Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St Mary's, #1)

by Jodi Taylor

Instead, she said, with a strange urgency, ‘Madeleine, you cannot let your home circumstances define your entire life. You are intelligent – you have abilities of which you are not even aware. This is the only chance you will ever have. I can help you. Will you allow me to do so?’ No one had ever offered to help me before. Something flickered inside me, but distrust and suspicion die hard. She said softly, ‘I can help you. Last chance, Madeleine. Yes or no?’ No words came. I was trapped in a prison of my own making. ‘Yes or no?’ I took a huge breath and said ‘yes’.

St Mary's Institute of Historical Research – an organisation I think would appeal to anyone who, like you, prefers a less structured existence.

The pay is terrible and the conditions are worse, but it's a wonderful place to work – they have some talented people there.

I know you have always preferred to work abroad, but given the possibility that America may close its borders again and the fragmentation within the EU, perhaps now is the time to consider a slightly more settled lifestyle.

Ugh, too real.

‘Go straight up the drive and through the front door. You can’t miss it.’ A bit over-optimistic there, I thought. I once got lost on a staircase.

Super-tall and super-thin, with a shock of Einstein hair, his big beaky nose reminded me of the front end of a destroyer.

LMAO

The bar and lounge next door were nearly the same size as the dining room, showing an interesting grasp of priorities.

But, for God's sake, I was an historian and cautious and sensible were things that happened to other people.

‘There was – will be – an outbreak of flu. There's one nearly every year, I know, but this one was a killer. And cruel. It took the old and the young. Anyone from twenty to fifty only seemed to get it mildly. Other people, the ones outside that age group, just dropped and died. It was that quick.

She wrote this in 2013 😬 Pre-pandemic