‘Help with what, Diana?’ Her mother was looking at the display while holding a single jonquil and deciding where it belonged.
‘With the baby. I don’t have anything for it besides what you gave me from upstairs.’
Her mother sighed. ‘I have spoken to him and I will again. Don’t worry about it – babies don’t need much when you bring them home. My great-grandmother slept in a dresser drawer.’
Diana had worried thatshewas going to have to sleep in a dresser drawer soon if her father kept ignoring her, but for some reason she had faith in her mother.
‘Shall I help you take these up to the church before the service?’ she asked her mother who had finally found a home for the jonquil.
‘Father thinks it best you don’t come to church, dear,’ she said. ‘It will be too tiring. You need to rest.’
Diana narrowed her eyes at her mother. ‘Is it because I’m pregnant and he doesn’t want me to shame the family name in the village?’
‘No, dear,’ said her mother, but Diana knew it was a lie. Diana had been respectful of her father’s wishes to remain out of sight for the most part. Aside from her trips to Newcastle to the doctor’s and the occasional lunch with Helen, she hadn’t seen anyone she knew since her belly started showing.
But this upset her.
‘Does he plan on hiding the baby when I bring it home?’ she challenged.
‘No, dear, I think he’s just concerned you’re doing too much.’
Diana snorted in an unladylike way. ‘That’s a lie and you know it, Mother.’
The next morning, Diana heard her father’s car start and she looked out of her window. She saw some of the staff carefully laying down the flowers in the back seat of the Jaguar, while her mother, dressed in her Easter finery, and her father in a suit got into the car and headed to the church.
Diana dressed in her best pregnancy dress, a pale-yellow smock with pretty lace cuffs and collar and wore the only shoes that fit her swollen feet – a pair of white sandals with a slight kitten heel. She pulled her blonde hair back into a ponytail and tied a yellow ribbon in it and put on a slick of pink lipstick that Helen had given her for her birthday.
Diana went downstairs and to her car. She got inside it and adjusted the seat back to accommodate her baby bump. For years Diana had tried to avoid Easter Sunday service and her parents would never let her, and now she wasn’t allowed to go, there was nowhere else she wanted to be. She knew why they wanted her to stay home and she wasn’t having it. She would go to church and show everyone her belly, then there would be no more hiding or excuses from her parents. The moment she revealed her baby was real, then her father could stop living in a world that he thought he controlled.
She opened her bag to take out her keys but they were not inside. She emptied her purse on the seat to check but came up empty-handed.
She got out of the car and went up to her room again to check. Her feet were already hurting in the sandals and she wished she could wear her slip-on shoes that Mother said were too low class to leave the house in.
Diana hunted through her room, even getting on all fours to look under the bed, which took some effort to do and to get up from.
She was sure she had put them back into her handbag the day before when she had taken a little drive along the cliffs for something to do. She’d returned before dinner and had left her handbag on the hallstand, which her mother told her off for, and told her she had put it in her bedroom.
Had her mother taken the keys?
Diana sat on her bed in defeat and for the first time since she had told her parents she was pregnant, she felt fearful of what was to come.
23
Amanda
Amanda clomped up the stairs to the attic of the house.
Carole had prescribed no gardening or being out in the heat for a week, which was frustrating, but Carole was more than intimidating when she was in doctor mode.
The last two days had been spent sleeping, doing some drawing and having lunch at Diana’s house. Amanda didn’t tell her what had happened and asked Simon, Janet and Carole to keep it to themselves also. Diana was old and she didn’t need to worry about Amanda.
But today she was grumpy in her boredom until she remembered that Diana had said the attic was filled with old clothes that she could have.
Lainie had insisted she send photos of anything cool when she had told her about it, so Amanda went upstairs with her phone to document the items.
The attic was at the very top of the house, up a tiny staircase that was just larger than a ladder.
Thankfully the light worked when Amanda turned it on and she looked at the mess of suitcases, wooden tea chests, boxes, and old furniture.
