Читать книгу Winter Wedding - Бетти Нилс - Страница 7

EMILY SAW saw almost nothing of Professor Jurres- Romeijn during the next few days; beyond stopping one morning to tell her that Doctor Wright was progressing just as he should, he had nothing to say to her other than a good morning or a good evening when he came to the ward. For some reason she felt vaguely discontented and miserable, perhaps because William had caught Claire’s cold. She was worried about Mary too; she had had a guarded letter saying that they hoped to come home before very long, but it really held no news. She confided her worries to Louisa, who treated the matter more lightly. ‘Well, they must be safe enough,’ she pointed out, ‘otherwise Mary wouldn’t write, would she? I expect there’s some sort of delay— you know what it is—some form not filled in properly…’

Emily told herself that she was fussing unnecessarily and resolved not to worry about it. Instead she worried about money. They lived on a tight budget, getting tighter every day, and sooner or later she would have to face up to what she was going to do when Louisa left home. She had suggested tentatively that Louisa might postpone the modelling school for a month or two, to be met with such a shower of reproaches that she hadn’t said any more about it. She had a few savings, she would have to use them, every penny, to pay for a babyminder—if she could find one she could trust. Mary would pay her back when they came back to England, but it would leave her with the nasty feeling that there was nothing to fall back on if an emergency cropped up.

When she got home that evening Louisa met her with scarcely concealed excitement. ‘I say,’ she began before Emily could get her coat off, ‘I was out with Tracey’—Tracey was the girl across the road with whom she sometimes went out—’ well, we were just going to cross the road when this fab car pulled up to let us go over—a huge silver thing, Emily, you never saw anything like it—well, there was this terrific man sitting at the wheel…’ She broke off to exclaim: ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Emily?’ And not waiting for an answer: ‘And Tracey said that he was the visiting professor at the hospital and when I asked her where, she said Ear, Nose and Throat Wards—you never said a word…’