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It is now six months since I have finished writing. I thought I had fully told Sophie’s story.
But today I discover how stories have a strange ability to keep going on, passing through yet more generations and crossing into other families’ lives, other people who have also shared in the history of this house.
I am working at my desk when I hear a knocking sound. I open the front door. Standing outside are four ladies, three in a line and one behind. I know at once, by their looks and an imperceptible kindred thing, that they are all related and connected to this house. The oldest woman is perhaps in her eighties, with the sprightly good-mannered bearing of generations past. The next lady looks in her sixties. She has the most striking and captivating face, not quite beautiful, but such presence, magnetic eyes which draw you in. The third lady, mature but still young, carries an aura of hard earned wisdom with her. Behind her is the youngest woman, I think it is her daughter. She has a waif like face, framed by spiky hair, and a twenty something body.
I say, “Hello, How can I help you?”
The middle lady speaks on behalf of the others, saying, “You don’t know us but we lived in this house before you, my mother and I when I was a child in the 1950s and 60s. It was also my daughter’, Catherine’s, home for a while. My mother continued to live here until she sold the house in the late 1980s. I used the front room where Sophie lived and she was my childhood friend. Sophie was my daughter’s friend too, even though we then lived on the opposite side of Australia. Later Sophie became my daughter and granddaughter Amelie’s friend when they needed help.
“We came to the ceremony for Sophie and Matty, on that day at Ballast Point, but we did not want to intrude; it was a day for their own families.
But it made us remember our time living here and how important Sophie was in our lives. For the last six months we have written our story, in which Sophie has a central role. Today we wondered if you would tell to us the rest of the story that you found out about her life.
With that I invite them in for tea and tell them this story. In return they pass me the hand written manuscript of their story. When they depart I sit down and read it, barely leaving my seat over a day and night.
As I finish and lay it aside I feel I have found a fitting closure to Sophie’ story, the girl in the picture with only eight years of living, but a child whose presence has passed across many generations and may yet continue.
With my reading done I place their manuscript alongside the words I have written, to share the same journey into Sophie’s future.
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For those who want to know more the books
Lizzie’s Tale and Devil’s Choice, continue this story.