The Pressed Flower

Text 1: The Attic Box, by Elinor March

An original novel extract.

The rain had kept them indoors all afternoon. Gran pushed a dusty box across the attic floor, and Mara knelt beside it, brushing cobwebs from the lid. Inside lay a bundle of letters, a cracked teacup and a book with a green cloth cover.

“You kept all this?” Mara asked.

Gran’s thumb rested on the book’s faded spine. “Your mum used to read it to you. You always asked for the same one.”

Mara opened the cover. A pressed yellow flower slipped into her palm. She looked up, but Gran was studying the floorboards.

“I found it in your old coat,” Gran said. “You were so small then.”

Mara held the flower carefully by its stem. The attic seemed to quieten around them. She had no memory of the coat, or the day the flower was picked. But Gran did. For a while, neither of them spoke. Then Mara placed the flower between the pages and passed the book back.

Gran smiled. “We’ll read it again tonight.”

“The same one?”

“The very same.”