The Thief of St Martins by Caron Allan

Author:Caron Allan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Caron Allan
Published: 2020-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

It was marginally warmer just here. The little outcrop of trees on this side of the sloping lawn sheltered the spot from the wind, and she could almost forget it was midwinter. The early morning sun threaded weak pale rays through the clouds and lit up the space all around her. A willow tree on the verge of the water had dabbled its long fronds into the water and now they were stranded, locked into the ice that the night had brought.

Dottie seated herself on the stone corner of the pavilion platform. She closed her eyes and tipped her face to the sun, longing to feel warmth on her skin. The small stone structure of the pavilion, a fashionable homage to the Greek style so popular for the last thirty or forty years, guarded her back like a watchdog as she turned to look into her deepest thoughts.

One more day. One more day and she could return to her home, her parents—truly, they were her parents, not because that was how she had always thought of them, but because now, with the knowledge of everything that had taken place—or as much as she’d ever know, she saw the real love they had given her—they had taken her in, clothed, fed and housed her, they had schooled her and paid her bills.

But more than that, they had filled her life with love. They had sat with her overnight during her childhood illnesses, they had bathed and soothed her grazed knees, wiped her tears, held her when monsters haunted her dreams. She remembered both her parents lying on the carpet with them to do jigsaw puzzles and to colour pictures. She had a fleeting memory of clattering about the house in her mother’s shoes, of draping herself with ropes of beads and hats and scarves, she and Flora together, running about the house laughing, her mother and the cook and maid running after them, then standing in her father’s study whilst he took a picture to capture that moment. Neither she nor Flora had been capable of keeping still for the requisite amount of time, and the resulting photo was somewhat blurred, yet still held its place in one of her mother’s scrapbooks.

They had loved her every bit as much as they loved Flora, she saw that now. Even when she had been sick, fractious, teething, naughty, and during the awful, fidgety, hurrying adolescent years of sulks and door-slamming.

How many times had she and Flora rolled their eyes at their mother, or complained to one another behind her back? How many times had they grumbled over her strictures and her attempts to train them to be decent, hard-working, responsible young women? Or her attempts to help them to meet nice eligible men with whom to spend their lives?

She had to bite her lip. She didn’t want to cry, not here, not now. Later when she was in her room, perhaps. Or when she had got home. And when she got home, she would tell her mother how grateful she was.

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