Rosie Thomas - The Kashmir Shawl

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2011

Copyright © Rosie Thomas 2011

Cover layout design Caroline Young © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Jacket photographs © plainpicture/Chinch Gryniewicz (curtains), Saurabh Singh/EyeEm/Getty Images (boat and landscape), Phongsiri Kittikamhaeng/Getty Images (mountain), Shuttershock.com(all other images)

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: 9780007285976

Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780007449996

Version: 2020-09-25

‘Rosie Thomas writes with beautiful, effortless prose, and shows a rare compassion and a real understanding of the nature of love’

The Times

‘Honest and absorbing, Rosie Thomas mixes the bitter and the hopeful with the knowledge that the human heart is far more complicated than any rule suggests’

Mail on Sunday

‘A master storyteller’

Cosmopolitan

‘Thomas’s novels are beautifully written. This one is a treat’

Marie Claire

‘A lush and sweeping voyage of self-discovery’

Eithne Farry, Daily Mail

‘Prepare to be dazzled … an epic tale of sisterhood and betrayal’

Company

‘Heart-rending and beautifully written … I read it in one delicious go, tears pouring down my face. You cannot fail to be moved’

Emma Lee-Potter, Express

‘A terrific book, beautifully written … questions about identity, belonging, infidelity, dying and forgiveness make this a very moving study of the human heart’

Australian Women’s Weekly

For my father

The mountain sheep are sweeter,

But the valley sheep are fatter;

We therefore deemed it meeter

To carry off the latter.

Cover

Title Page THE KASHMIR SHAWL Rosie Thomas

Copyright

Praise for Rosie Thomas Praise for Rosie Thomas: ‘Rosie Thomas writes with beautiful, effortless prose, and shows a rare compassion and a real understanding of the nature of love’ The Times ‘Honest and absorbing, Rosie Thomas mixes the bitter and the hopeful with the knowledge that the human heart is far more complicated than any rule suggests’ Mail on Sunday ‘A master storyteller’ Cosmopolitan ‘Thomas’s novels are beautifully written. This one is a treat’ Marie Claire ‘A lush and sweeping voyage of self-discovery’ Eithne Farry, Daily Mail ‘Prepare to be dazzled … an epic tale of sisterhood and betrayal’ Company ‘Heart-rending and beautifully written … I read it in one delicious go, tears pouring down my face. You cannot fail to be moved’ Emma Lee-Potter, Express ‘A terrific book, beautifully written … questions about identity, belonging, infidelity, dying and forgiveness make this a very moving study of the human heart’ Australian Women’s Weekly

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

‘Zahra’s Shawl’

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Rosie Thomas

About the Publisher

Mair made the discovery on the last day at home in the old house.

The three of them were upstairs in their father’s bedroom. They had come together for the melancholy business of sorting and clearing their parents’ furniture and possessions, before closing up the house for the last time and handing over the keys to the estate agent. It was the end of May and the lambs had just been taken away to market. Out on the hill the sheep were bleating wildly, loud, incessant and bewildered cries that were carried in with the scent of spring grass.

Mair had made a pot of tea and laid a tray to carry upstairs to her sister Eirlys. Their brother Dylan came behind her, ducking as he had had to do from the age of thirteen in order to avoid hitting his head on the low beam on the landing.

Eirlys’s energy was prodigious, as always. The floor of the bedroom was squared with neat piles of blankets and pillows, towers of labelled boxes, crackling black bags. She stood at the foot of the bed, resting a clipboard on the bedpost and frowning as she scribbled amendments to one of her lists. With the addition of a white coat and a retinue of underlings, she could easily have been on one of her ward rounds.

‘Lovely,’ she murmured, when she saw the tea. ‘Don’t put it down there,’ she added.

Dylan took a cup and wedged himself on the windowsill. He was blocking the light and Eirlys flicked an eyebrow at him. ‘Drink your tea,’ he said mildly. ‘Go mad, have a biscuit as well.’

Mair sat down on the bed. The ancient pink electric blanket was still stretched from corner to corner, and she thought of the weeks of her father’s last illness when she had come home to the valley to nurse him, as best she could, and to keep him company. They had enjoyed long, rambling conversations about the past and the people her father had once known.

‘Did I ever tell you about Billy Jones, the auctioneer?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He had a stammer.’

‘How did he manage?’

Over the top of his spectacles her father had glanced at her. ‘We weren’t in such a hurry, you know, in those days.’

In the low-ceilinged room the old man seemed very close at hand, and at the same time entirely absent.

Eirlys was pointing out which bundles were to be taken away to charity drop-offs and what exactly the house-clearance people could be left to deal with. There was a question about the linen bed-sheets that had been stored in the same cupboard for as long as they could all remember and were mysteriously kept for ‘best’, probably according to some long-ago edict of their mother’s. But when the sisters had unfolded the top sheet they saw that it was worn so thin in the middle that the light shone straight through. Eirlys pursed her lips now and briskly consigned it with its partner to one of her graded series of bin-bags.

The sun was slanting through the window, painting Dylan’s jumper with a rim of gilded fuzz.

Mair found that she couldn’t sit still any longer and let the wave of memories engulf them all. She jumped up and went to the bow-fronted chest of drawers facing the end of the bed. Their mother had inherited it from her own mother – she remembered hearing that. Gwen Ellis’s clothes had been stored in here after her death, until at last her widower and her elder daughter had recovered sufficiently to be able to give them away.