Script quote along the outer foot

You asked in your last letter whether the Sandgate Hotel still lets the back attic now that the Pemberton girls have gone home. It does, though I have fitted a brass bolt on the inside of the door since Mr Hale tried it on for size at four in the morning. Mrs Oddie says he is harmless and only wanted his bag. I have my doubts.

Mostly I want to tell you about the Thursday the tide came over the lower promenade and Ada Pryce would not leave the steps. She had a box of ribbons from her late mother's trade and a pair of new shoes she had bought on the strength of a postal order. The water reached her ankles, then her shins, and she just stood there reading the sign the council had painted on the rail, as if it had been put up for her particularly.

Bert from the chandlery came down with a torch and a length of rope, and I went after him because I could hardly let a man of seventy-one wade in alone. We got her between us. She kept saying the words under her breath, the way you might say a rosary, and when we reached the dry boards she held her feet out to the lamp and read them aloud again, as though someone had written them there for her special use.

Bert said nothing, and neither did I, all the way up Marine Road.

Yours, Edith