Faith - Lesley Pearse [16]
‘Okay, Mum, I’ll try my best to like him,’ she said, feeling as though she might burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry about today.’
‘That doesn’t matter now,’ her mother said, coming over to the bed and sitting beside her. She put her hand on Laura’s shoulder and squeezed it. ‘I know it isn’t going to be easy adjusting to a new life, especially for me. I’m not a very good housewife, am I? But I’ll have to learn to be because we might never get a chance like this again.’
It was the Easter holidays before they moved to Barnes, and on the night before they were due to leave, as Laura took yet another bag of old clothes and rubbish out to the dustbins for collection, she was excited and happy.
They had all visited the new house back in February and it was all her mother had said, and more: a detached thirties house, backing on to the Thames, and the kind of elegant, spacious and sun-filled home that Laura had only ever previously glimpsed in films and glossy magazines. It had all those luxuries like a television, refrigerator, washing machine, fitted carpets and vacuum cleaner that her mother used to reel off when she imagined winning the pools. Nothing was shabby; it had huge comfy settees and armchairs, a dining room with chairs for eight people, and the kitchen had at least twenty cupboards. Laura was thrilled to find she was to have a room which looked out on to the river. There was the kind of triple-mirrored dressing table like a film star’s and she even had her own small armchair and the desk Vincent had promised her.
She had spent ages in the bathroom she would share with the little ones, drinking in every detail of the shiny pale pink tiles, the heated towel rail and the lights either side of the mirror. Yet it was the things Vincent had done for the little ones which made her lose all her reservations about him. He’d redecorated the room for Ivy and Meggie with a wallpaper covered in flowers and fairies. They had new twin beds and there was a lovely doll sitting on each one. Freddy’s room was tiny but Vincent had got a specially made small bed for him, and the curtains had jungle animals on them. He’d also bought him a shiny red tricycle. No one would go to such trouble if they really didn’t want children living in their house.
Vincent had also said they should start out afresh and so they were only taking their best clothes and most treasured possessions with them to his house. He was going to get them everything else they needed. For the last couple of weeks they had been getting rid of things; they sold a few bits of furniture to a neighbour, and outgrown clothes, pots, pans and china went to a jumble sale. The rest of the stuff was just rubbish and they had filled over twenty sacks with it.
Laura didn’t feel the least bit sad to be leaving Thornfield Road. They were going up in the world at last, and even if the girls at school didn’t come round when they saw her in her new summer uniform dress after Easter, she was too happy to care.
Ten months later, as Laura sat down for her special tea for her fifteenth birthday in January and looked at the beautiful cake with icing roses, and Meggie, Ivy and Freddy’s plump, healthy, smiling faces, she wished she could wholeheartedly believe, as they did, that they really were in paradise.
To be fair to Vincent, he was generous and affectionate to them all. He didn’t complain when the children were noisy, and he showered them all with new clothes, toys, books and anything else they so much as hinted at wanting. As for their mother, she had blossomed; she had her hair and nails done every week, she wore the kind of clothes and shoes rich women wore, and she no longer had that weariness about her which had been so much a part of their old life.
But Laura was always aware of a kind of undercurrent, as if her mother was acting out a role which wasn’t entirely to her liking. She was often nervy, particularly when Vincent was due home from the office, and he didn’t help by commenting on anything which was untidy or dirty.
Laura was by nature tidy-minded, and she loved