stuck around.’
Barbara resisted the temptation to ask why. Penny knew she would not have left the party without a reason, and though she had never asked what it was, Barbara had a feeling she had guessed. She managed a light laugh. ‘Is her name really Dodo?’
‘No, it’s Dorothy, which doesn’t exactly convey glamour.’
‘Give him my congratulations, won’t you?’
‘Of course. Look after yourself and kiss Alison for me.’
George came in as she was replacing the receiver. He put his briefcase down beside the hall table and dropped a kiss on her cheek. ‘Who was that?’
‘Penny.’ She followed him into the sitting room where he poured himself a whisky and slumped into an armchair to drink it. ‘Had a bad day?’ she asked.
‘Bloody awful,’ he said irritably. ‘No one seems to know the meaning of a good day’s work for a good day’s pay anymore. A delivery of timber hasn’t arrived and it’s holding me up. Inflation has gone sky-high and I’m paying through the nose for all my supplies because the bank has put up interest rates again. Don’t you read the papers? No, of course you don’t, you’d rather sit in the dark and watch trash.’
She did not respond, afraid that if she did wind him up into losing his temper, it would be an explosion so mighty that their whole world would fly to pieces. Alison, who adored her father, would suffer and so would her unborn child. Right on cue, he gave her a sharp kick. She smiled and put her hand on her belly, feeling him move. She didn’t know why, but she was sure she was going to have a son.
Chapter Five
Nicholas George was born at three o’clock on the morning of third of April 1923 at Melsham hospital. He was a lusty seven and a half pounds and George was delighted. He had a daughter he loved, but a son was special, a son could join him in business and make it ‘Kennett & Son’.
On the day of the christening, George decided to photograph them all, grouped around Barbara and the baby, whom he positioned on the settee. Alison knelt beside Barbara, obeying her father’s instructions to hold the baby’s hand and smile at him. ‘Mum, you sit the other side of Barbara, I want the whole family in.’ He set the delay and raced round behind the settee and bent towards Barbara, smiling down at his son. The flash coincided with the ringing of the doorbell.
‘That’ll be Dad and Virginia,’ Barbara said, handing Nicholas to her mother-in-law so that she could let them in.
She was shocked by her father’s appearance. The strapping man who loved to be out of doors working on the farm, who liked to ride and shoot and fish, could hardly walk from one chair to another without becoming breathless. He was patently ill, but he smiled and sat with his grandson on his lap, sipping a glass of champagne, assuring everyone he felt fine. Virginia took him home at seven and helped him to bed, then she crept downstairs to eat a lonely supper. When she went up to bed herself, he was already dead. He was smiling, as if he had been enjoying a private joke when he drifted off.
Even though she had known her father was ill, Barbara could hardly take in the news when Virginia rang at seven the following morning. Her father had always been so strong and healthy, her bulwark. She didn’t want to believe it. George fetched his mother to baby sit and then drove her over to the farm, but there was nothing she could do except sit with Virginia in the kitchen drinking endless cups of tea. She had idolised her father. It was to her father she had gone to solve her childhood problems, and to some extent, those of her adulthood, those she felt able to confide. He had never failed to give her good advice. The only time their relationship had been strained was over his marriage to Virginia, but he had convinced her that it was right for him, and she had come round to accepting it. She was still not one hundred per cent sure of Virginia, but there was no doubt the widow was genuinely grief-stricken.
‘He loved you,’ Virginia said, after a long silence, when the only sound was the ticking of the old clock on the dresser. ‘He was always talking about the things you had done as a child, riding, playing the piano, school