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

it around seven. It’s only nine o’clock now. Edward went in to see her afterwards and this is the first chance he’s had to phone us, I suppose.’

Julia steadied her thoughts and tried to forget the empty churning in her stomach. ‘I suppose so,’ she relented. ‘Did he say how she is? And the baby – what has she had?’

‘He said Stephanie and the baby are fine. She’s had a little boy, eight pounds.’

‘Aah!’ sighed Betty, laying her work aside for the moment. ‘Have they a name for him, bless his little soul?’

‘He never said,’ replied Ginny, looking across at her. ‘But he sounded over the moon.’

‘He would be,’ said Julia a little sharply but no one noticed as she went on, ‘Well, I’m glad there were no complications. We’ll have to go over there to see them when we can. But for the moment I’ve got to get on.’

Ginny went out, faintly disappointed that there hadn’t been as much excitement as she had expected.

Julia had meant to ask if their mother knew. She probably did. Ginny was the only one of her children living there with her now. She no longer went out to work, being more than well enough paid as a model, so it was Ginny who kept their mother company, cared for her, listened patiently to her complaints and no doubt dreamed of the day she and Robert could be married, when she would be free of it all.

Robert had proved to be a really charming, caring young man. Ginny was lucky and said so more often than she needed to. ‘I’m so very, very lucky! I can’t believe how lucky I am to have him. I can’t wait to be married.’

That would be next year, probably early spring, when she would be twenty-one. Julia already had it in mind to make hers the best wedding there ever was. She loved Ginny above both her other two siblings. A sweet and selfless girl like Ginny deserved nothing but the very best.

Stephanie named her second child Stephen Edward James. He was such a beautiful baby, so like his handsome father. Julia was asked to be his godmother, with one of Edward’s aunts as the other and Simon as his godfather. As she held the little scrap at the christening she found herself wondering who a child of hers might take after. If it were Simon, that would be perfect.

Her heart thudded with longing all over again as she held him, before handing him gently over to be baptized and receiving him back, whimpering in protest at the water on his little forehead. She felt her heart break that he wasn’t hers and drew in her breath with a huge trembling sigh.

‘Are you all right?’ Simon whispered as the mother took the baby for everyone to croon over. He was looking deep into her face but Julia smiled back at him.

‘Of course I’m all right,’ she said sharply, but later when they had returned home and sat together in their lounge listening to quiet music on the wireless, she said, ‘When you asked me if I was all right, I was in a way but I did suddenly wish little Stephen were mine.’

‘Mmm…’ was the quiet reply. Seconds later he leaped up from the settee and went over to their glass and chrome drinks cabinet.

‘Fancy another drink, darling?’ he called over his shoulder.

‘No, thanks,’ she said curtly as she studied her half empty brandy glass. ‘I’ve still got mine.’

‘Well, I’m having a top-up,’ he said brightly, dismissing the subject of babies. He came back to sit down beside her and began talking of their next show in just over a month’s time.

‘It’s coming along quite splendidly,’ he said, ‘don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘You do such wonderful miracles with stuff. I don’t know how the business would have expanded so well without you, darling.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘I really do think this is going to be the big one, darling, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

The following March the Women’s Wear Exhibition was held in London. Julia had lost sleep worrying about competing with so many stands. She needn’t have done. Hers was proving far more popular with the public than she’d ever dared to hope.

Ginny was at the height of her beauty as she paraded in the shimmering sleeveless tops and equally shimmering pleated skirts that fell to just below the knee. Teamed with them she wore the new skull caps of silver and gold tissue that completely covered her ears and hid the whole of her short hair.

Julia watched with excitedly beating heart as Ginny posed elegantly for a moment on the edge of the fur-covered chaise longue she had placed at the end of the platform. Her legs were tucked neatly under her, her body lightly supported by one slender arm while her other hand delicately held a long, ivory cigarette holder. Occasionally she would put it to her mouth to allow a gentle trail of cigarette smoke to issue from her painted lips; then, rising nonchalantly to an outburst of applause, she would resume her slow, studied pacing of the catwalk, finally disappearing behind the curtain for Betty to dress her hurriedly in another of her employer’s creations.

The necklaces she wore were Simon’s designs to match each different dress, each different skull cap. Bracelets glittered like real diamonds; rings and earrings, looking like pure sapphires, emeralds and rubies, were how set in gold and silver to ape the real thing.

Simon spared no expense to make them look so. Few people other than the experts would have been able to see the difference.

The exhibition was proving a roaring success and Julia felt her slender, figure-hugging evening gowns were a glittering triumph. The emphasis was still on the young, boyish look but she was keeping an eye on the bosom which she felt was about to make a gentle reappearance. She was sure this would be a welcome relief to the larger lady who’d been struggling for a decade