Daughters Of The Moon by Susan Sallis

Author:Susan Sallis [Sallis, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

MEG SLEPT SOUNDLY that first night. She had become adept at postponing any serious thinking and when she arrived in Kilburn she had concentrated on unloading the car, finding the vacuum flask of milk from the Keyhole dairy and making herself a cup of cocoa. Then she had switched on the electric blanket to air the bed, stuck the aerial into the television to watch the news and tried to feel something significant about Chou En-lai dying. And then she had gone to bed.

The next day was Saturday. She looked at her watch on her bedside table and noted it was eight-thirty. If she was still at Keele she would be halfway through getting the various breakfasts by now. Miranda had been persuaded to have porridge during the past week; the children liked odd things such as French toast and griddle cakes. She wondered how they would manage, what they would eat. And then she deliberately switched out of Keele and into Kilburn.

Her head ached slightly when she stood up and the faint nausea which had been with her for the past ten days swam from diaphragm into throat. She swallowed, tied her dressing gown unnecessarily tightly and went downstairs, leaning hard on the spiralling banister to slow herself down. Everything looked so small, almost mean, in the tiny front living room. And it was bitterly cold. She had forgotten to switch the heating on last night. She thought about going back upstairs to remedy that and couldn’t face the climb without a cup of tea so went on through to the verandah. At least the pale February sun filled this room. She stared around it. Plenty of room for a pram. But she’d have to install some kind of washing machine.

She lit the gas and filled the kettle, then warmed her hands over the lid while the water boiled. Tea. And aspirin. She needed both.

Afterwards, feeling much better, she went back into the living room and looked around her.

‘You’ve got to be a haven,’ she said aloud to the little house. ‘You’ve been a place for me to sleep and work. Now you’ve got to be something else. All right, you can’t hope to feel like Fish Cottage, but you’ll have to give a bit more than you’re giving now.’

A terrible wave of nostalgia for Keele and Fish Cottage swept through her and was gone, briskly evicted by this new common sense.

‘Perhaps this is Mother Nature,’ she mused, going to the window and looking down the road. ‘Her way of protecting this new life.’ She touched her abdomen and watched a car turn into the road. ‘Damn!’ she continued without pause. ‘Kovacks.’

She considered pretending she wasn’t back, then realized her car was visible down the side road where she always parked it. And anyway, she had to get into the routine of work. If he had something special for her, that was all to the good.

She adjusted her dressing gown again and unlocked the front door. He got out of his car with difficulty, one elephantine foot first, then the bulk of his enormous body.

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