Fell Purpose by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Read Free Book Online Page A

want Zellah to have everything, too. She deserves it. But Zellah’s not just a beauty. She got Pam’s looks, but she inherited my brains. She could do anything, be anything. I don’t want her to think that marriage to some rich idiot is her only goal.’
    ‘What school does she go to?’ Atherton slipped it in.
    ‘St Margaret’s. You know it?’
    It was the all-girls school at the far end of the Scrubs – next to where the fairground was presently set up. ‘I know it,’ Atherton said. ‘It has a good academic reputation.’
    ‘One of the best in the country,’ Wilding said. ‘It used to be a grammar school, but when the government abolished them it went private. But it’s also a church school – Anglo-Catholic. Fortunately we’re in the church’s catchment area. It’s one of the reasons I bought this house.’
    ‘You’re Anglo-Catholic?’
    ‘I am, and Pam was willing to be, in a good cause. We’ve brought Zellah up as one. I always had my eye on St Margaret’s for her because of the academic excellence, but you had to be regular communicants. We couldn’t have afforded the fees, but Zellah won a bursary, and it’s been wonderful for her. The standard of scholarship is as high as in any public school. The downside,’ his expression soured, ‘is the kind of girls she’s had to mix with. Empty-headed rich kids like Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson and Chloë Paulson, who poison her mind with trash and trivia – boys and make-up and pop music and all that rubbish.’
    ‘What school did Zellah go to?’ Connolly was asking upstairs.
    ‘St Margaret’s,’ Mrs Wilding said, and pulled a face. ‘All he cares about is exam results. He doesn’t give a damn about her getting on and meeting the right people. With her looks she could be anything – a model, an actress, anything. The sky’s the limit, but these days it all depends on having the right contacts. He just wants her to be a bookworm and ruin her eyes with reading and have no social life and end up a sour spinster with four cats. Fortunately, a lot of very nice girls go to St Margaret’s, so it’s sucks to him. Girls from well-off families, whose fathers can afford the fees,’ she added acidly. ‘Zellah’s clever, but she’s also got a bit of common sense. She wants to have fun, same as anyone else. She wants to be a normal girl, not a freak of nature.’
    ‘Does she have a boyfriend?’
    ‘ He won’t allow it,’ she said, making another face. ‘Says she’s too young. Well, it’s hard for her when she can’t go out whenever she wants to, like the others. Never on a school night, and at weekends it’s questions, questions, questions, and where are you going and what time will you be back? I mean, the poor girl’s watched like a criminal. And she couldn’t bring a boy back here. There was one boy, Mike Carmichael, brought her home on his motorbike once, very good-looking lad, and the ructions! Derek caught them kissing in the porch. Made them come in and – well, talk about the Spanish inquisition! Poor Zellah was mortified. And nothing the boy could say would satisfy Derek. They ended up having a row, and Zellah was forbidden to see him any more. She was in floods. Well, so was I. I mean, how’s she ever going to get married if he chases off every boy that looks at her?’
    ‘I suppose he’d be being protective,’ Connolly said.
    ‘Protective? He’s a . . .’ Her voice cut off as she remembered again.
    Connolly felt a pang of sympathy. It must be one of the worst things, the way you kept forgetting, and then remembering again. Every remembering must be like having it happen all over again for the first time.
    ‘It didn’t do her any good, did it?’ Mrs Wilding resumed bitterly. ‘Maybe if he’d let her go out more, she’d have been a bit more streetwise, known a bit more how to protect herself. What was she doing out there at that time of night? That’s what I want to know. She’d have known better than to go there