Read Online Daughter of Mine by Anne Bennett - Free Book Online

to have a word. She’d not listen to us.’
    ‘She’ll probably not listen to me where Mike’s concerned.’
    ‘Well, at least you’ll have tried,’ Betty said. ‘Sorry, I won’t be able to keep you company if you’re set on sitting up for her, I’m jiggered.’
    ‘Me too,’ Pat agreed. ‘And me feet are burning.’
    ‘I don’t need company,’ Lizzie said. ‘You get to bed, you’ve been at it all day.’
    She lay quiet until the girls’ even breathing told her they were asleep and then she got softly out of bed. The clock at St Phillip’s Cathedral tower, opposite the hotel, said nearly eleven o’clock, and she decided toget herself ready for bed and then if she did drop off in the wait it didn’t matter.
    Before half-eleven she’d finished her ablutions and was undressed, her Sunday clothes put back in the wardrobe and her uniform for work in the morning hanging on the picture rail. She was in her nightdress and tucked up in bed, with just the lights on her side of the room lit, and was reading a book she’d bought from a stall in the market.
    Twice she got up to go to the toilet and looked at the clock, and twice she dropped to sleep, the book still in her hands, and was jerked awake. By half past one she decided Tressa could go hang herself for all she cared, she was too tired to wait any more and both of them were on earlies the following day. She put the book down, padded across the floor to put out the light, and climbed into bed, pulling the covers over her.
    The light flooding the room pulled her back from the edge of a wonderful dream and she opened her eyes wearily, blinking in the sudden brightness to see her cousin standing there. Her face was aglow, as if a light had been lit behind it, and there was an inane grin on her face. Betty’s words came back to her.
    ‘You’re drunk,’ she said.
    Tressa giggled. ‘Maybe,’ she replied. ‘We were celebrating.’
    The blood in Lizzie’s veins suddenly felt like ice. ‘Celebrating what?’
    ‘Getting engaged!’
    ‘Getting engaged!’ Lizzie repeated, relieved it wasn’t something worse.
    ‘No ring yet,’ Tressa said. ‘I mean, Mike asked meto marry him tonight, and I said “yes” of course, and then he said he must ask Mammy and Daddy and do the thing properly, but that won’t be a problem. I’ve told them about Mike every week and how wonderful he is.’
    ‘You’re so young to be engaged.’
    ‘No I’m not,’ Tressa protested. ‘I’ll be twenty in July. We’re not getting married yet awhile. We have to save quite a bit first, Mike said. But an engagement is a commitment.’
    ‘I’ll say,’ Lizzie agreed. She got out of bed and crossed to the window. ‘It’s turned two o’clock.’
    ‘Who cares,’ Tressa laughed, turning a pirouette in the room. ‘Mike bought a bottle of champagne.’
    ‘Put a sock in it, why don’t you,’ Pat’s weary voice said from the other side of the room, and Tressa, her face still wreathed in smiles, put her finger to her lips in the exaggerated manner of a drunk. ‘Ssh.’
    ‘Tressa, get to bed, we’ve work in the morning,’ Lizzie advised.
    Tressa tossed her head and went on, but in a whisper, ‘I care nothing about tomorrow. It’s another day. What I care about is Mike, I love him so much I ache. I want to be near him all day and lie curled around him every night.’
    ‘Tressa!’ Lizzie said in dread. ‘Tressa, you haven’t…?’
    ‘No, I haven’t,’ hissed Tressa. ‘But it’s hard, bloody hard. I won’t feel as scared when I have the ring on my finger.’
    ‘It’s not a wedding ring, Tressa,’ Lizzie reminded her.
    ‘I know that. The wedding ring will follow.’
    ‘Please, Tressa, be careful.’
    ‘Careful!’ Tressa said scornfully. ‘That’s for old bones, careful. I’m so happy I could die, and you tell me to be careful.’
    There was no use talking to her. She was drunk on love and champagne and that wasn’t a combination that would produce any sort