The Girl in the Scrapbook by Carolyn Ruffles (reading women TXT) 📕

the two windows either side of the front door were both quite small. Its only distinctive feature was a column of horseshoes hanging beside the door. She was sure she had seen the very same thing somewhere else.

Emily turned again to her iPad. She'd been looking at holiday cottages for the past hour. Perhaps one of those was the very same cottage. With a rush of excitement, she began trawling back through the country cottage websites. Most of the cottages she had looked at were set in a coastal location with a sea view and, however hard she looked at the photograph, she could only see fields around and behind that cottage but she was determined not to overlook anything.

An hour and several interruptions from Alex later, she set the iPad aside. Nothing. Not one of those cottages looked remotely the same. It must have been somewhere else. She shook her head at Molly and got to her feet. Maybe inspiration would strike when she was cooking tea or doing something else equally mundane. She would not allow herself to be disappointed, she decided. It was best to be philosophical about these things. Fate would determine when, where or even if she were to unearth any information about her past. She just needed to keep an open mind. However, it was to be a week later before her hopes were raised once again.

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Chapter 11

Jennifer – December 2016

The article which featured Jennifer’s cottage appeared in the Sunday Telegraph supplement in early December and her journalist friend had done a great job in promoting it. As well as two photographs showing the cottage to its best advantage, there was a chocolate box view of Great Chalkham High Street showing the quaint half-timbered cottages which made it so popular with tourists. Then there was a photograph of the idyllic Chalkham lake, once a chalk quarry and possibly how the village got its name, and another of the historic Church of St Paul where, legend had it, St Paul himself appeared to offer solace to the bereaved Lord and Lady Congleton after the death of their first-born child in 1788. In the article, it told the story of how he had apparently told them they would go on to have seven more healthy children who would all live to maturity - a fact borne out in later years.

Once upon a time, Jennifer would have dismissed such a thing as fanciful nonsense, a charming tale and nothing else. Her parents had been atheists and she had been brought up in the belief that everything in the world could be explained by science, even if the human mind did not yet have the capability of understanding that science. She didn't believe here was a God and considered revelatory visitations of saints and angels to be the stuff of fiction. Indeed, she had often told her more religious friends that, while she would like to believe there was something out there, some all-powerful, all-loving being protecting mankind from its worst excesses, she sadly did not have a mystical bone in her body.

However, since she'd been living in her cottage, some of those firmly held convictions had been shaken by the intermittent appearances of ‘ghost girl’, as she'd named her. She had googled ‘the science of ghosts’ and the evidence suggested that the belief in the supernatural was all in the mind, just as she had always argued.  However, it was difficult not to believe the evidence of her own eyes and, unless she was truly going mad, she found she could not dismiss her as a construct of her own imagining. There had to be a scientific explanation, she reasoned, something perhaps to do with the residual energy of a person being left behind after their death.

At least ‘ghost girl’ was not a threatening presence and she'd become used to seeing her drifting through a room, one moment there and the next gone again. Her only concern was what her potential bed and breakfast customers might make of her, if they could actually see her. If not, then perhaps she really was a creature of her own troubled mind.

She turned her attention back to the magazine article. There was also information about other places near Great Chalkham worth a visit and Jennifer thought, on reading it, that if she didn't already live here, she would definitely want to visit. Her friend really had done her proud and she resolved to send her some flowers as a thank you.

It was not long before the phone started ringing. Soon she had taken bookings for most of June, July and August the following year and also, unexpectedly, a booking for Christmas. She had been looking to her own Christmas getaway; she usually took herself off somewhere, often abroad, rather than spend the holiday alone. The enquiry was from a couple whose only son had recently emigrated with his wife and family to Australia. For the first time, they would be spending Christmas alone and they just couldn't face it in their own home.

‘Of course, I can fit you in. That’s no problem,’ Jennifer had said, putting her own plans on hold. ‘I’ll make sure you have a wonderful time … yes, I’ll do all the catering … yes, there will be turkey … and a tree … yes, yes, all the trimmings. It’ll be a real home from home Christmas.’

She put the phone down flushed with excitement and mentally making instant plans. Her first thought was where she was going to get a tree - only a real one would do. David would probably know the best place to get one.

She hadn't seen him since the Race Night ten days earlier but otherwise her social life had definitely picked up. Jeremy had phoned the next day to invite her for dinner and he had taken her to a lovely restaurant in the nearby village of Little Chalkham. It had been a pleasant evening and the