Free Lakeland Lily by Freda Lightfoot

concentrated on pouring fresh tea, handing out delicacies from the many-tiered cake stand.
    Lily had never seen so much food in all her life. Cucumber sandwiches, as expected. Thinly sliced bread and butter with tiny dishes of strawberry jam. Scones and almond fingers, and various pastries filled with cream, which disappeared in one bite and simply melted in the mouth.
    ‘What do you think of our cream cakes, Miss Thorpe, since Bertie avows you an expert on the subject?’
    To her very great annoyance, Lily felt her cheeks fire up, tried to swallow a piece of flaky pastry which caught in her throat, and began to cough.
    ‘Dear me. Pray use your napkin, Miss Thorpe, if you are about to spit and splutter. We never use a spittoon in this house.’
    Bertie stepped eagerly forward. ‘Leave her be, Mama. Gone the wrong way, has it? Shall I get you some water, Lily?’
    ‘No, no. I’m all right.’
    ‘You live in The Cobbles, if I recall correctly?’ Margot persisted.
    ‘Yes.’ Furious with herself, Lily would have given anything to say otherwise.
    ‘Yet you are accustomed to eating such treats every day? You surprise me. I wouldn’t have thought they went with cabbage soup.’
    Lily flinched, wishing in that instant she had never ventured into this dreadful woman’s fancy drawing room. But however much she might long to say that yes, her mother made cream fancies every day and they always ate at least three each for tea, she couldn’t - nay, wouldn’t - pretend to be what she wasn’t. That would be denying her heritage. Yet not for the world did she wish to admit the fact that this was the first time she’d ever tasted one in her life. Before she’d found some way around her dilemma, Bertie, bless his heart, spoke up for her.
    ‘Stop your bullying, old thing. I told you I’d brought Lily here for a treat. Now let her enjoy her tea in peace.’
    Margot smiled with the satisfaction of a woman who knows she has found her mark. ‘Of course. And she must indeed enjoy it. We have so much it really doesn’t signify. Half of it will be thrown away as it is. When the servants have had their pick, that is.’ Her laughter trilled out and the assembled company tried a few stiff smiles. Then, swivelling in her seat, she addressed Lily more directly.
    ‘You must send your mother round with a basket tomorrow, dear, and we’ll find a few leftovers for her.’
     
    Despite this inauspicious start to their friendship, and the huge gap in their respective lifestyles, Bertie and Lily continued to meet, albeit in secret.
    As promised, he did take a flight in the Water Hen, coached by the pilot, a Mr Stanley Adams. The trip took place during the day while Lily was working at the fish market. But she could hear the buzz of the plane high in the sky and once caught a glimpse of it as it soared over the lake.
    ‘Against the rules of nature,’ was Hannah’s opinion. ‘What it must cost to fly that thing for one afternoon would keep us for month, I don’t doubt. Pity the rich haven’t summat better to spend their money on.’
    Every penny her mother earned, including most of Lily’s wages, went into buying food the likes of which Mrs Clermont-Read didn’t even know existed. Stale bread at least a day old, bruised fruit and vegetables, cracked eggs, and sometimes on a Sunday, as a change from tatie pot or the hated fish, they would have bacon bits bought cheap at the Saturday market.
    So Lily made no mention to her mother of her budding friendship with the young man now soaring over Carreckwater in a crazy machine.
    But she did manage to sneak off from home at every opportunity, leaving more of the household chores to her sisters. Lily wasn’t quite sure where all of this was leading, or even what her aims were in striking up this friendship with Bertie Clermont-Read, but fate had brought him into her life and she was eager to let their friendship continue, if only to see what came of it.
    He took her out and about with