Trapped In She Town : A Romantic Novella (The Jute Mills Series) by Serena MacKay Page A

bread. “Go on Mary. You look like you are
starving” he encourages her.
    “I’m not hungry” she
said “I don’t need your charity. They do feed me up the road, you know.”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t
mean to be pushy but you look like you haven’t eaten in a week, Mary. What
about the baby?” he asked.
    “The baby’s fine” she
snapped back.
    “Oh Mary! Tell me what
happened.” he pleaded.
     But she is too
embarrassed to explain the whole, sorry story to John.
    “I could kill that
George bloke of yours. Why won’t he do the right thing and marry you?” he
asked. “Can’t be a very decent bloke to do that. “
    Mary looked at John
quizzically. “What was he talking about – George” she thought to herself.
    “They were all giving
me funny looks at the house too.” John continued.
    “Have you seen George?”
Mary asked her face lighting up.
    “No, of course I’ve
not” John snapped. “But he should bloody well be here and looking after you,
seeing as the mess he’s made. Not much of a gentleman leaving you in the lurch
like this. Why don’t you go back up to Aberdeen Mary?”
    Mary couldn’t
understand what John was talking about.
    “George is married to
my sister Beth, and I can hardly turn up at my parents in this state can I.”
she spluttered out.
    Mary had not contacted
any of her family in Aberdeenshire since she had received the letter from her
mother with the news of George and Beth. She felt a huge sense of betrayal and
bitterness towards them all.
    “What the hell is
going on Mary? George gets you pregnant and then marries your sister.” John
looks horrified.
    “Oh John. George
didn’t get me pregnant. Edward did.” Mary retorted with a look of disgust on
her face.
    “Edward! Edward Muir.
The master. Mary how could you have been so silly to sleep with him” he
demanded?
    Mary was furious now.
    “How could I have been
so silly” she spat out. All the hurts were coming together and she let rip at
John.
    “How could I have been
so silly! Oh yes, so silly of me to be torn from my family to work in this hell
hole of a town. So silly of me to try to be a dutiful and faithful lady’s maid.
So silly of me to be accosted by a monster, who threatened to throw me out of
the house if I did not comply with his depraved demands.” she shouted taking a
deep breath and then letting it out again.
    “Yes” she now
whispered, “so silly of me to worry that if I screamed and shouted rape –
nobody would believe me and the mistress would throw me out anyway”, as she
started to sob.
    Then suddenly she
snarled again “Little did I know that I would be thrown out anyway” and she
jumped out of her seat and ran out of the bakery door.
    She should have known
John would turn against her too.
    She ran up the street
and could hear John calling her name behind her, but there was no point turning
around. Nobody understood anymore. As she hurried towards the park, she felt a
sharp, tearing pain in her abdomen, and she fell to her knees in the street
clutching her belly. Everything was swimming around her. As she lay down she
heard voices calling her but they were too far away.
    When she came round,
she saw she was still lying in the street with her head on John’s lap. “Oh Mary
I thought I had lost you” He looked as if he had been crying. “We need to get
you to a doctor. “
    At the surgery, the
doctor told Mary she needed to rest until the baby was born, which should be, by
his calculation, 4 weeks’ time. He told John that he needed to make sure his
wife was eating more. John just nodded dumbly as he paid and the doctor showed
them to the door.
    “Mary, you can’t go
back to the poorhouse, you heard what the doctor said – bed rest for the next 4
weeks. They are obviously not giving you enough to eat there. Let me look after
you?” pleaded John. “I’m going to get a wee one room flat for you to live in
until the baby is born.”
    Mary felt so weak that
she had no energy to