Trouble at the Little Village School (46 page)

The voices of the two boys who had been eavesdropping could be heard in the hall. ‘Say yes!’ they shouted. ‘Say yes!’

‘Yes,’ Elisabeth replied, beginning to cry. ‘Of course I’ll marry you.’

‘’Course, I knew it would happen,’ said Mrs Sloughthwaite to her customer, as she rested her plump arms on the counter of the village store and post office. ‘I predicted it from the beginning.’

‘Psychic now, are you?’ asked Mrs Pocock.

‘It is true that I have a touch of the sixth sense,’ replied the shopkeeper with a heave of the formidable bosom. ‘I mean it was bound to come about. Anyway, it was forecasted here.’ She tapped the horoscope page in the newspaper open before her. ‘Oh yes, it was all in here if you care to read it. It was written in the stars.’

Acknowledgements

I owe a debt of gratitude to my editor, Francesca Best, ever-patient, good-humoured and encouraging, my publicist Kerry Hood for her tireless support and my literary agent Luigi Bonomi at LBA who has championed my work with great enthusiasm. I should also like to thank Helen Goodwin, social worker; Phil Champion, Principal of the Hesley Group of schools and formerly head teacher of Fullerton House Special School; and The Venerable Clive Mansell, Archdeacon of Rochester, for their invaluable advice.