Darker Days Than Usual

by Suzannah Dunn

'Cassie came to Helen's sixth birthday party in scarlet hotpants. She played in the garden with the other little girls. The mothers who had come to help were in the living room smoothing paper tablecloths across tables and pouring beakerfuls of cherryade, leaning against the window sills and nibbling at sausage rolls and twiglets. The children had taken outside with them fistfuls of iced gems... I watched Cassie riding Helen's new bike around and around the lawn. Now l feel sure that if Laura had ever wanted to harm herself then the explanation must lie with Cassie'.
During one long shining summer of school trips, games in the playground, amber limbs in the long grass and sudden rain, the secretary puzzles over why her assistant, Laura, is increasingly wan and withdrawn. Bit by bit she pieces together the real, disturbing story of the two sisters' past before she turns, inevitably and painfully, to her own.
Suzannah Dunn gives us stories of the suburbs which are as brittle as they are funny. Her observations snip away at home life until, little by little, we discover the secret truths women find so difficult to tell.

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1990

About the author

Suzannah Dunn was born in London, and grew up in the village of Northaw in Hertfordshire (for Tudor ‘fans’: Northaw Manor was the first married home of Bess Hardwick, in the late 1540s). Having lived in Brighton for nineteen years, she now lives in Shropshire. Her novel about Anne Boleyn (The Queen of Subtleties) was followed by The Sixth Wife, on Katherine Parr, and The Queen's Sorrow, set during the reign of Mary Tudor, ‘Bloody Mary’, England’s first ruling queen. Her forthcoming novel – to be published in hardback in May 2010 – is The Confession of Katherine Howard. Prior to writing about the Tudors, she published five contemporary-set novels and two collections of stories. She has enjoyed many years of giving talks and teaching creative writing (from six weeks as ‘writer in residence’ on the Richard and Judy show, to seven years as Programme Director of Manchester University’s MA in Novel Writing).