Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books. Sally Bayley

chips off the front and laughed at the speedboats going by much slower than we were and waved and waved and waved. And the apple blossom fell on top of our noses and in our eyes and we saw the white stars come out again and we lay down beneath the tree and fell asleep until Maisie came out with her clippers and told us that the green beans needed tying up and that our feet were in the way.

      And now I see outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the ragged old rooks’ nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are – a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate, and a padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden.

      (David Copperfield)

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      In the first house, my grandmother and I shared a dark bedroom with pink shells. Some days she would pick up her shells and push them to my ear.

      ‘Listen to the sea. If you talk to the sea, it will talk back. Listen to the sea, and it will take you somewhere nice.’

      I picked up the shell with its curly horns and put it to my ear. I thought I heard the faint sound of the sea, and behind that, the sound of my grandmother laughing. I push the shell harder to my ear. I can hear the lapping of the waves, and behind that, other things: voices, shrieks, a young woman giggling, a young woman kicking her legs through the air and flying; a young woman with spots of rouge on her cheeks smiling up at a man called Cyril.