A New Dream - Maggie Ford (interesting novels to read TXT) 📗

kind and sweet and selfless, and her mother was being totally unfair to her.

‘It’s only a matter of time,’ had been the unkind reply. Julia had watched helplessly as she’d worked herself up into a rage.

‘She works for you, displaying her body before total strangers,’ Victoria had continued. ‘Isn’t that enough? I was never happy about it though I hoped she would come to her senses. But you were bent on leading her astray, dragging her down to your level. Stephanie too – if she hadn’t seen the way you were carrying on with that Simon she would never have been tempted into thinking she could do the same. Now look at her. At least I still have James. He is the only one left to me.’

At this she had hardly been able to speak for weeping. ‘At least he sets a good example of virtue. He wants me to meet his young lady though they are too young to become engaged, but she is the only young lady he has ever had. He is sober-minded and respectable like his father and I trust him as I trusted your father.’

Julia suspected her brother was not as lily white as her mother imagined, but she let that pass. In any case, Victoria had already continued on another tack.

‘As for Stephanie, I want no more to do with her. She ran to you, not me, her mother.’

‘Because she knew how you’d be.’ Julia had been unable to stop herself but had immediately regretted her words as her mother’s face twisted into an expression Julia still couldn’t get out of her mind.

‘In that case,’ Victoria had said slowly, her anger grown cold, her voice dry and harsh, ‘you may have the responsibility of her.’

Julia had been shaken and hurt by the scene She had broken down in front of Simon later as it all flooded out. He hadn’t shown any resentment, had made no comments against her mother.

All he’d said was that Stephanie would have to stay with them until the baby was born, then he’d find a little flat for her. It had made Julia angry all over again with her mother for her unfairness in persisting in seeing him as self-centred and uncaring. On the spur of the moment she found herself vowing never to speak to her mother again.

She said so to Simon, who frowned and looked suddenly sad and said quietly, ‘No, darling, you musn’t say that.’

Nineteen

‘What are we going to do when the baby arrives?’

Julia had never seen Simon so gloomy, he who usually made the best of things even when they looked hopeless.

‘She can’t stay with us for ever when the baby comes.’

He sat toying with his breakfast, the two of them sitting side by side on the bed at a little table. With Stephanie there they could no longer eat breakfast in the living room with any comfort.

Stephanie was still asleep. She rose later and later these days, taking advantage of her burgeoning pregnancy. Julia would creep about the living room trying to get breakfast at the little gas stove while her sister lay oblivious to the rattle of pots and plates. She’d been sleeping on the sofa these past three months and it was becoming increasingly inconvenient for them all.

Julia worried how she could sleep there in such a narrow space with her distended stomach growing larger by the week. There were many other inconveniences. Simon saw her often about the place in a dressing gown, he was banished from his own living quarters while she took a bath, and the chamber pot had to be emptied because she couldn’t or wouldn’t get herself across the stockroom to the staff toilet. As her pregnancy progressed and the baby pressed on her bladder she needed to use it several times in the night. Julia felt embarrassed for Simon, having to see Stephanie lolling in one of the two armchairs, her stomach bulging. The place wasn’t their own any more.

Their relationship was already being strained as it was. It seemed to Julia that the longer she and Simon spent together unmarried the more of a stigma it was becoming. She was sure they were being talked about among their friends in business. As if that were not enough, Stephanie’s condition was starting to make her feel a little broody. Of course, a baby was out of the question while she wore no wedding ring. Nor could they very well adopt Stephanie’s baby when it was born, for the same reason.

In the meantime she couldn’t help the feeling that their love might be growing stale, their moments of love making becoming ever less frequent. Maybe it was the pressure of business but sometimes she felt it went a little deeper than that. By the time they did marry, all the sense of newness would have gone out of their relationship and she was already grieving for the loss, as if for a real person.

Stephanie’s presence also made it impossible for them to express their natural feelings for each other. Perhaps that was all that was wrong, Julia reassured herself, nothing deeper. Once Stephanie had her baby and moved into the little flat Simon had planned for her, life would return to normal, they’d get married and start a family. Stephanie herself was depressed and often in tears. There had been no word from Jimmy Waring since the day he’d walked out on her. His name was always on her lips, her emotions alternating between ‘I loved him so’ and ‘I hate him, the bloody horrible bastard!’ Julia’s heart would thud to hear her sister, who had never used words like that, using them now.

When she wasn’t pining after the man who had wronged her Stephanie was complaining at having to give up work. ‘I shall never get another job as good as that one,’ she would lament. ‘I’ll lose my looks and my figure. It won’t ever come back.’

Julia tried hard to be encouraging. ‘Yes it will,’