Her Frozen Heart by Lulu Taylor

Author:Lulu Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was two weeks since the great storm and there was no hope of post, and the telephone lines were still down.

‘I expect they have better things to do at the moment than fix the telephone,’ Tommy said, and they all gathered around the wireless to listen to the news. It was February now and there was no sign of the weather letting up. If anything, it was colder.

‘How long can it go on?’ Gerry said, looking pinched and tired.

The children were listless and stir crazy. They ran around screaming and shouting until Tommy shushed them, worried that they were disturbing Fred.

‘We’re bored, Mummy,’ Antonia said.

‘Can we have lessons again?’ asked Harry.

‘Aunt Gerry is still doing French with you, isn’t she?’

‘But we want Latin too,’ Harry said. ‘Molly wants to do it too, don’t you?’

Molly nodded. She seemed to be improving despite the bitter weather; her cheeks were pinker and her pale blue eyes sparkled. ‘I want to do what you’re doing,’ she said to Antonia, who she clearly admired.

‘When Mr Burton Brown is well again, perhaps he’ll start up the lessons. We’ll see. But keep quiet upstairs, can’t you? He still needs his sleep.’

But Fred was on the mend and with less to do in his sickroom, Tommy discovered that Barbara had, unobtrusively and unnoticed, made herself a part of the household. She was always beautifully turned out, in expensive clothes and neat shoes, her hair coiffed and her pale face brightened by makeup. Her scarlet lips were vivid in her paper-white complexion, her small pink mole the only other touch of colour. Occasionally Tommy would walk into a room to find Barbara already there, quietly examining things: pictures, photographs in their frames, a china dish or a silver tray. But most often she was to be found with Mrs Whitfield, sorting silks and separating threads for the old lady’s embroidery, keeping her company.

‘What do you think of Barbara?’ Tommy had asked Gerry idly as they went down to the kitchen for tea. She had said nothing of her own feelings about her before Barbara’s arrival in case she was being unfair.

‘Oh, I think she’s splendid. She takes all the burden off me. I don’t have to do all that boring silk sorting and needle hunting that Mother likes to inflict on me. More time to read in the bath.’

When Gerry wasn’t minding the children, she was in the warm bathroom, curled up with a book lying in the bath in her coat and beret, a stone hot water bottle under her toes.

‘So you like her?’

‘Not exactly like. She’s rather a cold fish, isn’t she? Though I’m rather obsessed with her face – that whiteness and that pink mole, she makes me think of a naked baby mouse.’

Tommy had laughed. ‘Well, she’s certainly being nice to Roger, and that’s good of her. It takes the heat off Fred.’

Barbara, away from Mrs Whitfield, was often with Roger, who had been lost and miserable during Fred’s illness. Now he seemed to be becoming as dependent on Barbara’s company as he had been on Fred’s.

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