***chapter 48***

***Letters from Home***

Dear Daz (Matthew always thought it more homely to use her nickname)

Ignore bad spellin and grammer like all ways. Hope school still ok. Still take fresh flowers to Jimmy grave every week for you like you asked me and no your not to pay me back I got loads of dosh with this job and not much to spend it on so I want to spend sum dosh on my kid sis. They say tulips and chrisanthersmum is best for snow and frost last longer so what we get. Feel daft carrying flowers thug so did I tell you I go in dis guise wear Big Joes coat and hat or borrow one of your Dads top hats he do'nt know and footy scarf over me mouth. Girl I told you about Jacky who works there sez Ime mad laughs till she crys and the coat comes down to my ankels all most but hay need it with this snow soon be March and still here. Jacky has green eyes and long hare color like them toffy slabs and fab smile and likes the Beatles and has a cat called Penny youd like her.

Ada baked big mounten of scones yesterday and was all jolly when all of a sudden she sat down on a chair, buryed her face in her hands and bowled like a baby. We thought she took sick then Mrs Geratty went to see what was to do to cheer her up next thing Mrs Geratty pulls up a chair and was bowling to. Ada sez Dora loves scones with jam and cream would'nt be none left if you was here and every body bowled at that and then we eat them.

Jack Stanford got Lydia up the spout so they left for Scotland. (Dora, being too young to understand the expression, innocently imagined that Jack and Lydia, for reasons best known to themselves, had climbed a drainpipe to the roof somewhere in the North, espied Scotland in the distance and decided it a good place to re-locate.) Got a new man Bingham to drive nearly as quit as the Quit Man but not quit just surley bugger.

Daz sorry got to tell you sum very bad news. The wood horses got threw out. The Quit Man put them in the rubbish not his fault your Ma sez to. I yelled when found out and he got scarred Jesus Ida made a grate priest I do'nt think good thing I did'nt but felt bad after wards took him for few pints down the Red Lion they think Ime 18 there. Sorry Daz old Pruneface may be your Ma but bleedin mean trick. Well mate got to go help clear drive way all hands on deck in this snow they say worse winter since 1740 jesus christ no wonder were froze. You take car now were all thinking of you.

Luv xxx your big bro Matt

ps Going to ask Jacky on date next time wish me luck kidda

Dora swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. Long ago, when Jimmy had given her the sculptures, he had told her the story of how loved the two beautiful black Follyfoot horses had been, and how Davey had carved them in memory of Beauty and Magic for his children. And, oh, she knew it was silly, she knew she was too old to believe in such things, but she had always imagined them real, and now they were gone, a little part of Dora died with them. But Prudence and Arthur would surely have been proud of their little daughter at that moment, when she took a deep, shuddering breath and sternly told herself she must brush away her quiet tears.

For she was learning to be on her own.

There were other pupils like herself at Green Willows. Girls from similar wealthy backgrounds, a few with parents like her own, as distant in love as they were distanced by geography. And there were the horses. The horses that would nicker in greeting and listen intently when she told them about the stables at Hepplethwaite's and her life at Saxe Coburg Mansion, gazing at her with warm brown eyes that seemed to understand.

With surprisingly little protest, she had agreed with her mother and father when they suggested that going away to school would be an excellent idea, partly because she knew they would send her anyway, but mostly because they finally relented and said they would allow her to take riding lessons. At Green Willows, she had friends her own age and the horses and she needed nothing and no one else.

Although she often longed for the old days, of going for a drive out with Jimmy to his church, wearing her pretend chauffeur hat and pretend chauffeur badge; or tucking into a thick slice of bread and jam in the kitchens, kicking her legs happily on the three-legged stool, enjoying the chatter and laughter and being fussed over; or Millie showing her how to dance the twist and Simon and Jeanette and one or two others joining in, faster and faster, till they were all dizzy and giggling and breathless; or Matthew teaching her the words to The Loco-Motion and the two of them singing an out-of-tune duet and dancing badly in the staff lounge to a thunder of applause and a stomping of feet that threatened to bring the roof down.

Her parents' letters were stilted, written out of duty. Matthew's letters painted pictures and lightened the loneliness of her banishment. Mummy and Daddy didn't miss her, but the servants did and she missed them too, so much, much more than she did Mummy and Daddy. She'd been taken away from those she loved, but she could and she would be strong.

Because she had to be now she was all alone in the world.

Planning to reply to Matthew later that day, Dora threw the envelope into the dormitory's waste-paper bin, then carefully folded the pages that had been torn from a notebook and covered in Matthew's large, spidery handwriting, and placed them inside the book Ponies in Colour that her friend Cleo had lent her to read, little dreaming of the chain of events that would follow the letter being found there…