Down in the City by Elizabeth Harrower

little girl, perhaps a bit spoilt and moody sometimes…
    Moody? Laura cherished her at once. ‘Really, Bill,’ she said to her husband at this time, ‘they treat that girl, and take as much interest in her, as if she were a canary in a cage. She eats and sleeps, and that’s that! It’s shocking!’
    With the first few words of understanding and interest, Rachel was caught. From that time she belonged to Laura, and all her considerable allegiance was Laura’s. After the first weeks of intense sympathy, Laura gave her the place in her life that might have belonged to a younger sister whose guardian she had been appointed, and treated her in the humorous, deprecating way that young dependent things are treated. But she was always willing to listen and talk; she always wanted to understand and advise, and Rachel adored her for it.
    â€˜Now, Rae, I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong, can I?’ Laura concentrated her eyes on the girl’s averted face. Her voice was thrilling with reason.
    At last Rachel said reluctantly, ‘It’s nothing in particular. That’s the trouble.’ She knew that Laura preferred a specific grievance on all but her very best days when she would analyse the indefinable miseries of heart and mind for hour on hour. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said again. ‘I just wish I was dead!’
    â€˜Oh, darling,’ Laura crooned tenderly, laughing a little, ‘don’t say that.’
    Her voice made Rachel cry, as she had known it would, and she watched the weeping girl with a curiously mingled expression of maternal compassion and clinical interest.
    â€˜I really mean it,’ Rachel said dully, when she had controlled her tears. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’
    â€˜One thing’s certain,’ Laura said decidedly: ‘you shouldn’t mope about at home reading these deep books all the time. They’re no good to you, Rae. They’d make anyone miserable.’ Rachel looked at her sadly, feeling wise, knowing that today Laura saw her as a temperamental child who needed only—yes, here it was.
    â€˜Why don’t you get someone to go to the pictures with you?’
    Rachel blew her nose and silently burned at the suggestion. It was a heavenly day. Company in the sun, company in the air, was what she wanted; conversations like the ones in books, laughter and affection, not Hollywood shadows in a dark, disinfectant-smelling, air-conditioned cinema.
    Ah, Mrs Maitland. Laura. Where’s your attention today? Not on me. Why don’t you read my thoughts and tell me what to do to be happy, to be like you? You’re all charm and heart and feeling, and because of that, as rare…more than mortal. Rachel sighed with love.
    There was a knock at the door and Laura called, ‘Come in!’ To Rachel she said, ‘It’s Esther. Better wash your face and then come back and have your coffee.’
    Rachel rushed into the bathroom, long-legged, gawky, feeling better but unsolved. She splashed her face with cold water and dried it. She gazed levelly at herself in the mirror. How dramatic can you get? she asked. And the cold eyes said: Being dramatic, talking out, crying, seeing myself, knowing it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It is.
    Laura and Esther looked up when she went back.
    â€˜Hello, Rachel,’ Esther said gently, and the girl smiled at her, calmed by her unemotional serenity.
    Laura offered Esther a cigarette, lit it, and took one herself. They all drank iced coffee from tall frosted glasses and talked about clothes.
    When that subject came to an end Laura smiled. ‘Rae and I were just talking about happiness when you came in.’
    Esther, glancing at Rachel, doubted the wisdom of recalling their conversation, whatever it had been. She looked rather vague and discouraging, but Laura, leaning back in her chair, said, ‘Happiness,’ again,