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

he? She realized it immediately as he interrupted her with a curt, ‘How long?’

‘How long?’ she echoed, not understanding the question.

‘How long have you been seeing each other?’

She told him how she and Chester had met again by chance at the London Fashion Exhibition in March, and how she had accepted his invitation to have coffee with him and talk over old times. ‘I saw no harm in it then,’ she said.

Simon listened without a word as she went on to tell him how she had intended only to let Chester see how contemptible she thought his behaviour had been towards her and to show him how well she had done for herself without him.

‘But it was all a long time ago,’ she said. ‘And we became more like old friends having coffee together. He told me he was in the middle of a nasty divorce. He was miserable and I felt sorry for him and in a way it made me feel superior. Then, somehow, I don’t know what really happened but…’

She let the rest trail off. It was in danger of becoming a sordid story and she wasn’t prepared to subject Simon to painful details. It was then she realized he was behaving strangely, every now and again clearing his throat like a person bored.

Defeated by this apparent indifference to what she was trying to say, she repeated bleakly, ‘If only you and I had been married.’

‘Then we’ll get married,’ he said, taking her by surprise. But there was no love in his tone. She reacted immediately.

‘No. I want you to want to marry me, not just as an arrangement but because you love me.’

‘I do love you.’

She couldn’t believe that, not after what she’d been telling him. ‘In spite of what happened?’ she burst out in disbelief.

‘In spite of what you say happened.’ He turned his face towards her. He was looking at her, studying her levelly, and suddenly she broke down.

She felt his arm go about her, drawing her close. Now crying into his shoulder she felt his arm tightening even more as her words came tumbling out, drowned in sobs and practically inaudible.

‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she kept saying. ‘I’ve been such a fool. Nothing I can say will put it right. But I want only you, only you, darling…’ She was becoming more and more incoherent as he held her to him. How could he forgive? But that was just what he was doing and she didn’t deserve him.

The memory of how coolly Chester had informed her that he was going back to his wife, betraying her for a second time, almost made her want to rage against him again. But even as she wept against Simon’s shoulder, sense told her that it would be disastrous to say any more about Chester. It was over. And she must stop punishing herself, too, for her foolishness and weakness. So long as Simon still loved her and consented to marry her, she was prepared to forget the past and spend the rest of her life loving only him.

Twenty-Seven

The wedding was short and simple, by special licence at a registry office on the third Friday in August. There were few guests: Ginny and Robert as witnesses, James and his wife, Betty who’d been with her and Simon all these years. Stephanie and her family were in Italy on holiday, their first ever trip abroad, but sent their love on a postcard with a view of Rome.

The little party had a quiet meal in a nearby restaurant, no one else was invited, not even friends, for as far as others were concerned they’d been married for years and there was no point in letting the cat out of the bag now.

The whole thing had taken a couple of hours, with Simon and Julia returning to their place of business as if nothing had happened. Business still came first. They were coming towards the end of a decade of rapidly changing fashion, from the voluminous fashions of 1921 to the skimpy ones of 1928 and 1929. Julia foresaw a settling down next year to sleeker, more flowing garments, already beginning to make an appearance. She couldn’t afford to be caught out, as had happened once before. At times she worked herself to near exhaustion to get the finished samples off to the factory for making up and dispatching to the shops.

She missed Ginny’s lively presence about the place as she draped her toiles, the muslin cloth from which she would cut her copies, on the plaster model she’d used for years or on one of her live models, altering a hemline, a bodice, a sleeve. Dear Ginny would endure these long, boring hours without complaint, allowing herself to be pulled this way and that so as to get a new idea just right, a trim added to the waist, a strap to the shoulder, a bit taken out of a bodice, a little more draping to a skirt – always with a smile as a garment slowly, laboriously took shape.

The girls Julia now used seldom smiled, behaving more like statues, straight-faced, eyes fixed, suffering what they were being paid to do as she fitted the material on them, pinning, cutting, redesigning as she went until finally she was satisfied, the finished garment ready to be completed and hung from the racks for dispatch to the factory to be made up and sent out.

Before Ginny had married she had proved herself to be almost as gifted as her sister at sketching. With an eye for colour she had even begun to work from just an idea in her head, often improving on Julia’s own ideas. She might even have become a designer in her own right. Instead she had become a wife.

They were living near Robert’s parents and would often drive over to see Julia, unlike James and Stephanie, neither of whom she saw very often now their mother was gone.

‘It wouldn’t hurt either of them to come