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Copyright jeanne_d_artois October 2006
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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The laundry of my ancestors' house is now my workshop. I'm a potter and good enough at my trade to make a reasonable living from it.
However I don't earn enough to maintain the family mansion and estates to the standard they need so the main house is open to the public and the subsidiary buildings are rented out. I have a part of the former servants' quarters converted into a three bedroomed apartment next to the laundry room.
As a child, the laundry room was my favourite wet-weather play area. It had running water, plenty of light from the windows, and a floor that could be hosed to clear away whatever mess I had made. It was bliss.
However the main attraction of the laundry room was Martha, the resident ghost. I was aware of her from an early age. I would sit on the scrubbed table and ask Martha to tell me a story. She always did. At first Martha's stories used to be fairy tales, 'Once upon a time...' and suitable for my age. Her story telling was so effective that I became the princess, the fairy, the heroine. I lived the character while Martha's voice was sounding in my head. As I began older Martha retold the classic tales of Literature covering the Greeks and Romans, through Chaucer and Shakespeare up to the end of the Victorian age.
I didn't know how she could tell the later stories. She had died in the eighteen-eighties so how did she know stories written after her death?
When I became an adult, and particularly after I had returned from Art College, Martha's stories became more personal to her with adult themes. She told me about incidents in her life at the Hall. Each time I became Martha and experienced the events exactly as she had. This is one of the first of those stories.
The Twins' Charade.