Enchantment (25 page)

When Tim cleared out his things, his plain girl friend came too, with a handicapped child in tow, who fell off the top of the outside stairs, but bounced.

‘It shouldn't be hard to get another tenant,' Brian said when they had gone.

‘I'll get Janet to put a notice up in the main office.'

‘We can raise the rent now.'

‘I'll miss old Tim, though.' Cindy was in a kimono, painting her nails, although the polish would have to come off before Jack went to work on Monday. ‘Do you think it will last?'

‘It's so bizarre, it just might,' Brian said.

‘Wouldn't you think she had enough, with one nutty kid, without taking on another?'

‘She collects them.'

‘I've sometimes thought I'd like to do that, Bri, if you're not going to give me a child …'

Great granddaughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world in which she was brought up, she acted out - she was expelled from St Paul's Girls' School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge. Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book,
One Pair Of Hands
, published in 1939.
Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but she continued to set the majority of her writing in Britain.
No More Meadows
, which she published in 1953, reflected her work with the NSPCC - she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children's books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals and, to some extent, children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.

Discover books by Monica Dickens published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/MonicaDickens
Closed at Dusk
Dear Doctor Lily
Enchantment
Flowers on the Grass
Joy and Josephine
Kate and Emma
Man Overboard
No More Meadows
One of the Family
Room Upstairs
The Angel in the Corner
The Happy Prisoner
The Listeners
Children's Books
The House at World's End
Summer at World's End
World's End in Winter
Spring Comes to World's End

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1989 by Viking
Copyright © 1989 Monica Dickens
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
eISBN: 9781448209699
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