How lovely it is to fall into the hands of a natural storyteller, who tells her story with such lovely and well-chosen words and with such understanding of every element of her story.

And when she sets her story around the beautiful and historic cathedral at Chartres, well that really is the icing on the cake.

Agnès Morel and was found by Abbé Paul on a rainy night. Sleeping peacefully in the porch of the cathedral. She wouldn’t say where she came from, indeed she wouldn’t say anything about her past.

She found a place to live, helping  her elderly landlady in lieu of rent, and she found bits and pieces of work. Cleaning mainly – just enough to get her by. She lived quietly, making just a few friends, but her eccentric dress and strange demeanour did attract a little attention.

When the cathedral’s elderly cleaner began to struggle with his work, the Abbè Paul asked Agnès to help. That gave her respectability and she was offered more jobs  – organising the papers of Professor Jones,  babysitting Philippe Nevers’ young nephew.

Agnès took on every job that she was offered. She liked to be busy, and to be needed.

While she was cleaning the cathedral, Agnès met Alain, who was working on the restoration. He was smitten, but she felt awkward and didn’t know what to do.

All of this had a natural charm, and it was brought to life by a wonderful mis of characters, all real and recognisable. Salley Vickers shone a soft light on their hearts and minds, just enough to illuminate them. I saw their hopes, I saw their fears, and I understood.

But others were less taken with Agnès. Madame Beck, jealous of the attention that she attracts and taking a dim view of her reticence,  askedAgnès to clean for her. Just so that she can keep an eye on her.

In time, inevitably, Madame Beck found something amiss. She blamed Agnès, and she sets about digging up her past to make her point. And when she met a nun from the convent where Agnès was raised, then she knew she was right. But was she?

Agnès had a painful past, and her story was threaded through the stories of the people of Chartres. A strange juxtaposition, but it worked.

It allowed Sally Vickers to paint all sides of humanity: generosity, selfishness, malice, greed, fear, courage, humour …

The story was beautifully written, the setting so very well evoked, and the history of Chartres came into play quite naturally.

The heroine was a little elusive, but her story was so extraordinary that I think that was probably for the best.

It did leave a gap though. And that’s the one thing that makes The Cleaner of Chartres a little less than perfect.

When you work in a small office in a small harbour town there is nowhere in particular to go at lunch-time on days like today, when the sky is grey and the wind is swirling.

And so I seized the the chance to escape for a little while at my desk, courtesy of a lovely new stand-alone short story: Vacation by Salley Vickers.

I was pulled into the world of a young couple about to go on holiday: Beth and Hamish were heading to the Hebrides where his late father had grown up.

But a spanner was thrown into the works. Hamish’s step-father had died and his mother, Una, had invited herself along for the trip. Beth was not best pleased; she that there had been many times when Hamish had needed his mother and she hadn’t been there.

They bickered, but in the end Beth accepted what Hamish had known from the start. There was no easy solution, and Una would be going to the Hebrides too.

The two women had very different ideas of what to do on holiday. Very different ideas about most things. So when Hamish was called away, to deal with a crisis at work, he wondered what might happen.

Two women in a small remote cottage.

What would Hamish find on his return … ?

It’s a simple story, but it’s beautifully and carefully observed, the characters are nicely drawn, and the situation they find themselves in is utterly believable.

The dialogue rang true – I could hear the voices in my head – and there was just enough to make the story distinctive without losing its realism.

It was evident the Salley Vickers has a good ear, a sharp eye, and fine judgement.

If only I could have stayed in the Hebrides a little longer. The ending came much too quickly. Though it could just be that I want to start work again.

I don’t usually read digital books – and this story is only available that way – but I decided I could read a short story from my computer screen, just this once.

Because I’ve only read one of Salley Vickers’ novels and, even though I liked it, her others have been sitting on a shelf unread for quite some time. This story was going to tell me whether I should move them up or down my list of reading priorities.

I knew the answer, and the extract from the forthcoming novel, The Cleaner of Chartres, that came as a little bonus confirmed it.

The answer was up!