Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher Read Free Book Online Page A

shadowed by a pair of bushy eyebrows, and his thick hair, iron-grey, lay smooth on his head, relentlessly barbered and firmly controlled by Royal Yacht hair oil and a pair of bristly brushes.
    ‘Have a good day,’ Biddy told him.
    He looked at the empty table. ‘Where is everybody?’
    ‘Not down, yet.’
    ‘What time is their train?’
    ‘This afternoon. The
Riviera.
’
    ‘I don't think I can make it. Will you be able to take them?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘You'll say goodbye for me. Say goodbye to Judith.’
    ‘You'll miss her.’
    ‘I…’ An unemotional man — or, more accurately, a man who did not show his emotions — he searched for words. ‘I don't like to think of her being abandoned. Left on her own.’
    ‘She won't be on her own. Louise is there.’
    ‘She needs more than Louise is able to offer.’
    ‘I know. I've always thought the Dunbars were just about the dullest crew in the world. But there it is. Molly married into the family, and seems to have become absorbed by them. Not very much you and I can do about it.’
    He thought about this, standing gazing out of the window at the bleak, dark morning, and rattling the change in his trouser pocket.
    ‘You could always ask her here for a few days. Judith, I mean. During the holidays. Or would that be an awful bore for you?’
    ‘No, not at all. But I doubt if Molly would agree. She'd make some excuse about not wanting to offend Louise. She's dreadfully under Louise's thumb, you know. Louise treats her like a nitwit, but she never says boo.’
    ‘Well, let's be honest, she is a bit of a nitwit. But have a try, anyway.’
    ‘I'll suggest it.’
    He came to drop a kiss on the top of her unruly head. ‘See you this evening, then.’ He never came home in the middle of the day, preferring to lunch in the Ward room.
    ‘'Bye, darling.’
    He went. She was alone. She finished her coffee and went to pour another cup, then returned to the table to read her mother's letter. The writing was spidery and uncertain and looked like the hand of a very old lady.

     
My dear Biddy,
Just a line to thank you for the rug. Just the thing for cold evenings, and with this spell of weather my rheumatism has been playing up again. We had a quiet Christmas. Small congregations, and the organist had 'flu, so Mrs Fell had to fill in, and as you know, she's not very good. Father had a horrid skid in his car coming up the Woolscombe Road. The car is dented and he knocked his forehead on the windscreen. A nasty bruise. I had a card from poor Edith, her mother is failing
…
    Mother

     
    Too early in the day for such gloom. She laid the letter down and returned to her coffee, sitting with her elbows on the table and her long fingers wrapped around the welcome warmth of the cup. She thought of that sad old pair who were her parents and found time to marvel anew at the fact that they had actually performed unimaginable acts of sexual passion, so producing their two daughters, Biddy and Molly. But even more miraculous was the fact that these daughters somehow or other had managed to escape the Vicarage, to find men to marry, and to be shed forever of the stifling dullness and genteel poverty in which they had been brought up.
    For neither had been prepared for life. Neither had trained as a nurse, nor gone to University, nor learned how to type. Molly had longed for the stage, to be a dancer, a ballerina. At school, she had always been the star of the dancing class, and yearned to follow in the footsteps of Irina Baronova and Alicia Markova. But from the very beginning her feeble ambitions were thwarted by parental disapproval, by lack of money, and the Reverend Evans's unspoken conviction that going on the stage was tantamount to becoming a harlot. If Molly hadn't been invited to that tennis party with the Luscombes, and there met Bruce Dunbar, home on his first long leave from Colombo and searching desperately for a wife, heaven alone knew what might have happened of the poor