Free Marrying Money: Lady Diana's Story by Glenys O'Connell

heart wasn't in it.
    “No , dummy. I had to share a boarding house room with Karen Fisher-Blye for one night because we were the only two who didn't have chicken pox, so we were sent out to a boarding house so we could go home the next day.”
    “They sent the well kids home, and made the sick kids stay in school?”
    “I’ll never forget it. I hated that boarding school so much, and I wanted to be with you and the others at the secondary school.”
    “Yeah , but your parents thought you were picking up common behaviour from hanging around with us lot.”
    “Nah. Well, maybe. But the real reason they sent me to boarding school was because they were fighting all the time. It had nothing to do with…Well, I don’t think they ever knew I was smoking behind the bike shed with the rest of you. Grandmamma would really have thought that was common. But Mum and Dad were fighting. I think one of them had an affair. It was nasty at home.” My voice had gone thin and high. A lot of years had passed, I was a big girl now, but those few weeks when I was twelve still had the power to make me weep. “I thought they were going to split up. I thought they hated each other. But then they seemed to get over it.”
    “I didn't know you knew about that,” Sally said.
    “You knew?”
    “Pick your jaw up off the floor, dummy. Of course I knew. Everyone knew. It was the talk of the village, even down to Lower Ingersoll and Little Brownlow. “
    I should have known. Suddenly, Bill's face came to mind, and the sadness and bitterness in his voice when he talked about how small a world it was. He didn't know the half of it.
    “All right, clever Sally, if you know so much, why don’t you tell me?”
    “Are you sure you want to hear?”
    Dammit, she'd guessed I didn't really know.
    “Yes,” I said, in a voice sounding very much like a child's.
    “Well , your dad had been meeting up with Mrs Metcalfe-Jones, you know, the American lady who was renting Stafford Manse? But he kept leaving his bike parked outside the front gate, and your Mum got suspicious and one day she walked right in on them.”
    Oh, it was more embarrassing than I thought. I wanted to hide my face in the pillow, but I was an Ashburnham, and Ashburnham's didn't hide their faces. Not for anything.
    “ But the best part...well,  after she'd hit the pair of them a few whacks with the broom handle, my Mum heard from Mrs Peters, who cleaned for Mrs Metcalfe-Jones, your mum told your dad to get himself home, and she told that floozy if she ever went near your dad again, she'd tell everyone about her.
    “Mrs Metcalfe-Jones packed up and left the next day. Good riddance to bad rubbish, Mrs Peters said.”
    “Well , I admit, I didn't know the details,” I muttered, trying to save face. I don’t know why I even bothered with the all-knowing, all-seeing Sally around.
    “Yeah , well, the next part is the best.”
    “I know what happened next, my mum and dad fought like mad things, and when they weren't fighting they weren't speaking, and I got sent to Boarding School Hell.”
    “No , that's not it at all. Your mum had her own affair with that nice Colonel Jackson. She said it was only once. Although my mum never reckoned it was fair to Colonel Jackson, who apparently really loved your mum and was very hurt when he realized that she was just using him. He went off on a cruise to India and came back married to a showgirl he'd met on the boat. Everybody said it was rebound from your mum, but I think he just got himself a toy girl and a better deal.”
    I didn't know what to say. The idea of my staid and very correct mother having revenge sex was beyond my comprehension. I couldn’t even fight in her corner about whether she was a better deal for the colonel than a showgirl. I swallowed back the tears.
    “You are different, you aristocrats. There's no getting around it.”
    “Different to what?” I demanded.
    “Just   different.”
    “Aren’t we best friends? How can I