Free Spilt Milk by Amanda Hodgkinson

served candied fruits and mince pies on a tray.
    ‘She doesn’t hear,’ said Trixie when Nellie spoke to her mother. ‘Deaf, dearie. She can’t see too well neither, and her waterworks have sprung a leak. If I had the money I’d pay a nurse to look after her. I’m worn out by the old bird.’
    The butcher sat on the sofa by the gas fire, holding his mother’s hand. Nellie ate nothing, said very little and felt out of place. She realized she missed her home and the comfort of Vivian’s company.
    ‘Cold meats,’ said Rumsby as Trixie ushered them into the dining room where she lit the gas lamps. ‘We’ll have cold meats and bread and butter with a glass of cider.’
    Nellie sat at the table with the mother. Through the open door, she heard Trixie talking to her brother in the hallway. She was praising Nellie. Saying what a hard worker she was and he wouldn’t find better. Nellie leaned slightly towards the door. A look of fear passed over the butcher’s mother’s face. The old woman clutched her throat and gave a small cry of alarm. A puddle of yellow urine steamed around her shoes.
    ‘We’ll move Mother into your rooms,’ Trixie was saying. ‘Nellie will look after her. I’ve already a buyer for the house. We have to act fast or he’ll find another property and we’ll have lost our chance.’
    ‘What if Nellie won’t do it?’ Nathan said.
    ‘You must
make
her marry you. For goodness’ sake, Mother will only sell this place if you have a wife. She says you need her here until you have a wife to look after you. You know that. We must get a move on. We both need money, Nathan, and we’re not going to get it with Mother holding on to the house.’
    Trixie said Nellie was no spring chicken, but Nathan wasn’t exactly young himself and she was sure Nellie would accept a marriage proposal.
    ‘She’s too tall.’
    ‘She’s the best Jane could find. I just hope this one will stay and not disappear in the middle of the night like the last one.’
    ‘She’ll stay,’ Nathan Rumsby replied gruffly. ‘She’s got nowhere else to go.’
    When they returned to the flat above the shop that night, Nellie went to her room. She took a chair and wedged it under the door handle. She would find another place to live, but for the moment, with the winter so hard and so little money in her pocket, she had no choice but to stay where she was. For a week she put the chair against the door, and for a week the butcher left her alone.
    ‘If you pay me five shillings more, I’ll leave my door open,’ Nellie said to him one morning. She might be a countrywoman, but she didn’t have straw for brains. She was catching on to how people were with you when you were on your own. Well, she could play the game too.
    He put his hands in his apron pockets and his eyes flickered over her slowly.
    ‘How much for marrying me?’ he asked. ‘You’d keep your room. We can have a long engagement. As long as you like.’
    Nellie didn’t answer him. She thought that kind of decision might cost more than money.
    A grey, misty morning in February, Nellie and the butcher’s mother walked through the crowds on the docks, stopping to watch the fishing boats that had sailed in on the tide. Huge baskets of fish were being unloaded, stacked high on the cobblestones. Trixie had married her draper and moved away, and the butcher’s mother lived with them now. Nellie and the butcher were engaged. That was to say, if the old woman ever asked, she showed her a ring Rumsby had got from Woolworths.
    Seagulls screamed and Nellie thought of Joe, of the town he had come from in the north where the birds sounded like cryingchildren. A seabird dived low over one of the fishermen, its yellow beak slicing the air close to his ear. The fisherman swung his head down, lost his footing and upturned the basket of fish he was carrying, spilling mackerel everywhere, a flickering silver dance at his feet.
    Other seabirds swooped down. The noise of the birds