An Ordinary Girl. Бетти Нилс

      An

      Ordinary Girl

      Betty Neels

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CHAPTER ONE

      PHILOMENA SELBY, the eldest of the Reverend Ambrose Selby’s five daughters, was hanging up sheets. It was a blustery March morning and since she was a small girl, nicely rounded but slight, she was having difficulty subduing their wild flapping. Finally she had them pegged in a tidy line, and she picked up the empty basket and went back into the house, where she stuffed another load into the washing machine and put the kettle on. A cup of coffee would be welcome. While she waited for it to boil she cut a slice of bread off the loaf on the table and ate it.

      She was a girl with no looks to speak of, but her face was redeemed from plainness by her eyes, large and brown, fringed by long lashes beneath delicately arched brows. Her hair, tangled by the wind, was brown too, straight and fine, tied back with a bit of ribbon with no thought of fashion. She shook it back now and got mugs and milk and sugar, and spooned instant coffee as her mother came into the kitchen.

      Mrs Selby was a middle-aged version of her daughter and the years had been kind to her. Her brown hair was streaked with silver-grey and worn in a bun—a style she had never altered since she had put her hair up as a seventeen-year-old girl. There were wrinkles and lines in her face, but the lines were laughter lines and the wrinkles didn’t matter at all.

      She accepted a mug of coffee and sat down at the table.

      ‘Mrs Frost called in with a bag of onions to thank your father for giving her Ned a lift the other day. If you’d pop down to Mrs Salter’s and get some braising steak from her deep-freeze we could have a casserole.’

      Philomena swallowed the last of her bread. ‘I’ll go now; the butcher will have come so there’ll be plenty to choose from.’

      ‘And some sausages, dear.’

      Philomena went out of the house by the back door, and down the side path which led directly onto the village street. When she reached the village green she joined the customers waiting to be served. She knew that she would have to wait for several minutes. Mrs Salter was the fount of all news in the village and passed it on readily while she weighed potatoes and cut cheese. Philomena whiled away the time peering into the deep-freeze cabinet, not so much interested in braising steak as she was in the enticing containers of ice cream and chocolate cakes.

      Her turn came, and with the steak and sausages wrapped in a not very tidy parcel she started off back home.

      The car which drew up beside her was silent—but then it would be; it was a Bentley—and she turned a rather startled face to the man who spoke to her across the girl sitting beside him.

      ‘We’re looking for Netherby House, but I believe that we are lost …’

      Philomena looked into the car, leaning on the window he had opened.

      ‘Well, yes, you are. Have you a map?’

      His companion thrust one at her and she opened it out, pausing to smile at the girl as she leaned further in.

      ‘Look, this is Nether Ditchling—here.’ She pointed with a small hand, reddened by the cold wind. ‘You need to go through the village as far as the crossroads—’ her finger moved on ‘—go right and go to Wisbury; that’s about three miles. There are crossroads at the end of the village. Go right, and after a mile you’ll see a lane signposted to Netherby House. Can you remember that?’ she asked anxiously.

      She looked at him then; he had a handsome, rather rugged face, close-cropped dark hair and blue eyes. They stared at each other for a moment, and she had the strange feeling that something had happened …

      ‘I shall remember,’ he told her, and smiled.

      Philomena gave her head a little shake. ‘People often get lost; it’s a bit rural.’ She withdrew her head and picked up her steak and sausages from the girl’s lap, where she had dumped them, the better to point the way on the map. She smiled as she did so and received a look of contempt which made her blush, suddenly aware that in this elegant girl’s eyes she was a nonentity.

      ‘So sorry. It’s only sausages and steak.’

      She didn’t hear the small sound which escaped the man’s lips and she stood back, hearing only his friendly thanks.

      Her mother was still in the kitchen, peeling carrots. ‘Philly, you were a long time …’

      ‘A car stopped on its way to Netherby House; they’d got lost. A Bentley. There was a girl, very pretty and dressed like a fashion magazine, and a man driving. Mother, why is it that sometimes one meets someone one has never met before and it seems as though one has known them for always?’

      Mrs Selby bent over the carrots. She said carefully, ‘I think it is something which happens often, but people don’t realise it. If they do then it is to be hoped that it may lead to happiness.’

      She glanced at Philly, who was unwrapping the sausages. ‘I wonder why they were going to Netherby House. Perhaps their eldest girl has got engaged—I did hear that it was likely.’

      Philly said, ‘Yes, perhaps that’s it. They weren’t married, but she had an outsize diamond ring …’

      Her mother rightly surmised that the Bentley and its occupants were still occupying her daughter’s thoughts. She said briskly, ‘Will you make your father a cup of coffee? If he’s finished writing his sermon he’ll want it.’

      So Philly went out of the kitchen, across the cold hall and along a passage to the back of the house, which was a mid-Victorian building considered suitable for a vicar of those days with a large family and several servants. The Reverend Selby had a large family, but no servants—except for Mrs Dash, who came twice a week to oblige—and the vicarage, imposing on the outside, was as inconvenient on the inside as it was possible to be.

      Philly skipped along, avoiding the worn parts of the linoleum laid down years ago by some former incumbent, and found her parent sitting at his desk, his sermon written. He was tall and thin, with grey hair getting scarce on top, but now, in his fifties, he was still a handsome man, with good looks which had been passed on to his four younger girls. Philly was the only one like her mother—something which he frequently told her made him very happy. ‘Your mother is a beautiful woman,’ he would tell her, ‘and you are just like she was at your age.’

      They were words which comforted Philly when she examined her face in the mirror and wished for blue eyes and the golden hair which framed her sisters’ pretty faces. But she was never downcast for long; she was content with her lot: helping her mother run the house, helping with the Sunday School, giving a hand at the various social functions in the village. She hoped that one day she would meet a man who would want to marry her, but her days were too busy for her to spend time daydreaming about that.

      The driver of the Bentley, following Philomena’s instructions, drove out of the village towards the crossroads, listening to his companion’s indignant voice. ‘Really—that girl. Dumping her shopping in my lap like that.’ She shuddered. ‘Sausages and heaven knows what else …’

      ‘Steak.’ He sounded amused.

      ‘And if that’s typical of a girl living in one of these godforsaken villages—frightful clothes and so plain—then the less we leave London the better. And did you see her hands? Red, and no nail polish. Housework hands.’

      ‘Small, but pretty, none the less, and she had beautiful eyes.’

      He glanced sideways at the perfect profile. ‘You’re very uncharitable, Sybil. Ah, here are the crossroads. Netherby is only a mile ahead of us.’

      ‘I never wanted to come. I hate engagement parties …’

      ‘I