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.It was obvious Laud Mayor knew about the multiple ownerships.And surely the whole community would at least know Miss Clapham owned Staceys after the fiasco of Mrs Potts’ father’s will.It seemed to Nina that she was working in ever-increasing circles with no progress whatsoever being made.She shoved the book into her backpack and pulled out her Bible.She had no plans what she would read.She’d just open it and read a bit of whatever took her fancy.She wondered where the closest church was – it didn’t matter which denomination.She’d like to listen to a sermon, to wallow in the traditions of a group of worshipers.The Bible fell open at the small concordance in the last few pages.It was little wonder, Nina thought.The concordance, which was more a list of verses linked by subject material than sharing a common word, was the part Greg liked looking at: how to live peaceably, how to settle disputes, how to be comforted in sorrow, how to respond to criticism.So much practical advice, along with other topics: the Sabbath, Jesus’ second coming, the state of the dead.Nina’s eyes filled with tears as she stared, mesmerized, at the Bible verses which she had read while Greg lay in the hospital bed, as white as the sheets pulled tight beneath him.Greg would sleep, he would be buried in the ground, he would turn to ashes, to dust, and one day he would rise again when Jesus came to take them home.How did other people cope, Nina wondered.She was glad she had no need to feel guilty about her private grief, her misery, her outright anguish because he might watch her from heaven.She was glad he wasn’t one of the stars in the sky.When the days were too dark and the nights too long she took comfort knowing that Greg no longer suffered; that he slept, that one day she would see him again and they would never be separated ever again.A gust of wind blew sand into Nina’s eyes, tearing the fine paper of her Bible.She turned against the wind, and waited for calm to descend once again.It did, and she watched the tide slowly come in.Before it got too late, she clambered over the rocks and back to Mrs Potts’ cabbage soup.Red cabbage, white cabbage, green cabbage.The soup was really quite pretty, she said to Mrs Potts.She closed her mouth firmly against describing the taste.If she dared describe Mrs Potts’ food, she knew she’d never be able to eat it ever again.“It tastes like pee,” she wrote in her journal, then crossed heavily through the words.What an awful, awful thing to say.And how did she think she knew what pee tasted like anyway? She tapped her pen against the page.“It tastes like…” she twiddled the pen between her fingers, but the right words evaded her.“Pee.”Chapter 47c.AD 1319, ENGLAND: Venetian traders sell 50 tons of sugar for £10,800 in today’s money ($20,460,000US).Bryn’s letter came before Miss Clapham returned.It came while Maudie was off shopping in the metropolis.It came the same day Nina received a blank postcard from John, adorned with a new array of stamps and telling her nothing at all except that someone remembered her.Someone knew where she was.Bryn turned up at Sweet Treats with the offending article held between two fingers.“I’ve got to decide what to do with Jen.”Nina had no idea what Bryn was speaking of.When she realised it was a letter informing Bryn that Jen’s ashes had to be interred somewhere in the near future, she stared at him blankly.“What do I do?” he said.“About what exactly?” Nina said.Surely he didn’t want her to tell him what to do with his wife’s ashes.“The ashes,” Bryn said.Unbidden, a picture snapped into her mind of she and Bryn sailing into the wind, flinging the ashes over the water and back into their faces while singing Abide with Me.She wouldn’t do it.She couldn’t.“What would Jen want?” Nina said.“She’d want to be alive,” Bryn said.“I’m sure she would.” Nina stalled for time.Perhaps Bryn would come to his own conclusions if she waited long enough.“She always loved the sea,” Bryn said, uncertainty making his voice waver.“Hmmmm.” Nina was determined not to get involved.Bryn re-read the letter.“She did have a favourite tree.It was on a hill, which had a phenomenal display of daffodils and jonquils in the spring.The hill, I mean, not the tree.”Nina waited for Bryn to complete his thought.It was interesting that he’d stopped speaking in incomplete sentences as they’d got to know each other better.He really wasn’t a bad sort of guy, she supposed.“If I were to call the funeral parlour today, perhaps I could spread her ashes over the daffodils.She’d like that.”Nina nodded.“I’m sure she would.”“The problem is,” Bryn said, “that this hill with its daffodils isn’t here.It’s hours away.We were there for our honeymoon.”Nina had nothing to say about that.It was all rather embarrassing and she wished Maudie had not gone away.Maudie should be the one to help her brother make this decision.Maudie could even have gone with Bryn to do the deed.Her eyes widened and her mouth formed a silent ‘o’.Please, don’t ask me to go with you, she begged, silently.I’m not the right person for the job.There is time, the small voice in her head comforted her.He won’t go before the fete and Maudie will be back by then.Perhaps Miss Clapham will be back too.“I need to go immediately,” Bryn was saying.“Otherwise the daffodils will be gone.”“Can’t it wait for next Spring?” Nina heard herself saying.“I doubt very much that I would have received this letter now if it could wait for another full year.” Bryn scanned the letter.“Ah, it says here that I have six months to make a decision
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