bigger yard, a proper office. It was a gamble, but I undercut the opposition and got the contract. It’s taken all Mum’s savings, but she’ll get them back with interest.’
‘You are very close to your mother, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. My father died when I was a baby. Mum brought me up alone. I owe everything to her.’
She smiled. ‘Including your tenacity?’
He laughed. ‘That too.’
‘What does she think about me?’ He had been so understanding and comforting over the business with Virginia, helping her to put it into perspective. And he had been honest with her about his ambitions, his personal aspirations. Beside him, Simon seemed a stripling, which was unfair, considering he had spent the best part of four years in the trenches and that would surely age a man. Why had she suddenly thought of Simon? Since Penny had left college, she had not seen him. She had liked him, had liked his quicksilver mind, his ability to make her laugh, but he belonged to a different life, one far away from Melsham and her father and the problems that beset her here. She had kept in touch with Penny so she supposed that one day she might meet Simon again, but they would be like strangers, the easy familiarity they had enjoyed would be gone.
‘She wants me to be happy. Just as your father wants you to be happy.’
She turned startled eyes on him. ‘You’ve spoken to him?’
‘Naturally I have. I wanted his approval.’
She began to laugh. Nearly twenty years after the old queen had died, he behaved like a Victorian. Was that his mother’s influence? Whatever had her father made of him? ‘And does he approve?’
‘Yes, so long as it’s what you want.’
‘I don’t know what I want.’
‘You will,’ he said confidently. ‘When the time comes to ask you properly, you will know.’
His mother came into the room at that point and announced that Christmas dinner was on the table and they followed her into the dining room. Barbara wondered what he meant when he said ‘when the time comes’.
It came at the New Year’s Eve Ball, as the clock chimed midnight and everyone turned to their neighbour with kisses and cries of ‘Happy New Year! May 1920 be all you hope for it.’ Caught up in the euphoria of the moment, she accepted.
Chapter Two
The dress was made in heavy white silk, the bodice curved over her breasts and down over her slim hips to the floor. There was a huge bow at the back of the waist that fanned out into a train. Penny set the orange blossom circlet on Barbara’s blonde hair and carefully arranged the lace veil over her shoulders. ‘There! Now you can look.’ Barbara moved carefully over to the mirror. The veil softened her features, gave her a dreamy quality which was not altogether false. She was living in a dream. Nothing was quite real.
‘Nervous?’ Penny was wearing a pale lime-green dress in the same style as Barbara’s but without the train. But unlike Barbara’s, which had a boat-shaped neck filled in with lace, and long narrow sleeves, Penny’s was off the shoulder and had short puffed sleeves. Both had matching velvet capes lined with white fur to keep them warm. February was hardly the month for a wedding.
‘Terrified.’
‘You aren’t having doubts, are you?’
She wasn’t, was she? George loved her and she loved him and she meant to be a good wife to him, to have his children, to help him in his business, to be there supporting him. Always. It was how her mother had been with her father and theirs had been a particularly happy marriage, which was why she could not understand his obsession with Virginia. Virginia was nothing like her mother. She stopped her thoughts from spiralling away and turned to Penny. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Good. I’m off.’ She rose and went to the door. ‘See you in church.’
Barbara stood looking round the room. It looked bare. The picture of her mother, the bookcase containing her books, her tennis racket which had been propped in the corner, sundry photographs and ornaments, had already been taken to her new home. Dad had offered her the furniture too, but even the small amount she had taken had crammed their bedroom to bursting point and there was no room for more. George had laughed and said there wouldn’t be space to swing a cat. Her battered old teddy bear sat on a cushion on a basket-weave chair, looking at her