Rosie Thomas - A Simple Life

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann 1995

Copyright © Rosie Thomas 1995

Cover design Caroline Young © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Cover images © Oleg Gekman/EyeEm/Getty Images (main image), Shuttershock.com(birds)

Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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.

Source ISBN: 9780007563197

Ebook Edition © December 2020 ISBN: 9780007560516

Version: 2020-11-27

For Paul and Jane

Contents

Cover

Title Page A SIMPLE LIFE Rosie Thomas

Copyright

Dedication

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Rosie Thomas

About the Publisher

It was a pretty street in a good neighbourhood. The Stewards had seen that right away, as soon as they turned the corner from Pleasant Street into Kendrick, at the beginning of their first year in New England. The houses were a friendly distance apart, with mown grass and tidy trees between them. There were basketball hoops over the garage doors and children’s bicycles on the open porches.

‘Looks okay,’ Jack said from the back of the car. ‘Looks good, in fact.’

In fact was one of his sayings. You see was another of them, and both were copied directly from his father. Jack used them in his careful explanations of the world for his younger brother’s benefit.

‘I know that already, you don’t have to tell me that,’ Merlin would retort, conscious as always of his position as the youngest and least well-informed of his family.

‘It’s kind of neat-looking,’ was Merlin’s verdict on the house as they drew up. From the beginning he was the most determined to fit into this new world. He spooned up the language as if it were ice-cream.

‘So, what do you think?’ Matthew Steward asked his wife, after they had seen around. He was eager for her to like it. They needed a home to settle into in Franklin, a real home not a rented apartment, and Matthew wanted to have all this fixed up so that he could be free and comfortable to concentrate on his work.

‘Oh. Ye-es, I think it’s the best we’re likely to find,’ Dinah answered.

They had moved only a week ago from home in England to this stately tree-canopied college town in Massachusetts. Matthew was a scientist, a molecular biochemist. He had been invited here by the university to set up a prestigious new department and his wife and children followed behind him, bobbing in faint bewilderment in the wake of his latest success.

Dinah stood on the porch steps of the house on Kendrick Street, her head tilted as she squinted upwards. She could see snug-fitting window frames and solid timbers. Even so, the house appeared to slide out of focus and then, when she stared harder, it took on an insubstantial quality, two-dimensional, like a family home mocked up for a film set.

Jack looked from one parent to the other. ‘I like it. I really, really like it. There’s room for everything, all our stuff.’

‘Me too.’ For once Merlin did not try to argue the opposite case. The boys also wanted to feel that the decisions were safely made and that they were fixed, taking root in a place where they could leave their bikes and skateboards on the porch like these other as-yet-unknown children.

Matthew nodded his satisfaction. ‘Good. That’s settled.’

They drove back across Franklin to the realtor’s office. Dinah trailed her arm out of the window and felt the concentrated sun hot on her skin. The street had an exhausted, end-of-summer air and the cars and shops were veiled with pale dust.

The house was nice. It was white clapboard, with green shutters at the windows and a raised porch that ran all the way round. Inside there were wide pine floorboards and the family room had an open hearth. They could take their belongings out of storage. Their English furniture would look well in the house.

The Stewards became the new family on Kendrick Street.

The Kerrigans next door gave a welcome party for the Stewards, and everyone in the street came, even old Mr Dershowitz from the end house and the quartet of postgraduate students who were renting for the year while the Berkmanns were in France.

Matthew was introduced over and over as the new professor at the university.

‘What is it you do, exactly?’ Dee Kerrigan asked him.

‘I’m a molecular biochemist. My particular field is protein engineering.’

Matt grinned, the way he did. He talked about his work to Todd Pinkham from across the street and George Kuznik, their neighbour on the other side, telling them what a privilege it was to be here to set up the programme for the university.

Dinah ate the chicken with black-eye beans that Linda Kuznik had brought, and listened and smiled. There was a lot of smiling to do, and she felt the kernel of herself shifting within this shell of politeness. These people were so friendly, with their warm questions and welcoming explanations, and in return all she could feel was isolated and estranged. Home was a long way away.

No, she reminded herself, this was not like her, that was not the way to think; this is home. She could make it so.

She tried harder to be responsive. There must be a way to direct herself into the current of goodwill on which everyone else was happily sailing.

‘I did have a job, back in England,’ she said in answer to a question of Linda’s. ‘In advertising, I don’t know yet what I’ll do here. Get the house fixed up, the boys into school, do the domestic map-reading for all of us. Matt’s going to be too busy.’