A New Dream by Maggie Ford (world of reading .TXT) 📕

learn it this way from someone else! And he was in such fear for her, having to go through a Caesarean operation!’

‘And how are they?’ Simon queried.

‘The baby seems to be fine.’

‘And Stephanie?’

‘I don’t know. She’s still sleeping off the anaesthetic.’ Julia bit at her lower lip, uncertain what would happen now. ‘I wish we could find Edward, explain to him. What if he can’t forgive her?’ She grew agitated again. ‘What’s going to happen to their marriage? She was so happy.’

Simon sighed and held her to him to stop her frantic outpouring. ‘First we’ll see if we can find him. He may have gone to his parents’ house.’

‘But I don’t know where they live.’

‘We’ll telephone his office. They’ll know.’

Julia clung to him, wondering what she would do if ever she lost him. Such a thing was unthinkable but nevertheless, seeing Stephanie’s plight, she couldn’t help wondering all the same.

Julia sat with the baby in her arms. Instinctively rocking back and forth as if she were the child’s mother she let her mind wander over these past six weeks since the baby’s birth, musing upon how a chain of circumstances could alter lives and send them along a totally different route, changing them completely.

Had her father not died, had their lives continued along the lines he had set, Stephanie would have been a different person from the one she now was. She would never have worked for a living behind a department store counter, spending her evenings dancing, looking for young men, looking for a good time. She would certainly not have got involved with a rogue who had got her in the family way, leaving as soon as he discovered her condition. She wouldn’t be in this mess now.

It was ironic, Julia thought with a bitter smile as she gazed down at the baby in her arms. All her hard work trying to keep the family going after losing Father had been a waste of time. Her mother had become a miserable woman, allowing herself to age before her time, while Stephanie had got herself into this mess. Ginny had grown into a beautiful fashion model, parading herself before those chasing fashion – a lovely, kind-hearted young girl, but what sort of man would her lifestyle bring her into contact with? The thought was frightening and she vowed to try and guide Ginny, at least, away from some of the pitfalls Stephanie had encountered. She had no worries about James though. Of all of them, he had changed least, except to grow more staid, more like his father every day, a little pompous and remote.

The baby had begun to whimper, and then squirm. From gazing at the little face, lost in thought, Julia looked up at the baby’s mother.

‘Perhaps you had best have her now, Stephanie.’ Even so she felt a slight reluctance to hand the child over; it felt so right to be holding her as if she were her own. She experienced a tiny pang of loss as Stephanie lifted the baby from her arms, the small weight gone, leaving Julia with a strange sensation of emptiness.

‘She probably needs changing,’ Stephanie said in a subdued voice.

It was amazing how she had altered over the past couple of years. Gone was the overconfident flapper she had been before picking up with that awful Jimmy, losing the baby and going through all her troubles. Meeting Edward had been her salvation. But now he too appeared to have become part of her past, her happiness dashed again as she was left to bring up her baby alone.

Julia had tried to talk to Edward, but it had been an impossible task to make him see that his wife, through no fault of her own, had fallen foul of a selfish brute whom she thought had loved her, who had spoken of engagement and tricked her into giving herself to him.

She had tried so hard to make him see that it had been he himself who had lifted Stephanie out of the mire she had made for herself. She’d striven to point out that Stephanie had tried to put the sad episode behind her; that she had never again referred to her desolation after that stillbirth, so why should she want to speak of it to him? Julia had asked him to put himself in Stephanie’s shoes – prior to marrying her, would he have admitted to such a fall from grace if he thought it would wreck their lives together? In a way, meeting him had led to the only happiness she’d known. Why would she want to spoil it?

She had pleaded with him to forgive for the sake of his child as well as his wife, pointing out the harm his attitude could do, the effect it could have on his daughter if she had to grow up torn between separate parents.

During those six weeks since the birth and the separation from Edward Stephanie had been so ill that Julia had had to take time from her work to help with little Violet Julia, whom Stephanie had named after her sister.

On this particular Sunday morning a knock on their apartment door forced Simon up from lounging on the settee to answer it. He came back to the lounge grinning, followed by the broad-shouldered figure of Stephanie’s husband.

‘It’s Edward,’ he announced unnecessarily as Stephanie leaped up the moment she saw him.

Julia offered up a silent prayer of thanks that all her efforts had been rewarded, and then she and Simon quickly retired to the living room, taking little Violet with them, to give the couple some privacy.

As she picked up the child, Julia again experienced that discomforting sense of broodiness. Even more discomforting was the fact that Simon didn’t seem in the least interested in the child. The question came to her, would he be interested if it were his own child – and would she ever be given the opportunity to find out?

When finally the two people called them