Free Lonely Teardrops (2008) by Freda Lightfoot Page B

surprisingly well provided for.
    Not that Joyce was aware of quite how much her dustman father had left. Oh, no, Rose kept that very close to her chest. The silly lass had looked down on her father when he was alive, so she didn’t deserve to benefit from his death. Ruined the silly mare’s life, in a way, that snobby streak of hers.
    Anyroad, just as well if she didn’t inherit, since that madam went through money like water. No, when Rose went to meet her maker, she meant to leave whatever remained of her savings to Harriet, not selfish, silly Joyce. Not that she’d informed her daughter of these intentions, not yet.
    Harriet was saying, ‘Much of this celebration has been given to Patsy as a gift by the other traders, since she has no mum and dad of her own. Rather like me.’
    ‘Nay,’ Rose demurred. ‘Not at all like you. You have me. I’m still yer nan, and you had a father, don’t forget.’
    ‘I’ll never forget Dad. But I’m sad he didn’t tell me the truth. Why didn’t he?’
    ‘He did what he thought was best,’ Rose prevaricated, for once defending her son-in-law. ‘Your Mam . . . Joyce . . . did too. It might’ve turned out all wrong but they did it for the best of reasons, at least, we have to assume so.’
    Why Joyce felt so bitter about the blows that life had dealt her, was quite beyond Rose. She would never have taken her personal grievances out on Harriet, even if she was the child of a straying husband. Why Joyce persisted in doing so, and had got herself so churned up with revenge, Rose would never understand, not if she lived to be a hundred. Some good had come out of it, she supposed, in that they still had Harriet, but quite a bit of bad too.
      She again wiped a tear from her eye, one of sadness this time.
    ‘What about your mum, she died young, didn’t she?’ Harriet had heard this story before but still loved to have it repeated. She needed to hear it now to prove that she still had a place in the Ashton and Ibbetson family tree. She felt so alone, as if the world had shifted and she was about to fall off the end of it. Even though she’d never felt close to Joyce, she still thought of her as her mother. It was hard not to, since that’s what she’d been for Harriet’s entire life.
    Rose nodded. ‘Aye, my mam were sickly with TB, and died young leaving six childer. Me Dad were a docker working on the wharves, and a right bully. He’d beat the living daylights out of you soon as look at you. A Yorkshireman no less, so no wonder I never had no time for that son-in-law of mine, since he came from the same neck of the woods.’
    ‘Dad wasn’t violent,’ Harriet protested. ‘He never laid a finger on Mam, though he’d sometimes land Grant a clip round the ear.’
    ‘Aye, and the stupid lad probably deserved it.’
    Harriet half smiled, glancing about as if expecting to see Grant emerge out of the crowd. She’d deliberately avoided him today, since she still felt uneasy over the fact he’d followed her down to the river the other day. Whatever little game he was playing, she didn’t find it in the least amusing.
    Rose was saying, ‘Anyroad, when my mother died, Dad said he could only cope with me two brothers. Me and my three younger sisters were farmed out, split up around the family, and never managed to keep in touch. Iris and Daisy are in London somewhere, I think. It’s that long ago I can’t rightly remember. But to this day I’ve no idea where our Violet lives, or even if she’s alive or dead.’ Rose frowned. ‘Though I might’ve forgotten that too, I suppose.’
    ‘Oh, Nan, that’s so sad.’
    ‘Well, my memory isn’t what it was, not by a long chalk.’
    ‘No, I mean about losing touch with your sister.’
    ‘It happens, sometimes, in a big family. Aye well, that’s enough about me, eh? Doesn’t Patsy look pretty, and all flushed and happy. Things turned out all right for her in the end.’
    Rose often stopped the story at this point, not