Daughter of Mine by Anne Bennett Page A

almost as bad as Steve’s and Mike’s two sisters also adored their baby brother. They’d resented Tressa from the beginning, sensing how Mike felt about her. They were too clever to do this in front of Mike, when they were icily polite, but they had plenty of opportunity to give digs and make comments to show Tressa she wasn’t welcome in their family. Tressa never complained about this to Mike, for she knew the high regard he held his family in and she told herself it was Mike she loved and was marrying, not his family. But then she’d never envisaged living with them.
    Mike, catching sight of her face by the light from the lamppost, said quite sharply, ‘It’s no good looking like that, Tressa. It’s my parents or the streets as far as I can see just now.’
    ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just not what I imagined.’
    ‘D’you think I did?’ Mike snapped, and then he put his arms around Tressa. ‘God, I’m sorry,’ he said, kissing her gently. ‘I’m a brute yelling at you. It’s all my fault, because I know you would have waited.’
    Tressa knew Mike spoke the truth. However hard it was, she would have held out to keep her virginity till the wedding night if Mike hadn’t wanted it so much. That first night, the night of the engagement, she’d done it fearfully to please him, because she knew he expected it, and she’d been totally bowled over by the experience. Few of the women she had spoken to had mentioned any enjoyment they got from sex, never mind the exhilarating, mind-blowing rapture Tressa had felt. After that first time she’d been as anxious to repeat the experience as Mike was, and so she said, ‘No, I loved you too much to want to wait.’
    ‘Well,’ Mike said with a rueful grin. ‘See where our loving has got us both?’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘You’ve had time to think and worry about this,’ Mike said. ‘To me it’s like a bolt from the blue. Who else have you told?’
    ‘No one,’ Tressa said. ‘But I think Lizzie suspects. I’ve been sick a few times in the morning, you see. I’ve even seen Pat and Betty looking at me oddly a time or two. But they’ve said nothing and neither have I.’
    ‘We need to get things organised,’ Mike decided. ‘Ithink we should tell Mom and Dad straight away.’
    Tressa quailed inside at the thought of that and yet she knew they’d have to know, and fast, for a wedding had to be arranged speedily. ‘What about my mammy and daddy?’ she asked suddenly. ‘They’ll have to give permission; I’m not twenty till July. I’ll have to tell them face to face. We’ll have to go over on a flying visit.’
    ‘First things first,’ Mike said. ‘Let’s tell my parents tonight and at least get that over and done with.’
    ‘She looked at me like I was some sort of slag,’ Tressa cried later to the three girls grouped about the bed. ‘She said…she said it…it was all my fault; that…that I’d trapped her son, snared him in some way.’ She looked at them all, her face red and awash with tears, twisting a sodden handkerchief in her agitated hands. ‘It wasn’t like that. Mike and I love each other.’
    None of the girls were surprised. Mothers seemed to care more for sons than daughters and they all knew how Mike’s family behaved towards Tressa for she’d told them bits before, but now wasn’t the time to remind her of that.
    ‘Come on, bab. Don’t take on,’ Betty said. ‘These things happen. She’s likely in shock.’
    ‘At least your man’s standing by you,’ Pat added. ‘That’s summat today.’
    ‘That’s not all,’ Tressa said. ‘She says we can’t stay with them. That she’d never live with the shame and that she’s writing to her brother Arthur and his wife Doreen, to see if we can live there after the wedding. I don’t even know the man and he lives in Longbridge.’
    ‘Where’s that?’ Lizzie asked.
    ‘Bloody miles away,’ Pat said. ‘You don’t even know these people?’
    ‘No, but apparently they’ve