A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [159]
Robin was far more affectionate than Peter, but then Peter was more dependable. They were both so undemanding, happy to go along with whatever the majority of the family wanted to do.
Sweet Patty! She would give anything to be able to tell her sister just how much she loved her. All those nights of them giggling in bed, the covering up Patty’d done for Fifi right from a small child. She was a born diplomat, accepting and appreciating that not everyone was as uncomplicated or gentle-natured as she was.
But the biggest change in Fifi’s opinion about a family member was her view of her mother. The weaker and hungrier she’d become, the more she’d remembered good things about Clara. She’d also thought of all the things she’d done, often purposely, to annoy her.
When did she ever do as her mother asked? Even the rule about putting her shoes in the hall cupboard when she came in had to be disobeyed. If all six of them had left their shoes in the hall, what a mess it would have been! If her mother cooked chicken, Fifi wanted pork or lamb; she turned up late for meals, never washed the bath round, and when she was asked to put carefully ironed clothes away, she just dumped them on the bedroom chair.
She’d seen the light about some of these things once she was living with Dan, but it wasn’t until now that she realized she had in fact treated her mother like a housekeeper, never asking how she was, what she’d done during the day, or even just thanking her for ironing and mending her clothes. She never offered to help around the house, get shopping or even cook a meal for her mother.
Looking back, she really must have tried her mother’s patience. She argued about everything, and when she was younger, she never came home at the time she was told to. She never confided in her mother, never once suggested they went to the pictures or the theatre together. And Fifi was the one who started most of the rows because she would see a mere suggestion as an order or criticism.
It wasn’t possible to forgive her mother entirely for not accepting Dan, but Fifi could see now that she’d put all those bad ideas into her mother’s head by being so secretive about him in the first place. She was probably scared Fifi would get pregnant, and it would have been easy enough to tell her mother that she understood that fear, and reassure her she intended to wait until she was married. But she never really tried to talk to her mother at all; one sharp remark and she blew up. If she’d just enlisted her father’s help, he might have been able to smooth things over.
Yesterday she had written all these thoughts about her family and Dan in the diary she kept in her handbag. She’d explained when and how she came to be brought here, and gave a description of Martin and Del. If she was to die here, someone might find the diary one day, and she hoped that it would, if nothing else, show that she valued them all.
But she wasn’t prepared to die that easily, nor was she going to let Yvette give up.
‘Taking your own life is a sin,’ she said firmly. ‘And it’s cowardly. If you could survive all that terrible stuff during the war, you can survive this too.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Yvette whined. ‘I’ave nothing to live for. My life holds nothing but hurt and sorrow.’
‘It doesn’t have to,’ Fifi insisted. ‘You could go back to working in a couture house, any one of them would be glad to have someone as talented as you. You’d be happier with other people around you, and you could find somewhere nicer to live. You’re still young.’
‘No!’ Yvette cut her short. ‘Don’t you dare say I might meet a man and fall in love. This could never’appen.’
Fifi hadn’t intended to say that at all. Instead, she was going to suggest Yvette had a change of hairstyle, made herself some fashionable clothes and got out more.
‘Life is precious,’ she said instead. ‘When we get out of here you’ll see.’
Yvette sighed deeply, and Fifi thought she was trying to go to sleep again.