Anna [J.Shelby]

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

"Whose looking after the kids overnight?" Ada asked Anna as she watched the kids run in and out and around the house with Karl.

"The new nanny, our old one got married and has her own kid now, and my dad's staying with her." Anna sighed as she spread jam on bread for the kids with Ada.

"You see, I trust the nanny but it's the kids that I don't trust with our nanny, if they drive their own parents around the bend and back again I can't imagine how the nanny feels when she leaves the house" Ada laughed at this comment.

"You and John make them out to be worse then they actually are"

"Oh we love each and every one of them, but when they're all together and running around, they're bloody buggers" Anna commented, licking some jam off her thumb.

"I'm happy with Karl, not that there's anyone to have more with anyway. All the men I meet are either not good enough for me according to my brothers or they're scared of my brothers"

"Put it this way, at least if you find another, you'll know that they're both good enough for you and not scared of your brothers"

"In the eyes of my brothers, nobody's ever been good enough, I think that's why they despised my marriage so much at first."

"Don't worry Ada, when my mum found out who I was married to she had a lot of insults and glares to hand out, no reaction could possibly be worse than my mum"

"I would have loved to have seen her face"

"I wanted to slap her, and if Polly was there, there would have been some seriously intimidating words"

"Well I need to get going, because it's not just me who needs to get ready, you do too."

"Will you be staying longer than just for just this charity dinner? Or will you up and leave back to London again?" Anna asked her hopefully.

"We'll see" Ada replied with a small laugh.

At the charity dinner, the atmosphere felt foreign and very forced in the large hall, Anna felt out of place surrounded by strangers.

Everybody around her had some sort of importance, it was unusual how the Shelby family could blend so well, even act themselves around others.

But she understood, they did run a majority of England, and the name was very, very well known and so were their faces.

"It all seems fake to me" Linda commented as she stepped up beside her Anna who turned to her.

"What does?" Anna asked.

"The whole dinner, the guests.." Linda listed, glancing around the large hall.

"It's for charity, top names across the country and beyond had to be invited to raise more money. But I agree, there is some fake smiles. But there isn't many people who smile genuinely these days, Linda"

"It's a little too full and loud for my own liking. John's a people person, he could go around and talk to anybody but not me, I've never been that way" She added.

"I could tell that when I first met you, which wasn't that long ago, but you have grown on me" Linda commented, sending Anna one of her tight smiles.

"I'm glad, we do see a lot of eachother so that is a good thing" Anna replied.

"When I first met you, I just couldn't understand why you were in Birmingham, I can tell you're from the South-west, and you've told me before that you came from a very small village but I've always wondered, why here, in Birmingham and with John Shelby?"