Free Sapphire Battersea by Jacqueline Wilson Page A

again myself, experimenting.
    ‘Stop messing about, Hetty. This isn’t a game. Come along now.’
    She showed me the best guest bedroom and then the second-best guest bedroom – both seemed incredibly grand to me, especially the beds themselves. I was used to the narrow beds in the hospital. These ones were enormous. I stroked the counterpanes. They felt incredibly soft and silky. Perhaps I could occasionally sneak into one of these guest bedrooms and have a little lie-down?
    ‘Does Mr Buchanan often have guests sleeping in these rooms?’ I asked.
    ‘Rarely. The master isn’t one for entertaining. He’s too engrossed in his work,’ said Sarah, leading me up yet another flight of stairs. These had brown linoleum instead of carpet, and there were no paintings looking down at me from the walls.
    ‘These are the attic rooms,’ said Sarah. ‘You will dust and sweep and polish here too, but you don’t need to be quite so particular, because they are only
our
rooms.’
    Sarah’s room was very small compared to Mr Buchanan’s, and the ceiling sloped sharply overhead. Her bed was narrow, her washstand basic, her chest small, with only three drawers. There was no fireplace there so it must be icy cold in winter. She had no ornaments whatsoever – just a brush and comb on her washstand, a Bible by her bed, and one small painting hanging on the wall. It was a portrait of a large lady, not very well executed. She looked like a stiff puppet, not a real woman at all. But Sarah looked up at her and gently touched her cheek, as if she were a real and lovely lady. I knew that gesture, that feeling.
    ‘She is your mother!’ I said.
    ‘Yes, dear Mother. My cousin Luke painted her likeness. It’s very good, isn’t it?’
    I thought it very
bad
but for once I knew how to behave. ‘Yes, it is. Your mother looks a very fine lady,’ I said. ‘Does she live far away? Do you get to see her often?’
    Sarah’s potato face flushed. She shook her head sadly. ‘Dear Mother passed away many years ago,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I still miss her so much.’
    ‘Oh, Sarah, I’m so sorry,’ I whispered.
    A sudden new fear clutched at my chest. How would I ever stand it if
my
mama died? I had only known she was my mother for such a cruelly brief time. I could not bear it if she were snatched away from me.
    It was the one terrible disadvantage of loving someone . You couldn’t bear the idea of being without them. I reckoned up the people I had loved during my fourteen years. I loved Mama most of all, of course. She shone like the sun in my life – but there were stars too. I had loved Nurse Winnie a little, and my dearest friend Polly a great deal. I had cared for young Eliza, and thought wistfully about my whole foster family. I loved them all – though of course Jem was the one I’d truly worshipped and adored.
    I thought again about the man waiting outside the hospital. I’d read about the magical method of photography. I wished I had a photograph of that young man so that I could pore over his image and see if he could really be my own dear Jem. I fingered the stamps inside my apron pocket …
    ‘Hetty Feather! Don’t daydream, girl. Come, I will show you Mrs B’s bedroom.’
    Mrs Briskett’s bedroom was twice the size, with a large bed. A vast pair of bloomers sprawled on the covers, legs akimbo. I felt my mouth twitching, and Sarah herself sniggered, but then straightened her face, looking guilty. Mrs Briskett did not have a portrait of her mama. She had several coloured lithographs of great pink pigs, black-and-white cows, huge woolly sheep and assorted hens and ducks. She seemed to have deliberately surrounded herself with the raw materials of her trade. I wondered if she lay on her big bed looking at these animals by candlelight, plotting massive roasts and stews.
    There was only one more room upstairs – a little inconsequential garret with the ceiling sloping severely. I thought it would be
my
room, but it