Read I Hope You Dance for Free Online

any control over me, my child or my life? Any guilt I may have felt at the dreadful state of our relationship evaporated when I asked Margaret (yes, I was also steamrollered into naming my daughter after her) to help us out financially after Fraser died, leaving us broke and in danger of losing our home.
    I was not her family, she had coolly replied down the phone. I had ensnared her son, dragged him down to my low level of existence, kept him miles away from his own mother, gleefully spent all his hard-earned wages and now had the cheek to expect her to fund my shallow, self-indulgent lifestyle instead. All that, after bringing shame on her family name.
    I hung up, reminded myself she was an old woman grieving her only son, poured myself a very large glass of wine and breathed a sigh of relief that I never officially became her daughter-in-law. Some people are fire-breathing dragons. They burn to a frazzle anyone and anything around them. We are better off keeping these people out of our lives.
    Except, here she was.
    She hobbled, scraping her black stick across the paving slabs, over to where Mum had pulled out a chair. “Please, do take a seat, Margaret. We had no idea you would be coming all this way, too. You must be exhausted.”
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous. How is sitting in the back of a car exhausting?”
    â€œGrandma’s on her way to London to visit her sister.” Maggie had taken a seat next to Timothy, kicked off her Dr Martens and grabbed a handful of sandwiches. “Where do I sleep?”
    â€œIs anybody going to offer Brown a cup of tea?” the dragon snapped, referring to her driver. “Or will I have to fetch it myself?”
    â€œNo, of course not,” Mum smiled. “We were just about to ask. Ruth?”
    I spent as long as possible taking tea to Margaret’s driver, dropping off a cup with Maggie, now lying on her new bed with headphones on, then killed more time reassembling some fresh cakes and sandwiches.
    â€œWould you like something to eat, Margaret?” Mum genuinely believed all it took was a few kind words and the dragon would morph into a bunny rabbit. “I made them myself. Or a cup of Earl Grey? Peppermint?”
    Margaret sniffed. “No. I do not. Hasn’t Brown finished that tea yet?”
    She left, not a second later than her driver’s allotted break allowed for, and the waistband on my trousers expanded to fit me again.
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    Dinner was at six. It did not turn out, I am guessing, quite as my mother had hoped. She had really tried, too.
    â€œDid you have a lovely time in Scotland, Maggie?”
    â€œAll right.” Maggie stabbed a piece of carrot with her fork, eyes on her plate.
    â€œThe grounds there are spectacular, aren’t they? Did you go for any walks?”
    â€œNo.” She jabbed at a pea, sending it bouncing onto the table top.
    â€œWas it nice and sunny?”
    â€œNo.”
    Mum pushed on, relentless, only pausing to top up her youngest grandchildrens’ water glasses. “Oh dear. I suppose that’s why you didn’t walk then. Did you meet any Scottish relatives while you were there?”
    â€œNo.” A flick at her mashed potato this time.
    â€œOh. What did you do then?”
    â€œNot a lot.”
    End of conversation.
    Arianna cried because, well, she always cried, and Timothy refused to eat the pastry on his chicken pie because it wasn’t wholemeal. Esther gritted her teeth as she tried to make herself feel better by having digs at me about jobs, money, clothes and general life choices compared to hers for the past twenty years. She had a hilarious story about when I got sacked from the bakery in Southwell after a monstrous nose bleed contaminated the cream cakes. Hilarious! Every sixteen-year-old girl thinks it is funny to leak blood all over a crowded shop, including a load of kids from her school, one of them being Meat Harris.
    By the time we started on the ice-cream, I