Free Tara by Lesley Pearse

school he was sent to, but Mum never did. Why do you think that was?'
    'Father Glynn reckons she vowed never to go back until her old man was brown bread.' He shook his head slowly. 'That letter's summat, Amy, but it ain't exactly what I had in mind.'
    'You were hoping for the return of the prodigal daughter.'
    'You don't have to go,' George assured her, his forehead furrowed with frown lines. 'I only thought it might make you feel easier, to know where she was.'
    'Why don't she like us?' Tara asked as Amy tucked her and Paul into bed. 'What did we do to her?'
    'The word is doesn't, not don't,' Amy reproved her.
    They had talked of nothing but Mabel all evening. George had made them laugh with funny stories from before the War, and Harry had chimed in with his recollections. But Amy had kept quiet.
    At this stage she didn't want to sway the children one way or another. She wanted them to want to see their grandmother, but at the same time not be too shocked if she turned out to be even stranger than Amy remembered. Filling them in on the missing years would be like walking a tightrope, but she knew she must take the first tentative steps.
    'Neither of you did anything, she never even saw you.' Amy sat down on the bed, tucking a teddy bear in beside her daughter. Paul bounded out and on to his mother's lap, his arms creeping round her neck.
    'Tell us about her?'
    'There's so much to tell.' Amy smiled down at her son and held him tightly. 'But I'm not sure it's right to tell tales on someone we might be going to see soon.'
    'We won't tell her you told us.' Tara sat up in bed, pulling up her knees to her chest and hugging them. 'Tell us how she went barmy.'
    Amy shook her head, not sure whether she should reprove Tara, yet at the same time knowing she couldn't avoid the subject for ever.
    'Going barmy, as you call it,' she said gently, 'is often nature's way of blocking out pain. Not pain like with a broken leg or a bad cut, but a pain in the heart. Until the day Mother got that telegram about Dad, she was a happy, lively woman. She had the kind of personality that made everyone like her. She was an artist, she painted the most beautiful water-colours, she could play the piano very well, and she was very pretty.'
    'Like you?' Paul asked.
    'Not really, more like Tara. The same eyes and hair. Of course I was only nine when everything went wrong and I didn't know much about anything except what went on in our street, but I remember people looking up at her. One of our neighbours called her "the Duchess of Durwood Street". You see she spoke well, like a lady, she had good manners and made sure I did, too. As a child I never questioned why someone like her ended up in Whitechapel, after all I didn't know anything else.'
    'It looks like she got thrown out for marrying Grandpa,' Tara said.
    'Perhaps, but I know they were together for at least ten years before I was born, maybe even more than that. She told me once they had given up hope of having a child, she was thirty when I was born and your grandpa joined the Army because it was the Depression and there wasn't any work.'
    Paul frowned. 'You mean he couldn't find any job except being a soldier?'
    'That's right, and it must have been difficult being apart when they were so happy together. Funnily enough, though, I only remember clearly the times he was home. We used to go to Southend on the Tower Belle. Sometimes we went in a charabanc with other families and had picnics in the country. Other times it was just the three of us going to Victoria Park together, or the street parties. We had one for the Coronation of George VI in 1937 and it lasted two days! Dad took the piano out into the street and there was an old man who played the accordion. It was wonderful, coloured bunting, flags, paper hats. All the grown-ups danced and got tiddly, us kids played musical chairs and scoffed all the food.'
    'Was Grandpa shot by a German?' Paul asked.
    'I suppose he must have been, but up till then