Prologue
Esther
December 1910
I picked up the letter I’d written and read it over to myself. I knew he’d never see it, but it
made me feel better, just putting my feelings down on paper. Putting everything that had
happened behind me.
‘Sometimes the fight is part of the fun,’ I’d written. I smiled sadly. That was exactly how
I felt, and why everything had gone so wrong between us; there had just been no fight.
Picking up my pen again, I signed the letter with a flourish and then wafted the paper,
waiting for the ink to dry. I wouldn’t send it. There was no need. But I wanted to keep it
somewhere safe, somewhere I could find it if I ever needed to remember why I’d done what
I’d done.
I glanced round my small bedroom, looking for inspiration, and my eyes fell on my fabric
bag, stuffed under the bed. I pulled it out and opened it and found inside the wooden
photograph frame holding the only photograph I had of my former love. Perfect. But first I
had to change something else. On my bedside table was my journal and tucked inside was a
photograph of myself. It had been taken at a recent suffragette rally and vain as it sounded, I
loved the way it made me look. I had my chin raised slightly and a flash of fire in my eyes. I
looked like a woman to be reckoned with.
Smiling, I opened the back of the picture frame and took out the photograph that was in
there. Should I throw it away? No, he was part of my past no matter how horribly things had
ended. Instead I put it into the bag and pushed it back under the bed. Then I put the
photograph of myself into the frame, folded up the letter and put it in an envelope, carefully
tucked that behind the photo and fixed the back on securely. I proudly stood the photograph
on my bedside table. I would keep that picture with me, wherever I ended up, and every time
I looked at it I would remember that I had been made stronger by everything that had
happened.
‘The fight goes on, Esther,’ I said to myself. ‘The fight goes on.’
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