something to occupy her.
Feeding, bathing and dressing Alison and taking her out in her pram filled her days. Sometimes they went shopping, sometimes to the park and sometimes she wheeled the pram up to the Newtown estate past the new council houses, to the one on the corner which adjoined a street of private houses. She would stand looking up at the house, wanting it finished, wanting to move in, but full of apprehension. Nothing George said could make her feel any easier in her mind about how it had been obtained. She had sleepless nights about it, and that made George laugh. ‘I can see it was a mistake to tell you anything,’ he said. ‘You don’t have the stomach for business. Forget it, will you? Let me do the worrying.’
‘So you are worried.’
‘Not at all. You will have your house and I will make lots of money.’
The last time she had been there, the roof was on and plasterers and carpenters were working inside. Retribution could not be long coming, she was convinced of it.
And then George came home one evening carrying a bottle of champagne. ‘The house is ours,’ he said, washing his hands at the kitchen sink, before rooting around in a drawer for a corkscrew. ‘The council numbered the houses today.’
‘And they found one too many. Oh, George!’
He laughed. ‘You should have seen their faces. They counted them twice and stood scratching their heads, wondering how it had happened.’
‘What did you say? What did they do?’ Her heart was pounding in her throat, in spite of the fact that he seemed to be treating it as a joke.
‘Oh, I enlightened them, told them the last one was mine, paid for outside the contract. They went away to ask the chief officer what to do about it.’ The cork left the bottle with a satisfactory pop and he began pouring the wine into the glasses his mother had fetched. ‘He sent for me.’
‘Then what?’ Elizabeth asked, because Barbara had been struck dumb.
‘I told him straight out what I’d done. He was a bit miffed at first, but I pointed out the publicity wouldn’t do him or the council a ha’porth of good, the Melsham Gazette would have a field day and he’d be a laughing stock. No one would blame me, they’d probably say if I could pull one over on the authorities, then good luck to me. He saw my point. I’ll send him a case of Scotch for being such a good sport.’
‘You mean you got away with it?’ Barbara couldn’t believe her ears.
‘I told you I would, didn’t I? I swore to keep mum, so you two must promise not to tell any of your friends.’
‘It’s not something I want to boast about,’ Barbara said tartly.
Nor did she, not even to Penny when she came down for Alison’s christening at the beginning of May. She looked at her god-daughter, cradled in Barbara’s arms, wearing the long christening robe Barbara herself had worn, but did not take up the invitation to hold her. She was uncomfortable around infants: they had a disconcerting habit of discharging the contents of their stomachs from one end or the other and the cream linen suit she was wearing had cost her all of twenty guineas. She admired from a safe distance and allowed Virginia, the baby’s other godmother, to do the honours.
Barbara envied her friend her smart clothes. She had bought a new dress for the ceremony, but most of the time she wore a cotton blouse and skirt which was more practical while she was breastfeeding. They held a small party which overflowed into the back garden, though that was no more than a long strip of lawn with a gate at the end. George had set out hired tables and chairs and brought in a caterer. He went round pouring champagne, accepting the congratulations of his friends as if he alone had accomplished the miracle that was their daughter.
‘I bet he doesn’t get up when she cries in the night,’ Penny said to Barbara. She didn’t know why she did not like the man. It wasn’t only that he had taken Barbara from Simon – who had never complained of his loss, but she knew her brother through and through and beneath that smiling exterior was a man who felt deeply disappointed – but that she simply didn’t trust George Kennett, and she hoped for Barbara’s sake it would not all end in tears.
‘No, but he