everything from near-pleading-for-a-date classified ads to
the story of a tourist who’d got her bottom stuck in the
helter skelter at the village fair. Annie snipped them all
out and glued them in. A dose of the giggles, Annie
reasoned, could cure hurt and divert sadness – it even
went so far as to ease her loneliness.
Annie cackled now as she turned a page and saw the
story about the boat named Boaty McBoatface, then
guffawed at the tale about an enterprising local who’d
heroically plugged a gas leak at the chippie using potatoes
and a bar of soap. Today’s paper had been disappointing.
Tesco was opening another superstore: boring; the local
library was hosting a bake sale: whoop-de-doo; a dog had
worked out how to open a donkey’s stable door, and the two
kept going out for walks together: much better.
Annie turned the page and froze. The photo was
unmistakably her. She was laughing in it. And there was
one of Len and her in their wedding attire, and their son,
David, and Bethany and Peter.
‘Annie-lujah!’ declared the headline, and underneath:
‘Family say thank you to a one-in-a-trillion woman’.
Annie gasped, her hands shaking as she read on. It was
all here – how she had met and fallen in love with Len, how
they adopted David and explored the world, and – good
Lord – here was a line about the feel-good book, too, and
how much joy it had brought them. “To say thanks,” Peter
was quoted as saying, “we’re throwing a party at Newton
Village Hall, and everyone is invited.”
Annie barely had time to process what was happening
before the doorbell chimed, and she promptly dropped the
book, scissors and glue onto the f loor in her haste to get up.
“Surprise!” chorused voices through the frosted glass.
Annie swung the door open. They were all there – her
son and his wife, Bethany and her husband and daughter,
Peter and his two sons.
“Mum?” David stepped forward as Annie burst into tears.
“What’s up? Didn’t you see the paper?” Annie could only
nod. “We thought you’d like it, Nana,” Bethany said.
“We thought you’d be happy.” For a moment, Annie simply
stood and took them all in – her family, her people.
And then, quite wonderfully, she began to laugh.A
nnie began her book in the summer of 1979.
In the beginning, it was just for her
grandchildren, a perfect antidote to their
woes. Bethany fell over endlessly and
scuffed her knees, and while Peter’s self-
preservation levels were higher, he was
sensitive, once crying buckets over the accidental death of a
snail. Each time, Annie would reach for her scrapbook, and
within a few pages, there would be chuckles in place of tears.
The ‘feel-good book’, as she named it, never let her down.
Of course, Peter and Bethany had grown up – both had
children of their own now. How could it be that she was old
enough to be a great-grandmother? Annie could remember
turning 21 as if it was yesterday. Len would have laughed at
the absurdity of it, too, had he lived long enough. With a
small sigh, Annie gathered up the book and settled into
her easy chair. Easy because it’s the only one I can clamber
out of these days, she thought.
When Peter and Bethany were young, Annie had stuck
pictures of daft-looking animals or cartoon strips in the
book, but now she collated stories from The Newton Crow.
The local paper was a goldmine of the ridiculous, withILLUSTRATION: HANNAH WARRENWriting is something Isabelle Broom has always done: “When I’m
happy, sad, excited, heartbroken or in the midst of falling in
love.” Her latest novel is called One Thousand Stars and You
(Penguin). Her simple pleasure is “Sitting with my closest friends,
and chatting away about anything and everything.”THE FEEL-GOOD BOOK
AshortstorybyISABELLE BROOM