The Judge's Daughter by Hamilton Ruth

Author:Hamilton, Ruth [Hamilton, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780330542036
Publisher: Pan
Published: 2013-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

Louisa was afraid for Helen. The poor girl had clearly lost her sense of balance, was saying too much to her father and was in danger of becoming a certified lunatic if she didn’t calm down. Not that it was a case of calming down at the moment, because Helen was calm. As long as she stayed away from her dad, she was almost rational.

‘I’m going,’ said Helen for what seemed like the fortieth time.

Louisa grabbed her hand. ‘Wait a while,’ she begged. There was selfishness in the request, and Louisa wondered how she would have managed without Zach’s daughter. Having served her purpose by proving herself fertile, Louisa was now being ignored for much of the time. Her husband slept in his dressing room, using as excuse the opinion that Louisa needed her rest. He spoke infrequently, was distant and dismissive. Left here with only him, Louisa would surely go out of her mind. She and Helen might well finish up sharing a room in some private home for the terribly bewildered. ‘Please, please stay. I need you, Helen. This baby will need you.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Of course you can. There are no more shared meals to get through – you cook for yourself here in your own little apartment. You’ll hardly see him. You don’t need to see him at all if you don’t want to.’

Helen turned her head slowly and faced her friend. ‘And when I do see him, I’ll kill him.’

A shiver ran the length of Louisa’s backbone. She had married for security, no more, yet had clung to Helen like a drowning woman clutching a piece of frail flotsam. Helen had made the whole arrangement bearable. If she left . . . Louisa swallowed.

‘It’s difficult to explain,’ Helen said. ‘For years, I have avoided him. When I was a child I was ignored, and that neglect shaped me. It’s strange. I am lonely, but I don’t want anyone to come close. You are a very isolated exception. You are good to me and you make me feel better.’

‘Then stay for me.’

Helen half smiled. ‘Will you be there to take the knife out of my hand or out of his back?’

‘It won’t come to that.’

The room darkened. Helen frowned, tried to order her thoughts, failed yet again. There was something she knew, yet she didn’t know it. Loud noises – like the clattering of the tray at the party – triggered a memory that was not a memory. Falling in love with Denis had produced a similar effect. There was in her a place she needed to visit, yet she dreaded reaching it. Nothing made sense. Helen, a clear enough thinker, was circling something big, something horrible. It came and went, while she simply became the space it occupied.

‘Don’t leave me, please.’

Helen looked at her fellow sufferer. Louisa was here in the now time, not in the nightmare, because she shared no history with the man she had married. ‘You should have walked away from him. You can’t possibly know what you have taken on.

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