Wishing Water Read Online Free PDF

fault of ours.’  
    Meg dropped her chin and drew in a long, shuddering breath, steadying herself, fighting the urge to tear this unfeeling, cruel woman to shreds. How dare she deny Lissa’s parentage? So concerned was she with her efforts that she did not notice how the colour drained away from Lissa’s cheeks. She only heard a stifled moan and then the air seemed to be filled with a piercing scream, bringing both women whirling.
    ‘Look what you’ve done. Both of you,’ Lissa screamed, terror in her voice. ‘You’ve killed me. I’m dying. Meg, I’m dying.’  
    The blood of womanhood was running down the young girl’s legs, soaking into the bright white ankle socks and on to the valuable Persian rug.
    ‘Dear Lord,’ cried Meg, horrified.
    ‘As I said, Mrs O’Cleary. Discipline and control. Entirely lacking, you see.’  
     
    Meg sat on the edge of the big bed she shared with Tam, wringing her hands in anguish. ‘I should have told her long since. I’ve failed her, leaving it so late. She was scared out of her wits, poor lamb. I should have explained all about Jack too, then she mightn’t have felt the need to shock with that dreadful word.’
    ‘You’ve told her now?’
    ‘Yes, everything.’
    Tam slipped an arm about her to pull her close. ‘Don’t worry over it. You wouldn’t be the Meg we all know and love if you were mooning about the house fussing over us all the time.’
    ‘Even so, it was a mistake. That dreadful woman. Discipline and control, my Aunt Fanny!’ Meg’s hands clenched tight, as if she would have punched Rosemary Ellis on the nose were she present. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things she said to me, what she accused me of.’
    Tam stroked the golden curls away and tucked them behind her ears, kissing the lobes as he did so. ‘Haven’t you told me, sweetheart, a dozen times already? You mustn’t let the woman get to you. She is a vicious, bad-mouthed old besom and not to be listened to. I forbid you to take Lissa to see her again.’
    Meg turned to gaze into his moss green eyes, startled for a moment by the unusual vehemence in his lilting voice. ‘Forbid?’
    ‘Why should our little girl be subjected to such an attack? Tis not her fault if she was born on the wrong side of the blanket, now is it? So keep her away in future. We don’t need any of them.’
     
    For Lissa it was a turning point, of sorts, for the rejection cut deep. There were no more letters to Canada, no more wishing for her mother to come. She had Meg and Tam who she loved to bits. She told herself she needed no one else, certainly not a mother who didn’t love her. But she still worried about whether she was really wanted, ached to know who she really was and where she truly belonged.
    The following months and years weren’t easy, and there came a particularly difficult period when Meg fell pregnant. To her shame, the thought of a baby in the house appalled her. It would take all Meg’s time and attention. It seemed to prove how unimportant she was, for why should Meg want a baby at all when she’d always claimed Lissa was everything to her?
    Her fears seemed to be justified as Meg withdrew into a world of her own, rarely hearing when Lissa spoke to her so that she had to say everything twice.
    Mealtimes were changed to suit Meg’s delicate stomach. She went to bed early instead of sitting chatting by the fire, leaving Lissa to make her own supper. Even iron her own clothes. It was quite incredible how life changed. To Lissa’s increasing dismay Meg became perfectly obsessed with making plans for the baby, took to having weird food fancies, morning sickness and back ache. And Tam’s loving preoccupation with her grated every bit as much.
    There seemed nothing else for it but to play the martyr or how would they ever remember she lived here too? If they saw she was unhappy, Lissa decided, then they would pay her proper attention. So she refused to speak to either of them, took to spending hours