The Favourite Child Read Free Page A

to a lace handkerchief, in case smelling salts should be called for. The other rested along the arm of the sofa, fingers drumming with impatient fury. The sound trembled throughout the room. Even the aspidistra quivered. Mrs Ashton wore a dark olive green dress buttoned up to her firm pointed chin, almost as a declaration of half mourning for her lost hopes of the previous evening. Her slender, upright figure seemed to blend gloomily into the shadowed parlour as if requiring, along with the highly polished, heavy mahogany furniture, to be sheltered by the green paper blind of a similar colour drawn against the afternoon sun.
    Or to hide our shame from prying eyes, Bella thought. She attempted a joke to lighten the atmosphere. ‘The hospital staff had the opportunity this morning to put me into Bedlam but clearly considered my behaviour perfectly normal, if somewhat eccentric.’
    ‘ Eccentric !’ Emily lifted her eyes heavenwards, pointedly indicating that this was the last word she would choose to describe her ungrateful and rebellious child. ‘You know nothing about this - this street urchin.’
    ‘She’s a young girl, Mother.’
    ‘You don’t even know her name.’
    ‘It’s Jane Cook, known as Jinnie. And it’s only for a couple of nights, until she’s properly recovered. She certainly isn’t fit enough to take care of herself. She nearly died.’
    ‘And how did she manage to do that, might I enquire?’ as if it were some act of pure carelessness on her part.
    Bella judiciously decided against enlightening her irate parent on the precise details. Instead, she crossed her fingers against the lie and pressed on with her plea. ‘An accident with a runaway horse. She won’t be a nuisance, I promise. You won’t even know she’s here. I shall have a bed made up in the room next to mine so she’ll be no trouble to anyone. I’ll be the one to attend her should she need care during the night.’
    ‘No trouble ? She’s brought nothing but trouble upon this house from the minute you decided to wander the streets instead of coming home to your brother’s coming-of-age dinner, as you were directed. There was pandemonium here last night when you did not arrive. Pandemonium! ’
    ‘I don’t see why there should be. It was Edward’s party after all. Not mine.’
    ‘Don’t quibble. We were desperately worried, particularly as it grew late and still you didn’t appear. Your father very nearly called out the constabulary to look for you, while I was beset by one of my fainting fits. What our guests thought I daren’t imagine. It was all most distressing.’ Emily’s agitation increased with the telling of this tale which Bella had already heard related several times during the hour since her return. For as long as she could remember if there was any way her mother could put the blame for life’s misfortunes upon her daughter’s shoulders, she would do so, largely because Bella coped with them so much better than she.
    ‘I’m sorry Mother. I never meant to stay out all night. Events just flew out of control.’
    ‘Why does that not surprise me? When will you stop this racketing life you lead? It’s not at all proper for a gel of your station to be going about unchaperoned.’ Attempting to soften her blunt Lancashire accent with the more refined tones she considered appropriate for a mill manager’s wife.
    Having married slightly above her station with high hopes for a bright future, Emily Ashton was a disappointed woman. Her husband she considered far too soft for his own good, save when it came to commenting upon her adored son who, sadly, had been an academic disappointment. Her daughter was a lost cause. As for life in what she had hoped to be the higher echelons of middle class society, however carefully she might arrange the flowers on her polished hall table, however expensive the gowns she wore or the fineness of the food which graced her beautiful mahogany furnished dining room, she still had to