When Mrs Oliver left, I returned to my room to change out of my dress.

I left it draped over the armchair before going downstairs to join William in the living room. Mr and Mrs Atkinson had gone elsewhere, no doubt to discuss how they were going to push William for his comments over luncheon. They did not appear like the type who would just let something like that go, especially as it had been quite rude, and William did not hold back. I dropped down beside William and knocked his legs off the table.

"What did you do that for?" he asked.

"No feet on the table," I said.

"You sound like Mother."

I rolled my eyes. "And you're annoying."

"Do you think I broke Mrs Oliver?"

"Probably. You were a little harsh."

"It needed to be said, she has never had to face the consequences of her actions before and it was time someone held her accountable. Mother has been wanting to say something like that for years, but she never could."

"Still, you could have just asked her to stop."

"Like she would listen to me. If it stops her attacking you for the scar and the hair-"

"And you for the pointy ears."

"Exactly. Then it was worth it."

William looked at me and shrugged, sinking lower into the chair and throwing his legs up onto the table again. I made no attempt to knock them off this time and just sat there, gazing up at the painting on the wall and trying to decide whether William had been right. What he said had been harsh and insulting, but Mrs Oliver had been the one to spend the entire luncheon picking on other people, including me. She deserved for someone to have a word with her, but not like that.

I thought there were better ways of explaining how unfair she was being to tear into her the way William did. It made him no better than she was as far as I was concerned regardless of whether he had been trying to defend me or not. William found fault with what Mrs Oliver had been doing in the same way she had been doing to us since she had arrived for luncheon and even before that. It hardly seemed fair to address her that way when he would have been far easier and better for him to address her politely.

Still, I did not say anything and neither did Mr and Mrs Atkinson. I expected them to tell William off and punish him for what he had done but they did not, they just ignored it. They continued on as though nothing had happened, throughout supper and when we went to bed nothing was said, or even mentioned in passing. Perhaps they did not feel the need to bring it up when I had been around and would deal with the matter privately, but even then, I did not hear them approach William's room. They did not mention it at all.

Even the next morning, when I woke up knowing I had to show James my dress and that I would be returning to the orphanage the next day, it did not appear to have been addressed. We sat at breakfast following the usual routines of William eating his weight in bacon, Mrs Atkinson picking at her food and Mr Atkinson not eating a thing. It was as if the events at luncheon had never happened and perhaps that would be the best way of handling it. They did not come across as the punishing type and decided it would be better to just pretend it never happened.

"I thought we might put the Christmas decorations up today," Mrs Atkinson said. "As you have to go and see James to show him your dress, we could get ourselves a Christmas tree."

"Sounds great," William said.

"A little early, don't you think Lydia?"

"It's never too early. Besides, it's Lizzie last day with us before she returns to the orphanage and I think it is only fair that she takes part in it with us."

"Alright, if you're certain."

Mr Atkinson folded his newspaper in half and dropped it onto the table beside his plate before doing something I never thought I would see him do. He took up a sausage from the tray, stabbed his fork into it and ate it without even cutting it up. Mrs Atkinson looked at him a little disgusted, but I would see a small smile on her face – at least there was no doubt as to where William got his appalling table manners from.

After breakfast, I returned to my room to change into my dress whilst Mr Atkinson hailed a carriage that could carry the tree for us, so we did not have to. I felt a little out of place wearing a dress as extravagant as the one I had made just to show James and then put up Christmas decorations, it did not feel right and I wished I did not have to wear it and could just show it to him but I knew that James would want to see me wear it rather than just have it hanging over my arm.

I joined the Atkinsons in the carriage and watched London move by as we pulled away from the house and towards James' shop. I spent the entire time staring out the window and watching the world pass by, people doing last-minute Christmas shopping, moving through the crowds and trying to squeeze into shops. Peeked over the top of one of the shops was the orphanage, a large stone building that had always been intimidating to look at and even more so from a distance.

The carriage stopped outside James' shop and me and William climbed out with the Atkinsons deciding to go and try and find a tree and leave us to it. William looked at me and smiled, walking to the shop and pushing open the front door, chiming the little bell above the door. James looked up from his mannequin and smiled, his mouth full of small pins as he worked to pin a dress together. Rosie hovered in the door to the office once again, she seemed to do a lot of paperwork.

"Ah, I wondered when we would be seeing you today," he said.

"Here I am," I said, holding my arms out so he could get a better look at my dress.

"Give me a second."

James removed the pins from his mouth and placed them onto a small table just to the side of him. He stood up and brushed off his trousers, there were white makes on them from where he had been kneeling on the floor. After stretching out his back, he approached me and took a closer look at the dress, examining the stitching that held the dress together along with the flowers on the skirt. He didn't say anything and only mad the occasional noise as he checked the stitching. James was very precise.

"It looks great. The stitching is tight and neat, you can hardly see the seams at all. I like the flowers, it reminds me of a dress I made Rosie about five, six years ago now. Do you remember?" He turned behind him.

"The green one?" James nodded. "That was my first Christmas back home in seven years."

"We threw our first Greyson Christmas party in years; you had that confrontation with Robert's Mother."

"Those were the days."

"You did a good job, Lizzie. It looks like it could be professionally made. Especially considering it's only been a few days and even I would struggle with a deadline like that. I struggle with deadlines anyway."

He laughed and looked around the room, accepting a biscuit from a plate someone else had started to hand around. I took one too but did not eat it. Instead, I spun it around in my hand and looked around the room. Despite this being my second time in James' shops, I could not believe how much fabric he had on display and I expected there was more hidden away somewhere that I could not wait to get my hands on.

I would have loved to have access to it all, to be able to play around with brand new fabrics and ideas just as James could. I never thought I would have the opportunity to make something new since Matron was very strict on mending things rather than replacing them. James had given me the chance to make something brand new and even if the time constraint had been rather stressful, it felt nice to be good at something. To be able to come up with something brand new and know it would work. I wanted to be able to do it all the time.

James had offered me that opportunity, he had said I could work with him but that only went on the basis that I agreed to the adoption in the first place. I loved the idea of being to work with James and to play around with new ideas for dresses and maybe even expand my knowledge on tailoring a little more than just a dress. Everything came down to whether I accepted the Atkinsons offer of adoption and that did not feel like a possibility just yet.

"The offer still stands. If you would like the opportunity to work here, I will be more than willing to show you the ropes of everything," James said.

"I don't know. It will depend on what I decide with the adoption."

"I'll be here until then. Even if you go into service, you'll have at least one day off."

"We should go," William interrupted. "Mother will probably be going mad that we have yet to put the decorations up."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Feel free to stop by whenever you're free. I'll be here," James said.

I smiled at him and offered him a small wave before William and I left the shop, the bell dinging when we opened the door. The carriage was outside the shop, a Christmas tree strapped to the roof, although it did not look all that stable. William climbed into the carriage without saying a word, he wanted to leave the shop very abruptly although I did not understand why he would. Perhaps James mentioned me working for him in service upset him, he seemed convinced that I would agree to the adoption.

He refused to look at me in the carriage and I did not understand why. Me agreeing to be adopted had yet to be decided, I had made that clear before and still, William was convinced I would agree to it. I did not know what I wanted to do but I had to decide soon or else I would run out of time, especially if Mrs Atkinson's reason for it had been because she wanted to give an orphan a real Christmas. I had to make my decision before then and yet I did not know what to do.

For years I had been so set on not being adopted, I had been adamant that it was not something I wanted to do, and it made everything so much easier. Now, I did not know what I wanted, and everything had become overly complicated and I did not know what decision I wanted to make. With the Atkinson, I had the chance to learn from James and do something I loved, I had the chance to have an actual brother and did not have to spend my time scrubbing the floors. Without them, I would go into service with Charity as planned and not have to face other people.

Although there were more upsides to agreeing to the adoption, Charity would always be the one thing holding me back from making a decision. We had made a plan, a plan that we had kept up for eight years and that had all started to crumble in a matter of weeks. I could not betray Charity by leaving her behind, but I felt bad saying no to the Atkinsons when they had done so much for me. William thought it had already been decided and I knew how devastated he would be if I said no.

Why did a decision that should have been simple have to be so complicated?

~~~

First Published - December 16th, 2020