Free Ellie Pride by Annie Groves Page A

disturbing.
    His landlady approached him as he walked into the house.
    ‘There’s a letter for you,’ she told him. ‘It came a couple of days back. Shall I fetch it?’
    Nodding, Gideon tried to conceal his impatience as he waited for her to return. He had made enquiries about a couple of shop premises, and maybe the letter was about one of them.
    When his landlady returned with a sealed envelope with his name written elegantly on it, Gideon resisted the temptation to tear it open straight away. She was watching him with open curiosity, but, sidestepping her, Gideon made for the stairs.
    Once inside his own room he ripped open the envelope, frowning a little as he read its contents.
    Disappointingly, it wasn’t about either of the shop premises he had visited. Instead, the letter declared that its writer was aware that he was a skilled cabinet-maker newly come to the town, and that she had some work she wished to discuss with him if he could make himself available at the address given on the letter when he was next in Preston.
    Ruefully Gideon reread it. Well, at least he had a potential offer of work, even if he did not have any premises, but he was warily conscious of the work he had done that had still not been paid for. This time he would behave a good deal less naïvely and trustingly when he visited his would-be customer.
    He studied the address. Winckley Square. Very posh. What exactly was it that Miss Mary Isherwood wanted him to make, he wondered.
    At least he would have some good news to tell Ellie. Whistling cheerfully under his breath, Gideon washed quickly and then put on fresh clothes. The last time he had been in Preston he had promised that he would take Ellie boating on the river. The thought of being with her made his heart lift in anticipation.
    ‘Oh, my poor head. What on earth is that dreadful noise?’
    Ellie sighed, trying not to betray either her impatience or her longing for Gideon’s promised arrival and her escape from the stuffy, claustrophobic atmosphere of her mother’s room and company.
    ‘It is the men who have come to install the new telephone,’ she replied as patiently as she could.
    Fretfully Lydia Pride pressed her hands to her temples. ‘I cannot understand why your father should have been so unthinking as to have them come round now when he knows that I am suffering from a bad headache.’
    Ellie said nothing. The truth was that her mother had been suffering from ‘a bad headache’ and an even worse temper on and off now for weeks, and Ellie couldn’t help fidgeting a little and glancing longingly towards the window through which the late spring sunshine was shining in intoxicating temptation.
    ‘You must go and tell them to stop, Ellie,’ Lydia announced. ‘I really cannot stand any more of this noise. And whilst you are downstairs, tell Cook to prepare me a tisane. It might soothe my poor aching head. No, you had better make it yourself, Ellie, I am sure that Cook did not use newly boiled water yesterday when she made me one. It had a distinctly sour taste, and she had used far too much ginger!’
    The taste of her mother’s tisane could not be any sourer than the air in this room, Ellie decided rebelliously, and certainly nowhere near as sour as her mother’s mood. Ellie scarcely recognised her gentle, laughing mother in the cross shrew she had turned into these last few weeks.
    ‘The men are almost finished,’ she tried to placate her.
    ‘But why could they not wait a little?’
    ‘Mother, you were the one who insisted that Father had a telephone installed as soon as he could, remember?’ Ellie couldn’t prevent herself from challenging. ‘You said that if all your sisters had telephones then you must have one too. You said that Father would find that it increased his business,’ Ellie pressed on, ignoring the protective little voice inside herself that was urging her to remember that her mother was not well, and that the pregnancy must be making her feel