Free The Unknown Bridesmaid by Margaret Forster Page A

her that, we’ve tried to tell her without, you know, scaring her. We can’t trust her any more, she won’t promise never to go off again just when she feels like it.’
    There was a lot more in this vein. Julia listened, and watched Camilla, who appeared entirely unworried.
    Visits to see little Reggie became regular. Julia and her mother now lived only ten minutes’ walk away from where Iris stilllived with her parents. Often, Julia and her mother babysat while Maureen and Iris went out. It was, Julia discovered, a deeply boring pastime. Hours, she seemed to spend, standing dutifully in the garden watching over a sleeping little Reggie. There was a canopy over his Silver Cross pram but this might not protect him from the attentions of stray cats even if it guarded him adequately from the sun. It was Julia’s job to chase away any interested cats, and look out for wasps and bees. A bee sting, she was told, could be ‘fatal’ for such a young baby. If a bee started to hover round the pram, she was to move its position at once. It occurred to Julia that, since bees flew, they could fly after the pram and it would be no good moving it, but she didn’t mention this obvious fact. To do so would have meant being called ‘argumentative’ by her mother.
    Little Reggie was still very little. Julia listened to the conversations about his weight. They were interminable. Iris fretted about her baby’s lack of substantial weight gain whereas Maureen saw nothing worrying about little Reggie only having put on a couple of ounces since regaining his birth weight. Julia’s mother, however, supported Iris. Little Reggie was taken weekly to the baby clinic where all three women watched the scales intently while he was weighed. The nurse who did the weighing was reassuring, saying little Reggie was perfectly healthy, but Iris was sometimes tearful on the way home. Maureen and Julia’s mother nudged each other when this happened, and cleared their throats, and began talking over-brightly to each other, until Iris recovered.
    It was the last week of the school holidays. The weather went on being hot and sunny, but Julia didn’t enjoy it much. She wished she could be at the seaside, any seaside, or at least near a lake or river. Their new home had a small garden but this consisted merely of a parched plot of grass and a ragged border full of weeds and not much else. Julia’s mother clicked her tongue at the sight of these weeds but said she had no time to do anything about them and certainly couldn’t afforda gardener. Julia wished they had a garden like Maureen’s but as they didn’t she stayed mostly inside, out of the sun. Go out and play, her mother urged, but there was no one to play with and outside it was too hot. Go and explore, her mother suggested, get to know the way to your new school. But Julia knew the way. There was no need to explore. The use of that word irritated her. ‘Explore’ sounded exciting, and walking the roads round where they now lived was not in the least exciting. She would have liked to explore the canal at the back of the houses, but the gate onto the towpath was locked.
    She was worried about starting her new school. On the one hand, she wanted the holidays to be over because she was so bored, but on the other she was nervous because she would know no one. She would be the new girl, and she had seen what it could be like to be a new girl. She’d be an object of great curiosity at first and then this interest would fade away and she’d be left struggling to break into groups and partnerships formed by the others long ago. She was resolved not to care about this isolation, but she was not looking forward to experiencing it. She didn’t bother voicing her anxieties to her mother, knowing she would only get a bracing lecture on facing up to things. What her mother didn’t appreciate was that in her imagination Julia had done just that and hadn’t liked it. She had envisaged the faces peering at