For Better For Worse by Pam Weaver Page B

to promise that you will do as I say.’
    Annie remained silent. Looking at his pompous face and wagging finger, it occurred to her that her father could be insufferable at times.
    ‘I’m only doing this for your own good,’ Malcolm Mitchell insisted. ‘If you do as I say, when this has all blown over, and people have forgotten what happened, you’ll probably be able to find a decent young man who will forgive your past and take you as a wife.’
    Annie could feel her heartbeat quickening again. ‘None of this was my fault!’ she cried. ‘And I wouldn’t have run off with him if you’d given him a chance, Father.’
    ‘Oh, I think you already knew something about his character,’ her father spluttered. ‘That’s why you didn’t invite your mother and me to the wedding.’
    ‘You hated him from the word go,’ she cried. ‘And I did invite you. You chose not to come.’
    ‘I never hated him,’ Malcolm insisted. ‘But I knew he was no good.’
    Annie said nothing.
    ‘If the chairman of the Borough Council gets to hear of all this …’
    ‘You don’t give a damn about me, do you?’ Annie cried.
    Judith’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Annie,’ she gasped. ‘Language …’
    But her daughter wasn’t listening. ‘All you can think about is how this looks to your snobby friends.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Malcolm snapped.
    ‘You never had time for Henry,’ Annie blundered on. ‘All those snide remarks.’
    ‘And which one of us turned out to be right?’ her father demanded. ‘Eh? Which one?’
    ‘Malcolm, dear,’ Judith Mitchell interjected, ‘I don’t think this is helping.’
    ‘Oh, here we go,’ her husband bellowed. ‘Somehow I thought you’d be sticking up for her before long.’
    ‘I’m going to my room,’ said Annie, getting to her feet.
    ‘Sit down!’ her father spat, but Annie ignored him. Calmly walking from the room, she closed the door. She could still hear him shouting, ‘Annie? Annie, come back here this minute …’ as she closed her bedroom door and lay on the bed. It was still a couple more weeks until the court hearing, but she’d made up her mind she wasn’t going to get into any more arguments with her father until it was over. She’d give the baby up like they said. Not because her father wanted it but because it wasn’t fair to bring a child into a world where its grandparents were warring with its mother and its father was in jail. To have it adopted was by far the best thing. That way the baby could have a mother and father who loved and wanted it.
    ‘It’s the best I can do for you,’ she told him, as she ran her hand wearily over her bump. But when the baby moved in response to her touch, she knew she could never do it.

Eight
    The courtroom in Lewes was on the High Street. When Annie first saw it, she thought it an imposing building. It dated from Victorian times and was made of Portland stone with a portico of four pillars which covered the steps leading to the three doors at the top. Above the steps, a single Victorian lamp lit the way. Lewes had had its share of famous trials and most notably had gained notoriety as the place where Patrick Mahon was tried for the murder of Emily Kaye in the infamous Crumbles murder case, a case which had been handled by none other than the famous forensic pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Annie only knew all this because there had been a lot in the paper about him when Spilsbury had died at the end of 1947.
    With the castle itself as a backdrop, Annie wished she was here as a tourist rather than a wronged woman. Flanked by her parents, she was hustled through the doors and into a waiting area where she sat down. Her father prowled the corridors, jangling the coins in his pocket, and her mother, a bag of nerves, kept going to the toilet. Their drive to Lewes had been uneventful, and although she knew it really worried her mother, Annie had little to say. She found her silence acted as a defence mechanism