A New Dream Maggie Ford (fantasy books to read .TXT) 📖

promise of huge gains. Her father had been seduced in this way and had either been deeply unlucky or ill advised. Whatever the truth of it, the result had been the same: he had lost everything and ruined his family. She could only hope that Simon might be shrewder and more fortunate in his dealings than ever her father was.

‘There really isn’t any need to worry,’ Simon was saying happily. ‘We are doing fine. I’m doing well on the stock market and we might even need to consider expanding the business still more.’

‘I don’t want us to expand. I’d prefer us to be content as we are.’

But discontent was beginning to creep into her life. It began in earnest in the spring of 1927 when Stephanie came to see her, hanging on the arm of a well-dressed young man. Proudly she introduced him to her sister.

‘This is Edward John Tillington, Julia. Eddie. We’ve been seeing each other for nearly a year.’

She’s kept that quiet, thought Julia as she shook the young man’s hand, noting his firm grip and candid expression. Looking towards Stephanie as Simon took his turn to greet him, she caught sight of the flash of diamonds on her sister’s engagement finger.

‘Yes, we’re engaged,’ Stephanie blurted excitedly, noting the direction of Julia’s gaze.

‘Does Mummy know?’ Julia asked quietly.

‘No, not yet, but does it matter? We see so little of each other now, me with my flat and she in hers. But I will tell her. Eddie and I will be getting married this July and…’

‘But it’s already the middle of May,’ Julia cut in, taken by surprise by the announcement. ‘It’s a bit sudden, isn’t it? Why so quick?’

She saw a vague clouding of her sister’s previously excited expression and guessed, with mounting dismay, at the reason for the haste. At the same time she tried to tell herself she could be wrong, was unnecessarily jumping to conclusions.

Stephanie was obviously put out by her question, protesting that after nearly a year together it wasn’t a sudden decision, it was just that they hadn’t announced it earlier.

Unconvinced, and unable to forget the look on Stephanie’s face, Julia could only hope that she had misconstrued what she thought she had seen.

A few days later Stephanie popped into the fitting room of Julia’s boutique. It was mid morning and a most inconvenient time for a social visit, but Stephanie insisted on taking her aside and asking if they could have a chat upstairs in Julia’s apartment.

‘Well, I am a bit busy right now, Stephanie,’ she told her, but there was something about the girl’s eyes that arrested her attention. ‘Look,’ she said quickly, before turning back to her customer, ‘go on up and I’ll come as soon as I can. Give me half an hour. Make yourself a cup of tea.’

Stephanie’s demeanour had been that of someone with a need to confess and it took a huge effort of will for Julia to give her attention to her woman customer’s needs. Finally, the woman departed, satisfied and she hastened up to her flat.

‘I couldn’t help seeing the way you looked at me the other day, Julia, when I told you about our plans,’ Stephanie began as soon as she came into the room. ‘I knew what you were thinking.’

‘Then am I right?’ Julia asked bluntly, and was immediately dismayed by Stephanie’s nod and deep blush. Seconds later though Stephanie had become chirpy and confident again, clutching both Julia’s hands with hers.

‘It’s all right, Julia. Eddie is quite happy about it. The baby’s not due until around December and by that time we’ll be so well married no one will think of counting up, and if they do we’ll just say it was premature. And no one will suspect at the wedding because I shall be hardly four months gone and not showing all that much. It’s just that I had to come here and explain because you looked so surprised and worried.’

She seemed so self-assured, so happy, and left obviously feeling that all was well with her world. But Julia couldn’t help fearing history could easily repeat itself. Eddie seemed a likeable, upright and honest young man, not at all badly off for money, and from quite a good family. But then so, apparently, had been the other one.

She continued to feel uneasy until the happy couple finally stood at the altar in all their splendour. The bride’s mother, still unaware of her daughter’s condition, had given her tearful blessing. Neither of the families seemed concerned at the haste of the wedding preparations and in truth Stephanie looked as sylphlike as ever as she and Eddie stood together at the altar. If, in the months to come, people started to notice her growing pregnancy and put two and two together, Julia felt she couldn’t care less.

Yet she experienced a deep feeling of envy as the two went through their marriage vows. It should have been her and Simon standing there at the altar; the guests half filling the church should have been their guests. Simon should have been standing beside her as her husband-to-be, not giving her sister away in the absence of a father.

The feeling grew as she listened to the vicar’s intonations; Stephanie’s quiet responses, Edward’s firm and confident; the church filling with sound as the congregation rejoiced for the couple; the organ playing quietly while the couple retired to the vestry to sign the register; then swelling again to the echoing, resounding strains of Mendelssohn’s Bridal March as the congregation filed slowly out behind the newly-weds for the photographs.

Edward had bought his wife a lovely house in north London, not far from his parents. As the months went by and Stephanie started to show in earnest, Julia’s envy grew stronger, as did a strange sense of longing; a slow realization that what she was feeling was broodiness. She had experienced this at other times in the past – an oddly miserable, empty feeling – but never as strongly