Free The Ribbon Weaver by Rosie Goodwin Page B

have if he hadn’t thrown his daughter out.’ And with that the women turned their talk back to the good news and the rest of the visit was spent discussing the wedding. Molly insisted that they should celebrate properly and ordered Amy to fetch a bottle of her homemade elderberry wine from the pantry.
    ‘Ain’t it a bit early in the day?’ Amy questioned.
    ‘It’s never too early in the day to celebrate good news,’ Molly told her. ‘Besides – I’ve been keeping a few bottles o’ me elderberry wine fer a special occasion an’ it don’t get much more special than this from where I’m standin’, so just go and fetch it and do as you’re told fer once.’
    Thrilled to hear her gran sounding so much more like her old bossy self, Amy scurried away to the pantry. One bottle turned into two and two into three, and by teatime, when Mary and Beatrice finally made their unsteady way back to Forrester’s Folly they were more than a little tiddly and in a merry mood, as indeed were they all.
    With February came the snow. Molly had been expecting it for weeks, insisting that the skies were full of it, and when it did come it came with a vengeance.
    They woke up one morning to a silent white world. When Amy pulled aside the pretty flowered curtains at her bedroom window, all she could see was a blanket of white. The windows were frozen over inside into intricate little patterns and she had to breathe on them and rub a little space to peep out. The sight that met her eyes made her shudder, and after washing as quickly as she could at the little pot bowl in her room, she got dressed and tied a warm woollen shawl about her. Then, hurrying downstairs, she skilfully banked up the fire and pushed the kettle into it. Molly was still in bed. Since her illness, Amy had insisted that she lie in until she had got the kitchen warm each morning, and today she almost envied her. It was so cold that her teeth were chattering, and after hastily brushing her unruly curls and tying them into a ponytail with a ribbon, she caught up the copper coal-scuttle and bracing herself, went out to the little coal shed in the yard. The snow had drifted halfway up the door by then and she began to shovel it aside with her hands. By the time she was done, her fingers were blue and she looked as if she were dressed all in white.
    After finally managing to drag the door open she stared in dismay at the contents. There were still a few logs and odd bits of wood inside, but the remaining coal was little more than slack, and not much of it at that.
    Filling the scuttle as fast as she could, she scurried back into the homely little kitchen and slammed the door shut behind her. Luckily the fire was burning brightly now and the room was getting warmer, so after she had mashed the tea, she poured out a cup for Molly and took it up to her room to her.
    Later that afternoon, much against Molly’s wishes, Amy took the old pram out to the slagheap to try and replenish their dwindling coal supply. Molly’s troubled eyes kept going to the window.
    ‘She should never have gone out on a day like this,’ she fretted. ‘Why, it ain’t fit for a dog to be out.’
    She and Bessie were huddled up by the fire, and reaching over, Bessie patted her hand comfortingly.
    ‘She’ll be all right, love,’ she reassured her. ‘She might not be very big but she’s young and strong. Anyway, she’s been gone well over an hour now; happen she’ll be back soon.’
    Molly hoped she was right. ‘I need to get back to me weaving,’ she told Bessie. ‘The money I had put by has almost gone, but me damn hands don’t seem to want to do what me head tells ’em!’
    Bessie sighed at her dilemma until all of a sudden a solution to Molly’s problems occurred to her.
    ‘What about the locket?’ She had never mentioned it once in all the years since Molly had brought Amy home.
    But Molly discounted it immediately. In truth, she had almost forgotten about it herself. It was still