The House by Princes Park Read Online Free PDF Page A

that’s how. I’ve another young lady coming at the end of May and I’ll probably be making it again.’
    ‘What do you think I should do?’ The idea of being free, able to do anything she wanted without the burden of a baby was tempting. But the thought of giving up Ruby was intolerable.
    ‘Don’t ask me, Olivia. I don’t even know what
I’d
do in the same position. It’s a decision for you and no one else to make.’
    In the early hours, Ruby, in her basket on the floor beside her mother’s bed, woke up and began to howl and still howled after she’d been fed and her nappy changed. Olivia was rubbing her back when Madge appeared in an emerald green dressing gown.
    ‘If you were in rooms, there’d be people hammering on the walls shouting for you to keep the baby quiet.’
    ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Olivia asked fretfully.
    ‘Nothing’s wrong. She’s behaving like a perfectly normal baby.’
    ‘But why is she crying, Madge?’
    ‘Maybe you haven’t brought up all her wind.’
    ‘She’s burped twice.’
    ‘She might want to burp three times.’
    Ruby fell asleep and woke up at six for another feed. Olivia fed her. There was something almost sensual about the sound the baby made as she sucked on her breast. A thrill of emotion swept through her, almost as intense as when she’d made love with Tom.
    ‘We’re starting on a big adventure soon, you and me,’she whispered. She could look for a job as a housekeeper, say she was a widow.
    Madge appeared again, much later, this time wearing a hat and coat. ‘I’m going out a minute, dearie. I won’t be long.’
    Olivia dozed, the baby in her arms. Madge came back and made a cup of tea. She’d hoped she would offer to look after Ruby while she had a proper sleep, but Madge made no such offer. Perhaps she was making a point instead – this was how it would be when she and Ruby were on their own with no one to help.
    Midday. She’d bathed her baby, marvelling again at how perfect she was, how beautiful. Ruby made cooing sounds and waved her arms. Olivia dried her, dressed her in the new white clothes Madge had bought, hugging her tightly. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I love you so much.’
    There was a knock on the front door, followed by Madge’s footsteps in the hall, then whispering that went on for a long time. Then the whispering stopped and someone came upstairs, not Madge, because the tread was too heavy. Her heart did a somersault when her father came into the room. Madge must have sent him the promised telegram.
    Olivia wasn’t sure if, for the briefest of seconds, she glimpsed a softness in his stony eyes when he looked down on his daughter nursing her tiny, dark-haired baby.
    Father and daughter stared at each other across the room, neither speaking. Olivia kept her eyes on his, willing the softness to return. If only she could talk to him, he might offer to support them, come and see them, bring her mother.
    Instead, her father strode across the room and tore the baby from her breast. Ruby whimpered and Olivia heard someone give a thin, high-pitched scream that seemed to go on and on and on as if a single note was being played on a violin.
    Then Madge seized her shoulders and shook her hard and the screaming stopped. ‘
RUBY!
’ Olivia screamed as her father and her baby vanished from the room.
    ‘Shush, dearie. It’s for the best. It’s what you asked of me, isn’t it?’
    But that was then, and this was now. She loved Ruby with all her heart, she wanted to keep her. Even so, Olivia made no attempt to leap out of bed and try to get her baby back. Afterwards, during the dark weeks that followed, she wondered, horrified, if in some secret, horribly selfish, part of her mind, she didn’t want Ruby after all, that she was relieved she’d been taken away.
    Now, though, she felt only desolation and despair.
    It was the second occasion the little Ford Eight had made the long journey from the south to the north of Wales. This time,