A New Dream, Maggie Ford [books to read romance txt] 📗

time she would ever see the view from this window of that glorious rosy blush flooding across the broad vista of the Park.

Julia Victoria Longfield closed her eyes against the tears that sprang suddenly, tugged the curtains together again and turned away from the window.

Five

Julia gazed around her father’s small warehouse. She had never set foot in here before yet in a strange way felt she would miss it once it was gone.

By rights she shouldn’t even be here. It had been locked, no doubt against any unlawful entry, but by rummaging in her father’s old bureau at home early this morning, well before the rest of the family were up, she had found a set of keys. She had some idea that coming here might help her recover from Chester’s vile letter, and give her something else to think about.

Having got Fred their chauffeur to drive her, she now found herself wondering what she had expected to do once she was here. She felt rather like an intruder with no purpose but to nose around. It all felt so furtive, so underhanded, just like her mother’s behaviour when she had gathered her children about her to caution them against saying anything to anyone about their present situation.

‘You mustn’t even tell your friends,’ she’d warned. ‘I want no one to know and start talking about us and shun us as if we were pariahs.’

‘But they’re our friends, Mummy,’ Virginia had said, aghast. ‘We can’t just gather up our things and creep away. They’ll wonder. And when they find out, my friends will never speak to me again. It feels like telling a lie.’

But for once in her life her mother had been adamant. ‘I want no one to know of our downfall and that is that! We’re leaving tomorrow morning. And when any of you see your friends after that, you will just say that we moved because I could not stand to live here now your father is gone, that there are too many memories here. Do you all understand?’

They’d all been stunned. ‘Well, I for one am not going to abide by that!’ Stephanie had said when they’d gathered in the evening out of their mother’s hearing. ‘I’m not prepared to lose my friends over this.’

‘Nor am I,’ Virginia had said indignantly while young James had looked downcast and said, ‘I’ve already lost mine, dragged out of school and not permitted ever to go back because we haven’t got enough money any longer.’

It had been too late anyway last night to tell anyone and Stephanie hadn’t had the courage to go out with her friends that evening and face them as if nothing was wrong. But she was rebellious all the same. ‘I’m still going to write to each of them when we get to this place you’ve found for us, Julia.’

‘But it still does feel as if we’re lying, even for a short while.’ Virginia had pouted and Julia had quite agreed with her.

But wasn’t she lying now, standing here in this empty warehouse, having crept out of her house before anyone was awake? She had merely warned Mrs Granby not to say anything while giving the woman no reason for her request.

She gazed around the empty space. The whole area had a strange, unnerving quietness about it at this hour. Julia shivered.

‘It looks larger than I imagined,’ she whispered to Fred who had left the car round the back where it wouldn’t be noticed.

‘That’s ’cos it’s more or less empty, miss,’ he answered dejectedly. He had reason to be in low spirits. Tomorrow the car was to be taken as part of her father’s assets in order to pay off some of his debts, leaving Fred out of a job. She had not even thought to ask if he had another to go to, she was so full of misery herself.

Their maid Mary had already gone and was now working in a shop. Julia didn’t know which shop and didn’t much care. Mrs Granby had refused point-blank to leave, declaring she’d stay without pay until the family had to vacate the property. Mr Grantham the solicitor had kindly written to them enclosing a list of what he considered might be respectable lodgings.

‘You cannot take a chance with your accommodation, dear ladies,’ ran the words. ‘Mr Longfield would not have wanted to know that his family were living somewhere unsuitable.’

A pity he didn’t think of that before he gambled everything away, Julia thought bitterly as she read out the list to her mother who’d been sent into a welter of weeping by it.

Mr Grantham had no doubt kept his thoughts to himself regarding the underhanded way her father had mortgaged the house to pay off his debts. But they hadn’t been paid off, had they? He’d used the money instead to continue gambling on the stock market, always in the hope, she guessed, of hitting the jackpot – much as a punter at a race meeting might behave, always believing the next bet would be the one to see him right. Her father had been no better than that gambler, yet had cut such a figure of haughty respectability, looking down his nose at others, even his own wife. Now he was dead and all his assets, including the roof over his family’s head, were being repossessed. So much for respectability! She had nothing to thank her father for.

The rented accommodation she’d finally found after rushing around yesterday like a demented chicken was on the top floor of a three-storey tenement just off Bethnal Green Road. It consisted of a living room hardly large enough to swing a cat, two tiny bedrooms and a narrow kitchen with hardly anywhere to hang washing. The only lavatory was a shared one in the back yard, so that they were obliged to trek all the way downstairs to it. The whole thing was thoroughly distasteful and embarrassing. Their only washing facilities were the kitchen sink and a tin bath