Rosie Thomas - The Potter’s House

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © Rosie Thomas 2014

Cover layout design Caroline Young © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Jacket photographs © DEEPOL by plainpicture/Gemma Ferrando, 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: 9780007563227

Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780007560547

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

Contents

Cover

Title Page THE POTTER’S HOUSE Rosie Thomas

Copyright

Praise for Rosie Thomas

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

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Rosie Thomas

About the Publisher

The first time I saw the woman who later ran off with my husband she was giving directions to two removals men. They were struggling to lift a sofa round an awkward bend in the communal stairs and I was waiting to pass.

There were two flats per floor in Dunollie Mansions and this was evidently the new owner of the one directly above ours. Old widowed Mrs Bobinski had lived up there for twenty years in a fug of simmering soup fumes and mothballs, and then she died in hospital after a very brief illness and her heirs put the flat up for sale. It was on the market for months, partly because mansion flats like ours were no longer fashionable, if they ever had been, but mostly because the two nephews were asking too much money for it. I had heard from the Frasers on the top floor that the place was finally sold, but no one had any idea who our new neighbour would be.

‘Some nice, unremarkable couple just like us,’ Graham Fraser cheerfully assumed.

‘And us,’ I added, more thoughtfully.

I stood to one side to let the woman and her puffing retinue pass by. She was walking upstairs backwards and would have collided with me if I hadn’t put out my hand to steer her away. She wheeled round at once.

‘God, sorry. Can’t even look where I’m going. Hang on a sec.’ The last words were called down to the two young men. The one on the lower end hitched his shoulder under the padded arm and stared up in sweaty disbelief.

‘Don’t worry about us. We’ve got all day, Col, haven’t we?’

Ignoring him, she introduced herself to me. ‘I’m Lisa Kirk. Just moving in, number seven.’

‘Let your end down, Col.’

‘Right you are.’

I told the woman my name and pointed to our door. She was younger by far than anyone else currently living in the flats. I would have put her age at twenty-three, although I learned later that she was actually twenty-seven. Fifteen years or so younger them me. She had fair hair with blonde streaks and a soft leather rucksack slung over one shoulder. Even her combat pants had obviously come from somewhere expensive and fashionable, well away from the firing line. She looked as if she ought to be moving into a loft in Clerkenwell or a pastel-fronted little place in Notting Hill, not a flat in a stuffy red-brick block in a Kensington backwater.

‘If you need a cup of sugar. Or maybe gin …’ I said.

‘Thanks,’ she answered and smiled. An attractive smile. ‘You come and have a drink with me when I’ve got the glasses unpacked. Tell me what I should do with the place.’

I flattened myself against the wall as Col and his counterpart hoisted the sofa again. They laboured past me, with Lisa Kirk leading the way. I went out to post my letters and to the greengrocer’s down the side street to buy vegetables for dinner, then walked slowly back into the building.