A nice little aside
Just wrote this little aside that I liked and wanted to share. It’s from book two in the series, in rewrites as I type, and occurs almost entirely in Portia’s head. Let me know what you think?
The next morning was a Saturday, and found me on the floor of my living room with several maps of London spread in front of me. I was circling and marking areas that I still needed to explore, some in the poorer areas of the city that my grandmother had grown up in. A knock at the door caused me to pause in my work, but not taking my eyes from the papers, I called from the floor, “Who is it?” “It’s me, Miss. Adams,” returned the voice of Brian Dawes. I frowned. We had not really spoken since that awkward moment at Jenkin’s and he had since began a relationship with Annie Coleson. For almost two decades in Toronto, I had been a very solitary child and then teenager, used to being on the periphery of my schoolmates lives. I observed their relationships from the outside, in an almost clinical way, watching the young women of my class grow from bratty children who made fun of me to refined ladies who disdained me. Brian Dawes was one of the first true friends I had ever had, and now, now he was spending his time with a young woman who reminded me of those downtown ladies, who had looked at me aslant under long eyelashes with whispered condescension. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Annie had never ignored me, she in fact had extended the hand of partnership if not friendship towards me. Brian knocked again. She had extended that hand to both of us, and one of us had taken her up on it.
PS: This is one of those scenes where initially I had written: “Portia feels left out” and decided that was another example of me ‘telling’ not ‘showing’ and fixed it.