Dancing the Charleston by Jacqueline Wilson

Author:Jacqueline Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781448198085
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 2019-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

I turned the little gold key in the lock.

14

It was Aunty’s day at Harrods. I was supposed to go to Mrs Higgins for my tea, but that seemed impossible now. I was glad that Sixpence was big enough to be left at home. She’d have to wait a bit longer to see me because I needed to visit the graveyard. I stroked the rough bark of the yew trees, and then lay down carefully on top of Mother.

‘You don’t think I’ve got ideas above my station, do you, Mother?’ I whispered down to her through the tickling grass.

Mother said that it was a good thing to be ambitious.

I told her all the lovely things Mr White had said to me, word for word, and Mother said she was very, very proud of me.

I glowed all over, though the grass was damp and my dress was getting wet. I stayed until I started to shiver, and then I pressed a fond kiss right into the earth and trailed home.

Sixpence greeted me with enthusiastic mews, and I picked her up and made a fuss of her, rubbing my cheek against her soft head. It was still lonely without Aunty there, even though she was always in her workroom. She wasn’t expecting me to be home for tea, so there was nothing much in the larder. I looked at a tin of sardines, wrinkled my nose, and mashed half of them up for Sixpence instead. I made do with the heel of a loaf and some jam, and then wandered around the cottage, unable to settle to anything.

I thought about running up to the manor, but Mr Benjamin was having visitors for the weekend, and they usually arrived on the Friday evening. I hated the thought of encountering them, especially Lady Arabella. I stayed in my room and picked up my book, but soon tossed it aside and started another.

I couldn’t even get lost in an old favourite like A Little Princess. It made me worry that the high school might be like Miss Minchin’s seminary. Even if it was, I still wanted to go there. It was my chance to better myself. I didn’t want to slave all day and half the night sewing a sparkly dress for a young lady. I wanted to be the young lady. There wasn’t much chance of my becoming a dressmaker like Aunty anyway. She’d taught me how to sew but she fretted at my incompetence.

Nor did I want to wear an apron and cap and call people Madam when I served the tea, like Ella. I wanted to be the Madam, and wear an outrageously short frock and smoke a cigarette in a long holder while my bangles slid up and down my bare arm. I would be a clever young woman of good education, a famous writer of witty modern novels, the talk of literary London. All Mr Benjamin’s guests would beg him to invite me to his weekend parties because I was so bright and famous.

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