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22
To Be Loved
My parents agreed to keep Charity safe in that time.
The night before we were expecting Charity, my mother pulled
me aside.
‘Aubrey, I want to talk to you a bit more about that Hollows girl.’
At this point, Mother’s face had contorted itself into a nervous twist,
which surprised me (she was never nervous). ‘Well, she’s ten years
old. That’s quite a bit younger than you.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘And she’s well… special.’
‘I’m special!’
‘Well, by her type of special, I mean…
strange
. A bit eccentric. Just
be patient with her, please.’
And in an effort to please my beautiful mother, I said yes, of
course I would. I used to always wish I had Mother’s blonde curls
instead of my wooden twigs, and her hazel eyes instead of my
puddles. I suppose I wasn’t terribly ugly. I just wasn’t terribly
pretty, either.
‘
After breakfast, on my first morning with Charity Hollows, I
decided to give her a formal tour of the house. She’d really only
seen the dining hall, the drawing room and her bedroom since
yesterday evening, and naturally, I wanted to show her all the other,
better, rooms.
When we arrived at the library, instead of admiring the shelves of
books, she flocked to the window.
‘Oh, what a beautiful place! I’ve always loved the countryside,’
she cried.
‘Well, I suppose it’s alright,’ I replied, thinking not much of it,
seeing as it was what I’d grown up with all my life.
‘Say, Aubrey, what’s that old-looking place down there?’ She said,
pointing to some old castle ruins.
‘Well, Daddy says that some hundreds of years ago, our family
used to live in a castle. Which wasn’t that uncommon, because there
used to be loads of castles. See how big it is? It became too big to look
after properly, which was why we built this house. But look at all the
books, Charity. Don’t you want to read?’
‘I never liked reading,’ she said, ‘I was never good at it.’
Frankly, this surprised me. But, as the day passed on, that little
dark creature continued to surprise me. She ate lots, couldn’t
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