The Silent Tide by Rachel Hore Page B

stepped onto a train, thinking about home.
    Except it wasn’t home, she quickly saw, and never could be again.
    When she arrived, her mother let her in and hurried back upstairs, explaining, ‘I’ve left Lydia in the bath.’
    Isabel pushed open the living-room door, to the sound of tinny laughter. At once, her father rose from his chair and stood impassive, his solid bulk dominating the room. He did not come forward to welcome her but reached behind him and switched off the wireless. ‘No, Dad!’ Ted and Donald, who’d been slumped at the table, a chessboard between them, sat up, indignant, then saw her and looked delighted, whilst glancing uncertainly at their father. His handsome face glowered. He shoved his hands in his pockets.
    ‘Well, we are honoured,’ he said.
    ‘Hello, Dad,’ that something was wrong. a the co she said, going to quickly kiss his cheek. She gave the boys a sisterly grimace and handed over the chocolate she’d managed to buy for them.
    ‘Ripping, thanks!’ they said in unison.
    ‘It’s good of you to turn out and see us,’ her father said, sitting down again. ‘I hope we’ll not be dull company next to your London friends.’
    ‘Don’t be silly, Dad,’ she said gently, but her fingers clenched into fists.
    ‘Can’t we have the wireless on again?’ Ted said through a mouthful of chocolate. ‘We were listening.’
    ‘To a lot of rubbish,’ their father said shortly, but he did as they asked.
    ‘You got yourself work, I hear,’ he said, above the comedians’ patter.
    ‘Yes, I really—’
    ‘Does it pay you much?’
    ‘No, but it’s—’
    ‘You could have saved yourself the trouble. Found a job round here and stayed and helped your mother.’
    ‘There wasn’t anything I wanted to do here.’ She glimpsed an expression in his face that touched her, before the mask fell again, such an expression of unhappiness. She was free of him now. She’d struggled and got free. Is that what he sensed and resented? Or envied?
    He picked up a newspaper and began to read, ignoring her. All was as before. Ted moved a chess piece, Donald gave an impatient whistle. A log settled in the fireplace. On a string above the mantelpiece, half a dozen Christmas cards fluttered pitifully in the heat.
    ‘I’ll go and help Mum,’ Isabel said feebly and retreated.
    Upstairs, she glanced about her old bedroom, disconcerted to find it wasn’t hers any more. Lydia’s cot had been shoved alongside the bed and a rosy Lydia was in it, dressed in pyjamas, bouncing with excitement as she clutched the rail. The clothes spilling out of the drawers were Lydia’s and her teddy bear stared glassy-eyed from the dressing table. Isabel had been away for two months, and she saw no evidence that she’d ever lived here. Then her eye fell on a suitcase standing by the door.
    ‘The rest of your clothes are in there,’ her mother said. ‘Perhaps you can take them with you. We had to put your books in the shed. There wouldn’t have been space for the cot otherwise.’ Lydia had previously slept in their parents’ room. ‘You won’t mind sharing when you’re here, I’m sure.’
    Both the family and the room had adapted to her absence.
    The next two days dragged past. She helped her mother in the kitchen and played with her siblings. The atmosphere she found oppressive. Her father was morose and her mother by turns irritable and falsely cheerful. Worse, Isabel felt herself slipping back into her old, mutinous ways. On Boxing Day, only a long, lonely walk across sodden fields saved her from bad temper. Then it was dusk and her brothers walked her to the station, carrying her cases. As the train pulled away, a mixture of relief and loss overwhelmed her. But as it got nearer and nearer to London, the relief won out.
    At Earl’s Court she staggered up the steps of the Underground, longing for her little room at Aunt Penelope’s, and to return to work the next morning, to see Audrey and Stephen and Trudy, and