The Widow's Confession Read Free Page A

A place for invalids, for those who hoped to convalesce, and those that never would. The town was known for its retired nature, and we thought that if we
stepped quietly amongst its residents they would never notice us.
    Broadstairs was one more resting-place on the ceaseless journey Julia and I had taken since the autumn of 1841, when we left New York for England on the
Great Western
. We had spent
ten years touring Europe, travelling as much as our small income would allow. We thought this quiet sea-bathing resort would be no different from the spa-towns or the lakeside villages we had seen,
where we kept to ourselves, careful not to make connections.
    We arrived in May, before the season had begun. The days were long and bright; the light hard and clear, sometimes even cruel in its merciless exposure of every flaw. Going to sketch on the
beach in the early mornings, I thought that I had never seen such light before.
    Night fell differently there, too. Raised in New York, I was surprised by the swift way in which it descended: the sharpening air, the total darkness, only broken by the sweep of the
lighthouse’s lantern at North Foreland and the flashing signals of the lightships marking the Goodwin Sands out at sea. Coming out of our cottage, I would never know which way to turn:
towards the darkness of the foreland, or towards the town, where the locals sat in the taverns and conversed by the light of flickering candles.
    I often wonder what that summer would have been, without the deaths. Would we – a group of strangers – have been thrown together with such intensity? Our loves, our hatreds,
focusing in the presence of death, giving every word, every touch, a sense of urgency. It seems so strange when observed at a distance, now that time has passed. We could have been like any other
group of travellers, passing and grazing each other lightly, with polite conversation and the occasional cutting remark. Instead, we were a conflagration, or perhaps that conflagration was only
within me.
    Delphine went to sketch on the sands at Main Bay, going early, before anyone else was there apart from one or two fishermen on the pier. She was seated with her back to the
town, and the bathing machines were not yet drawn to the water’s edge, so she saw only the sea, the clouds and the sun. When the first walkers came, she closed her sketchbook and left the
beach.
    Harbour Street and the clifftop promenade were still quiet. Delphine walked for some way until the path verged upon a cornfield, which went right up to the cliff’s edge. On its most
far-out point, she looked down upon the whole bay; the perfect view for a painter. But already, more people were out, and she knew it was time to go back to Victory Cottage, her home for the
season.
    Her route back took her through the town and past the Albion Hotel. It was a large square building, solid as a dowager and with the same pretensions to stateliness, despite evidently having been
battered by the sea winds that winter. It was the foremost of the town’s hotels and associated with Charles Dickens, though he had long since decamped to Fort House, a private residence, for
his summer seasons in the town. She paused to look at the hotel with the interest of a stranger’s eye – the lantern over the large entrance and the little ornamentation cut into the
stones – to consider whether she wished to sketch it.
    In the back of her mind she had noted the swift approach of a carriage from the distance, but it was only when the growing noise of hooves and wheels intruded into her thoughts that she became
truly aware of the danger she was in. The horse and carriage had come from the top of the town; it was downhill all the way, with the Albion at the bottom. The horse had bolted. It was hurtling
forwards, head high, eyes rolled back as its driver struggled with it. As she turned, the sudden vision of it arrested her where she stood; frozen, one hand against the wall of