Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters

Author:Louise Walters
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Contemporary Women
ISBN: 9781444777444
Google: 2TuVAQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00FG26SBC
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2014-02-26T11:00:00+00:00

19

Dorothy smiled to herself as she basted the chicken, slaughtered just the day before by Nina. Dorothy could not bring herself to perform the task, and Albert had always been the one to snap the birds’ thin tremulous necks. Last Christmas, alone, she had not bothered with Christmas lunch, but this year she had plucked, gutted and now cooked the bird with great pleasure. The smell was divine, she thought, the house was warm, the frost outside clinging to the world like washed lace, and she and the girls were cosy and contented. Dorothy was determined to make Christmas Day a good one for all three of them. Besides the chicken, there were roasted potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, parsnips from the garden. And port, a bottle hidden away by Dorothy for years, taken from her mother’s house. Why she had taken it, Dorothy couldn’t fathom; it was just another item in her strange and ill-considered trousseau. Perhaps, she mused, today was why: Christmas Day 1940, cold, but calm. And safe, for now.

The girls had sipped two small glasses each already and were lounging, listening to their favourite Billie Holiday songs. They had loved the presents Dorothy had made for each of them: simple linen handkerchiefs she had dug out from the bottom of her rag bag and which she had embroidered with their initials, pressed and then scented with a handful of lavender; a silk scarf for Aggie that Dorothy no longer wore; a red lipstick, barely used, for Nina. Not astounding gifts, but something sitting under the small Christmas tree for the girls to open, wrapped simply with brown paper and kitchen string.

Dorothy was glad there were no presents for her. She had never liked them. She would be expected to smile and say thank you; she felt obliged to be thrilled. Her mother’s idea of presents had been The Infant’s Progress: From the Valley of Destruction to Everlasting Glory, and other hideous books that Dorothy had never read but had hidden away under her bed. They were probably still there, she thought, as she took a modest sip of her own glass of port. The thrill of alcohol, its exuberance, was a sensation Dorothy rarely allowed herself. She loved too much the hot, glowing feel of it in her mouth, her throat, her gullet, through her stomach, down deep into her legs. She loved too much the feeling of losing oneself, of being buoyed up, and the opportunity it afforded for blurring and forgetting. But she could not forget the way in which Albert had acted towards her after he had taken too much drink. She would never allow herself to get into that state, to lose her mind completely to drink’s calamitous charms. But today, this Christmas Day, she was allowing herself the pleasure of alcohol. December had been a month of further disappointments, and she needed to forget.

Despite his promises, his hints and suggestions, Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski had not visited. Indeed, he had not written for over a month.

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