Bittersweet Read Free Page B

uniqueness, her eyes were a vivid blue shot with lavender stripes that came and went according to her mood. When she thought no one was watching her, Kitty gazed on her world with none of her twin’s tranquillity; the light in her eyes was bewildered, even a little terrified, and when things got beyond her ability to reason or control, she turned the light off and retreated into a private world she spoke of to no one, and only her three sisters understood existed.
    People literally stopped and openly stared at first sight of Kitty. As if that weren’t bad enough, her mother constantly raved about her beauty to anyone she encountered, including those she encountered every day: a shrilly simpering spate of exclamations that took no notice of the fact that their object, Kitty, was usually within hearing distance, as were the other three girls.
    “Did you ever see such a beautiful child?”
    “When she grows up, she’ll marry a rich man!”
    The kind of remarks that had led to a cheese grater, a rope, and the decision Edda made that all four of them would join the new trainee nursing scheme at Corunda Base Hospital at thebeginning of April 1926. For, her sisters agreed, if they didn’t get Kitty out from under Maude, the day would come when Edda might not be on hand to foil a suicide attempt.
    Because the only world children know is the one they inhabit, it never occurred to any of the four Latimer girls to question Maude Latimer’s behaviour, or stop to wonder if all mothers were the same; they simply assumed that if anyone were as ravishing (Maude’s word) as Kitty, she would be subjected to the same remorseless torrent of attention. It didn’t occur to them that Maude too was unique in her own way, nor dawn on them that perhaps a child with a different nature than Kitty’s would have relished the attention. All things being as they were, the Latimer girls understood that it was the main task of three of them to protect the vulnerable fourth from what Edda called “parental idiocies”. And as they grew and matured, the instinct and the drive to protect Kitty never faded, never diminished, never seemed less urgent.
    All four girls were clever, though Edda always took the academic laurels because her mind grasped mathematics as easily as it did historical events or English composition. The quality of Tufts’s mentality was very similar, though it lacked Edda’s fierce fire. Tufts had a practical, down-to-earth streak that oddly dampened her undeniable good looks; through their adolescent years she displayed scant interest in boys, whom she thought stupid and oafish. Whatever the essence was that boys emanated to waft under the noses of girls and attract them utterly failed to stir Tufts.
    There was a male equivalent of Corunda Ladies’ College: the Corunda Grammar School, and all four Latimer girls associated with the boys in the matter of balls, parties, sporting and other events. They were admired — even lusted after, in schoolboy fashion — kissed as much or as little as each desired, but things like breasts and thighs were unplundered.
    Rules that were no hardship for Tufts, Kitty and Edda, though irksome for the more adventurous, less bookish Grace. Perpetually submerged in gossip and women’s magazines about film stars, stage actors, fashion and the world of royalty as represented by the Windsor family who ruled the British Empire, Grace was not above local gossip either. Her brain was self-centred but acute, she was an expert at wriggling out of trouble or work she disliked, but Grace had one inappropriate passion: she adored the steam locomotives of the railways. If she disappeared, everyone in the Rectory knew where to find her: down in the shunting yards watching the steam locomotives. In spite of her many undesirable characteristics, however, she was naturally kind, immensely loving, and devoted to her sisters, who put up with her tendency to moan as her nature.
    Kitty was the one with the romantic