Barbara Taylor Bradford - The Triumph of Katie Byrne

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2001

Copyright © Beaji Enterprises, Inc 2001

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007330645

Version: 2017-11-16

This book is for my husband, Bob, with my love and thanks for making everything always so special.

Cover Page

Title Page The Triumph Of Katie Byrne Barbara Taylor Bradford

Copyright Copyright Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2001 Copyright © Beaji Enterprises, Inc 2001 The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007330645 Version: 2017-11-16

Dedication This book is for my husband, Bob, with my love and thanks for making everything always so special.

PART ONE Kiss of Death PART ONE Kiss of Death Connecticut, 1989 ‘…break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away.’ JOHN DONNE ‘The coward does it with a kiss.’ OSCAR WILDE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

PART TWO Gift of Friendship

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

PART THREE Touch of Love

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

Connecticut, 1989

‘…break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away.’

JOHN DONNE

‘The coward does it with a kiss.’

OSCAR WILDE

The girl sat on a narrow bench, centre stage, her body bent forward, one elbow on her knee, a hand supporting her head. The thinker, deeply thinking, her body language seemed to convey.

She was dressed very simply, boyishly, in a loose, grey, knitted tunic cinched by a black leather belt, worn with black tights and ballet slippers. Her long, reddish-gold hair was plaited, the plaits wound tightly around her head, so that the finished effect was like a burnished-copper cap gleaming under the pin-spot shining down. The girl’s name was Katie Byrne and she was seventeen: acting was her entire life.

She was about to act for her favourite audience – an audience of two: her best friends, Carly Smith and Denise Matthews. They sat on straight-backed wooden chairs in front of the makeshift stage in the old barn which belonged to Ted Matthews, Denise’s uncle. Both girls were the same age as Katie, and had been friends since childhood; all three were members of the amateur acting group at the high school in the rural Connecticut area where they all lived.

Katie had chosen to perform a speech from one of Shakespeare’s plays at the school’s upcoming Christmas concert. It was only two months away, and she had recently begun to rehearse the piece; Carly and Denise were also perfecting their chosen speeches for the same concert, rehearsing with her in the barn almost every day.

Now, at last, Katie lifted her head, stared out into space, and focused her blue eyes on the back wall of the barn, as if she saw something visible only to herself. Taking a deep breath, she began.

‘To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them. To die –’

Abruptly, Katie stopped.

She jumped up off the bench, walked to the edge of the stage, looked down at her friends. Shaking her head, she seemed unexpectedly uncertain of herself, she who normally had such confidence and self-possession.

‘I’m not getting it right,’ Katie wailed.

‘Yes, you are, and you’re wonderful!’ Carly cried, rising, stepping closer to the stage, the stage on which they had started to act when they were children. ‘Nobody does Shakespeare the way you do it. You’re the best, Katie.’

‘Carly’s right,’ Denise agreed as she went to join Carly near the stage. ‘It’s the way you act the words, say them. You make sense out of them, and there’s never been a Hamlet like you.’

Katie burst out laughing. ‘Thanks for your compliment, Denny, but there were a few others before me…Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton, to name a couple of them…they were the greatest classical actors on the English-speaking stage, just as Christopher Plummer is the greatest classical actor today. And listen, I keep telling you, it’s all to do with understanding the meaning of the words, the motivation and intention behind them. And also with punctuation , knowing when to run the words on without pause, and when to pause to breathe…’ She let the sentence trail off, knowing now was not the right time to give Denise another acting lesson.