Free A Daughter's Secret by Anne Bennett Page A

comforting. Tom wished with all his heart that he was older, that he could care for Aggie, and if herparents wouldn’t let her stay at home then he would take her some other place and see to her. It seemed abhorrent to him that a young girl should travel so far completely alone and all because a man had taken advantage of her.
    McAllister was there waiting for her and impatient. ‘Where have you been?’ he hissed. ‘For this to work I must be back in Buncrana with the horse stabled before the place is awake. Come on now, get up and be quick about it.’
    Aggie handed McAllister her bag and turned to Tom. ‘Goodbye, then.’
    ‘Goodbye, Aggie,’ Tom said. ‘Look after yourself.’
    ‘I’ll try,’ Aggie said, putting her arms rather awkwardly around her brother.
    ‘We haven’t time for this,’ McAllister snarled.
    Aggie turned on him. ‘Listen here, you,’ she said. ‘Your life will not change in any way, shape or form because of that one night. I am leaving behind my home and all in it that I hold dear. I know that I will see none of them ever again and you dare complain because I spend a few minutes saying goodbye to my brother?’
    McAllister said no more, for he knew that Aggie had a point. She kissed Tom on the cheek before climbing in beside McAllister. The cart rolled down the road almost silently and Tom saw with surprise that the horse’s hoofs had been wrapped in cloths so that they would make little noise. He had to admit that that was a wise move, for the soundof hoofs on the road could be heard for miles in the still and quiet of the early hours.
    He yawned, weariness suddenly hitting him, and with the cart lost in the darkness he turned back to the farmhouse.

FIVE
    ‘Have you anything to wrap around yourself?’ McAllister asked Aggie when they had gone a little way down the road. ‘You are shivering like a leaf.’
    ‘It isn’t with cold, or at least not that alone,’ Aggie said. ‘It’s mainly fear.’
    ‘Well, I can do nothing about the fear; you must combat that on your own,’ McAllister answered. ‘But if you have brought a shawl or anything, I would put it around you, that’s all I’m saying.’
    Aggie did then delve in the bag and pull out the shawl, but even wrapped tight around her, it did nothing for the icy dread that seemed to be seeping all through her body.
    ‘Are you sure your sister won’t mind me just landing on her?’ she asked at last.
    ‘No,’ McAllister said confidently. ‘I have explained it all in a letter that I will give you to show her. Big sister Gwen refuses me nothing.’
    ‘You might be a better man if she had a timeor two,’ Aggie was tempted to say, but she bit back the retort. There was little point in annoying McAllister at this late stage, particularly when she needed information. So instead she said, ‘And what about getting rid of the baby and all? Will she know someone?’
    ‘Course she will,’ McAllister said. ‘You won’t be the first person she has helped, not by a long chalk. Everyone in the area knows her. Her name isn’t McAllister but Halliday, Gwen Halliday, for she was married. She lives in Varna Road now in a place called Edgbaston. That’s not far at all from New Street Station in Birmingham city centre.’
    ‘Her husband might have something to say about me just turning up,’ Aggie said, ‘however lax Gwen seems to be.’
    ‘Oh, the old man is dead and gone now,’ McAllister said. ‘She was left with the one son to rear but he’s grown up too. See, Gwen is twelve years older than me and was more of a mother to me than my own ever was. She won’t let me down, never fear.’
    ‘Won’t she be shocked that this is your child that I am having to get rid of?’
    ‘Why should she be?’ McAllister said. ‘She knows what men and woman get up to. The prostitutes working the area were forever seeking her out. Can’t work if they have kids hanging on to them, can they now?’
    Aggie had never been so shocked in the