Illusions of Happiness by Elizabeth Lord

lower lip between her teeth.
    ‘I was in the kitchen with Mrs Plumley, planning today’s menu,’ she offered. ‘What was it you wanted, dear?’
    ‘Look at this!’ He held out the sheet of notepaper to her, his face now turned away from her, compelling her to come forward to receive it.
    ‘Read it!’ he snapped.
    Quickly she began to read but only got as far as the first sentence. ‘It’s from Madeleine,’ she gasped.
    ‘I do not recognize the name,’ he growled, still with his gaze on the surface of his bureau. ‘Just read what it says . . . to yourself,’ he added as she started to read aloud.
    As bidden she took in the words in silence, reading quickly and as briefly as she could. Finally she looked up. He was staring out of the window from where he sat. ‘It says she is getting married in August. She has asked us to be present.’
    ‘Never!’ he exploded, leaping up to go over to the window to gaze out.
    ‘She asks if you would give her away,’ Dorothy ventured timidly.
    ‘I cannot give away what I do not have,’ he returned, his back still to her.
    ‘But she is our daughter, dear. We ought at least . . .’
    Swinging round so viciously that he caused her to jump, he blared, ‘Enough! We have no daughter, Dorothy! The author of this letter is nothing to do with us. You would be well advised to remember that fact.’
    It sounded as though he were addressing his board of governors. His tone seemed to stab into her heart like a knife wound, so harsh did it sound and quite suddenly his anger made her feel bolder than she could ever remember.
    ‘You may not like it, Aldous,’ she heard herself say, ‘but she is still my daughter. I bore her, fed her at my breast, tended her and cared for her. She is . . .’
    ‘Enough!’ he thundered, moments later drawing an impatient breath as she began to weep. ‘I am not prepared to countenance her nor be present at the wedding of someone I do not know, whoever the man is. Nor will you, Dorothy. I am disappointed in you. I did expect you to be in total agreement, which is why I called you in here. But it seems your answer to everything is to dissolve into tears so there is no point saying any more. As to this letter I shall not even respond to it. And neither will you. Now you may go back to whatever you and Mrs Plumley were doing.’
    With that he returned to his writing desk and sat down, continuing to ignore her presence until slowly she turned and went from the room.
    Outside the door she stood sniffing back the tears. Finally she slowly straightened her back and lifted her chin, whispered softly, almost defiantly: ‘But she is still my daughter.’
    She began to make her way back along the hall, not to the kitchen but to the stairs leading up to her little parlour on the second floor where she would write her own letters to people she knew, one letter which at this moment she needed very much to write.
    After only three months of preparation, neither she nor James hardly needing to lift a finger towards the day, his having arranged it all to be done for them, she had still felt that she was living in a dream world, that nothing was real. From that very evening when James had proposed to her, such as it was, and she had accepted, again such as it was, everything had felt as if it wasn’t happening, the world itself seeming to have receded, as if she were floating through it.
    The war too, even now, seemed to pass her by. And yet it held enough stark reality to make her feel otherwise – daily the newspaper headlines, the sight of maimed and blinded men on the streets, Lord knows how many thousands more languishing in hospitals all over the realm, the sight of drawn blinds in almost every other street – to make it all real, so horribly real.
    Sometimes she thought of Hamilton Bramwell. She rather felt he still survived, conducting operations from some safe distance, a command post well removed from the front, maybe still safely entrenched in some HQ in