All That Glitters Read Free Page B

the homes. But that was a bridge she’d cross when she came to it. After he’d taken her out through that gate. Wearing her most determined smile, she glanced coyly at him from beneath lowered lashes.
    ‘What about this one?’ He lumbered towards her, his eyes focusing on the bodice of her shapeless smock. Jane breathed in, and pushed out the small, plum-sized breasts the other girls teased her about.
    ‘Too skinny.’
    ‘The skinny ones are generally quick and strong.’
    ‘I can vouch for that one being a good, hard worker,’ the Master interposed. ‘And she’s not that long out of Church Village Homes.’
    ‘It doesn’t take long to pick up bad habits, and this place must be rotten with them if our last two girls were anything to go by,’ the woman commented tartly.
    ‘She’s used to working on her own initiative. Give her a job to do and shell see it through without too much supervision.’ The Master looked to the man, sensing that the decision would ultimately be his.
    ‘We’ll take her. With us right now, if that suits.’
    ‘It suits.’ The Master gave a rare, tight smile. The Board of Guardians were always pleased when a pauper was taken for outside work.
    ‘Salad, steak and chips for Sunday dinner and no husband in sight?’ Haydn looked enquiringly at Bethan as a girl in maid’s uniform carried loaded trays into the dining room.
    ‘We eat dinner at eight, and you heard Andrew, he has to work.’
    ‘On a Sunday?’
    ‘People don’t stay well just because it’s a Sunday. He and Trevor Lewis take it in turns to cover for emergencies, and it’s easier for them to work out of the surgery they’ve opened in town. And then again -’ she pushed the plate of steak across to her brother ‘- he’s trying to be tactful. He thought we might like to talk.’
    ‘Last time I saw you I didn’t think you’d live with him again. Not even in a place like this.’ He glanced around the large, beautifully proportioned oak-panelled dining room.
    ‘I love Andrew, and he loves me.’
    ‘You could have fooled me.’
    ‘It hasn’t been easy, Haydn, for either of us. There are times, even now, when I think that if we’d known what we were getting ourselves into when we danced together for the first time at that hospital ball, we would have run in opposite directions. Marriage is hard enough when the husband and wife are from the same world. We might have both been born in Pontypridd, but Dad was right when he said there was a lot more than distance between the Graig and the Common.’
    ‘But you want to live with him now, Beth?’ He laid his hand over hers as she reached for the salad.
    ‘Most definitely, yes.’ She smiled at him and this time the smile wasn’t strained.
    ‘So, you decided to kidnap me on my way home to gloat about your new-found happiness, and ask me to be nice to Andrew?’
    ‘Not exactly,’ She helped herself to a large portion of salad and a smaller one of beefsteak. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the changes at home.’
    ‘Eddie’s married?’ he joked. There was an edge to his voice. His brother Eddie had filched and, he suspected, slept with his childhood sweetheart Jenny, just before he’d left Pontypridd, giving him good cause to stay away – until now.
    ‘Of course not. Eddie’s the same as ever.’
    ‘Boxing?’
    ‘Every spare minute. And he and William are both working full time on the meat stall and in the cooked-meat shop Charlie’s opened.’
    ‘Good to have an affluent lodger.’
    ‘Charlie doesn’t lodge with Dad any more. He married Alma Moore a couple of weeks ago. They’re living on top of his shop.’
    ‘Charlie married Alma? You’ve got to be joking?’
    ‘I’m not. They seem very happy together.’
    ‘Good for Charlie. I never thought he had it in him.’
    ‘William and Diana are still lodging with Dad of course,’ she said, referring to their cousins. ‘Diana’s working for Wyn Rees in his High Street sweet shop.’
    ‘So I heard