Debutantes Read Online Free PDF Page A

them. Violet could probably make something for herself – and for us – out of them. She’s good at that sort of thing. And she spends all her pocket money on fashion magazines so she must know what to do.’
    ‘A party . . .’ Daisy was beginning to wake up. She half sat up and then lay down again. The room was very cold. Then she thought of an objection.
    ‘Who’s going to be dancing?’ she asked.
    ‘Violet, you, me, Edwin, Simon – all the gang. And what about that fellow who turned up yesterday? What was his name? Justin. He could dance with Violet. Then there’s Baz for me and George for you – he likes you – and Simon’s mad about Violet.’ She giggled. The jazz band were forever teasing Simon about Violet – he always turned bright red when she appeared. ‘And Edwin could dance with Rose – the jazz band would have to take turns, of course . . .’
    Daisy thought about it for a moment and looked at it from Violet’s point of view. She hadn’t seemed to like Justin much, but she would certainly consider the members of the jazz band too young for her – and she wasn’t too keen on Simon, calling him ‘wet behind the ears’. Yes, it would be a good idea to ask Justin. And it would be jolly to dress up and dance. Daisy forgot about being cold and sat up in bed.
    ‘It would be fun!’ she said. ‘We’ll do it properly – send out invitations and all that. Great-Aunt Lizzie has probably got plenty of invitation cards. I saw the label on her desk drawer and if it’s anything like her drawer of writing paper, it’s absolutely full up. They probably date from the good old days when money was plentiful. Let’s get up.’
    Before her courage could fail her at the thought of the icy cold water in the jug on the washstand in their dressing room, Daisy jumped out of bed, got washed and dressed herself in her riding breeches and her two warmest jumpers, pulling a pair of fingerless mittens over her cold hands. It was only then that she noticed the hands on their alarm clock.
    ‘You’ve woken me up at seven in the morning, Poppy, you idiot,’ she shouted through the door, where splashes were punctuated by small shrieks.
    Still, now that she was up, she was glad to be early. Her mind was full of the photographs that she had taken yesterday. This portrait had to be something special. She grabbed the alarm clock – all those chemicals needed to be so carefully timed – and went down the back stairs, softly in order not to wake Great-Aunt Lizzie.
    The dairy pantry was startlingly cold, but it had one addition since the previous night. A heavy black curtain had been nailed to the outside frame of the door and now not a single chink of light would come in to spoil her film. She picked up two of the stoneware heaters and carried them into the kitchen. For the film’s sake as well as her own, that dairy needed to be heated up a little.
    Maud was there, piling coal into the enormous black range that did all of their cooking and made the kitchen the warmest room in the house. Thinking about what Rose had said the evening before, Daisy examined the scullery maid carefully as she explained about filling the bottles with boiling water. Was it possible that the girl was anything to do with the Derrington family? Her mother could have been a maid in the house, but who was her father? Not my own father, thought Daisy; that was certain. Michael Derrington had been very much in love with his own wife – he could still hardly speak of her without a break in his voice and sometimes Daisy would come into his library to find him with a small photograph of Mary Derrington in his hands and tears in his eyes. In any case he would probably have been out in India when Maud was conceived.
    But what about his younger brother? Robert Derrington was another subject that it was not safe to mention to their father. Robert had been the heir to the earldom as, after nine years of marriage, Mary had shown no signs of having a son.