I for Isobel Read Online Free

knew she mustn’t express any feeling at all. ‘Blessed Mary, Virgin Mother, make me not cry. I don’t want to cry, Blessed Mary, Mother of God, baby Jesus, I don’t want to cry. Help me, Blessed Mary, Virgin Mother, and baby Jesus…’ If once she started to cry, she wouldn’t be able to stop. ‘I won’t cry, I won’t. Help me, Blessed Mary.’
    At last, the prayer made a patch of candle-lit calm in her mind. She slowed and steadied, the need to cry having passed.
    When she got back, the bedroom was empty. Perhaps Blessed Mary had seen to it that she didn’t have to meet her mother straight away; Isobel found the special attention comforting. She murmured, ‘Thank you, Blessed Mary,’ left the writing pad and took her book. As for the repulsive halfpenny, she wanted to do something wicked and outrageous with it, but she lacked knowledge of the suitable curse.
    She dropped it into one of the drawers. If they asked her what she had done with it, she would say she had put it in the poor-box on the shop counter.
    She went to the small room to leave her book on her bed. Margaret wasn’t there—the lunch bell must have gone while she was out. She hurried to the dining room and sure enough, everyone else was at the table. Only her place was empty.
    Except for a little parcel wrapped in pink tissue paper and tied with gold string. Keeping her eyes on it, she sat down warily.
    Mr Mansell said at length, ‘Aren’t you going to open your parcel, Isobel?’
    A harsh loud voice came out of her mouth, saying, ‘Is that thing mine?’
    She heard her mother draw in a long breath of rage and wondered why, but she did not look away from the little parcel.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Mr Mansell, in a funny, slow, clear voice, like a teacher giving dictation, ‘it is a present for you, for your birthday.’
    With jumping fingers she untied, unwrapped, opened a little box. Pinned to a card which read on top
Elegance
and underneath
Fashion Jewellery
there was a gold brooch shaped like a basket, an old-fashioned one with a wide brim and a curly handle; there were coloured flowers in it, three little white bells with green tips, two daffodils, a pink rose and a blue flower with petals edged like a saw. It was beautiful.
It was a present for a real girl.
    How strange it was. Birthday after birthday she had hoped, and at last, after she had given up hope, the present had come, better than anything she could have imagined. She lifted it out of the box, set it on the lid and read it like a book while she ate her lunch.
    Mrs Callaghan had recovered her company voice. ‘How kind of you!’
    â€˜It’s only a small thing,’ said Mr Mansell.
    â€˜Oh, but you shouldn’t have!’ Chancing on a useful phrase in a foreign language, she said graciously, ‘She’s spoilt enough already!’
    There was a disturbance—a kind of gust of breathing—at grown-up-face level round the table. Isobel looked up and saw that all the grown-ups were turning on her mother the same glare of indignation, except Mr Mansell, who was looking at Isobel herself with a bright, soft look that puzzled her, and her pale father, who was going steadily on with his task of cutting, chewing and swallowing. Her mother, for once, was even paler than he, so white-faced that traces of an earlier colouring showed russet in her hair and green in her eyes. She was staring at her plate, plying her knife and her fork slowly and carefully like crutches. Isobel felt an ache of sympathy, knowing how it felt to be the last to be chosen, or even left out of the game. Besides, what was wrong with what her mother had said? It sounded just like the stuff grown-ups usually talked.
    She forgot sympathy in looking at her brooch. When she had finished eating, she put it back in its box, wrapped it, clutched it, gabbled, ‘May I be excused, please?’ and ran away to her room, where