Free For a Father's Pride by Diane Allen Page B

you like, my love.’ Daisy spotted Bob’s hand overhanging the red padded sofa that had been placed in the living room in front of the marble fireplace.
    There was no reply.
    ‘I’m sorry, really I am.’ She thought it better to submit to his feelings before approaching him.
    There was still no reply, and his arm did not move or flinch.
    ‘Bob, you are just being stupid and stubborn now.’ Daisy could feel her temper rising as she walked towards him. ‘It was only a dress!’ She stood opposite him. He
wasn’t moving. His mouth was open and his head was on one side, his body lifeless and still. He looked ashen and his hair was grey, and Daisy suddenly realized how old he looked, before she
let out a scream like a banshee. Her groom was dead. He was dead in his chair. He’d never made it to bed because he was cold like the grave, leaving her alone in the world again!
    Her scream echoed around the small settlement of Blea Moor, making Bert abandon the signal box and the womenfolk from the Iveson and Sunter households knock on the door and shout their concerns.
Hearing Daisy weeping, they entered the clean, new marital home to find her on her knees, holding the dead man’s hand, constantly muttering that she was sorry, between her sobs.
    ‘Aye, lass, sit over there. Let me see if I can get a pulse.’ Bert urged Sally Sunter to sit Daisy down in a chair, while he ran his fingers down Bob’s neck, and felt his
wrist, looking for a pulse. He shook his head, as Sally consoled Daisy. Betsy Iveson shooed her children out of the kitchen, their curiosity having got the better of them, as she did the only thing
she could to help: lighting the fire and putting the kettle on to boil.
    ‘So you came down and found him here? Did he never come to bed last night?’ Bert scratched his head, with his cap in his hand, and looked at the heartbroken Daisy.
    Daisy shook her head between sobs. ‘We had a row, and I went to bed without him. I was so upset I cried myself to sleep. And the next thing I knew it was morning, and he’d never come
to bed,’ she wailed, as Sally put her arm around her.
    ‘He was an ill man. He were taking pills for his heart, but bloody hell – I didn’t think he was that poorly. Betsy, can you go to Gearstones Lodge and tell them what’s
happened and that we need the doctor from Ingleton. I’ll have to get back in the box, else we will have more than one death on our hands.’
    Bert hit his cap on the side of his leg, in defeat of death, and let out a long sigh.
    ‘By, it’s a hard one on thee, lass; you’ve not been married twenty-four hours. Sometimes you wonder if there is a God up there. He’s a bloody joker, if there is.
I’ll miss Bob, he was a good man; always the same, no matter what his worries. Look after her, Sally. I’ll come back across – I’ll send word to Horton and Dent on
what’s happened, and get someone to relieve me of my shift.’ Bert patted Daisy’s shoulder as he left the grieving house. He’d always known that Bob wasn’t that strong,
but fate was cruel. That poor young lass: bride-to-be one day, and widow the next.
    ‘Oh, Daisy, my love, what are we to do?’ Jenny put her arm around the small frame of her good friend and employee, as the undertaker placed Bob in his coffin.
‘You’ll come back and stop with us tonight? You can’t stay here, with a corpse in the house, on your own.’
    ‘No, I can’t face the lodge tonight. I’m his wife – I belong here with him. I let him down, with my pride and my stubborn ways. I’ll not leave him now.’ Daisy
dabbed her eyes with her hankie. ‘Besides, I’ll have to write and tell his mother. She needs to know – give her a chance to be at his funeral, if not at his wedding.’ Daisy
breathed in deeply, thinking of the woman whom she now knew had partly ruled Bob’s life and had refused to see her son wed.
    ‘Don’t let her upset you. She sounds like an old dragon to me. She’s the one to blame