Free Still Waters by Katie Flynn

the door and Marianne looked almost furtively through the doorway, then heaved a sigh of relief. She did not know what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t what she saw. A beautiful room with low windows set into the thick old walls overlooking the land and the woods beyond, a very large double bed spread with a warm, gold-coloured counterpane and curtains, a dressing-table and matching wardrobe in some very pale wood . . .
    ‘Like it?’ Peter sounded almost embarrassed, Marianne thought, as she turned to smile up at him.
    ‘I love it! It’s a beautiful room and tastefully furnished, too. I love the colour scheme, the view . . . everything, in fact.’
    Peter walked into the room. He sat down on the bed and patted the counterpane beside him, inviting Marianne to follow suit. She came, and perched. He put an arm round her.
    ‘What about this bed? Cosy, would you say?’
    ‘I can’t judge without trying it,’ Marianne said demurely. ‘Oh, Peter . . . no, Peter! What if . . .’
    ‘We’re alone. We’re going to get married.’ He put a hand around the nape of her neck, caressing the soft skin with a gentle, hypnotic movement. ‘You’re sure you can cope with a little girl of eight, as well as with a new baby?’
    Honesty, as well as caution, forbade over-confidence here. ‘I think I can,’ Marianne said. ‘I hope I can. But no one can foretell the future, Peter. Tess may not like me.’
    ‘Liking has to be earned,’ Peter said. ‘Just as love has to be. She’s a good, sensible girl, my Tess; she won’t dislike you on sight, but she’ll stand back a little, give you space to prove yourself. All you have to do is show her you’re prepared to be a proper mother to her.’
    ‘I’ll try,’ Marianne said earnestly. ‘I really will try, Peter.’
    ‘Good. Then in that case, why don’t we have a kiss and a cuddle, just to show willing?’
    Marianne left the house late that evening. She was extremely happy and very relieved, and she sang little French songs as she cycled along the flat country roads. She was going to be Mrs Peter Delamere, she was going to be very good indeed to her little stepdaughter, and she would be the best mother in the world to her new baby when it was born. Already she loved the house, its garden, the location. She would make changes, of course she would, starting with a bathroom. She would divide the room in two, so that the lavatory would be separate, paper the walls with suitable paper, enjoy buying the various fixtures and fittings. And then there was the kitchen. Shining cream paintwork would help and lots more working surfaces and an Aga instead of the old range. Then she would get some bright linoleum for the floor and light-coloured curtains for the windows. She had no intention of trying to run a house from a kitchen which resembled something from the dark ages!
    It wasn’t until she was back in Norwich, in her digs on Clarence Road overlooking the marshalling yard, that something occurred to Marianne. Peter had not once said he loved her, in fact his main preoccupation had been that she and his daughter should get on. She brooded over this for a little, but then her practical side took over. Poor Peter had been totally bowled over by the news of her pregnancy, she could scarcely expect him to behave like a lovelorn swain when bluntly told that he was about to become a father. Naturally, he had thought at once of the feelings of his small daughter. Any decent man would have behaved just as Peter had.
    Marianne had a bath, enjoying the fact that her landlady’s displeasure over anyone running water after nine p.m. was no longer of any importance to her. She tipped the best part of a jar of bathsalts into the hot water and lay there, day-dreaming. A white wedding dress with lilies of the valley in her hair was essential, as was an official photographer – she would send the photographs home, the best one to Dédé – with Peter’s Tess as one bridesmaid and her