Belle Read Online Free PDF

missing for just an hour, and they always had tea together around six, before Mog had to go upstairs to prepare for the evening ahead.
    The evenings were normally very tedious to Belle because she had to spend them alone. She would wash up the tea things, then read a newspaper if one of the gentlemen had left one upstairs on the previous evening. If there was no paper to read, she sewed or knitted. But she was usually in bed by half past eight because she couldn’t stand her own company any longer. Tonight, however, she wasn’t just lonely, she was terrified. Not for herself, though she was scared of what Annie would do to her, but for Millie. She could see her face so clearly in her mind’s eye, that silent scream, the way her head was tipped back and her eyes bulging. Had the man killed her?
    There was no sound coming from the parlour upstairs, so maybe there had been no one but Jacob in there as she came down the stairs. That was understandable considering the snow, but she wondered where the girls and Mog were. Aside from Millie there were seven other girls, but even if they were all in their rooms, with or without a gentleman, surely some of them would have looked out when Annie and Jacob went running up the stairs?
    Yet over and above her fear for Millie, and the possible repercussions of tonight’s events, were the shock and disgust she felt about what had been going on nightly above her head. How could she have been so stupid as not to know what was going on in the house she lived in?
    How was she ever going to be able to hold her head up out on the streets now? How could she be friends with Jimmy without wondering if he’d want to do the same thing to her? No wonder Mog had said he wasn’t to take any liberties with her!
    Belle heard a loud yell from out the back, quickly followed by banging and clattering, as if someone had knocked over the dustbins, then even more shouting from several different people. She ran into the scullery and towards the back door. She didn’t unlock it and go out, for she knew she was in enough trouble already, but she looked out of the window next to it.
    There was nothing to see, just the snow covering all the old crates and boxes out there, and it was still coming down hard, the wind blowing it into drifts.
    ‘Belle!’
    Belle wheeled round at her mother’s voice. She had come into the kitchen and was standing by the table, one hand on her hip.
    ‘I’m sorry, Ma, I fell asleep in Millie’s room. I didn’t mean to be up there.’
    Annie always wore black in the evenings. But this long-sleeved silk dress had a wide swathe of ornate silver embroidery from her shoulders right around the low neckline. She had her hair fixed up with silver combs, and with diamond bobs in her ears she looked regal.
    ‘Come with me. I want you to quickly tell me exactly what you saw,’ she said hurriedly.
    Belle thought it very strange when instead of shouting at her or accusing her of wrongdoing, Annie took her hand and led her into Belle’s tiny bedroom. She ruffled up the bed and indicated that Belle was to undress, put on her nightdress and get into it. She even helped Belle with the buttons on the back of her dress and slipped her nightdress over her head. It was only once she’d got her daughter beneath the covers that she sat down on the bed beside her.
    ‘Now tell me,’ she demanded.
    Belle explained how it had come about that she was there when Millie came in with the man, and that in panic she’d hidden under the bed. She didn’t know how to tell Annie what the couple were doing, so she referred to it as kissing and cuddling. Annie waved her hand impatiently and asked that she move on to what the man had been saying to Millie.
    Belle repeated everything she could remember and how he had struck Millie, then how it all went quiet and she looked out from under the bed. ‘He had his …’ Belle broke off to point at her belly. ‘It was in his hand, by her face. She wasn’t moving,