Authors: Elizabeth Gill

Miss Appleby's Academy (38 page)

‘Miss Appleby sits at the top, but you can come and sit by me,’ Connie told him.

So he did. He didn’t speak all the way through the meal. It might have been because it was better than what he was used to, but Emma didn’t think so. She thought that most of the time he was not around at all, he had retreated to the city and hotel food.

Emma had been torturing herself recently that he wined and dined other women at tables which looked out over the river and that one of these days, probably in the summer – men never lingered long over their dead wives – he would turn up there with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and Connie would fall in love with her too and transfer her love that up to now had been Emma’s to somebody beautiful, somebody to take Isabel’s place, and all she would be left with would be the fast-fading memory of a single night.

In her polite moods she wished him well, but all the time her heart did horrible somersaults in her chest. She
remembered John Elstree and his family, watching them and their happiness. She didn’t know whether she could manage again, but she didn’t think she had any choice. This adventure had taken all the courage and spirit she had. She did not want to have to go away and start afresh.

After the midday meal it began to snow. Emma had promised the children and the dogs a walk in the afternoon, and as Mick made his excuses and tried to leave the dogs paraded round, turning into Dalmatians as the white hit the black. They danced in small circles in their joy and leaped up at Mick because they thought he was going to go with them. This was not going to happen, as he was wearing a good suit and city shoes.

Connie, never a child to be quiet when she could say something, tried to insist.

‘I will come back tomorrow, suitably attired,’ he said.

‘You always say that,’ she protested, and went back into the house in a huff. George followed her. The dogs were not so easily put off and ran about the garden, making long tracks in the snow.

‘It’s getting very bad,’ Emma said, and it was true: she could hardly see through the snow any longer. ‘You can’t walk back to the house in this.’

She couldn’t even offer him better footwear as Laurence had none and Jack came and went to his mother’s house. The snow became a blizzard within minutes. They went back inside.

Very soon it was a white-out, what in the north is known as a hap-up, and there was nothing to do but stay inside
and watch from the windows for a while. The snow went on and on even into the darkness. They had tea and sat over the fire. Laurence did not come back and they concluded that he was stuck at the Black Diamond for the night. It was no problem, Mick could have Laurence’s room, Emma assured him, they could put clean sheets on the bed. In fact, the last thing she wanted was to have him stay there. She would never sleep, knowing he was in the house and not with her, a stupid and unbearable situation.

In the late evening, when the children had gone to bed and Margaret had retreated upstairs and everyone was tired, Mick stood by the window with Emma. The snow had finally stopped and a moon had risen, full and silver, above the black sky. And there were stars.

‘So,’ he said, and she thought he was going to announce he was going to bed. He paused and then he went on, ‘I want to take Connie and George to Edinburgh soon, when the weather clears. I wondered if you—’ and then he stopped, said, ‘I wondered whether you—’ and then stopped again. ‘I wondered whether you might like to come with us.’

‘Oh,’ was all Emma could think to say.

‘I’m sure your sister and Jack would look after the other children if we went away for three or four days. I’m gradually finding people to see to the business, though it takes a lot of doing, but I shouldn’t be there all the time.’

Emma mumbled agreement at this, only glad he wasn’t looking at her burning face.

‘I have friends in the hotel business now,’ he said in the same level tone. ‘You could have a room to yourself. It isn’t expensive.’

Emma said nothing at this; she couldn’t think of a single thing.

‘Do you think you might?’ he ventured, and then looked at her.

‘Perhaps.’

‘What does perhaps mean?’

Emma got up, she couldn’t think.

‘Wouldn’t people talk, even if it’s – like that?’

‘Do you want to or not?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Do you?’ His voice had taken on an insistent note.

Emma wanted to run out of the room, but she felt as if he were barring the door, even though he hadn’t moved.

‘Do you really want to?’

She glared at him. He was smiling just a little.

‘Do you really want to, Emma?’

She felt irritated, frustrated, angry.

‘Oh stop it,’ she said. ‘You know very well how I feel about you and this isn’t fair.’

‘I don’t know anything of the kind. Tell me.’

‘I will not. It’s not respectable. Your wife has just died and—’

‘And?’

Emma burst into tears. She hadn’t cried in so long that now it had started she seemed to have no way of doing anything about it. She tried to stop and it was awful, all
soggy and snotty and disgusting, and the breathy sobs fell over one another and she could no longer contain them. He got up as though to help and she attempted to get away, but he got hold of her.

‘I want you to marry me. Will you consider that?’

Emma shook her head vehemently. ‘Certainly not,’ she said, and that was when the sobs eased and her whole body shuddered with relief. She found a handkerchief inside the cuff of her sleeve and blew her nose.

She went to open the door as though somehow she could get out of the situation, and the dogs woke up immediately – perhaps they thought she might let them go outside again. They skidded across the hall, dancing about in intricate dog fashion for the joy of being alive.

‘Your dogs are the very bane of my life,’ Emma said.

He went through and opened the outside door once again and they leapt outside. Since the snow was now very deep they pushed their faces into it as though they might make tunnels. Round and round they tore, weaving back and forth through the tracks they had made earlier which were already beginning to disappear.

‘It isn’t fair, you know,’ Mick said. ‘You have my house, my child and my dogs. You have to have me too. Please, Emma.’

‘Oh, very well then,’ Emma said, and they stood there together watching the two black Labradors playing in the garden in the snow on a winter’s night.

If you enjoyed
Miss Appleby’s Academy
, please try Elizabeth’s other novels in ebook:

THE SINGING WINDS

FAR FROM FATHER’S HOUSE

UNDER A CLOUD-SOFT SKY

THE ROAD TO BERRY EDGE

SNOW ANGELS

SHELTER FROM THE STORM

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