Stolen Summers by Anne Goodwin

 

Stolen Summers by Anne Goodwin.

Published 1st October 2022 by Annecdotal Press.

From the cover of the book:

Stolen Summers: A heartbreaking tale of betrayal, confinement and dreams of escape.

All she has left is her sanity. Will the asylum take that from her too?

In 1939, Matilda is admitted to Ghyllside hospital, cut off from family and friends. Not quite twenty, and forced to give up her baby for adoption, she feels battered by the cruel regime. Yet she finds a surprising ally in rough-edged Doris, who risks harsh punishments to help her reach out to the brother she left behind.

Twenty-five years later, the rules have relaxed, and the women are free to leave. How will they cope in a world transformed in their absence? Do greater dangers await them outside?

The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home is a tragic yet tender story of a woman robbed of her future who summons the strength to survive.

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To mark publication of Anne Goodwin's latest book, Stolen Summers, it is my absolute pleasure to bring you an extract from this captivating prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home.

Stolen Summers opening: March, 1939

Not all the nuns were cruel. Some of the younger ones would address the girls kindly if Mother Superior were out of earshot. So Matilda counted her blessings when Sister Bernadette slipped onto the seat beside her in the taxicab, while a sombre man with a box-shaped head took the passenger seat at the front. He resembled a tradesman in his white cotton coat worn over an ordinary jacket and trousers; Matilda assumed the nuns had offered him a lift out of charity. He wasn’t introduced. 

Although still sore down below, she held herself erect with her hands folded in her lap. She had dressed for hopefulness that morning in the polka-dot frock her brother favoured; her wool coat with the missing button lay with her suitcase in the boot. Guided by the mirror of her compact, she had dusted her cheeks with rouge. Her hair was a fright but, once the salon had worked its magic, it would be as if the horrors of the past few months were another girl’s history.

No one spoke on the journey; the sole sounds the purr of the engine and the

intermittent striking of matches for the men’s cigarettes. Matilda had almost nodded off when she opened her eyes to find they were on the road that passed Stainburn School. Her bodice tugged against her bosom as she leant forward, then sideways, then back, searching in vain for a peep of mustard and maroon. She had thought she had seen enough changes for one lifetime when she first donned that uniform. She could not have imagined the turmoil to come.

The driver seemed unfamiliar with the area: instead of veering left towards Briarwood, he continued downhill towards the centre of town. As the tradesman turned his boxy head to speak to the cabbie, Matilda surmised he wanted dropping off at the shops. She tried to be tolerant, but she resented the delay. Her brother would be waiting, and minutes felt like hours to a six-year-old child.

The diversion afforded some consolation: a chance to reacquaint herself with the town where she was born. She had left it for an overnight stay on three occasions in her almost twenty years. If she fulfilled her ambition to train as a nanny, she would have to leave again, and for longer. But not until Henry was old enough for boarding school.

Nearer the town centre, daffodils bowed to the headstones in St Mark’s churchyard. Weeds would have colonised her mother’s grave in her absence; Matilda resolved to take Henry to tidy the plot tomorrow if the weather held.

They skirted the brewery. Even with the windows closed Matilda smelled the hops. She could not ask, but wondered if Sister Bernadette secretly relished this exposure to masculine vices. Neither alcohol nor nicotine crossed the threshold of the convent. As the cab proceeded out of town, something nagged at Matilda’s mind like an aching tooth on biting into a toffee apple. Shuffling her hands in her lap, she pushed her apprehension away. Sister Bernadette fingered her rosary. The tradesman lit another cigarette.

Surely the driver could have taken him to the bus station if he had business elsewhere? Matilda’s irritation vanished as she glimpsed the big top on the common ground known as The Cloffocks on the other side of the river. Henry loved the circus, but it would not linger long and Matilda would hate for him to miss it. Would it be wrong to take him to see trapeze artists, clowns and performing seals before they checked their mother’s grave? The weeds would not have grown too much over the winter.

As they continued north along the coast road, Matilda shivered in her thin frock. As the cab turned onto progressively narrower country lanes, her mouth dried. When they pulled up at a pair of ornate wrought-iron gates and, in response to a blast of the horn, a man in a peaked cap emerged from a cottage on the other side to open them, Matilda realised she had underestimated the tradesman. He must be important to supply the grand estates.

The cab trundled up a tree-lined driveway and stopped outside a red-brick building with an imposing clock tower. When the men got out, and the driver opened her door and gestured for her to exit the taxi too, Matilda had a sense of being cast into one of Mrs Christie’s murder mysteries. But none of the roles – victim, sleuth or socialite – seemed to fit.

When the tradesman offered Matilda his arm, Sister Bernadette remained in her seat. Whispering her prayers, her gaze inward, the nun looked as remote as a statue of the Virgin Mary. Matilda could not interrupt her devotions to ask her to intercede. It was all too clear that she would not be seeing her brother today. She would not be going home.

Stolen Summers is available to buy now using the link HERE.

About the author:

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. 
That same curiosity now powers her fiction. Anne writes about the darkness that haunts her and is wary of artificial light. She makes stuff up to tell the truth about adversity, creating characters to care about and stories to make you think. She explores identity, mental health and social justice with compassion, humour and hope.

An award-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection 
with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for 
the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.

Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that 
inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.