Free Love Changes Everything by Rosie Harris Page A

knew today about what was happening and, as she’s just told you, she’s stayed up so that she could tell you all about it the minute she saw you,’ Maggie protested.
    â€˜You get into the kitchen and make my supper and keep out of this. I’m talking to her, not to you.’
    â€˜Your supper’s ready, I’ll bring it in right away. Do you want some pickle on your bread and cheese, Sam?’ Maggie asked quietly, hoping to divert some of his anger away from Trixie.
    â€˜Haven’t you any bloody meat?’ he demanded angrily. ‘How do you expect a man to do a labouring job on bread and cheese?’
    â€˜It’s what you usually have for your supper and there’s nothing else,’ she told him mildly.
    â€˜Spent it all on fancy foods for that snivelling little brat, I suppose,’ he roared as Cilla, disturbed by all the noise, began crying. ‘About time you stopped pandering to her and packed her off to school like any other kid of her age.’
    Trixie pulled away from her father’s grip and made for the door. ‘I’ll go and see to her,’ she offered.
    â€˜Come back here, I’m talking to you,’ her father demanded. Reaching out he grabbed her hair, pulling on it so hard that she screamed with pain. ‘Now then, spit it out, what’s all this bloody nonsense about you being trusted with the money the other women at the factory are saving up for Christmas?’
    He listened in silence, apart from the occasional drunken belch, as Trixie did her best to explain about the savings scheme and that she would be responsible for looking after the money that the women on the assembly line had deducted from their wage packet each week.
    â€˜Bloody silly idea, if you ask me,’ he muttered when she’d finished. ‘Especially letting a kid like you look after it.’ He looked thoughtful for a moment, then a gleam came into his sharp eyes. ‘You’d best hand it over to me each week and I’ll take care of it till you have to pay it back to them in December.’
    Trixie looked worried and bit her lip. That was the last thing she wanted to do. She was pretty sure that if she handed it over to him then he’d be straight down to the boozer spending it. He’d be showing off and paying for pints for anyone in the bar who would raise a glass with him.
    For a fleeting moment she wondered if this was what Fred Linacre had had in mind when he decided to make her treasurer. If he knew her dad as well as he was supposed to, then perhaps he was deliberately doing it to needle him and get her into trouble, though she couldn’t understand why.
    She squared her shoulders and was about to say that whatever happened it was the last thing she’d do when she saw her mother looking at her and shaking her head, an anxious look on her face.
    â€˜I’ll have to think about that and see what Fred Linacre thinks of the idea,’ she hedged.
    â€˜What’s it bloody well got to do with him? Stand on your own two feet, my girl, that’s what he expects. That’s why he’s given you this job. He’s testing you.’
    Trixie didn’t know what to say. She had no intention of trusting her father with the savings money, but she didn’t know how to tell him that, or, for that matter, what she was going to do with it. If she brought it home, then no matter how carefully she hid it away, he’d be bound to find it. Yet what else could she do with it? she asked herself. She couldn’t leave it lying around at work and she didn’t think that Fred Linacre would be prepared to look after it for her.
    It was a problem that kept Trixie awake most of the night. By morning she still hadn’t thought of a solution and on the way to work she asked Ivy what she would do in her shoes or if she could think of any way of getting out of it.
    â€˜I don’t think you can, not without upsetting