The Gilded Cage - Taking my Place

Mother

"I can't believe that you have not been here before this afternoon, Hermione?" Mum sighed as she poured a cup of tea for me. I was sitting at her kitchen table, at my parents' house in the grounds of Deepdene, in full finery, and she was fussing around me as usual, having made the tea and fetched cakes and biscuits, wearing what looked very much like a designer DiMarco gown in deepest purple. My father was clearly not skimping on her wardrobe, which had not always been the case. Dad was always very careful with his money before, but since moving to Meadvale he seemed to have enjoyed spending his ill-gotten gains. She looked so well to my eyes. Different to the woman I had known before we both discovered the Church of Christ the Reformer, but also more confident, somehow. Happier, I suppose. "I really like it...and it is so handy for your father...he can be in his office in five minutes."

"It's a nice house, Mummy...I like Annie's flat, too...I hope you are happy here?" I asked a little awkwardly. She had not really replied to my letter, but she had invited me to tea, and Miss Knight had decided that I ought to go, because it felt like an olive branch. She had walked me over, but had agreed to leave me on my own, whilst she went off to visit Mrs Radcliffe. Catriona felt that my mother and I needed to talk in private, and resolve our differences, so I had to face the ordeal alone. I was nervous, because it felt like we had to get reacquainted, somehow. I did not really know my mother anymore. "I don't think you ever were happy up in Cambridge but things seem different now?"

"Coming here has been wonderful for us, dear...I have made lots of friends and I am enjoying myself helping out at Deepdene. It has given me a real purpose in life...I feel like I am doing something useful...for the good of this wonderful community." She insisted, finally taking the seat opposite me, after serving our refreshments. "There are a lot of young women working at the school, and they need someone to keep an eye on them...I rather enjoy advising them...as I would enjoy advising you, my darling?"

"I have Miss Knight and Mrs Montague for that, Mummy...you know that?" I sighed, before taking a sip of my tea. Perhaps she was feeling abandoned, but I had not deserted her. Not from my point of view. Rather, she had left me. "But I still want you and dad in my life...even if we don't see eye to eye about everything?"

"It is not a question of seeing eye to eye, Hermione?" Mum sighed back, giving me a look so full of disappointment that I wanted to cry. She had looked like that when I came home from university, in pieces, because she thought that I had let her down, I suppose. She had helped put me back together, but I had always been haunted by that expression, because it meant that I had hurt her, which was never my intention. "Your total obsession with those girls...it is your OCD all over again...and you are turning your back on your own parents, just so that you can spend every minute with them...and being encouraged to do so!"

"Mummy, I am not obsessed with my sisters...I love them...it is because of them that I have found the faith to join the church and make my life here. You both wanted me to marry Steven Blackstone, and I am walking out with him now...I do like him...and I am really committed to my life here as a maiden...and as a daughter of Eve?" I insisted, sticking to my guns. "I thought you wanted me to be happy? I thought that was what you wanted for me?"

"Yes...your father and I are in favour of that match...young Steven still needs to learn where his own best interests lie, but we believe he would keep you properly...but we are not so sure that Mrs Montague is a good influence, Hermione? She has ensured that there is a real distance between us, but we are your parents, dear? We should be the ones helping you to grow up and grasp the opportunities you have here?" Mum said, just a little curtly, before pausing to sip her tea. It was quite surreal, really. Mum and I had sat in a kitchen drinking tea hundreds of times before, but never whilst dressed in sumptuous gowns, and talking about an arranged marriage as if it happened every day. And she was criticising Catriona Montague, of all people. Mum had hardly joined the church, and there she was accusing someone who had been born into it of being a bad influence. It was insane. I could not believe we were there, let alone what she was saying to me. It was more than surreal. "And those girls are not your sisters at the end of the day? We are your family?"