Beatrice Thorpe had been a beauty once but her looks had long gone. She was now fat and overblown like a rose whose petals quivered on the stem, ready to fall ignominiously to the ground. Her eyes were half-hooded by fallen flesh, her lips now thinner and lost in the mounds of fat that were her reddened cheeks, the one-time elegant slenderness beyond the hope of any corset. She no longer wore the restricting garments, for they were acutely uncomfortable these days, and thus she spilled out in all directions.
Fred found it hard to admire his mother now. He had thought her wonderful when she had been young and lovely and he often looked at the early portraits of her in the hallway and in the dining room. Hard to believe that it was the same person. How did people alter so much? Youth se
