Ripples

By Eva Seyler

Alice Rothmann has been content with her quiet, ordinary life in Oxford with her quiet, ordinary husband. But when he dies suddenly, she finds herself adrift and lonely, and before she knows it she's deeply attracted to her neighbour, George Graham. 

 

There's only one hitch: George is married to Alice's best friend...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Issoria Press
• Release date: Jul 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736029732

Eva Seyler

Eva was born in Jacksonville, Florida. She left that humidity pit at the age of three and spent the next twenty-one years in California, Idaho, Kentucky, and Washington before ending up in Oregon, where she now lives on a homestead in the western foothills with her husband and five children, two of whom are human. Eva cannot remember a time when she couldn’t read, and has spent her life devouring books. In her early childhood years, she read and re-read The Boxcar Children, The Trumpet of the Swan, anything by Johanna Spyri or A A Milne, and any issues of National Geographic with illustrated articles about mummified, skeletonised, and otherwise no-longer-viable people. As a teenager she was a huge fan of Louisa May Alcott and Jane Eyre. As an adult she enjoys primarily historical fiction (adult or YA) and nonfiction on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, history, disaster, survival, dead people, and the reasons people become dead. Audiobooks are her jam, and the era of World War One is her historical pet. Eva began writing stories when very young and wrote almost constantly until she was 25, after which she took a years-long break before coming back to pursue her old dream of becoming a published author for real. She loves crafting historical fiction that brings humanity to real times and events that otherwise might seem impersonal and distant, and making doodles to go with them. When Eva is not writing, she is teaching her human children, eating chocolate, cooking or baking, wasting time on Twitter, and making weird shrieky noises every time she sees her non-human children.

Book preview

Alice, 1907-1914

What was the pebble that started the ripples circling ever outward in the pond of my life? 

Not the night George came into my house by mistake. That was more of a boulder than a pebble. 

No, something tiny set it off, something so tiny I could search my memory forever and not be able to determine whence it came.

I was nobody when I moved to Oxford with my husband in 1908, nothing but Mrs Cecil Rothmann: the mousy middle child of a London rabbi, married off to a solidly devout Jewish professor who, taking a year off from teaching at Oxford, happened to cross our path. Nobody forced me to marry him; I was twenty-nine when we met and considered well out of circulation by the time he came along. Cecil was my first and last chance, and I took him, handlebar moustache, cryptogamic botany, and all.

I settled into my married life all right. To my delight, my new home’s garden was full of rose bushes, beautiful specimens of Coupe d’Hébé and Albéric Barbier, Yvonne Rabier and Lady Penzance, and I took up their care and propagation with enthusiasm. I had always fancied roses, but there had never been room enough in London for me to have my fill of them. I also kept busy making clothes and doing fancy-work, which had been my chief occupation before my marriage as well. I simply couldn’t be happy if I wasn’t creating things. We had a daily girl come in to do the cleaning; I did my own cooking. 

One morning, shortly after Cecil brought me back to his home, a neighbour came calling. She introduced herself as Maggie Graham; she lived up the street. Several years younger than I, she seemed welcoming, and invited me to come for tea the next day.

I accepted, of course, because making friends is hard for me, and chances don’t always fall in my lap so effortlessly. Maggie, who was expecting a baby in a few months, already had two precious daughters: Susan, four, and Amanda, two. Their nanny brought them in to be introduced, and I immediately fell in love with them both.

I cannot wait to have some of my own, I confided in Maggie, after they had gone back to the nursery, as we drank our tea. 

How long have you been married? she asked.

Almost a year.

Well, then, you have time. 

––––––––

I didn't feel as if I had much time, being already thirty, and the sight of Maggie’s children sent pangs through me every time I laid eyes on them. Some afternoons I went over simply to play with them, read them stories, sew dresses for their dolls. Practise for when I have my own, I told Maggie, laughing.

The laughter covered the very real, raw wound in my own heart: I had been unable to produce any children. My cycles had always been irregular, even before my marriage, and I could do nothing about that. Anyway, Cecil always seemed too busy to pay much attention to me. 

If I could have a child, I told Maggie, perhaps he would love me more.

Don’t be too sure, Maggie said, rolling her eyes from the mountain of pillows on which she’d propped herself in her bed.

Why do you say that? I asked, confused.

Children change nothing; husbands are what they are, Maggie said, a bitter edge in her tone. Mr Graham was a philanderer before he met me, he’s still a philanderer, and he’ll continue to be until his dying day. He’ll never really give his heart to any woman, least of all me. And yet he comes around enough to keep making more babies. He’s waiting for a son, I expect.

The third baby had just been born, another girl, Mildred, and I supposed Maggie was disappointed on behalf of her husband.

Maybe the next one! I said brightly.

Maybe, Maggie agreed. But if it’s not, I refuse to have any more unless he decides to stay at home and be a proper husband.

The conversation was growing too dark, and I changed the subject. May I hold Mildred? I asked, eagerly, and Maggie waved me over to the cradle. 

I gently lifted the tiny bundle from its beruffled bed and stroked the baby cheek. Mildred opened dark eyes, and yawned, and shut her eyes again. I cradled her tenderly against my breast, longing to sing to