The Serving Girl // Book 2 in the Rosie Grey series

Chapter Twenty-One

"How often do you see your friends from the factory?" James asked, sawing into his meat with a knife. Beside him, Lily wrestled with Sebastian in a battle to get him to eat his vegetables. It was a battle she would lose.

"As often as I can. I see Tommy the most, he brings us our meat delivery," I said. Across the table, Matilda perked up slightly at the mention of Tommy's name and I caught Robert stifling a laugh out of the corner of my eye.

After church on Sunday, Matthew had extended the luncheon invitation to the entire Ealing family as well as Miss Jenkins and Esther. Although Mrs Ealing didn't appear too fond on the idea, Doctor Ealing agreed, and we proceeded to meet James and Kitty at a restaurant not too far from James' shop. Both twins were more than excited to be eating out for the first time in their lives and it took the combined efforts of myself and Esther to control them whilst Sebastian just hated the idea. He never appeared to be all that happy around others, besides James.

The conversation around the table had been somewhat stale until the topic of the factory came up. James and Matthew seemed particularly interested in my friendship with the girls, Mathias and Tommy but neither of them pushed far enough to ask about Isabel. They knew of her, of course, they did, yet they never pried beyond what I had already told them. I was glad for that, I didn't want to share Isabel with anyone. Instead, they asked about the others. What they were doing now, where they were and who I saw most often. It almost felt like an interrogation, but I knew they were only curious about the people I had spent seven years of my life with.

"I still find it odd that you were allowed to grow so close to the boys," Kitty added, stopping Sebastian as he prepared to launch a pea towards Esther.

"They weren't known to play by the rules. Besides, I wouldn't say I grew close to them. It was Lucy who spoke to them the most, we used to tease her about Mathias all the time."

"I never thought you'd be the one to do the teasing, Rosie. I remember when we would tease you about John Davidson and you would usually bite us." Matthew chuckled to himself whilst I felt my cheeks grow red.

"That reminds me, I was digging in the attic the other day and came across this, I thought you might want to see it," James said.

From his pocket, James produced a small oval-shaped photograph frame and handed it to me over the table. I flipped the photograph over and stared down at the image that had been tucked behind the glass panel and encased by the metal frame. Staring back at me was a picture of myself. I must have been about five or six in the photograph, my dark, curly hair bouncing around at my shoulders whilst I smiled widely and exposed the gaps in my mouth from where I had lost some of my teeth. Even with the grin on my face, I looked uncomfortable. I had never been one for sitting still and family photographs involved a large amount of sitting still for prolonged periods of time.

I ran my fingers over the glass pane covering the photograph. It would have been taken a year or so before Mother's death, a year before Father put in the factory and I stopped being that little girl with the large grin. Only a short amount of time between being a child and being a worker. I had forgotten what it had been like to be that small, smiling in the photograph. It felt like a lifetime ago, and I suppose it had been.

"Let me have a look," Robert asked, leaning against the table and ignoring the looks from his mother. I handed the photograph frame over to him and watched as he chewed on the inside of his cheek before speaking. "You were so sweet, what happened?"

"Funny."

"I thought so."

Robert handed the photograph back to me, still grinning as he returned to the meal in front of him. I had forgotten about the food that sat in front of me and drew all my attention back to the photograph and the day it had been taken all those years ago. Mother insisted we had family portraits taken every year, she would use it to mark the four of us growing up and changing from children into adults. Of course, there were no photographs of me after seven-years-old and I didn't know if James and Matthew had kept to the tradition, but I wished it hadn't stopped. I knew I was no longer the little girl in the photograph, but I had nothing to mark that change except the scars on my back and the callouses on my hands.