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

Magazine forgotten, Virginia regarded her with shocked surprise. ‘You want me to model for you? But I’ve got a job, and I don’t really want to give that up.’

‘You wouldn’t need to. This would only be every now and again and it would put a little extra money in your purse.’

‘I get decent money now. I’ve had that two-shilling rise this autumn and Mr Green says that as I’m doing so well, he’ll try to give me another in the New Year. I can’t see that I need another job as well. And it wouldn’t leave me with all that much time to go out with my friends.’

Julia couldn’t help being struck by how quickly her brother and sisters had accepted working for a living as normal. It wasn’t so long ago that the mere idea of such a thing had been unthinkable. How different life was now for them. They had brought themselves up from the awful poverty that had all but overwhelmed them to this moderately comfortable life they now led. They were like new people; only their mother still left: to lament her lot and pine for the husband who in life had hardly noticed her.

‘Ginny,’ she pleaded as her sister continued to look doubtful, ‘it won’t be every day, or even every week, just on the rare occasion. We won’t be starting up for a few months yet and even then it would only be a few times a year. Later we’ll have professional models. This business could go such a long way, so please say you’ll step in and help.’

She wanted to add, ‘Please help me as I helped all of you’ for where would they have been without her guidance, her energy, her plans? She had taken up the reins when her mother had not dared to do so. She had kept them all going. But she said none of this.

Virginia was beginning to look thoughtful, an encouraging sign. Julia let the minutes tick by in silence, watching her sister, allowing her to consider the offer. But eventually she couldn’t keep silent any longer.

‘Think how lovely you’d feel dressed in silks and satins, parading up and down in day dresses and evening dresses, all the height of fashion.’

Virginias face changed. ‘Parading?’ she echoed. ‘You mean walking up and down in front of people, strangers?’ She gave an emphatic shake of her head. ‘No, Julia, let Stephanie do it – she enjoys showing off. I don’t.’

‘Oh, Ginny…’ Julia felt suddenly close to tears. All the months of worrying and striving and scrimping to keep the family going began to overwhelm her. ‘I’d never ask her! It can only be you. You’re the only one who can do it. Without you…’

She choked on her words as the tears overflowed. The next thing she knew, Virginia was hugging her, the magazine fallen to the floor.

‘Julia, don’t cry. I’ll do it – for you. I know how you feel. I’ll do it.’

Slowly Julia recovered herself and apologized for her foolishness.

Virginia sat back in her seat and grinned at her sister. ‘Stephanie’s going to be so jealous!’ she said.

Stephanie was almost beside herself with indignation. ‘Why? Why couldn’t you have asked me first?’ Giving her sister hardly time to reply, she plunged on, ‘I know more about these things than she ever will. What is she? A little junior in some office! I deal all the time with clothes and cosmetics in a huge department store. I am often consulted by some really important customers and well thought of by the management.’ She held up an angry hand as Julia opened her mouth to speak. ‘I’m rubbing shoulders all the time with the wealthy and know how to behave with them, yet you chose her over me! What’s so special about her?’

‘I’m sorry, Stephanie,’ Julia began but Stephanie was in no mood to hear apologies.

‘You two have always been as thick as thieves,’ she railed on. ‘Don’t think I don’t know. You’re always rowing with me, never with her. And what does an office junior, not even sixteen yet, know about how to display dresses before a discerning public? Well, all I can say is, don’t come crying to me when she makes a mess of it!’

Running out of steam, Stephanie gave her sister a long, hard look and made for the bedroom, banging the door behind her. As she did so she heard their mother’s gasp. Too angry even to burst into tears, she flung herself on the bed. If her mother should come in now to try to pacify her, she knew she’d yell at her, unable to stop herself. But no one came.

She lay on the bed straining her ears to the silence on the other side of the door. Were they whispering about her? What were they saying? Her mother should have taken her side but instead had sat looking from one to the other with that usual pained expression whenever any of them didn’t see eye to eye. At one time she’d been her favourite daughter. Her mother had bought her clothes, sometimes quietly supplementing her allowance, always there to listen to her when things hadn’t gone quite right. But since they’d lived here it seemed to Stephanie that everything had changed. Julia was now her favourite, creeping around her, looking after her and the flat, taking charge, forcing everyone else out to work while she took it easy, earning nothing.

And all this talk about setting up a business, where had the money for that come from? Had their mother helped her secretly? Now this: Julia choosing Virginia over herself, and Mummy practically agreeing with it. It wasn’t fair!

Stephanie’s pretty features crumpled, her eyes filled with tears as she stared blindly up at the ceiling.

‘I hate them!’ she said next day to Rosie Gower, a work colleague. They had become friends. She and Rosie and a few other single girls went most Saturday nights to one of