A Week in Paris Read Online Free Page B

partner of the firm, and the underlying assumption was that she would be a housewife and support him in all this. She couldn’t see how there would be room for her music. In fact, she couldn’t see herself at all in this picture of suburban bliss.
    No man had really breached her reserve. Some found her aloof, though Jim seemed to have liked that about her. She had thought she loved him, but she can’t have loved him enough. She should have put him out of his misery earlier. In the end he’d got fed up with waiting and found somebody else. Fay had cried for a whole day then quickly recovered.
    It was strange how her life was turning out differently to that of her old friends, Fay thought as she licked delicious cream from the chocolate éclair. She rarely saw Evelyn and Margaret now. Despite their talk about getting glamorous jobs in London, they had both been happy to stay in Norfolk. Evelyn had trained as a bank clerk, but had recently left work to become a farmer’s wife. Margaret had got herself into trouble at eighteen with a fresh-faced lad who sold insurance. He was no one special but she married him anyway, to her mother’s obvious relief. Now she was tired and shrill-voiced from running around after two lively small boys, and spoke of her husband as though he was a wayward third.
    Fay knew that she needed more for herself than that. She wanted the kind of love her mother had had for her father, a deep, eternal love, and there was no sign of anything like that at the moment.
    These days she went home to Little Barton as often as she could, but felt guilty that it wasn’t more. She rang her mother once or twice a week from the coin box downstairs, and though Kitty never complained, Fay sensed her growing loneliness and sadness. The truth was that as Fay’s life was opening out with new opportunities to explore, her mother’s had stagnated, for Kitty no longer had her beloved daughter to look after. It was as though everything she did had been for Fay, and now that Fay had left home she’d lost all purpose in life.
    If it had been only that, however, Fay would have understood, but there was something else that created a barrier between them. It was silence. Fay sensed that there were things she needed to know, things that her mother perhaps wanted to tell her, but had not quite managed to do so yet. Once, early last summer, during a weekend visit home, she’d found Kitty gathering roses in the garden and saw with alarm that she’d been crying. When she asked her what was wrong, Kitty had wiped her eyes with a weary movement and murmured, ‘It’s just I miss . . . oh Fay, I can’t – I’m only being silly . . .’ before reaching for the trug and starting back to the house. ‘I must put these in water before that boy comes for his lesson,’ she’d called behind her in a strange, hoarse voice.
    Later that evening, as they finished supper, Fay asked, ‘What was wrong this afternoon?’
    ‘I was only thinking of your father,’ Kitty replied, ‘I still miss him, you know.’
    When Fay took courage and asked about the air raid that killed him, an expression of pain crossed Kitty’s face, to be succeeded by that familiar blank look. Then her chair grated on the wooden floor as she stood up and carried their plates to the sink where she started washing up noisily.
    ‘It isn’t fair of you not to tell me anything!’ Fay had cried out, throwing her napkin down.
    Kitty turned and glared at her. ‘Nothing’s fair in this life. You’ll learn that soon enough, my girl.’
    Fay was shocked. Her mother rarely spoke to her so cruelly. She said no more. They were both too upset and they’d never liked to hurt one another. Each was too aware that the other was all they had. It had always been Fay and Kitty, playing music together, going on spur-of-the-moment picnics on sunny days, making fudge and peppermint creams from carefully hoarded sugar. But now she was grown up Fay was all too aware that her mother