Read Online The Fall and Rise of Lucy Charlton by Elizabeth Gill - Free Book Online Page B

made herself do it, thinking that perhaps she had gone outside on purpose to bring him to her – no, she had not. She went over and over it, though it wounded her every time. The lingering physical pain reminded her of another problem. What if she were to have a child?
    The panic was enough to send her back under the covers, to exhaust her so that she went to sleep again. She thought if she could just do this every time she woke up then everything would be all right.
    *
    She didn’t know how many days it was before her bodydemanded food again and when it wasn’t supplied she began to feel sick until she was sick every time she drank water. It was strange to discover that she didn’t want to die after all. If she lay there much longer, she reasoned, she would be too weak to get up and move.
    She felt herself going into some deep black place which made her try to claw her way free. If she did not get out of bed now, something told her, she never would – and although she had thought that was what she wanted, it turned out that it wasn’t. There was some force which would not let her lie there and then she felt the blood between her legs. At least she was not pregnant. How strange when it was something to be glad of; she had always thought that when it happened she would be married to a decent man and that somehow she would have fitted into her father’s business. It made her laugh now to have had such innocent dreams.
    She managed to stand up and found the clothes which she had left on the floor for however many days it had been since she had shut herself in here as though it were a tomb. She found her purse. There wasn’t much in it, but it wasn’t empty. She took up the key and unlocked the door. The corridor beyond would not stay still; it seemed endless. Other people flitted in and out and some of them spoke.
    One girl even said, ‘Are you all right, Miss Charlton?’
    Lucy almost remembered her name and smiled and said that she had had the flu but was much better. But the girl did not seem to care because she did not enquire any further. The corridor disappeared into the distance and Lucy followed it, trying to make sense of the place.
    Eventually she came outside. There was sunshine. Howodd. She screwed up her eyes against it. She moved into the shadows and from there walked around Palace Green and down into Saddler Street. She stepped back out into the sunshine in the marketplace, walking further over the cobbles of Silver Street until she reached the café from which wafted the smell of bacon.
    She sat down at the nearest table inside and ordered a pot of tea and a bacon sandwich. She ate swiftly because she was so hungry, drank all the tea, paid and got herself outside again. She staggered back to her room. She had not thought about how she felt until now, but she felt worse, hot and cold. Luckily she did not throw up the bacon sandwich and tea as she had begun to think she might. She managed to get the key into the lock and herself back into the room, falling thankfully on to the bed. After that she was oblivious to everything.
    Again her sleep was happy, full of dreams of being at home when everything was well. Her stomach was satisfied, and it was strange that something so basic could lift her mood. She had not known the difference it would make. She slept as she had done as a child, which made it all the more difficult when she awoke – because this time she wanted to get up.
    The room had become her cell; she felt like a nun or a monk. It was home to her now. She only went back to sleep after promising herself that the following day she would find some work. Her sensible side said that if she didn’t have work she would never graduate, that she would not go on to be a solicitor. Considering everything which had happened to her she had to manage that. The money which she had left from her post office savings account must last; she must eke it out until she graduated and then she must find better