The Factory Girl

As he turned restlessly in his bed, dissatisfied with the state of his marriage, Neville’s thoughts turned to his real mother and he wondered what she was like. He would dearly love to know more about her, to see a photograph of her. But how to go about finding out? Who, twenty-seven years after her death, would remember somebody as insignificant as Bessie Hipkiss? Who would possibly remember a particular housemaid put in the family way by a male member of the family that employed her, out of the hundreds of such beguiled and unfortunate young women who littered society? If only she could have lived a year or two longer so that he might have some memory of her, however vague.

And this brother, the existence of whom Neville was so ambiguous about…He actually hoped he would like him, because he longed to talk to him about their mother, about how he felt now at their being parted. Sometimes he felt as if he was only half a person, that there was another half somewhere, waiting to make the whole. It was a strange feeling. He would love to know whether his brother felt it, too. Someday he might meet him. He would know him immediately; they were identical twins after all, or so he’d been led to believe. If and when that day came, he hoped any differences in their circumstances and upbringing would not render them entirely incompatible.

Chapter 7

By the end of July, the government had announced plans to increase unemployment benefit, and forty-eight countries had signed the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. Lizzie was even bigger, but at no time did she suffer the things normally associated with pregnancy, such as morning sickness.

From the point of view of business, Billy Witts began to worry; he was finding it ever more difficult to achieve lucrative deals, due to the general economic climate. But he and Henzey had been making love regularly for two months, which helped take his mind off his finances. Love-making concentrated Henzey’s mind on their relationship. It was the ultimate expression of her feelings for Billy and, often, she pondered Neville Worthington’s words about energetic love that made you breathless and exhausted. It did not apply to Billy and her, but she reckoned things must be approaching something akin. At least she thought so.

She had finished half-a-dozen watercolours and three pencil sketches of Billy besides, her favourites of which she’d had framed and were now hanging on her bedroom walls. He warranted being a subject of her paintings. He was the one who had appeared in her life like a whirlwind and swept her off her feet. The reason he fascinated her so much was because he kept her guessing. She was intrigued that he had resisted her for so long in the first place, and that intrigue turned to fixation, and then to love.

If Billy had never come along she could have comfortably existed with no male companion. Hitherto she’d been perfectly content to open doors herself, pull on her own coat, without any masculine courtesies. In any case, on a practical level, doing things for herself was by far the fastest way. But Billy was now a part of her life and she was content.

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