Mrs Taylor found herself in the village library four weeks and two days after her husband dropped dead sitting on a beach with a woman who was not his wife. She believed they had common interests and had shared things that she could not. Would not, she reminded herself. Would not.
There was a space for her new car outside the library and leaving her sunglasses on the dash board she went in. She liked the regularity of the shelves and the soothing sound of the wooden indexes as Valerie Clements tried to find large print books for that lady who had once attended a meal for the St John’s Ambulance. There was only one book Janet Taylor wanted and she noted that no one had read it since she last had it out. This was strangely comforting as it made her choice quietly remarkable after all. John Keats 3 may 1818 she read on:
‘ Well I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me- The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless chamber, in which we remain as long as we don’t think..’
No one tried to speak to her. She was immune to small talk, dignified and solitary in her grief thought Valerie who had never seen anyone as beautiful and strong. Valerie pulled at a thread of reckless hair, adjusted her small gold watch, and put Marilyn James’s rather dubious foreign novel under her stamp.