Free Fair Exchange by Jennifer Smethurst Page A

someone?
    Helen, the manager, was pleasant enough, but always had too much to do. The other volunteers were very much a clique, their lives centred around Bingo, reality TV, and wanting something for
nothing. She had no desire to be like them.
    The scruffy young man was now examining a brown polo-neck. If he’s a thief he’s got good taste, she mused. Her father had only worn the sweater once.
    ‘Excuse me . . .’ it was a young girl in a wheelchair. She was pointing at the blouses, which were on the top rail.
    ‘I need white blouses in a size 10. I see two there; could you reach them down for me?’
    It was while she was taking the girl’s money, then dealing with a man who was donating a large box full of books, that Marjorie saw the young man slip out of the shop. He was wearing a
brown sweater: wasn’t it the one he’d been looking at on the rail?
    As soon as she was free, Marjorie made her way to the menswear at the back of the shop. Her practised eye soon spotted the dirty sweatshirt hanging on the rail. She pulled it off and tossed it
on the floor behind the till to go in the rag bag. She wouldn’t report it. It would be their secret.
    Maybe the young man was just a thief. Or maybe he needed the jumper for some occasion that could turn his life around.
    She’d give her notice in to Helen tomorrow and find some other way to be useful. There were always people who needed help. Help – and warm sweaters.

Simon & Schuster were delighted to support the Women’s Institute in running a short story competition for all WI members. We were thrilled with the response and were
    inundated with over 500 entries. The quality and subject matters were varied and always interesting. The subject of ‘Secrets’ brought forth stories about IRA arms caches, missed
    connections, and illicit lovers – to name just a few intriguing themes.
     
    Rachel Hore, the S&S bestselling author of
The Silent Tide
and
A Gathering Storm
, and the S&S editorial team were united in their choice of ‘Fair
Exchange’ as the worthy winner.
     
    Published as an ebook and sold through all the usual channels, we hope that you enjoy this story as much as we did discovering it.
     
    Find out more about Rachel Hore at www.rachelhore.co.uk and read on for more information about her novels.

Rachel Hore
    The Silent Tide
    When Emily Gordon, editor at a London publishing house, commissions an account of great English novelist Hugh Morton, she finds herself steering a tricky path between
    Morton’s formidable widow, Jacqueline, who’s determined to protect his secrets, and the biographer, charming and ambitious Joel Richards. But someone is sending Emily mysterious
    missives about Hugh Morton’s past and she discovers a buried story that simply has to be told . . .
     
    One winter’s day in 1948, nineteen-year-old Isabel Barber arrives at her Aunt Penelope’s house in Earl’s Court having run away from home to follow her star. A
    chance meeting with an East European refugee poet leads to a job with his publisher, McKinnon & Holt, and a fascinating career beckons. But when she develops a close editorial relationship
    with charismatic young debut novelist Hugh Morton and the professional becomes passionately personal, not only are all her plans put to flight, but she finds herself in a struggle for her very
    survival.
     
     
     
     
    Paperback ISBN: 978-1-84983-290-8
    Ebook ISBN: 978-1-84983-291-5
    PRICE: £7.99

Rachel Hore
    A Gathering Storm
    As Lucy listens to the tales of the past, she learns a secret that will change everything she has ever known . . .
     
    Photographer Lucy Cardwell has recently lost her troubled father, Tom. While sifting through his papers, she finds he’d been researching an uncle she never knew he’d
    had. Intrigued, she visits her father’s childhood home, the once beautiful Carlyon Manor. She meets an old woman named Beatrice who has an extraordinary story to tell . . .
     
    Growing up in the 1930s, Beatrice plays