, then dealing with a man who was donating a large box full of books, that Marjorie saw the young man slip out of the shop. He was wearing a brown sweater: wasn’t it the one he’d been looking at on the rail?

  As soon as she was free, Marjorie made her way to the menswear at the back of the shop. Her practised eye soon spotted the dirty sweatshirt hanging on the rail. She pulled it off and tossed it on the floor behind the till to go in the rag bag. She wouldn’t report it. It would be their secret.

  Maybe the young man was just a thief. Or maybe he needed the jumper for some occasion that could turn his life around.

  She’d give her notice in to Helen tomorrow and find some other way to be useful. There were always people who needed help. Help – and warm sweaters.

  Simon & Schuster were delighted to support the Women’s Institute in running a short story competition for all WI members. We were thrilled with the response and were inundated with over 500 entries. The quality and subject matters were varied and always interesting. The subject of ‘Secrets’ brought forth stories about IRA arms caches, missed connections, and illicit lovers – to name just a few intriguing themes.

  Rachel Hore, the S&S bestselling author of The Silent Tide and A Gathering Storm, and the S&S editorial team were united in their choice of ‘Fair Exchange’ as the worthy winner.

  Published as an ebook and sold through all the usual channels, we hope that you enjoy this story as much as we did discovering it.

  Find out more about Rachel Hore at www.rachelhore.co.uk and read on for more information about her novels.

  Rachel Hore

  The Silent Tide

  When Emily Gordon, editor at a London publishing house, commissions an account of great English novelist Hugh Morton, she finds herself steering a tricky path between Morton’s formidable widow, Jacqu
eline, who’s determined to protect his secrets, and the biographer, charming and ambitious Joel Richards. But someone is sending Emily mysterious missives about Hugh Morton’s past and she discovers a buried story that simply has to be told . . .

  One winter’s day in 1948, nineteen-year-old Isabel Barber arrives at her Aunt Penelope’s house in Earl’s Court having run away from home to follow her star. A chance meeting with an East European refugee poet leads to a job with his publisher, McKinnon & Holt, and a fascinating career beckons. But when she develops a close editorial relationship with charismatic young debut novelist Hugh Morton and the professional becomes passionately personal, not only are all her plans put to flight, but she finds herself in a struggle for her very survival.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84983-290-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-84983-291-5

  PRICE: £7.99

  Rachel Hore

  A Gathering Storm

  As Lucy listens to the tales of the past, she learns a secret that will change everything she has ever known . . .

  Photographer Lucy Cardwell has recently lost her troubled father, Tom. While sifting through his papers, she finds he’d been researching an uncle she never knew he’d had. Intrigued, she visits her father’s childhood home, the once beautiful Carlyon Manor. She meets an old woman named Beatrice who has an extraordinary story to tell . . .

  Growing up in the 1930s, Beatrice plays with the children of Carlyon Manor – especially pretty, blonde Angelina Wincanton, Lucy’s grandmother. Then, one summer at the age of fifteen, she falls in love with a young visitor to the town: Rafe Ashton, whom she rescues from a storm-tossed sea.

  But the dark clouds of war are gathering, and Beatrice, Rafe, and the Wincantons will all be swept up in the cataclysm of events that follow. Beatrice’s story is a powerful tale of courage and betrayal, spanning from Cornwall to London, and occupied France, in which friendship and love are tested, and the ramifications reach down the generations.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84983-288-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-84983-289-2

  PRICE: £7.99

  Rachel Hore

  A Place of Secrets

  THE RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB BESTSELLER

  The night before it all begins, Jude has the dream again . . .

  A successful auctioneer, Jude is struggling to come to terms with the death of her husband. When she’s asked to value a collection of scientific instruments and manuscripts belonging to Anthony Wickham, a lonely eighteenth-century astronomer, she leaps at the chance to escape London for the untamed beauty of Norfolk, where she grew up.

  As Jude untangles Wickham’s tragic story, she discovers threatening links to the present. What have her niece Summer’s nightmares to do with Starbrough folly, the eerie crumbling tower in the forest from which Wickham and his adopted daughter Esther once viewed the night sky? With the help of Euan, a local naturalist, Jude searches for answers in the wild, haunting splendour of the Norfolk woods. Dare she leave behind the sadness in her own life, and learn to love again?

  ‘Rachel Hore’s intriguing Richard and Judy recommended read . . . is layered with a series of mysteries, some more supernatural than others’ Independent

  PB ISBN: 978-1-84739-142-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-84983-186-4

  PRICE: £6.99

  Rachel Hore

  The Glass Painter’s Daughter

  In a tiny stained-glass shop hidden in the backstreets of Westminster lies the cracked, sparkling image of an angel.

  The owners of Minster Glass have also been broken: Fran Morrison’s mother died when she was a baby; a painful event never mentioned by her difficult, secretive father Edward. Fran left home to pursue a career in foreign cities, as a classical musician. But now Edward is dangerously ill and it’s time to return.

  Taking her father’s place in the shop, she and his craftsman Zac accept a beguiling commission – to restore a shattered glass picture of an exquisite angel belonging to a local church. As they reassemble the dazzling shards of coloured glass, they uncover an extraordinary love story from the Victorian past, sparked by the window’s creation. Slowly, Fran begins to see her own reflection in its themes of passion, tragedy and redemption . . .

  ‘Fans of Possession and Labyrinth will recognize the careful historical research Hore has undertaken and enjoy the seamless blend of past and present narratives into one beautiful story’ Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84983-533-6

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-84739-868-0

  PRICE: £7.99

  Rachel Hore

  The Memory Garden

  Magical Cornwall, a lost garden, a love story from long ago . . .

  Lamorna Cove – a tiny bay in Cornwall, picturesque, unspoilt. A hundred years ago it was the haunt of a colony of artists. Today, Mel Pentreath hopes it is a place where she can escape the pain of her mother’s death and a broken love affair, and gradually put her life back together.

  Renting a cottage in the enchanting but overgrown grounds of Merryn Hall, Mel embraces her new surroundings and offers to help her landlord, Patrick Winterton, restore the garden. Soon she is daring to believe her life can be rebuilt. Then Patrick finds some old paintings in an attic, and as he and Mel investigate the identity of the artist, they are drawn into an extraordinary tale of illicit passion and thwarted ambition from a century ago, a tale that resonates in their own lives. But how long can Mel’s idyll last before reality breaks in and everything is threatened?

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84983-532-9

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-47112-717-5

  PRICE £7.99

  Rachel Hore

  The Dream House

  Everyone has a dream of their perfect house . . .

  For Kate Hutchinson, the move to Suffolk from the tiny, noisy London terrace she shares with her husband Simon and their two young children was almost enough to make her dreams come true.

  Space, peace, and a measured, rural pace of life have a far greater pull for Kate than the constantly overflowing in-tray on her desk at work. Moving in with her mother-in-law must surely be only a temporary measure before the estate agent’s details of the perfect house fall through the letterbox.

  But when, out walking one evening, Kate stumbles upon the beautiful house of her dreams, it is tantalizingly out of her reach. Its owner is the frail elderly Agnes, whose story – as it unravels – echoes so much of Kate’s own. And Kate comes to realize how uncertain and unsettling even a life built on dreams can be: wherever you are, at whatever time you are living, and whoever you are with . . .

  ‘A beautifully written and magical novel about life, love and family . . . tender and funny, warm and wise, the story of one woman’s search for the perfect life which isn’t quite where she thought she would find it. I loved it!’ Cathy Kelly

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84983-531-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-47112-716-8

  PRICE: £7.99

 

 

  Jennifer Smethurst, Fair Exchange

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