Trust Me Read Online Free Page B

twenty-seven,’ she said aloud to her reflection in the mirror. ‘Surely I’m entitled to more than this?’
    Later, as she lay back in the bath, her hair protected by a scarf, she looked down thoughtfully at her naked body. Not a stretch-mark, her breasts as firm as they’d been at seventeen.
    ‘If only I hadn’t got pregnant,’ she murmured.
    It wasn’t persuasion from Reg that pushed her into making love, it was she who instigated it. He wanted to wait until they could be married, but kissing and petting wasn’t enough for Anne, just as meeting him in secret wasn’t either. Perhaps it was as her mother claimed, that she knew the only way her parents would tolerate him was through disgracing herself.
    Anne winced as her mind went back to that ugly scene on a summer’s evening in 1938 when Reg had come to the house to share the responsibility of telling them the news.
    Her father had remained standing for the whole time, his back to the fireplace, his mouth set in a straight line of disgust.
    ‘She’s having your baby!’ he exclaimed. ‘You must have raped her, my daughter wouldn’t allow an animal like you to touch her willingly.’
    Her mother was even worse. She sat on the couch weeping as if she’d just been told her child had been savaged by a mad dog.
    Yet Reg was wonderful, he kept so calm and insisted they heard him out.
    ‘I know you disapprove of me because I’m ten years older than Anne, a mere builder from Deptford, and you wanted a lawyer or a doctor at least for your daughter. But I love her, she loves me, and we want to get married right away.’
    Her father ranted and raved, her mother wept and insulted Reg by saying he was a common upstart. Yet still Reg stayed calm. ‘Give me a chance to prove myself,’ he said. ‘I will take care of Anne and our baby. She will never want for anything, but meanwhile just give Anne permission to marry me if you don’t want the disgrace of having a little bastard in the family.’
    Of course her parents did give their permission. As Reg had put it so succinctly, they didn’t want the shame of an illegitimate child. But they never even tried to like Reg, they turned up their noses at the tiny flat in Lee Green he found for himself and Anne, and refused to visit them there. By the time Dulcie was born in December of that year there was talk of war, men being called up, and Anne always had the impression that her parents were pinning all their hopes on Reg being killed, for that way they could get their daughter back home where they believed she belonged.
    But Reg survived the war. It was her mother who was killed in an air raid during the Blitz, caught while scurrying to a shelter while shopping in Lewisham.
    ‘Oh Mummy, you were so narrow in your outlook you wouldn’t even try to see the good in Reg,’ Anne sighed, standing up to soap herself all over. ‘If you’d just forgiven me maybe everything would have turned out different.’
    As Anne sat down in the bath again she thought back to when her mother was killed. Anne had been evacuated to Sussex when Dulcie was seven months old, billeted in a big country house near Hastings with three other young mothers. With them for company, and older women in the village to give advice and help, she felt secure and happy, and for the first time in her life she was making decisions for herself, learning to become independent. When Reg came to see her before being sent overseas with the army, they talked about finding a permanent home in Sussex once the war was over. Yet the happiness she found there shattered when her mother was killed in September 1940.
    Her father couldn’t bear to be alone, he made Anne come back and keep house for him, even though it was so dangerous to be in London. He kept crying all the time and expected her to wait on him the way her mother had, complaining about everything Dulcie did, insulting Reg. All the while bombs were dropping, turning every night into a living hell.
    It was