Well, it was all out of their hands now but he hoped that at some stage the girl would write to them. At least then they would know that she was all right and being well taken care of. He had suffered all manner of guilt since she had left because he hadn’t insisted on having her mother’s address, but it had all happened so quickly and Miss Fox had – quite rightly – made it clear that it was Kitty’s decision to make. She had been there one day and gone for good the next, and Sunday hadn’t been the same since. He’d always known that Kitty was special to his wife and because things were still somewhat strained between them, the loss of Kitty seemed to have driven them even further apart.

With a sigh, he entered his office and tried his best to concentrate on the open ledger on his desk, but for some reason the figures kept blurring into one another and in the end he gave up and wandered out to the stables as he too kept an eye on the drive for the postman. He was feeling desperately unhappy because with each day that passed, the rift between him and his wife seemed to get wider.

Chapter Nineteen

Could Tom have known it, in London, Kitty was also looking out for the postman each morning and with every day that passed, her spirits sank a little lower. There had still been no reply to the letter that she had written to Sunday and Tom, and now she was beginning to think they might not bother writing to her at all. After all, she had been just one of a number of children and young people they had cared for, so perhaps their time and attention was centred on the ones who were still at Treetops?

Kitty had taken to going for little walks alone out of sheer boredom and was now getting to know the streets surrounding her mother’s house fairly well. She had also ventured into the West End a few times and never tired of all the hustle and bustle, now that she was becoming used to it. She particularly loved the old flower-sellers who stood on street corners with their colourful baskets of blooms, and would often take a small posy home to her mother – not that Ruby ever seemed particularly thrilled with them. The house was always full of expensive hot-house flowers, which no doubt made the ones she offered look rather dull in comparison. But she wouldn’t be going out today, not alone anyway. Max had informed her that after lunch he would be taking her to buy something special to wear for her debut performance at a club in Soho the following weekend. Kitty had expected to be launched somewhere like the Prince of Wales Theatre where her mother had sung recently, but as Max had explained, she had to start small and work her way up.