Chapters (52)
- Cover
- Margaret Dickinson
- Dedication page
- Contents
- Part One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Part Two
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Sow the Seed
- Note
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- Copyright page
‘What do you know about it?’ She rounded on him. ‘You’ve always had a loving, close family. A mother, a father and a sister. You’re spoilt with family! I was nothing but a skivvy to the lot of them and never allowed to forget the circumstances of my birth. Never! “Me sister’s bastard!” – that’s what me aunt used to call me.’ She turned then on Kate. ‘That’s why I’m bitter. I’m bitter for what you’re doing to an unborn mite with no choice in the matter. It’s not the poor bairn I’m against, it’s you for causing it. You should have known better.’
Jonathan was staring at Esther.
‘And what’s up with you?’ She rounded on him.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. You’ve just given me what could be a very good idea,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘What?’
‘Ah – now that, for the moment, is my secret.’
He got up from the kitchen table and went through into the living room. They heard him open his bureau in the corner of the room, heard the rustle of paper and the scrape of a chair, and then there was silence. Intrigued, Kate peeped through the doorway into the room.
His head bent, her stepfather was seated at the table, busily writing a letter.
Thirty-Nine
A week after her return to camp, during which she had expected that each day she might be summonsed to Ma’am’s office to be confronted with the words, ‘You’re pregnant, Hilton, aren’t you?’, Kate received a letter from her stepfather, containing one from his sister Peggy, in Lincoln.
In his letter, Jonathan merely said, ‘I think, my dear, that the enclosed letter will be the answer for you, at least for the time being . . .’
Kate unfolded it and began to read.
‘My dear Jonathan, Of course Kate can come back to us. We should love to have her – it will be like old times – and she would be company for mother, who although still lively in her mind, is increasingly confined to the house and, indeed, to her sofa.’ Did Peggy really understand what she was offering, Kate wondered. Would Mrs Godfrey be so happy to have her if she knew she was going to be an unmarried mother? But as she read on it became clear that Peggy and her mother understood the situation exactly.