Two for Sorrow by Nicola Upson Read Free Book Online

regulations than the legislators were to make them. Not that she had anything to hide: when she placed her advertisements in the weekly journals, offering moderate terms, skilled nursing and every care taken, she was only telling the truth. More than twenty women had passed through her doors in the lasteighteen months, and she would be surprised to hear a complaint from any of them; they travelled from all over the country for the benefit of her discretion, and they wouldn’t find better.
    Outside, she heard the iron gate close but the footsteps coming up the path—although familiar—were not the ones she was waiting for. The front door slammed and her husband called her name. ‘In here, Jacob,’ she answered brightly, rocking the child gently as she began to cry, but her smile of welcome faded as she saw his expression change. He looked long and hard at the baby and then at her, and began to put his coat back on. ‘Jacob? Where are you going? Don’t be silly, love—you’ve only just come in. Stay with me now, Jacob— please !’
    â€˜How many times do I have to tell you?’ he asked, the suppressed anger in his tone making his words seem far more threatening than if he had shouted them at the top of his voice. ‘I don’t want that woman in my house when I’m here, and I won’t have anything to do with what you and her get up to. I’ll say this for the last time, Amelia—whatever it is, get it over and done with by the time I get home. Do you understand me?’ For a moment, she thought he was going to strike her and she lifted her hand to shield the baby, but he turned and left without another word.
    â€˜So you don’t want anything to do with it?’ she shouted after him. ‘You’re happy enough to spend my money, though, aren’t you? And to call this house yours when it suits you, and lay down your laws. The only thing you can’t seem to do is spend any time with your wife and daughter.’ But she was talking to an empty hallway. The front door slammed behind him, and the baby’s cries grew louder. ‘There, there,’ she said softly, but her attention was no longer on the child: she was thinkingabout Jacob, and how he’d be spending the rest of the night in the Joiner’s Arms, washing away his self-pity. Was that really what she was doing this for? So Jacob could afford to drink himself to death and risk everything she’d worked for with one slurred indiscretion? If only the wretched child would stop crying, she thought impatiently, hugging the tiny body closer to her. And where the devil was Walters? This was all her fault.
    She went back into the sitting room and drew aside the curtain in the large bay window, talking absent-mindedly to the child all the time. Peering out into the darkness, she saw Walters at the bottom of the street, sauntering along as though she didn’t have a care in the world. And perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps her reliance on drink or on drugs—Amelia didn’t know which and didn’t care to find out—had created a detachment from life which made her ideal for a particular sort of work. Theirs was a strange, twisted relationship, she thought, as she watched the older woman’s slow progress along the pavement. They were bonded by their work and had to rely on some sort of trust, but with that came a resentment that neither could flourish without the other. In her darker moments, distanced from her husband and fearful for her child, Amelia felt trapped by circumstances from which she could see no escape. While she knew that the trap was of her own making, she hated Walters, both as an unwelcome reminder of her situation and as a scapegoat for it. It did not require a great deal of understanding to know that the feeling was mutual.
    She opened the door before Walters had a chance to ring the bell, and stood aside to let her into the hallway. ‘Where the