Free Christmas Past by Glenice Crossland

was laughing and singing right up to when the accident in the truck occurred. It was all over so quickly that he wouldn’t have been
    aware of what was happening.
    Tom talked about you all constantly during our nights together, especially Mary, so that I now feel I know you all personally. I would like to visit you sometime in the future. We always
    told each other that’s what we’d do, if it’s OK by you.
    As for Tom, you can be proud of him. He was a brave man to the end. I for one am proud to have been his friend.
    From his best mate,
    Robert Scott
    Mary seemed oddly detached from the scene before her, as though she was accepting the inevitable, and had already lived through the shock and grief even before it happened.
    Lucy crumpled the letter viciously.
    ‘It’s all lies,’ she cried. ‘He’s got a cheek scaring us like that. We’d have heard by now from the War Office. He can’t be dead.’ Then she broke
into deep, heart-rending sobs. Mrs Downing drew her daughter into her arms in an effort to comfort her, silently suffering herself even more than the grieving girl.
    Little Douglas kicked his clogged feet rhythmically on the drystone wall, too young to know anything unusual had happened. Cyril, unable to stem the tears, jumped down and ran to the closet,
slamming the door behind him, ashamed of showing his feelings in public.
    It was Tom’s father for whom Mary felt the most sympathy. He seemed to have shrunk since she had ridden past him that morning. His brown workworn wrists were thrust deep into the pockets
of his corduroy breeches, stretching the braces to their limits. His shoulders, usually squared and jaunty, were slumped, causing him to look inches shorter in his distress. Only Bessie seemed
unaffected. Then she began to laugh, at first softly and then louder.
    ‘It’s all a joke,’ she cried. ‘Our Tom’s not dead.’
    Her laughter turned to hysteria, which held them all in frozen distress until Mary remembered how her mother had dealt with Auntie Norah after the pit accident. She slapped Bessie’s face
sharply, shocking her into silence. Then she said softly, calmly, ‘Come on, let’s go inside.’
    She had known all along that he wouldn’t come back. Something had told her outside the jeweller’s. She hadn’t been able to stop staring at him, knowing it would be for the last
time.
    She must take after her grandmother. The same thing had happened to her on occasions, like the day before Mary’s uncle had been killed in the pit. She had begged him not to go to work the
next day but he had laughed. They had all laughed but she had been right. Now it had happened to her. Her da always said she had her grandmother’s ways, and now it seemed he was right.
    ‘I’ll go and make some tea if that’s all right?’ she said. Mrs Downing nodded, and she set off into the house. The family followed her, slowly, silently, as though in a
funeral procession. To a funeral without a body.
     
Chapter Nine
    For a change Rowland Roberts showed his authority and insisted Mary take a holiday. The day after the letter arrived at the Downings’ he went to the station and bought a
ticket to Newcastle. Then he wrote out a sick note and delivered it personally to the steel works, along with others for Bessie and Lucy, who were in a far more obvious state of shock than
Mary.
    ‘She’s too calm,’ he said to Gladys after they had seen Mary off to bed with a mug of hot milk. ‘I don’t like it when they don’t show any emotion. It causes
nothing but trouble in the long term.’
    ‘She’ll be all right,’ Gladys said. ‘She did all her grieving after Tom went back from leave. It was as though she knew he wouldn’t return. Didn’t I tell you
at the time, about the premonition? It seems she takes after her grandmother, knew in advance what was going to happen, though I can’t say I ever believed in such things until now. Still, my
mother always said there’s something strange about