Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

The stairs tilt as she climbs them and the bedroom floor does not seem to be at quite the customary level. Undressing would be much too complicated. Despite her corset, despite the knobbly seams in her stockings and the suspender-buttons pressing into her thighs, she sleeps dreamlessly until Fanny opens the curtains and another bright day stabs her eyes.

Aunt Mary has sent breakfast in bed, and there is a parcel on the tray, something oddly shaped and heavy with a Manchester postmark.

‘She said you would need a tray, Miss Ally. She said to tell you not to stir until you’ve eaten it. And congratulations, Miss Ally.’

She sits up. A headache, naturally, and the smell of bacon is not appetising.

Fanny brushes something from Ally’s skirt, tangled around her legs. ‘Shall I help with your clothes? Perhaps something more comfortable for you?’

‘I will undress in a moment, thank you Fanny. I was somewhat indisposed last night.’

Fanny smiles. ‘Yes, Miss Ally. Your coffee.’

She always drinks tea, but Fanny is right, coffee will help. What did she say to Tom? She remembers holding him. When he was trying to leave. Fanny has just put the tray in her lap so she cannot curl back under the blankets. Were they all laughing at her?

‘Thank you, Fanny.’

The breakfast-tray is a good preventative for hysteria; one cannot writhe in embarrassment with a tray across one’s lap. At least he is going away. She will not have to see him again. And they have no acquaintance in common. Did he say that he would call before or after she disgraced herself? She can apologise, of course, but he will not forget. He is not, surely, a man to mock a woman’s affections, but even if he is not laughing at her, astonished by her forwardness, he may be dismayed that she has misunderstood his intentions. How could she think any man would want to marry a professional woman? She made her choice a long time ago. Drink your coffee, she thinks, and as she takes a sip she remembers Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s marriage, Dr. Mary Scharlieb who is a wife and a mother as well as an excellent surgeon. But Elizabeth Garrett Anderson does not take too much champagne and embrace reluctant gentlemen. Dr. Scharlieb’s husband, for that matter, is either dead or in India, she cannot remember which. What has she done? She must not expect him this morning. Whatever would have happened will not now. She must devote herself to finding work. She cannot expect to stay here indefinitely, contributing nothing. She is as much relieved as ashamed to find that it is already past nine o’ clock, three hours beyond her usual rising time. By the time she has eaten what she can, washed and dressed there will be no more than a few minutes to wait until she can be sure that he is not coming and concentrate on the pages of the British Medical Journal listing vacant situations, or perhaps visit Dr. Stratton who suggested that there might be a position of the sort that she seeks under Dr. Alan Haigh at the Birmingham Asylum. She would be the first woman mad-doctor, the first to take a special interest in nervous cases. She dresses in her old grey skirt and blouse, as if she is not expecting him, and bundles her hair into a lopsided knot, as if she believed that behaving as if he were coming would make him less likely to do so.

In the dining room, Aunt Mary is talking to the new cook, making lists of what is to be bought, cooked and eaten for the next seven days. Green peas, Aunt Mary says, so look out for a pair of nice plump ducks. She favours the butcher on Parthenon Street. And she will send out for Friday’s dessert; Stone and Son sell such excellent candied fruits that there is really little point in making them at home.

‘As long as you are sure he doesn’t colour them with copper and lead,’ says Ally. ‘Some of those grocers were very high-class.’

‘I’ve known Stone these twenty years, my dear. He would do nothing of the sort. And anyway, I am sure James would know if he did.’

Uncle James claims to be able to tell what plants the cows ate before producing the milk that made his butter.

‘Thank you for sending up my breakfast, Aunt Mary. I am sorry—I regret any impropriety yesterday evening.’

Aunt Mary glances at the new cook, as if every detail has not already been discussed in the kitchen. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Bridge. I will come down and finish this later.’ They wait; Mrs. Bridge crosses the rug, the bow of her white apron swinging over a firmly upholstered navy behind. ‘Nonsense, my dear. It was a pleasure to see you at ease for once. And I should say you are due months of breakfasts in bed after these last three years, but I daresay you will not take them.’

Ally shakes her head. ‘I must earn my bread, you know, now that I am qualified. I should betray all my friends if I adopted a life of ease.’

But that sounds like begging, or like a reproach to Aunt Mary’s own ease. ‘I beg your pardon, Aunt Mary, I did not mean anything. I am a little dazed still.’

Aunt Mary puts down her pen. ‘You must not fancy that you owe your friends any particular course of life. They did not, and did not intend to, buy your future in supporting your present. You have made all of us very proud, Ally. And now you must do what will make you happy and healthy and keep you that way. You have proved everything already. And I hope it goes without saying that you are warmly welcome to make your home here for as long as you like.’

The sky behind the lace curtains is grey, one of those days when the tentative progress of the English