STEPPING Out

Carrie threw herself onto the bed in despair, the memory of Father’s furious face as he loomed over her still vivid, his words still ringing in her ears. Thoughtless. Callous. Uncaring. Degenerate. That last one really stung. Even more than the blow to her face.

He’d never struck her before and his action had drawn a shocked gasp from Mother. Yet she hadn’t intervened. As far as Mother was concerned, Father made the rules and the rules came straight from God.

How could her day have taken such a downward spiral? Her afternoon at the theatre had been blissful, a magical interlude in another humdrum day.

Curiosity had pulled her inside the Assembly Rooms where the last but one performance of a touring entertainment – Yakov’s Variety Show – was taking place. How could she not succumb, given the publicity that preceded their visit and the ecstatic reviews heaped upon them by the local paper, while doing her rounds visiting Father’s parishioners?

Mrs Heggarty, who came to clean the vicarage three times a week, and Susan, who helped with everything else that needed doing, couldn’t stop talking about the show.

Not that either of them had dared discuss how entertaining it was in front of Mother, Father’s loyal spy.

Father, as vicar of St Mary’s, the largest parish in the town of Sittingford, had opposed the refurbishment of the rickety old Assembly Rooms with a vengeance. Some time in the middle of the war the decision had been made to close it.

But then, with the advent of the 1920s, the new