Free Anyone Who Had a Heart by Mia Dolan Page A

walk on, but what Bully had said stopped her in her tracks. ‘She’s got a job as a nurse! Are you kidding?’
    ‘Nah,’ he said, sliding out from beneath the vehicle and getting to his feet. ‘She weren’t wearing a uniform or anything.’
    So Marcie had a job at the hospital. Rita fingered her lip. One of the girls working in the solicitor’s office had once worked at the hospital. The girl’s name was Wendy Heale and she’d been sacked once she’d set the wedding date.
    ‘It’s hospital policy,’ she’d explained. ‘They prefer to employ single women in the support services like the canteen, the sewing room and such like.’
    Rita almost whooped with joy at this. Marcie was good with a needle. She used to make a lot of her clothes. Poor cow had to. She couldn’t afford to buy straight off the rack like Rita could – thanks to her father.
    She decided there and then that she’d find out exactly where Marcie was working. After that …

Chapter Ten
    MARCIE FELT A sharp jab in the small of her back. ‘Hey! You!’
    Jane Gale had started picking on her only days after she’d first started work in the hospital sewing room. When the first jab had occurred she’d smiled weakly and took it as a joke.
    ‘That hurt,’ she’d said, but had kept her smile as she said it.
    To turn the other cheek was the wrong thing to do when it came to Jane Gale. Retaliation and exchanging like with like was the only thing she truly understood. Marcie badly wanted to bash her one, but held back. Jane Gale was also something of a sneak. It didn’t help that she was Miss Pope’s niece and as such attracted some degree of protection.
    ‘Hey! You!’
    The jabs were always accompanied with the same exclamation. Sometimes Marcie considered that Jane Gale practised those same words every night in front of the mirror. She wasn’t the brightest girl she’d ever met and her vocabulary echoed the fact. Being a bully was Jane Gale’s way of communicating that she really was better than Marcie, even if she could barely string two words together.
    The turning point came when she jabbed at Marcie just as she was leaning over the sink washing her face.
    Joanna had been poorly for a few days and so had kept her awake the night before. Sleep had been intermittent, punctuated with the wails of a red-faced child who wouldn’t settle. Marcie couldn’t wait for Wednesday and her day off, not that she’d be resting much. Angela Babbington had popped round to Endeavour Terrace with an urgent order for two more dresses in the geometric black and white style. Marcie felt obliged to fill the order as quickly as possible even though her grandmother told her to slow down, that there was no need to rush at things as though her wages might be cut short at any time. But that was exactly how Marcie felt about both her present and her future. She had to have financial security for herself, but mostly for her child. At the back of her mind was the nagging guilt about bringing Joanna into the world. She hadn’t asked to come, and it was her fault she was here, therefore she had to do everything she could to do her best by the child.
    Tired and not in the best of tempers, this time she reacted to Jane’s bullying.
    Jane gasped as Marcie grabbed her by the throat, her eyes popping out of her head.
    ‘Just leave me alone, you stupid bitch! Do you hear me? Just leave me alone!’
    She suddenly realised that she was holding the collar of Jane’s overall so tightly the girl’s face was turning pink.
    Marcie came quickly to her senses, instantly regretful of what she had done. She released the stiff collar, flattening it with both hands – as if that was going to make any difference to someone like Jane Gale. Neither did her apology.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, quickly coming to. ‘You took me unawares.’ The sound of running water took her attention back to the sink where she’d swilled her face. She’d left the tap running and the water was