Never to Love by Anne Weale

after their return from Paris the housekeeper had shown her the kitchen and storeroom and staff dining room, but where the servants slept, what their hours of work were and whether they were contented, she had no idea and did not like to ask. Justin had mentioned that Mrs. Lane had run the household for more than ten years, and Andrea was afraid that she might resent any searching inquiries into her methods. It seemed wiser to leave things as they were.
    The days began at half-past seven, when Miller brought her early-morning tea, prepared a bath and laid out her clothes. At a quarter to eight she got out of bed, stepped into the dressing gown that the maid was holding ready and began a leisurely toilet. At half-past eight, as the gong boomed in the hall, she went downstairs to the dining room, where Justin was already looking through the Times .
    Lunch was at one o’clock, tea at half-past four and dinner, unless they were entertaining or going out, at seven. Within this framework of meals her time was her own, with none of the harassing experiments in housewifery that occupy most brides.
    Justin suggested that she should open accounts at a number of stores and gave her a monthly allowance, which she thought at first was intended to cover the household expenses as well as her personal needs. Then she discovered that it was all pin money and that he would continue to deal with the domestic bills.
    “But it’s much more than I will need. What could I possibly spend it on?” she protested when she found this out.
    “I daresay, you’ll think of something,” he said with his sardonic smile.
    All her life she had dreamed of being able to afford anything that took her fancy. Yet now that this was so there seemed to be very few things that she really wanted, and by the end of the first month she had spent only a fraction of the money.
    He arranged for her to take riding and driving lessons, and Madeline insisted that she learn to play bridge. Having mastered the intricacies of the game, which, she secretly thought a rather boring pastime, Andrea found herself obliged to attend her sister-in-law’s weekly bridge parties.
    Here she met women whose pictures she had often seen in the glossy magazines, women whose husbands’ wealth enabled them to spend most of their time in beauty parlors and dress salons or exchanging gossip over the card tables, women whose children appeared to lead a separate existence in the care of nursemaids until they were old enough to be dispatched to exclusive boarding schools. Almost at once she was invited to sit on various charity committees whose meetings, like the bridge parties, were spent more in idle chatter than in any strenuous organization.
    When she had passed her driving test, Justin bought her a small car, and as the weather grew hotter she spent several days driving around in Berkshire and Surrey, taking a picnic lunch and returning to London in time for dinner.
    Once, on a particularly fine morning, she asked Justin if he could come with her, but he said briefly that he had a busy day ahead but might manage it later. Whenever she tried to take an intelligent interest in his business affairs, he changed the subject in such a way that to ask any more questions would invite a more pointed rebuff.
    Jill and N ick were getting married in May, and their little apartment was almost ready. One afternoon when the two girls had been fitting loose covers on the secondhand chairs in the living room, Jill asked Andrea to stay to supper. Nick would be coming along later to finish fixing a tiled splashboard behind the sink and they could have potluck together. So Andrea telephoned home and asked Hubbard to tell Justin that she was busy at the apartment and would be back late.
    Nick arrived about seven with a friend whom he introduced as Simon Brennan, a roving reporter on one of the more reputable national newspapers, who had just arrived in England on leave. Apparently they had trained together on a