Free Rainbow's End by Katie Flynn

her mother had not listened to a word her daughter had said but was giving voice to her own secret worries. ‘He’s a prince, is Mick – what did he see in me, eh? A woman nearin’ forty, wi’ five kids . . . I’m past me best, there’s no denyin’ it. S’pose he meets someone younger, someone who’s still got her bloom on her? Suppose he leaves us? Oh, dear God, I couldn’t bear it if Mick left me all alone again! Ten years I been alone, ’cept for your gran, strugglin’ to bring up me fambly right, wonderin’ what I’d do wi’ meself when they left home, then your gran died an’ I din’t know which way to turn . . . and Mick came along and made me see I’m not finished yet . . . I hope to God he doesn’t want a baby a year, though . . . I’m too old for babies, I told him just the one, then we’ll have to find a way . . .’
    She mumbled off into silence and Ellen, who had been half listening as she moved around the room, went back to the bed and began to rub her mother’s back again, making soothing noises as she did so.
    ‘Don’t you worry, Mam, you ain’t too old for anything! An’ we all love Mick, you couldn’t have found a better feller. He won’t go away, he likes us and we likes him.’
    ‘Oh! Well, that’s good,’ Ada said and Ellen realised that her mother had forgotten she was there, had been unaware, in fact, that she had a listener. ‘Lean out o’ the window, queen, and see if there’s any sign of Mrs Bluett. The pain’s are changin’, they’re gettin’ mortal close.’
    Ellen breathed on the frost flowers which obscured the glass and made herself a little porthole; she had no intention of opening the window as her mother had suggested and letting in that ice-cold air! ‘I can’t see anyone . . .’ she began, then stopped short as the woman on the bed gave a strangled shriek and hauled herself into a crouching position.
    ‘Oh Gawd, it’s comin’, it’s comin’, an’ there ain’t a bleedin’ thing I can do about it,’ she moaned. ‘Quick, Ellie – knot me shawl round the end of the bed an’ give me the end of it.’
    ‘Right you are, Mam,’ Ellen said briskly. What a blessing it was that Shirl was the eldest of her family and had assisted at so many births; what a blessing she had insisted on telling Ellen in great detail about each one, furthermore! Mind, I didn’t think it was good at the time, Ellen remembered, knotting one end of the shawl round the sturdy iron bedpost and handing the other to her mother. All that heaving and grunting and blood and stuff just sounded frightening. But now it was coming in useful; she remembered Shirl telling her how she and her mam had tugged on opposite ends of a length of rope until the baby ‘popped out’, as Shirl had put it.
    Having done her duty with the shawl, Ellen stood back, trying to remember what she should do next. The baby would be washed in warm water so she should go down and bring a kettle up, then there was the clean sheeting which would be wrapped round the child like a shawl . . . the clothing was for show until the baby was a lot bigger, her mother had told her . . . and of course the stout. A bottle, not a crate, rather to her disappointment. Even if the new baby was a girl her mother had declined to provide the midwife with a crate of stout.
    ‘Your gran brought you an’ the others into the world an’ she never needed no stout,’ her mother had said. ‘Still an’ all, if that’s what Mrs Bluett wants . . .’
    So the stout waited, downstairs because Mam said she wanted Mrs Bluett stone-cold sober till afterwards.
    ‘Aaargh!’ her mother shouted suddenly, as though the noise had been wrenched from her. ‘Aaaargh!’ She was squatting forward, the covers had fallen back and Ellen saw that her stomach had a strange, pointed look and was as shining and slippery with sweat as her mother’s face.
    And what a face! Ada was a pretty woman with a bright colour and