Free Trust Me by Lesley Pearse

as their father had been, and she knew Reg with his brutish looks would be tarred with the same brush. She was certain Anne had another man, and that Reg had found out, and if that came out in court he wouldn’t stand a chance.
    She stood on the tiny landing between the two bedrooms, the candle in her hand, tears rolling down her cheeks. This house had once been crammed with children, boys in one room, the girls and her and her husband Albert in the other. At night it quivered with snoring, snuffling and rustling. She could remember nights too when the kids cried with hunger and she sobbed as well in desperation. Eight was a great many children, yet she’d borne eleven, three dying before they were even one.
    Reg had been the only one who always gave her joy. It was always he who came home with wood for the fire or a few vegetables left at the end of the market. As young as seven or eight he’d earn a few pennies selling papers or cleaning out stables and bring the money back to her. There were so many times when he bathed her black eyes and split lips, or washed her hair for her when she couldn’t lift her arms for the bruises. He always told her that when he was grown up he’d take her away from here.
    She never mourned Albert’s death. How could she? He’d been such a cruel and wicked man. She just wished she’d found a way of leaving him years before he’d made the older boys just like him. But Reg, with his gentle ways, big dreams and the ability to work hard, had cheered her. Thanks to him, Maria and Rose, her two youngest children, had shoes on their feet, food in their bellies and weren’t haunted by the misery their father had inflicted on the others. They were both in Canada now – Maria had gone first at eighteen, and then Rose joined her. They became nurses, got married and had a child each. Maybe they had more than one now, for neither of them wrote home any longer. Alan and Raymond, the two oldest, didn’t keep in touch either – for all she knew she could be a great-grandmother. So many, many children, seventeen grandchildren that she knew of, yet it was only Dulcie and May she had close contact with, Reg had seen to that.
    How was she going to comfort them now? Anne might not have been a good mother, but they loved her. And to be deprived of their father as well, that was too great a loss for them.
    As she went into the bedroom and saw them huddled together, fast asleep, arms around each other, her tears fell faster, for reason told her she was unlikely to live to see them leaving school.
    She sat on the edge of the bed, reached for her rosary and prayed. For Anne to rest in peace, for Reg to be cleared of any crime, and for God to give her the strength and endurance to make a good replacement mother for as long as she was needed.
    Blowing out the candle, she slipped into bed. It was warm from the girls’ small bodies, and it gave her a little comfort. Through the gap in the curtains she could see the first rays of daylight creeping into the sky above the roof of the house opposite.
    ‘Sleep tight, my little loves, Granny’s here,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t you worry either, Reggie, I’ll take care of them for you.’
    Maud woke at her usual time of seven, and force of habit made her get up. The girls were still sleeping, May buried in the crook of her sister’s arm. Maud pulled on her dressing-gown and pushed her feet into her slippers. It felt very cold.
    Downstairs, she put her teeth in, lit the fire in the parlour, and turned the gas cooker on to make the house warmer. She was sitting sipping a cup of tea when Dulcie came into the kitchen. She was dressed, but with the buttons on her cardigan all askew, and she was ghostly pale.
    Maud didn’t speak, just got another cup and poured some tea for the child too. For all her personal experience of death, she didn’t know what to say to her.
    ‘Did the policeman say what will happen to Daddy?’ Dulcie asked after a little while. Her voice