The House By Princes Park

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Coming of Age; Sagas; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

Another wonderful Liverpool saga from bestselling author Maureen Lee. The product of an affair between a nurse and an injured American soldier during the Great War, Ruby O'Hagan's early life is spent in an orphanage. At sixteen she runs away with a farmworker, and two years later she is alone and homeless with her two daughters. Her friend, Mrs Hart, leaves her big friendly house for Ruby to look after, and it is here that her life unfolds. Her children leave but return when tragedy befalls them. Through all this, the enigmatic Matthew Flynn drifts in and out of Ruby's life. She ignores him until it is almost too late.

Release date: September 9, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 516

Sample

Olivia had only been to London once before, on her way to France, and she’d liked the busy, bustling atmosphere. But now, she hated it. She hated everyone looking happy because the war was over. Surely there must be people around who’d had relatives killed? And women who felt as empty and desolate as she did.

There might even be women, single women, single pregnant women, who could advise her, tell her what to do, how to cope, where to go.

Because Olivia didn’t know. She didn’t know anything except that she couldn’t look for work in her condition. She’d always planned on going straight from France to Cardiff when the fighting ended. Matron had promised to take her back at the hospital where she’d been a nurse. But she’d got off the train in London and there seemed no point in going further. Matron wouldn’t want her now. She was ashamed of feeling so helpless when, since leaving home, she’d thought of herself as strong.

Never before had she had to think about money or somewhere to live or where the next meal would come from. The small amount of money she’d earned was more than enough to buy occasional clothes and over the years she’d managed to save a few pounds. Now, the savings had almost gone on accommodation in a small hotel in Islington. She was eking it out, eating only breakfast which, as a nurse, she knew wasn’t enough for a pregnant woman.

Despite this, she felt well and had never had a moment’s sickness. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t suspected she was pregnant when she missed her August period. She’d thought it was because she was upset over Tom. It could happen to women; their periods ceased when they were faced with tragedy. For the same reason, she wasn’t bothered when there was still no period in September, but by October, she had started to feel thick around the waist, and the terrifying realisation dawned that she was expecting a child. At that point, her brain seemed to freeze. She became incapable of thought.

With November came the Armistice. Olivia was glad, of course, but instead of rejoicing, she felt only despair.

She still despaired, weeks later. New clothes were needed because she could hardly fasten the ones she had. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to go out, and the proprietor of the hotel, a woman, was looking at her oddly because she was in her fifth month and seemed to be growing bigger by the day.

It was strange, but she rarely thought about Tom. If it hadn’t been for the baby squirming lazily in her womb, she wondered if she would have thought of him at all. The ring he’d given her that had belonged to his grandfather was in her suitcase. It wasn’t that the memory of him hurt, but it was impossible to believe the night had actually happened. It seemed more like a dream. She couldn’t remember what he looked like or the words he’d said or the things they’d done.

Mrs Thomas O’Hagan! She recalled whispering the words to herself the day he’d left.

‘What was that?’

Olivia was eating breakfast in the dingy dining room of the hotel. She looked up to find the proprietor glaring down at her. ‘Sorry, I must have been talking to myself.’

‘I’ve been meaning to have a word with you, Miss Jones,’ the woman said officiously. ‘I’ll be needing your room from Saturday on. I’ve got regulars coming, salesmen.’

‘I see. Thank you for telling me. I’ll find somewhere else.’

‘Not in a respectable place you won’t,’ the woman sniffed as she went away.

It had been bound to happen; either she’d run out of money or be asked to leave. Olivia’s thoughts were like a knot in her head as she walked towards the city centre. She preferred the noise of the traffic to the quiet streets, even if the West End clatter was horrendous. There were homes for women in her condition. They were terrible places, so she’d heard, but better than wandering the streets, penniless. But how did you find where they were? Who did you ask?

If only she didn’t feel so cold! Specks of ice were being blown crazily about by the bitter wind. She turned up the collar of her thin coat, pulled her felt hat further down on her head, but felt no warmer.

On Oxford Street, one of Selfridge’s windows had a display of warm, tweed coats, very smart. Olivia stopped and eyed them longingly. Even if she’d been working, they would have been way beyond her means, but she hadn’t enough to buy a coat for a quarter of the price from a cheaper shop.

She could, however, afford a cup of tea. She made her way towards Lyons’ Corner House, noting all the shops were decorated for Christmas – only a few weeks away – and trying not to think where she would be when it came.

A large black car driven by a man in uniform drew alongside the pavement in front of her. Two young women got out the back, wrapped in furs, silk stockings gleaming. Their matching handbags, gloves and shoes were black suede. They swept across the pavement into a jeweller’s shop in a cloud of fragrant scent.

Olivia had always been perfectly content to be a nurse, earning a pittance. She’d never envied other women their clothes or their position in life. But now, standing shivering outside the jeweller’s, watching the two expensively-dressed women seat themselves in front of a counter, the assistant bow obsequiously, a feeling of hot, raw jealousy seared through her body. At the same moment, the baby inside her decided to deliver its first lusty kick.

‘Are you all right, darlin’?’

A man had stopped and was looking at her with concern as she bent double clutching her stomach with both arms.

‘I’m all right, thanks.’ She forced herself upright.

He nodded at her bulging stomach. ‘You’d be best at home in a nice warm bed.’

‘You’re right.’ She appreciated his kindness. Perhaps he wouldn’t be so kind if he knew that beneath her summer gloves she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

She recovered enough to make her way to Lyons. As she drank the tea, Olivia realised with a sinking heart that there was only one way out of her predicament. She would have to ask her parents for help.

She couldn’t just turn up, not in her condition. Mr and Mrs Daffydd Jones could never hold up their heads in public again if it got out that their unmarried daughter was having a baby. Her father was a town councillor, her mother given to good works which she carried out with a stern, disapproving expression on her cold features. Olivia, an only child, was already in disgrace. There’d been a row when she gave up her job in the local library to take up nursing in Cardiff, and an even bigger one when she announced her decision to nurse in France. She daren’t go near the place where she was born, let alone the house in which she’d lived.

A letter would have to be sent, throwing herself on their mercy, and it would have to be sent today, so there would be time for a reply before Saturday when she left the hotel.

The tea finished, she searched the side streets for a shop that sold inexpensive stationery, then went to the Post Office and wrote to her mother and father, explaining her plight. She didn’t plead or try to invoke their sympathy. She knew her parents well. They would either help, or they wouldn’t, no matter how the letter was framed.

The reply came on Friday morning. She recognised her father’s writing on the envelope. Although he wrote neatly, he had managed to make the ‘Miss’ look as if it might be ‘Mrs’ – or the other way round. The proprietor didn’t look impressed when she handed the letter over. It crossed Olivia’s mind that she could have bought a brass wedding ring and signed the register as Mrs O’Hagan, claiming to be a widow if anyone asked, but she’d been so confused it hadn’t crossed her mind. Still, all it would have avoided was the indignity of, in effect, being thrown out. She would have had to leave in another few days when she came to the end of her savings.

The envelope contained a rail ticket and a curt note.

‘Catch the 6.30 train from Paddington Station to Bristol on Saturday night. I will meet you. Father.’

Bristol wasn’t far from where she’d lived in Wales. Relief was mixed with a sense of sadness as she re-read her father’s note. No ‘Dear Olivia.’ He hadn’t signed ‘Love, Father’.

At least now she was leaving she could treat herself to a decent meal with what was left of the money.

Her father was waiting under the clock at Temple Meads station, legs apart, hands clasped behind his back, glowering. He was rocking back and forth on his heels, a big, broad-shouldered man, in an ankle-length tweed overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat that made him look rather louche, though he would have been horrified had he realised. His coat hung open, revealing a pinstriped waistcoat and a gold watch and chain.

There was something forbidding about the way he waited, as if his thoughts were very dark. Olivia had always been frightened of him, although he’d never laid a hand on her, either in anger or affection.

He nodded grimly at her approach and had the grace to take her suitcase. He made no attempt to kiss the daughter he hadn’t seen for two and a half years. Even if she hadn’t been returning home under a cloud, Olivia wouldn’t have found this surprising.

She followed him outside and he stowed the case in the boot of the little Ford Eight car that was the only thing she’d known him show fondness for. He would pat it lovingly when it had completed a journey and murmur, ‘Clever little thing!’

‘Where’s Mother?’ Olivia asked as they drove out of the station.

‘Home,’ he said brusquely.

There was a long silence. The gaslit streets of Bristol were mainly deserted at such a late hour. They passed a few pubs that had recently emptied and where customers still hung noisily around outside.

‘Where are we going?’ Olivia asked when the silence began to grate. She wondered if she was being taken to a home for fallen women. It would be horrid, but she’d put herself in a position where she had no choice.

‘A Mrs Cookson, who lives near the docks, will look after you until... until your time comes.’ His voice was grudging. ‘It’s most unlikely anyone we know will visit the area, but I would be obliged if you would stay indoors during daylight hours in case you’re recognised. Mrs Cookson has been given money to buy you the appropriate garments. You’ll be comfortable there. When everything is over, you will leave. I’ll make arrangements for the child to be taken care of, if that is your wish. If you decide to keep it, don’t expect your mother and me to help. We never want to see you again.’

Although she’d had no wish to see them, either, the bluntness of his words upset her. They made her feel dirty. She opened her mouth to tell him about Tom, but before she could say a word, her father said tonelessly, ‘You’re disgusting.’

She didn’t speak to him again, nor he to her. Shortly afterwards, he turned into a little street of terraced houses, and stopped outside the end one. He got out, leaving the engine running, and knocked on the door.

It was opened by a gaunt woman in her fifties with hennaed hair and a vivid crimson mouth. She had on a scarlet satin dress and a black stole. Long jet earrings dangled on to her shoulders and she wore a three-strand necklace to match. Her long fingers were full of rings – if the stones were real, she must be worth a fortune, Olivia thought.

Her father grunted an introduction, almost threw his daughter’s suitcase into the hall, and left. The Ford was already in motion by the time Mrs Cookson closed the door. She folded her arms and looked Olivia up and down.

‘Well, who’s been a naughty girl?’ she said archly.

Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled. She’d been expecting to be treated like a wanton woman over the next few months and, although Mrs Cookson wasn’t quite her cup of tea, it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted with a joke.

‘Come along, dearie,’ the woman seized her arm, winking lewdly. ‘Come and tell us all about it. Would you like a cuppa? Or something stronger? I’ve got some nice cherry wine. I’m about to have a bottle of milk stout, myself. Oh, and by the way, call me Madge.’

Madge Cookson was the unofficial midwife in the area of Bristol known as Little Italy because of the street names. Her own house was in Capri Street, and there were other similar streets of tiny houses: Naples, Turin and Venice, as well as a small cul-de-sac called Milan Way, all off Florence Road. She had a weakness for milk stout and a rather brittle manner that hid a soft, generous heart. Olivia was to grow quite fond of her over the next few months.

‘How did my father know about you?’ she enquired after she’d been living in Madge’s house for a week.

‘He must have asked around. You’re not the first well-bred young lady I’ve had under similar circumstances to your own.’

As a young woman, Madge had been a singer on the music halls and there was a poster in her bedroom listing Magda Starr fourth on the bill at the London Hippodrome.

‘That was the highest I ever got,’ she told Olivia sadly. ‘I always wanted to be top, but it wasn’t to be. I got married soon afterwards and had our Des.’ Her husband had died years ago, but Desmond had followed in his mother’s footsteps and was a ventriloquist on the halls, although he had never reached such an exalted position as fourth on the bill. Desmond Starr’s name was usually in small print at the bottom.

‘Was your name really Starr?’ Olivia asked. She would never cease to be intrigued by Madge’s fascinating and varied life.

‘No, my maiden name was Bailey, but Magda Starr looked better on posters than Madge Bailey.’

‘How did you become a midwife?’

‘I’m not a proper midwife, am I, dearie? I worked in a hospital for a while after my husband died and saw how it was done. I helped deliver a couple of babies and word got round, that’s all.’

The house was comfortable, as her father had promised. Madge’s exotic taste in clothes was reflected in the furnishings. Instead of a conventional runner, a garish shawl covered the sideboard on which stood a vase of enormous paper flowers. A bead curtain separated the kitchen from the living room, and there were numerous satin cushions embroidered with silver and gold thread scattered around. The covers had come from India, said Madge, as had the big tapestry over the mantelpiece in the parlour and the black and gold tea service with fluted rims that was brought out for best.

A fire crackled in the living room from early morning till late at night. On Sundays, a fire was also lit in the parlour for Madge’s visitors; women about her own age, who came in the afternoon to play whist and drink milk stout.

Olivia stayed in the other room on these occasions reading one of Madge’s collection of well-thumbed romantic novels. Sometimes she went upstairs for a nap in her room at the back with its lovely springy double bed.

She was as happy as anyone could be in her position. It would have been nice to have gone for a walk in the bright winter sunshine, or even the winter fog, wearing the new, warm coat, bought by Madge with money provided by her father but Madge, usually very easygoing, was strict about her staying indoors while it remained light outside.

‘I promised your father you wouldn’t go out until it was dark. It’s what he’s paying me for. I can’t force you to stay in, but I’d feel obliged to let him know if you didn’t.’

‘I’m not likely to meet anyone I know round here,’ Olivia said sulkily.

‘The world is made up of coincidences,’ Madge said. ‘You could walk out and come face to face with the sister of your mother’s best friend.’

‘My mother doesn’t have friends.’

‘Well, her next-door neighbour, then.’

‘Has my father given you his address?’

‘’Course. I’m to send him a telegram when the baby’s born, aren’t I? “Package Delivered” I’ve to put, case anyone reads it. Unless you decide to keep the baby, that is, in which case he doesn’t want to know.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of keeping it.’ Olivia shuddered. Once it arrived, she intended putting the whole episode behind her and finishing her training, to become a State Registered Nurse.

Madge looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You might feel different when it’s born.’

‘If I do,’ Olivia said harshly. ‘I want you to tear it out of my arms and let my father have it.’

‘Your father can do the tearing, dearie. Not me.’

The baby seemed even less real than Tom. It might well be in her womb, but it had nothing to do with her. She didn’t care what happened to it as long as it didn’t come to any harm.

Christmas came and went, and soon it was 1919, the first New Year in half a decade with Europe at peace with itself, celebrated with a joy and enthusiasm that was infectious. Madge and Olivia watched fireworks on the River Avon and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at midnight in Victoria Park.

January became February, and February turned into March. The baby was due at the beginning of April.

Desmond Starr, Madge’s ventriloquist son, came home for Easter, a cheerful, outgoing young man, just like his mother. He was booked to appear all summer at a theatre in Felixstowe and invited Madge and her guest. He could get free tickets.

‘Well, I’ll try,’ Olivia lied. By summer, she would have started afresh. She was fond of Madge, but never wanted to see her or her son again.

She knew she had become very hard, very selfish. In days gone by, she’d been regarded as a soft old thing, too sympathetic for her own good. But now, there seemed to be a barrier in her brain, stopping all thoughts from entering that weren’t concerned solely with herself.

The baby signalled it was on its way one lovely sunny Sunday afternoon in April, dead on time. Olivia was reading one of Madge’s torrid romances when she had the first contraction, a strong one. It wasn’t long before she had another, stronger and more painful. She’d spent time on a maternity ward during her training and recognised it was going to be a quick birth.

Madge was playing whist with her friends in the parlour. Olivia calmly made a cup of tea and waited for the friends to leave. She boiled two large pans of water and laid a rubber sheet on the bed. The worn sheets Madge had boiled to use as rags she put ready on a chair.

She gritted her teeth when another contraction came, worse than the others, but was reluctant to disturb Madge while her friends were there. Not that Madge could do anything, but she wouldn’t have minded the company. The contractions were coming every ten minutes by the time the visitors were shown out.

‘By, God! You’re a cool customer,’ Madge gasped when Olivia called her upstairs where she was lying on the bed, already in her nightdress.

‘I’ve got a couple of hours to go yet.’

‘You’re too cool, d’you know that?’ She sat on the bed and took Olivia’s hand. ‘My other young ladies have cried themselves silly during the entire confinement, but there hasn’t been a peep out of you.’

‘I haven’t felt much like crying,’ Olivia confessed, wincing when another contraction gripped her stomach like a wrench.

‘It’s time you did. Didn’t you cry when your young man was killed? What was his name? Tom! You hardly ever talk about him.’

Olivia permitted herself a wry smile. ‘I slept in a dormitory with the other nurses. There was no place where I could cry in private. And I don’t talk about Tom because he doesn’t seem real. I can’t even remember what he looked like.’

Madge sniggered. ‘Well, the baby’s real enough. You can have a good old yell, you know,’ she said when Olivia winced again. ‘Let yourself go. Next door’s deaf as a post and the street won’t mind.’

‘I’d sooner not. And I don’t feel all that bad. Most of the births that I remember were much worse than this.’

The time passed slowly. Children could be heard playing in the street outside. Someone knocked on the door but Madge ignored it. A woman in a house behind was singing, her voice carrying clearly in the still, evening air. ‘Keep the home fires burning...’

It was the song the men used to sing in France, Olivia remembered. It could be heard late at night, from miles away across the fields, when the fighting had finished for the day. Some nights, the nurses and the patients joined in. They’d been singing it the night when she and Tom had made love...

... the sky had been spectacular, she recalled; deep, sapphire blue, as lustrous as the jewel, and powdered with a myriad glittering stars. The waning moon was a delicate lemon curve.

Although not yet completely dark, it was dark enough to disguise the fact that the French landscape was a battlefield on which more than a million men had died. In daylight, the flat ground was a sea of dried mud, a jigsaw of trenches, empty now that the fighting had moved on.

Spurts of white smoke could be seen on the horizon, where the battle now was, where shells were landing, killing yet more men. The smoke occasionally turned to flames, indicating a building had been hit. On such a night, the flames even added something to the splendour of the view, flickering as they did like giant candles at the furthest edge of the world. A few broken trees were silhouetted like crazy dancing figures against the lucid blueness of the sky.

People had come outside the hospital to marvel at the magnificent sight amidst so much mayhem; staff, a few of the walking wounded. There was the faint murmur of voices, the occasional glimmer of a cigarette.

‘Olivia! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

‘Tom!’ Olivia turned and instinctively lifted her arms to embrace the man limping towards her. She dropped them as he came nearer and hoped he hadn’t noticed. He was her patient. He mustn’t know how she felt, though she sensed he had already guessed. After all, she had a strong suspicion he felt the same, something of a miracle when he was so attractive and she so plain.

‘Great night,’ he said, panting slightly. The walk had been an effort.

‘Beautiful,’ she breathed. She nodded towards the smoke and the flames in the distance. ‘That spoils it rather. And there’s something sinister about not being able to hear the explosions.’

‘Or the screams,’ Tom said drily. He took her hand, his fingers curling warmly inside her own. She made no attempt to pull away. ‘So, this is it! Our last night together.’ He gave the glimmer of a smile. ‘Or should I say, our last night in the near vicinity of each other. I’m sorry my leg is better. I feel tempted to take off my clothes, wander into the darkness, and pray I catch pneumonia again.’

‘Not if I have anything to do with it!’ She pretended to be outraged. He was joking. He was American, and the Americans joked all the time. They seemed exceptionally good-humoured. ‘I’m a nurse. I want my patients to get better, not worse.’

‘Don’t be so practical.’

‘Nurses are always practical, they have to be.’ She didn’t feel practical, not now, with her hand held so tightly in his.

He gave another tiny smile. ‘Couldn’t you be impractical just for tonight?’

‘Not if it means you catching pneumonia, no. Anyway, it’s exceptionally warm. You’re not likely to catch anything except a few insect bites. Mind you, they can be nasty.’

‘In that case,’ he said lightly, ‘Maybe we could forget about war, explosions in the distance, illnesses, hospitals, doctors and nurses, and just talk about each other?’

She should really say no, that’s impractical too. Instead, she murmured, ‘There’s nothing much to say.’ She already knew quite a lot about him. He came from Boston. His parents – he called them ‘folks’ – were Irish. He was twenty-three, worked in a bookshop owned by his father, and had volunteered to fight when America joined the war in 1917. His full name was Thomas Gerald O’Hagan and he had two sisters and five brothers of which he was the youngest. She also knew she wasn’t the only nurse attracted to the tall, thin Irish–American with the laughing face, black curly hair, and peat-brown eyes. She was, however, the only one in love. He occupied her mind every waking minute of every day.

He had come into the hospital three weeks ago with a badly gashed leg and a dose of double pneumonia. Tomorrow, he was being sent to convalesce in a hospital in Calais. As soon as he was fit, he would return to an American Army unit to fight again. As a reminder of his imminent departure, there was a clanking sound as the ambulance train was shunted into place on the railway sidings behind them, ready for morning.

By comparison, he knew little about her, just that her name was Olivia Jones and she was the same age as himself. She had been born and bred in Wales and had never left its borders until she’d come to France two years ago as a nurse. He also knew, because he could see, that she wasn’t even faintly pretty, almost insipid with her pale face and pale blue eyes.

‘What will you do when the war is over?’ Tom asked casually.

‘Finish my training. I hadn’t taken my final exams when I left Cardiff.’

‘Would it be possible to finish training in the States?’

She caught her breath. ‘Why should I do that?’

‘Because it’s where I’ll be.’ His voice was very low, intense. ‘It’s where my job is. And it’s where I’d like you to be. Will you marry me, Olivia?’

‘But we hardly know each other,’ she gasped, though it was silly to sound so surprised when it was a question she’d hoped and prayed he’d ask.

He gestured impatiently. ‘My darling girl, there’s a war on, a hideous war, the worst the world has ever known. There isn’t time for people to get to know each other as they would in normal times. I fell in love the first time I set eyes on you.’ Pressing her hand to his lips, he said huskily, ‘You are the loveliest woman I’ve ever known.’

He must be in love if he thought that! It was time she answered, said something positive, told him how she felt. He was kissing her now, her neck, her cheeks. He took her face in both hands and kissed her lips.

She was a timid person, withdrawn, and this was the first time she had been properly kissed. She pressed herself against him and felt her body come alive. ‘I love you,’ she whispered.

He held her so tightly she could hardly breathe. ‘The minute this damn war is over we’ll get married,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ll write you every day and let you know where I’m posted so you can write me. Have you a photograph I can have?’

‘I’ve one taken with the other nurses a few months ago,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’ll let you have it before you go.’

‘I’ll let you have something of mine.’ He held out his hand. A circle of gold glinted dully on the third finger – she had noticed the ring before, and had thought he was married until she realised it was on his right hand. ‘It’s my grandpop’s wedding ring,’ he explained as he removed it, dark eyes shining. ‘He gave us all something before he died. I got his ring. It’ll be too big, but might fit your middle finger. Or you can wear it around your neck on a chain.’

The ring was too big for any of her fingers. She put it in the breast pocket of her long white apron. As soon as she could, she’d buy a chain.

‘I feel as if we’re already married.’ Her voice was thick in her throat. It was almost too much to bear. She wanted Tom to kiss her again, do the things that, until now, she’d thought wrong. She slid her arms around his neck and began to pull him along the side of the hospital building. He put his hands on her waist and they moved as if they were doing some strange sort of dance. In the distance, the troops began to sing, a desolate, haunting sound.

Tom said, ‘Where are we going, honey?’

‘Round here.’

They reached the corner of the building. About a hundred feet away, a tangle of railway lines shone silver in the light of the moon. Beyond the lines stood a small, single-storey building without a door.

‘This used to be a station,’ she said. ‘That building was the waiting room.’

‘And is that where we’re going?’ There was incredulity in his voice.

By now, she felt utterly shameless. Every vestige of the respectability and conformity that she’d been fed over her entire life had fled. In just an instant, the world had turned 180 degrees. ‘If you want,’ she said.

‘If I want! Gee, I can’t think of anything I want more. But you, Olivia, is it what you want?’

Her answer was a laugh. She grabbed his hand, and they began to step over the silver lines. The stars continued to shine in their hundreds and thousands, the troops continued to sing, but Olivia and Tom were aware of none of these things as they entered the small, unused building into an intoxicating world of their own.

The war would be over in a few months’ time, so everybody said: the experts, the newspapers, the pundits, the tired, hopeful men on the ground. But people had been saying the same thing for the last four years, ever since the fighting had begun.

It was something they wanted to believe, Olivia Jones included. But now she had her own pressing reason for wanting the fighting to end, to be over before Tom returned to battle.

Next morning, she saw him off, slipping him the promised photograph when no one was looking – she would get into serious trouble if Matron discovered the magical thing that had happen