The Forget-Me-Not Summer Read Online Free

at her mother when they met her aunt, had heard the muttered comments, indicating that Vi thought Arabella was what she called toffee-nosed, too big for her boots, and considered herself above ordinary folk.
    And so she might, because she
was
better than other folks, the young Miranda had thought rebelliously.Arabella was not just pretty, she was very beautiful. She had a great mass of curly white-gold hair, skin like cream and the most enormous pair of blue eyes, the very colour of the forget-me-not flowers she loved. And those eyes were framed by curling blonde lashes whilst her eyebrows, two slender arcs, were blonde as well.
    Aunt Vi, on the other hand, was short and squat, with sandy hair and a round, harsh face, for she took after her father, whereas Arabella’s looks seemed to have come from their mother. Miranda would have loved to look like that too, but in fact she did not. To be sure, Arabella often congratulated her on her colouring; her hair was what her mother called Plantagenet gold, but kids in the street called carrot, or ginger. ‘When you’re older, it will darken to a beautiful deep auburn,’ Arabella had been fond of saying. ‘You’re going to be a real little beauty one of these days; you’ll knock me into a cocked hat, so you will.’
    But Miranda had no desire to knock anyone into anything. She had no urge to be an actress, though she admired her mother tremendously, and was proud of her. However, it was one thing to be proud of someone, and quite another to wish to emulate them. Miranda’s own ambitions were far less exotic. She wanted to be a writer of books and had already hidden away in her bedroom cupboard a number of wonderfully imaginative fairy stories. To be sure, these stories were often connected with the theatre – perhaps one day she would turn them into plays – but wherever her writing ended up, it was her secret hope for the future.
    Now, though, nothing was important but to find Arabella and escape from the horrors of life in JamaicaClose, for after the first few days, during which Aunt Vi and Beth had pretended anxiety for her mother and affection for herself, they began to show their true colours. They had disliked Arabella and now they disliked her daughter, besides resenting her presence in the dirty, neglected little house. She was forced to sleep in a creaking and smelly brass bedstead with her cousin Beth, who was a year older than she, though they were now in the same class at the council school, for Beth was slow-witted and Miranda was bright. The pair of them did not have the bed to themselves, however; fat Aunt Vi took up more than her fair share of the thin horsehair mattress – she kept promising to buy another bed, since she had sold Miranda’s beloved mirror, but so far had failed to do so – and grumbled every night that her bleedin’ sister might have taken her horrible brat with her when she ran off. Miranda tried to ignore such jibes, but when she had nightmares she soon learned to slip out of bed and go down to the kitchen, for if her cries woke her aunt she would speedily find herself being soundly slapped, whilst her aunt shouted that she was a selfish little bitch to disturb folk who had been good enough to take her in.
    Another threat was that she would be sent to an orphanage, but Miranda thought that as long as she was useful she need not fear such a fate. Beth was lazy and spoilt, encouraged by her mother never to do her share around the house, and very soon Miranda got all the nastiest jobs. So when her aunt pretended her young half-sister had dumped her child and gone off just to annoy them, Miranda said nothing, deciding that the remark was too stupid to even merit a reply.
    The members of the cast at the theatre had done their best to persuade the police, and anyone else who was interested, that Arabella Lovage was not the sort of woman to simply walk out on her colleagues and friends and