Free The Hamiltons of Ballydown by Anne Doughty

knees of his boiler suit. ‘You shouldn’t have held back fer me,’ he said cheerfully looking at the waiting table. ‘Ye must be starvin’. I could eat a horse.’
    ‘That’s amazin’, Sam,’ said John, turning towards him. ‘I’ve niver known you to be hungry of an evenin’. Has the snow given you an appetite?’
    As she bent to open the oven door, Rose sent up a prayer of thanks for Sam’s timely arrival. Sarah had actually laughed at the idea of Sam not being hungry. It was the first small thaw in the ice she’d generated in the warm room. Dear Sam. Even if he’d not been busy with the snow he’d brought in, he wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss. A situation would have to be dire indeed for him not to greet them with his usual smile and an easy comment about the events of the day. A rare gift perhaps, but she was not entirely sure it was a good thing, given all life could throw at you.

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘Can we go and see Maisie when I get home from school?’ asked Sarah next morning, as soon as she came downstairs to breakfast.
    ‘We’ll see,’ said Rose absently, distracted by the headache she’d woken up with.
    She paused, her hand on the latch of the door to the dairy and tried to remember what she was doing when Sarah spoke.
    ‘Do you mean “no”?’ Sarah threw back at her.
    ‘No, I don’t,’ she replied, as the whatever-it-was she was about to remember slipped away from her like a mouse disappearing down a hole.
    She came back to the breakfast table and stood looking down at it until Hannah got to her feet. ‘We need some more milk, Ma. You sit down. I’ll get it.’
    Rose did as she was bid and poured three cups of tea, aware that Sarah was still staring at her.
    ‘When I say, “we’ll see”, I mean just that,’ she said, making an effort to sound firm, though she didn’t feel remotely firm. ‘It depends how much lightis left when you get in and whether it has snowed again. If the weather’s bad, we’ll have to leave it till tomorrow morning.’
    ‘And what if it’s still bad then?’ Sarah persisted.
    ‘We’ll meet that when we come to it.’
    ‘You always say that, doesn’t she, Hannah?’
    Hannah paused, milk jug in hand, looked at Sarah and bent towards Rose. ‘Say when,’ she said quietly, as she added milk very slowly to her mother’s cup of tea.
    ‘Thanks, love,’ she nodded, thankful for the small, loving gesture. It was so like Hannah to make putting the milk in her tea a way of comforting her without antagonising Sarah further.
    ‘Yes, she does often say that,’ Hannah agreed, sitting down and looking across the table at her sister. She helped herself to wheaten bread and reached across for the damson jam when Sarah forgot to pass it over. ‘You can’t always plan what you’re going to do, not even in summer. Look how often we changed our plans in the holidays when it got too hot, or when we remembered it was Fair Day in Banbridge, or when Dolly threw her shoe. That’s what
we’ll meet that when we come to it
means. You know that perfectly well, Sarah.’
    Rose drank her tea gratefully, but wasn’t sure she could face eating anything. She’d had a restless night, full of confused dreams about the past. They’d left her feeling downhearted and oppressed and herhead was beginning to throb. As soon as she’d got them off to school, she’d take a headache powder and sit down for a little while till it went away.
    Sarah had subsided for the moment. She was spreading damson jam liberally on another piece of wheaten bread.
    ‘Are you going up to see Elizabeth this morning, Ma?’ Hannah asked lightly, one eye resting on Sarah as she munched.
    ‘Yes, I’ll go,’ Rose said, brightening a little at the thought of Elizabeth’s company, ‘unless the snow comes on again.’
    Friday was their usual day, the heavy work of the week behind them. Elizabeth had a housekeeper who did most of the cooking, but she didn’t spare herself on what needed to be