Playing Beatie Bow Read Online Free

at her mother and said ‘Oh, yes? Did you just run into him?’
    ‘As a matter of fact I’ve seen him quite a few times lately,’ Kathy said. ‘Oh, darling, don’t be cross. I know it was deceitful of me, but I thought I wouldn’t mention it in case it all fell through.’
    Abigail felt a sudden chill. ‘Whatever are you talking about, Mum?’
    ‘Oh, Abigail, I don’t know how to put it without sounding silly. Dad – well, he wants us to become a family again.’
    ‘You’re joking,’ said Abigail.
    Kathy’s face was almost pleading. ‘No, I’m not.’
    Abigail felt much as she had felt that morning her father had said good-bye. A burning wave of dismay, anger and fright swept up from her feet. But before it reached her face and turned it scarlet she managed to say, ‘And what about Miss Thingo? Is she going to join the party?’
    Kathy said stiffly, ‘You know very well Jan went off to Canada a year ago. She has a name. Use it, and don’t be vulgar. What do you think I’m talking about, last Saturday’s TV movie? This is a serious matter for me and your father, so please don’t fool about with it.’
    Abigail could hardly believe what she heard. ‘You’re really considering it! After what he did four years ago?’
    Kathy smiled nervously. She used a cool tone, but it did not go well with her restless hands. ‘Next thing you’ll be saying he tossed me aside like a worn-out glove.’
    ‘He dumped you and me for a scheming little creep on his secretarial staff, that’s what he did, after being married twelve years.’
    ‘Hold on,’ said Kathy. ‘Fair’s fair. Jan wasn’t like that at all. And besides that, he fell in love with her. You don’t even know what that means yet.’
    ‘Oh, Mum, now you’re being wet!’
    ‘Oh, I know all you schoolgirls think you know every last word in the book about the relationships between a man and a woman; but love is a thing you have to experience before you know –’ she hesitated, and then blurted out – ‘how powerful it can be.’
    ‘Oh, come on!’
    ‘I’m only thirty-six,’ said Kathy. ‘I’ve missed being married.’
    Abigail leapt up and began to pile the dishes noisily in the sink.
    ‘You’ve no self-respect!’
    ‘Okay, okay!’ cried Kathy. ‘It’s awful, it’s shameful, it isn’t liberated in the slightest – but I happen to love Weyland. I always have, and I always wanted him to come back. And now it’s happened and I want to go with him.’
    Abigail was so outraged, so disgusted that anyone as capable and independent and courageous as her mother could be so… so –
female
was the word that sprang to her mind – that for a moment the significance of what she had said did not strike her.
    ‘What do you mean,
go
?’ she said, aghast.
    ‘He has to go to Norway for three years of architectural study, and he wants us to go with him and … and be together again as we used to.’
    Abigail felt as if her mother had risen and hit her with the teapot. ‘Norway! Why Norway?’
    ‘Well, he’s always had this strong feeling for Scandinavian design, because of his family, I expect. But he wouldn’t be in Norway all the time. He has to take some seminars in the University of Oslo, and of course we could often go to Denmark … and England sometimes.’ Her voice trailed away.
    ‘Mother,’ said Abigail, ‘don’t you realise that he could easily leave you again?’
    ‘Yes,’ admitted Kathy. ‘I have to take the risk, you see.’
    Flushing, she looked at her daughter, and the innocence and frankness of that gaze was such that Abigail thought, amazed, ‘She really is in love with him; she has been all along.’
    Such jealousy fired up in her heart that she felt dizzy.
    ‘Then you can take it by yourself.’
    Her mother looked as if she had been slapped. ‘You can’t mean that, darling.’
    ‘You forget that he dumped me, too,’ said Abigail tartly. ‘That’s not going to happen to me again. I can’t stop you doing