The Mystery of the Cupboard. Lynne Banks Reid

— well, unescorted, at a time when women didn’t go anywhere without a man — in her big hat and her pretty furs, laughing aloud as she used to laugh in our bedroom when I mocked her suitors, and she gave me confidence, more than the rest of the laughter.

      Because I knew that if I were not truly funny, she would not have laughed. She was my sister, but she wouldn’t pretend — she wanted me to give up and come home and be her poor little second-rate sister again. She wanted my talent to be for her alone.

      A debt was owed for those acts of loyalty and courage. How did you repay her, Jessica Charlotte?

      And that wasn’t all. When my Frederick was going to be born I had to go away to hide my shame, and I couldn’t work, and was destitute.

      It was then I came to this house for the first time. It was still a farmhouse then and the farmer’s wife was a relative of my young man. I will not name him… I have forgotten him! He wasn’t worthy to be remembered! But he made her take me in (it was the last thing he ever did for me) and Frederick was born here, here in this very room in this old house in the Hidden Valley — how rightly named! I was hiding at last, ashamed at last, I who had stood brazenly on a stage for men to look at, and sworn that I would never be ashamed. I was ashamed of my child, of my own son.

      Perhaps Fred felt it, even then, and that was why he never loved or forgave me.

      Maria, though she couldn’t come so far from home without arousing our parent’s suspicion, wrote to me secretly and sent me money. She understood by now about love, for she was in love with Matthew Darren. I was to meet him in time, and she would say, her face all a blaze of love: “Well? Can you mock him, can you turn me off him?” and I had to say “No”. He was above my mockery and my mimicry…

      I never saw a woman so fond as she was of him. But there was a long delay before they could be married because he was working in India, and our father would not allow her to go out there to that tropical climate that he said would kill her. The Old Queen was dead, and her son fat Edward too, before they were wed at last, and a year later Lottie was born.

      Little Lottie. My sweet, adorable niece. My little girl whom I wronged. There can be no forgiveness!

      I am crying… Let me rest. I can write no more for the present.

       5

       Family Stuff

      “Gilly.”

      “Oh, what?”

      “Sorry to interrupt. What are you doing anyway?”

      “Homework,” said Gillon virtuously.

      “You’re not - are you really?”

      “If I don’t I’m seriously stitched up. It’s last week’s. Pit Bull’ll tear me to pieces.”