Free Some Sunny Day by Annie Groves Page B

supposed about it,’ Sofia answered bitterly. ‘Seen at it, she was. Acting cheap around our men, wi’ them wot’s guardin’ ’em and we all know why. Some of us have allus known what she is, even if others…’
    Sofia’s voice was rising higher with every word she spat out. She was trembling with fury whilstRosie had started trembling herself. All her life she had thought of the Grenellis as her family, never imagining that anything could change the deep bond she had believed they shared. That belief had been turned on its head the moment the trouble had started in Liverpool.
    ‘Sofia, please…’ Maria begged her sister urgently in a low voice.
    Rosie heard her but she was too shocked to be able to react. Somewhere in a corner of her mind she had always known that her mother’s behaviour wasn’t like that of Maria and Sofia, but she had put that difference down to the fact that they were Italian, not because…She couldn’t stand here and let Sofia call her mother cheap without defending her. She took a deep breath.
    ‘I know my mother went to Huyton Camp but—’
    ‘She had no right to go there,’ Sofia shouted her down angrily. ‘What’s she to us? Nothing! And you can go home and tell her we don’t want her coming round here any more. Not that she’ll dare to show her face here after what she’s done…’
    Rosie looked helplessly at Maria, not knowing what to say or do and not really able to understand why Sofia was so worked up.
    ‘You’d better go home, I think, Rosie,’ Maria advised her, bustling her out of the room. ‘I’m sorry that Sofia spoke to you like that. She’s not herself at the moment.’
    ‘I know how much you must all be worrying,Maria,’ Rosie agreed, swallowing down the tears that were thickening her voice. ‘How is la Nonna? Have you managed to get any word of the men?’ The questions she wanted to ask came tumbling out on top of one another as Maria hurried her towards the back door.
    ‘You’re a good girl, Rosie. A kind girl,’ Maria told her, without answering her. ‘But with things the way they are, it’s best that you don’t come round for a while. Just until things settle down and Sofia’s back to her normal self.’
    The tears burned in the back of Rosie’s eyes. She wanted to throw herself into Maria’s arms and be told that everything was all right, just as she had done so many times as a little girl: when she had lost both her first front teeth and had been teased at school; when she had not been chosen for the school pantomime; when the goldfish her father had won for her at the fair had died, to name just a few of the small sadnesses that had coloured her growing up. But this was different. Everything was not all right, and she wasn’t a little girl any more. Poor Maria. Rosie could hardly bear to think about what she must be going through.
    Squaring her shoulders, she reached out and gave Maria a fierce silent hug, and then hurried away before her emotions got the better of her.

FIVE
    Rosie frowned as she studied her appearance in her dressing-table mirror. Having dipped her forefinger into a pot of Vaseline, she then drew the tip of it along the curve of her dark eyebrows to smooth and shape them, a beauty aid that Bella had shown her.
    She was wearing a frock she had made herself from a remnant of pretty floral cotton, bright yellow flowers against a white background. She had bought a roll of it at St John’s market in the spring. There had been just enough to make herself a halter-necked frock with a neat nipped-in waist and a panelled skirt.
    She had made the halter and trimmed the top of the bodice with some white piqué cotton, and then used the offcuts from the floral material to trim the little matching bolero jacket she had made. The result was an outfit that had brought her more than a few admiring comments. The smile that had been curving her mouth at the memory of those comments dimmed when she remembered how many of themhad come