Sins

Upstairs alone in her bedroom, Janey sat on the edge of her bed with her knees knocking together, feeling grateful relief. Her period had started–nearly a week late. A week during which she’d hardly eaten or slept for fear that she might be pregnant. Every night she’d prayed for her period to start, and three days ago she’d actually been contemplating hurling herself from the top of the stairs in the hope that the resultant fall would result in ‘sorting things out’, as she’d heard that it could.

If that had failed her next attempt would have meant sitting in as hot a bath as she could stand for as long as she could bear it whilst drinking a bottle of gin. However, thankfully it had not come to that. And now, as she sat doubled over with the wonderfully familiar pains cramping her stomach, she felt like crying with joy and thankfulness.

Never ever again would she take such a risk. Never.

It had all seemed so exciting and grown up that very first night she had given in to Dan’s insistent urgings and had lost her virginity to him. At the time she had believed the experience to be the most beautiful thing, perfect in every way and a symbol of the love they shared. Only now Dan had left her for someone else, a girl who was an actress and who he had met at a casting session. Janey was heartbroken, but she hadn’t said so to anyone else, particularly not her elder sister, as Ella was bound to ask her if Dan had repaid her the fifty pounds she had inadvertently let slip she had loaned him a few days before the split. The last time they had had sex. Although Janey hated admitting it even to herself, in some ways it was a relief not to have to have sex any more. The excitement of the first time had soon given way to frustration and disappointment so that she had somehow always ended up feeling thoroughly miserable and something of a failure, especially when Dan had told her that all his previous girlfriends had told him what a wonderful lover he was. She, of course, had felt obliged by her pride to do the same. Perhaps, though, he had guessed that she didn’t feel as responsive and sexy as she had claimed? Perhaps that was in part why he had left her for someone else? Janey didn’t know.

The money she had loaned him hadn’t been repaid and Janey suspected that it never would be.

Now, of course, it was impossible for her to tell Ella or Rose about what she and Dan had done. Ella wouldn’t understand and would fuss and be shocked and disapproving and go on at her, and whilst she felt that Rose would be more sympathetic she could hardly tell Rose and not her own sister. It simply wouldn’t be fair.

At least she wasn’t pregnant. It would have been different had she been in Emerald’s shoes, of course, and married. Having a baby didn’t matter once you were married. In fact, it was expected. Janey knew that she would never get married now. How could she when her heart had been broken? Her sketchbook was full of small drawings of girls with big sad eyes wearing tiny little black dresses trimmed with purple rickrack braid and felt-leaved flowers. The colours of mourning. Perhaps she would make up a dress like that for herself. If she did, she could cut out a series of purple felt hearts that she could appliqué to the sleeves, or maybe even a broken heart. Janey reached for her sketchbook, her mind working overtime as her creative instinct took over.

She had had such plans–plans she had discussed endlessly with Dan. There was so much she wanted to do, like opening her own boutique. She and a couple of the other girls had talked about it but they had agreed that that ambition would have to wait until after they had graduated. In the meantime Janey had been hoping to get a Saturday job working at Bazaar. She’d heard on the grapevine that Mary Quant might be looking for extra sales staff over Christmas, but now that Amber had wrung a promise from them to go home for Christmas that might not be possible. Besides, what if Dan were to come into Bazaar with his new girl on his arm? Janey’s tears fell onto the sketchpad, smudging the line of the drawing she had just made.

‘Well, my dear, I have to say that I think you are very brave,’ Jeannie de la Salles told Emerald as they sat sipping tea in Claridge’s, dressed in winter furs to protect them from the cold wind whipping through the city streets. ‘I shouldn’t care to be in your situation myself.’

Emerald affected a heavy sigh. ‘My mother says that it is no different really than if I had been widowed, but it is different, knowing that Alessandro is alive but knowing that neither I nor our child can ever see him. I was so foolish, thinking that love would be enough.’

Emerald paused to judge the effect of her carefully prepared admission of ‘heartache’ on her friend. Jeannie was such a sentimental fool that it should be easy to convince her that Emerald had a right to claim the high moral ground for herself and Alessandro’s child. Emerald had no intention of allowing the fact that she was to have a child become a bar to her being accepted in society.

‘I should perhaps have agreed to convert, but darling Daddy was vehemently C of E and it would have felt like a betrayal of everything he stood for to have done so.’

‘Oh, no, you did right. I do so admire you, Emerald. I believe the Countess of Bexton is due to give birth around the same time as you. Her husband was at Eton with Peter. I must introduce you to her. She is the sweetest person, and frightfully well connected. Oh, and Newton was asking after you the other day.’

Emerald gave a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m afraid that all I can think about at the moment is how much I miss Alessandro and how much I wish…’ She placed her hand on her body and gave another sigh, whilst inwardly amusing herself, imagining Alessandro’s mother’s fury when she read in the gossip columns of Emerald’s own Madonna-like bravery as she proudly carried Alessandro’s child despite the pain he had caused her.

Once the brat was born, of course, she fully intended to return to the entertaining life she had been beginning to live before she had realised that she was pregnant. Her mother, who had been so keen to plead with her to have the child, could repay her by keeping it out of her way at Denham.

Well, at least she wasn’t going to have to go home to Denham for Christmas now because she had the perfect excuse for not doing so, Rose acknowledged. Secretly she hadn’t wanted to go, dreading the difference there was bound to be between this Christmas and all the wonderful Christmases before. However, she had been unable to come up with an adequate excuse for not doing so until today, when she had been told that because of the amount of work they’d got on and Mrs Russell’s insistence on having her extended revamp completed for her New Year party, they were all going to have to work late Christmas Eve and then be back at work again the day after Boxing Day.

Rose looked at her watch and started to walk a bit faster. She was supposed to be meeting Josh in the Golden Pheasant for an after work drink and if she didn’t hurry she’d be late.

‘Had to use the hatpin much lately?’ Josh asked her after he had ordered their drinks.

Rose began to deny it, only to stop and admit, ‘He just won’t accept that I’m not interested. I’ve even threatened to tell his wife but he just laughed and said that she wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Bastard,’ Josh castigated vehemently. ‘Have you thought of telling your boss?’

‘I don’t think there’d be any point. The Russells are just about his best customers and they’ve recommended him to several of their friends. Plus, I don’t know for sure but I don’t think that the Russells have paid anything yet for this new work they’ve commissioned, so Ivor won’t want to offend them. And besides…’

When she hesitated Josh demanded, ‘And besides what?’

‘Well, you know, Josh, people seem to think…that is to say, some of the other girls make certain remarks and I’m not sure that Ivor would believe that it isn’t something I’ve done that’s encouraged Mr Russell to think that I might be available. He’s said as much himself.’

She felt miserable and self-conscious even telling Josh, who was so open about the most personal of things himself that he had gradually taught her to be equally open with him.

‘I’ve never known a girl less likely to give a bloke a come-on than you,’ Josh responded. ‘The man’s a bad hat, Rose. No one gets as rich as he’s done without getting his hands dirty. He might have managed to keep himself on the right side of the law but I’ve heard that he does business with a hell of a lot of men who aren’t.’

‘Ella said that she’d heard rumours about Mrs Russell from some of the girls at Vogue. She was a model before they married. Her father was a South American businessman who lost all his money and then disappeared.’

Ella had told Rose that Mrs Russell had tried to persuade Vogue to do an article on her but that Ella’s boss had said that Vogue didn’t run articles on people who attached themselves to the fringes of society in an attempt to pretend they were something they were not.

As they drank their wine and exchanged news, Rose told Josh about having to work on Christmas Eve.

‘At the Russells’?’ he demanded.

Rose nodded.