Charlie

Free Charlie by Lesley Pearse Page B

Book: Charlie by Lesley Pearse Read Free Book Online
Authors: Lesley Pearse
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary
mother’s knees to her beliefs about her parents. Her father was a crook, her mother was a bitter harridan who couldn’t even find a gentle way to break such terrible news to her daughter.
    How was she going to live with this? She had always been so certain about herself. Top of the class, captain of the netball team, the popular, pretty girl everyone invited to their birthday parties. Just last week she had confidently imagined that she could choose any career she wanted too.
    Sylvia had said, It will all come out soon . It was bad enough already with neighbours waylaying her, knowing the answers to their questions would be embroidered before being passed on again. Once the truth got out, who would want to know her? Certainly not her friends from school – their parents wouldn’t want their precious daughters mixing with a villain’s child. And what sort of a job could she get? Anything decent would be ruled out.
    ‘It was all very well saying you’d look after Mum,’ she whispered to herself. ‘But how? You can’t cook, you’ve never washed or ironed anything.’
    Despair overwhelmed her and she put her head down on her knees and sobbed.
    An hour or so later, Charlie was stiff and cold from sitting for so long in deep shade. She stood up and looked across the estuary again at ‘Windways’ and it seemed somehow symbolic that the sun was still blazing down there.
    ‘You’ve got to forget that,’ she whispered to herself. ‘You’ve got to find a new patch of sun for yourself.’
    As she walked back up the hill towards the ferry she mentally listed the things she didn’t have. There was no one to turn to, she had no qualifications and no real skills, and apart from that money hidden in the box, no money either.
    As the ferry moved out from the Dartmouth side over to Kingswear, and the sun struck her arms and face again, she listed the things she did have. A keen brain, youth, health, good looks and determination.
    ‘It’s enough,’ she murmured to herself as the ferry docked on the other side and she moved to walk off. ‘Dad made it all the way from a village in China to England with nothing more than that.’

Chapter Three
    ‘Any luck, dear?’ Mrs Melling asked from her position at the kitchen sink, as Charlie came in. It was the day after she’d visited her mother and she’d spent the whole day looking for a job.
    Charlie shook her head, she wanted to cry, but she was determined not to give into it. ‘I tried absolutely everywhere. The shops, hotels, pubs and guest-houses. No one wanted me.’
    ‘I expect they’ve already got fixed up with students,’ Mrs Melling said comfortingly, drying her hands on a tea towel. ‘Something will turn up though, it always does.’
    ‘It won’t, not here in Dartmouth,’ Charlie said with resignation. ‘There were jobs going, they just didn’t want me . I suppose they think I’ll run off with the takings or the bed linen.’
    Mrs Melling wanted to deny this, but she couldn’t. Gossip about Jin Weish was rife all over town, and even people who didn’t actually know him would immediately guess by Charlie’s appearance that she was his daughter.
    ‘It will blow over soon,’ she said instead. ‘Now, sit down and I’ll make you some tea. You must be worn out.’
    ‘I’ll go and change first,’ Charlie said. She was wearing her smartest outfit, a red mini-dress and matching jacket. She had been unbearably hot all day and her feet were killing her.
    Diana Melling sat down for a minute once Charlie had gone upstairs. She too was very disappointed Charlie hadn’t found a job today, she’d been banking on it, for she thought Sylvia Weish was taking advantage of her generous nature.
    The woman had never been a friend, in fact over the years Sylvia had given Diana the distinct impression she considered her to be on the same social level as Mrs Brown, the Weishes’ housekeeper. She might have crushed knees, but there was nothing to stop her asking for the

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