The Father's House by Larche Davies Page B

that they were clever but as for their looks, well, they never smiled and, to her, their faces seemed terrifyingly severe or even cruel. She had noticed the bitter submission in Aunt Sarah’s face as she stood with her eyes downcast, listening to Father’s Copse’s ferocious instructions. Once she had even heard Aunt Sarah mutter a prayer to the Magnifico to forgive her evil thoughts against the father that had been allocated to her.
    Now Lucy decided firmly that if she could serve the Magnifico in any other way she would not marry a father. She would study the
Holy Vision
word for word. There must be exceptions – especially if she could make herself really ugly and useless at cooking so that none of them wanted her. There were no mirrors in the father’s house or at school, but she had seen herself in shop windows and her face had looked so pinched and plain that she was sure she could make herself hideous. She twisted her mouth round now as the first step of a practice regime.
    Soft fine rain brushed against her skin, and she shifted further back into the shelter of the bush. She mentally assessed the beauty of today’s brides. A few were pretty, but some of the plain ones had nicer faces. She wondered whether her own mother was both pretty and had a nice face. A twig caught in her hair and pulled at her pigtail. Her mother would not have had boring brown hair. It would have been a luxurious chestnut, or black, or blonde, or auburn. Lucy could picture the hair, but not the face. She would certainly not have had a face like Lucy’s because the shop windows wouldn’t have lied. Aunt Sarah had told her many times that she was plain, and always scraped her hair back as severely as she could so as to emphasise it. Vanity was a sin she said.
    The clouds were heavy and it was getting darker. Aunt Sarah switched on the light in the kitchen and it poured out in oblong shapes through the glass panes in the back door. Lucy knew she should go in before she had to be called, or she would get the sharp edge of Aunt Sarah’s tongue. As she moved forward there was a creak at the back gate and she froze. The latch lifted with a little scratching noise and the gate squeaked slightly as it slowly opened. A hooded head appeared and looked around. Lucy held her breath as a figure emerged and slid along the side wall till it reached the back of the house. It darted across to the kitchen door and crouched down, peering in through the panes.
    The sound of blood thumping in her ears was so loud that Lucy wondered why whoever it was didn’t hear it.
    Very quietly the figure made its way across the back of the rear wing and vanished round the corner to the further side of the house. Lucy didn’t dare move. For the first time in her life she wished that Aunt Sarah would come out, or even the father. Her wish was granted because at that moment Aunt Sarah opened the back door and called her in. Lucy was torn between the terror of being caught by the figure as she ran across the lawn, and the terror of incurring Aunt Sarah’s wrath if she disobeyed the summons.
    From inside the kitchen Paul started to yell.
    â€œCome in quickly. It’s cold,” shouted Aunt Sarah.
    Her stout frame filled the doorway and she seemed to be taking gulps of the cool night air. Then she turned back into the kitchen and slammed the door. Lucy waited. The figure must have waited too, because an eternity passed before it slipped back round the corner and behind the wing. It paused to take another furtive look into the kitchen, and then dashed over to the wall to the left of the garden and out through the gate. Lucy waited a few more seconds then shot across the lawn with what felt like a thousand demons behind her.
    Aunt Sarah was busy with Paul, and Lucy slipped in almost unnoticed.
    â€œJust praying,” she muttered, and went to her room to fetch her homework.
    She opened a drawer and pulled out her extra jumper. Aunt