Hazel Gaynor - The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by © HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Hazel Gaynor 2018

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs © Magdalena Russocka/Trevillion Images (woman), Jill Battaglia/Trevillion Images (lighthouse); Shutterstock.com(back cover)

Hazel Gaynor 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: 9780008255213

Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008255237

Version: 2019-05-24

For courageous women everywhere. You know who you are.

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

—Louisa May Alcott

There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.

—Edith Wharton

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue: Matilda

Volume One

Chapter One: Sarah

Chapter Two: Grace

Chapter Three: Sarah

Chapter Four: Grace

Chapter Five: Sarah

Chapter Six: Grace

Chapter Seven: Sarah

Chapter Eight: Grace

Chapter Nine: Sarah

Chapter Ten: Grace

Chapter Eleven: Matilda

Chapter Twelve: Matilda

Chapter Thirteen: Harriet

Chapter Fourteen: Matilda

Chapter Fifteen: Grace

Chapter Sixteen: Grace

Chapter Seventeen: Grace

Volume Two

Chapter Eighteen: Matilda

Chapter Nineteen: Harriet

Chapter Twenty: Matilda

Chapter Twenty-One: Grace

Chapter Twenty-Two: Grace

Chapter Twenty-Three: Grace

Chapter Twenty-Four: Grace

Chapter Twenty-Five: Matilda

Chapter Twenty-Six: Matilda

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Harriet

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Matilda

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Grace

Chapter Thirty: Grace

Chapter Thirty-One: Grace

Chapter Thirty-Two: Grace

Chapter Thirty-Three: Grace

Chapter Thirty-Four: Matilda

Chapter Thirty-Five: Harriet

Chapter Thirty-Six: Matilda

Volume Three

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Grace

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Grace

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Matilda

Chapter Forty: Matilda

Chapter Forty-One: Grace

Chapter Forty-Two: George

Chapter Forty-Three: Grace

Chapter Forty-Four: Grace

Chapter Forty-Five: Matilda

Chapter Forty-Six: Matilda

Chapter Forty-Seven: Grace

Chapter Forty-Eight: Matilda

Chapter Forty-Nine: Harriet

Chapter Fifty: Grace

Chapter Fifty-One: Matilda

Chapter Fifty-Two: Harriet

Chapter Fifty-Three: Matilda

Chapter Fifty-Four: Grace

Chapter Fifty-Five: George

Chapter Fifty-Six: Matilda

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

The Creation of a Heroine

Reading Group Questions

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Hazel Gaynor

About the Publisher

THEY CALL IT Heartbreak Pier, the place from where I will leave Ireland. It is a place that has seen too many goodbyes.

From the upper balcony of the ticket office I watch the third-class passengers below, sobbing as they cling to their loved ones, exchanging tokens of remembrance and promises to write. The outpouring of emotion is a sharp contrast to the silence as I stand between my mother and Mrs. O’Driscoll, my chaperone for the journey. I’ve done all my crying, all my pleading and protesting. All I feel now is a sullen resignation to whatever fate has in store for me on the other side of the Atlantic. I hardly care anymore.

Tired of waiting to board the tenders, I take my ticket from my purse and read the neatly typed details for the umpteenth time. Matilda Sarah Emmerson. Age 19. Cabin Class. Cobh to New York. T.S.S. California. Funny, how it says so much about me, and yet says nothing at all. I fidget with the paper ticket, tug at the buttons on my gloves, check my watch, spin the cameo locket at my neck.

“Do stop fiddling, Matilda,” Mother snips, her pinched lips a pale violet in the cool spring air. “You’re making me anxious.”

I spin the locket again. “And you’re making me go to America.” She glares at me, color rushing to her neck in a deep flush of anger, her jaw clenching and straining as she bites back a withering response. “I can fiddle as much as I like when I get there,” I add, pushing and provoking. “You won’t know what I’m doing. Or who with.”

“ Whom with,” she corrects, turning her face away with an exaggerated sniff, swallowing her exasperation and fixing her gaze on the unfortunates below. The cloying scent of violet water seeps from the exposed paper-thin skin at her wrists. It gives me a headache.

My fingers return defiantly to the locket, a family heirloom that once belonged to my great-great-granny Sarah. As a child I’d spent many hours opening and closing the delicate filigree clasp, making up stories about the miniature people captured in the portraits inside: an alluring young woman standing beside a lighthouse, and a handsome young man, believed to be a Victorian artist, George Emmerson, a very distant relative. To a bored little girl left to play alone in the drafty rooms of our grand country home, these tiny people offered a tantalizing glimpse of a time when I imagined everyone had a happy ever after. With the more cynical gaze of adulthood, I now presume the locket people’s lives were as dull and restricted as mine. Or as dull and restricted as mine was until half a bottle of whiskey and a misjudged evening of reckless flirtation with a British soldier from the local garrison changed everything. If I’d intended to get my mother’s attention, I had certainly succeeded.