The Ribbon Weaver by Rosie Goodwin Read Free Book Online Page A

suddenly turned from saying something to her husband and glanced out of the window. What happened next shook Molly to her very core. As the woman’s eyes latched on to Amy, every ounce of colour seemed to drain from her face and she leaned forward to stare at the child more closely.
    At the same time the child looked up and for an instant their eyes locked. Amy flashed her a huge smile but then with a clatter of hooves on the cobblestones, the carriage pulled away.
    ‘Eeh, Gran, did you see that lovely lady?’ Amy said excitedly, her young imagination fired.
    Molly nodded as the child rambled on, ‘She were just like the princess in the fairy story Toby read to me last night, and did you see how she was dressed? By, her bonnet was lovely and that gown she was wearin’ must have been real velvet.’
    Amy sighed dreamily. To her, Josephine Forrester in her fine clothes was a world away from the rest of the women who were walking about in their drab dresses and dull shawls. But for some reason the joy had suddenly gone from the day for Molly, and tugging at the little girl’s hand, she said, ‘Come on, love, let’s get away home, me feet are aching.’
    ‘Aw, Gran – we haven’t done all our shopping yet, nor even been to the pie stall.’ Disappointment clouded her face but Molly was adamant. She was more than used to people looking at Amy, yet there was something in the way that Josephine Forrester had stared at her that had rung a warning bell in her mind.
    ‘Never mind the rest o’ the shopping, we’ll do that tomorrow,’ she said firmly.
    ‘All right, Gran,’ agreed the little girl, never one to sulk, and with her mind full of the beautiful lady she had just seen, she skipped merrily ahead longing to get home now so that she could tell Beatrice all about it.
    Molly had told Amy when she was very small that she was her gran. She said that she had taken her in when her mother died after her father had been killed in an accident, and Amy never queried why she had the same last name as her gran. Every day the old women prayed to God for forgiveness for the lies she had told, but just as Bessie had once predicted, Amy and anyone else who knew her never doubted her word. But for some reason today, for the very first time in a long while, Molly found herself thinking back to that fateful Christmas Eve, and the lies she had told lay heavy on her heart.
    Some time later, after throwing her coat across the back of a silk chaiselongue in the deep bay window at Forrester’s Folly, Josephine Forrester crossed to a bell-pull and tugged it. Within seconds, a maid in a frilly white apron appeared as if by magic.
    ‘Yes, ma’am?’ The girl bobbed her knee respectfully and Josephine said, ‘Tea, Lily, if you please.’
    ‘Yes, ma’am – straight away.’ The girl backed towards the door and scuttled away as if her life depended on it.
    ‘Is anything wrong, Mother? You look pale.’
    Looking across to her son, Adam, who was sitting on a settee with his wife, Josephine shook her head distractedly and replied, ‘No, dear, I’m quite all right. It’s just …’
    As her voice trailed away and she gazed from the window across the lush green lawns, her husband exchanged a worried glance with their son.
    ‘Your mother isn’t feeling too well, Adam, despite what she says. I was hoping a ride out in the carriage and a little fresh air would do her good, but unfortunately we had got no further than the hat factory in the town when she decided she wanted to come home.’
    Turning suddenly as if she hadn’t heard a single word he had said, Josephine demanded, ‘Samuel, you must have seen the child. She was …’ She struggled to find the right words. ‘She was standing outside the hat shop with an old woman. She smiled at me and it was almost like looking at Jessica when she was that age. She had the same red hair – the same dark eyes. She even had Jessica’s smile.’
    A deep frown creased Adam’s brow and Eugenie