The Country Girl (Truscott Family Sagas #1)

Prologue

Sweat trickled into Kate’s eyes and yet she was shivering.

The throbbing in her temples made it difficult for her to raise her head.

Her body twisted and turned, trying to find a position where her bones didn’t ache.

Lying on her back made it easier to breathe, but if she stayed in that position for too long, it was agony.

Her throat was dry and she was constantly thirsty, but when she tried to reach for some water, her hand shook so much that she couldn’t hold the cup.

She floated in and out of today and into tomorrow on waves of pain that made it impossible to distinguish day from night, wakefulness from sleep, presence from absence.

Life was going on around her, she could hear voices.

The clatter of pans told her that food was being prepared and the smells of cooking reached her nostrils, but when Albert tried to spoon soup into her mouth, her tongue couldn’t taste and her throat wouldn’t swallow.

His gentle words of encouragement urged her to try to eat, but her appetite had left her, along with her ability to decipher was what real and what was an invention of her fevered mind.

In this world of drifting, she clung on to the threads of her life that wove in and out of her consciousness.

She heard her child crying, but couldn’t go to him, her limbs weighed her down.

She felt the touch of her husband’s lips, but could not kiss him back.

Always there for her, she was so grateful for that, but his face was no longer clear to her, she was slipping away from him.

Where was she? Micklewell, her Hampshire home?

Was this her sister, Dot, bending over her or her mother, Ada?

Whose was this face? Then she remembered.

She was in a lodging house in Fareham. She’d left her village home in 1912 and so much had happened to change her life since then.

She had to fight this. Please God she would survive this illness. She had so much to live for.