Free Hope at Holly Cottage by Tania Crosse Page A

would have said – for ridiculous reasons. The highlight of the afternoon was being taken to Lady Ashcroft’s opulent bedroom to help Mrs Davenport change the sheets, which was done twice a week. Crikey. Surely once a week was enough? When Anna finally fell into her own bed, which she had been obliged to make up for herself as well, it was with strict instructions to present herself in the kitchen at six o’clock in the morning without fail.
    She lay in bed in the pitch dark. It was so silent, like nothing she had experienced before, no traffic or people’s voices from outside. She hoped she would sleep all right in the strange room, but she was so exhausted that she didn’t even say her nightly prayer for her mum before she fell fast asleep, clutching her threadbare little teddy.

Chapter Six
    ‘You’m going out with Bert tonight, all dolled up like a dog’s dinner?’
    ‘I am that!’
    Ethel set her face in a grin, hoping it appeared genuine. Thank goodness Bert was on earlies and was free, ’cause she really needed cheering up this evening. The first night for thirteen years, wasn’t it, when Anna wasn’t in hailing distance? Crikey, she were missing her already, and her only gone since that morning. How were she getting on? Ethel didn’t like the sound of the place, even though she were the one who’d encouraged Anna to go for an interview. She didn’t half feel guilty now, as if Anna had been swallowed up into a great big black hole and it were all her fault.
    ‘Say goodnight to your sister now, Primrose,’ Mabel ordered kindly, stubbing out her cigarette on the cracked plate from which Primrose had just been eating her tea of baked beans on toast.
    ‘Nightie-night,’ Ethel smiled a little ruefully as her mum heaved little Primrose into her arms. ‘Don’t let they fleas bite.’
    ‘No fleas in our beds!’ Mabel nodded emphatically, and Ethel grimaced. There had been once upon a time. Well, bed bugs, anyway. She remembered the legs of their beds standing in saucers of something that smelt disgusting to stop the little blighters crawling up at night. It had been when they had returned to the house after the war. Her dad hadn’t exactly kept the place clean. Managed to break his leg, he had, leaving it slightly shorter than the other one, so he’d been discharged from the army. He’d gone back to working longer hours than ever on the railway. Important war work, he often declared proudly – which indeed it was, especially with Plymouth being a major naval port – and often dangerous, with Hitler aiming at the railway routes as well as the city and the dockyards in his air raids. And when Fred wasn’t at work, he’d been a member of the home defences, patrolling the streets, so he’d hardly had time to eat and sleep, let alone keep the house clean. Not that it was spick and span now, but at least you didn’t wake up covered in little red bites. And it was home. Unlike where Anna had gone.
    ‘Night-night, Daddy,’ Primrose beamed, leaning out from Mabel’s arms to receive a noisy kiss from her dad who was also on earlies that week.
    ‘Oh, I swears you gets ’eavier every day!’ Mabel grumbled good-heartedly as she shambled out of the door in her worn slippers.
    ‘Huh, all right for you!’ Billy growled at once at his bigsister. ‘Going out enjoying yersel’ when some on us ’as got flaming ’omework to do!’
    ‘An’ I didn’t ’ave ’omework when I were at school?’ Ethel retorted sharply. ‘An’ one day you’ll be out at work, too, like Davy an’ Dad, an’ wishing you was back at school!’
    ‘I likes ’omework,’ little Sammy piped up, wide-eyed with earnest.
    ‘Yes, us knows you does!’ Ethel saw her dad grin, and he ruffled his youngest son’s mousy hair. ‘P’r’aps us ’as
one
scholar in the family!’
    ‘You calls that ’omework, reading a page of
Janet and John
an’ doing a few sums, like?’
    ‘’E’s only eight, Billy—’
    Oh, thank the Lord