Free Angel of the North by Annie Wilkinson

awoke at dawn to the awful realization that she truly was on her own. There was no one else to shoulder any of the responsibility for them all. Everything that had to be done would have to be
done by her, and her alone.
    Hannah opened the door of the Elsworths’ house the following morning, and gave Marie one long, silent, hard-faced stare, but she had misjudged her opponent. Marie stared
straight back, boring right into her eyes, and Hannah was the first to look away. Then she turned her back and sauntered up the stairs. Marie stepped inside and closed the door after herself.
    ‘Hello?’ she called.
    ‘In the kitchen!’ Mrs Elsworth answered.
    Marie walked along the hallway past the telephone on the polished table, and found her by the Rayburn, pouring steaming coffee into four cups.
    ‘You see, you were expected,’ she said. ‘We’ll just have time to drink this before Charles has to leave.’
    Marie went and stood beside her. ‘I thought Hannah might have had her orders to register for employment in some government work by now,’ she commented.
    ‘If she has, she hasn’t mentioned it to me.’
    ‘Have you ever seen her daughter?’
    Mrs Elsworth’s manner became guarded. ‘Once or twice.’
    ‘Did Charles tell you about last night?’
    ‘He mentioned something, very briefly.’
    Marie gave her version, also briefly, and as dispassionately as she could.
    ‘I’m afraid I agree with Charles,’ Mrs Elsworth said. ‘I never get involved in other people’s family affairs. Hannah’s worked here for three years, and
she’s been very reliable. I really prefer not to know about her private life. It’s not my concern.’
    Marie felt she’d been properly put in her place, and resolved to say no more – not here, at any rate. What would be the point? It was clear that she would receive no back-up from
this quarter.
    Charles and his father provided a welcome interruption.
    ‘I’m glad you’ve come.’ Charles gave her a wide smile and pulled out a chair for her.
    ‘Thanks, Chas,’ she smiled back, using the nickname more as one in the eye for Mrs Elsworth than because she felt much friendlier towards him. He dropped a kiss on the back of her
neck as she sat down. His father carried two of the coffee cups to the table, and pulled a chair out for his wife. Mrs Elsworth brought the other two, and put one down in front of Marie, her lips
compressed into that increasingly familiar thin line of disapproval.
    When the coffee was finished Mrs Elsworth took the cups to the sink. Charles got up, and putting his arms round his mother, gave her a squeeze.
    Marie saw the tears start to her eyes. ‘Come back safe,’ she whispered. ‘I won’t come to the station. I’ll say goodbye here, and here’s where I pray
I’ll see you again.’
    She followed them to the door, brushing tears away with a lawn handkerchief and Marie regretted her childish insistence on her pet name for Charles. She was just about to say so when Hannah came
downstairs with her yellow duster and thrust herself into the gathering.
    ‘So long, Charles,’ she said, with a knowing wink. ‘When you’re at that camp, and they bring a lorry load of Land Army girls in for you to dance with, don’t do
anything I wouldn’t do!’
    Marie’s jaw dropped at the cheek of her, and Charles gave Hannah an unfathomable look. ‘I certainly won’t,’ he said.
    Mrs Elsworth stopped crying in an instant, her face taut and her manner icy. ‘You’ll find some washing-up in the kitchen, Hannah, and the floor needs mopping,’ she snapped.
    Nothing daunted, Hannah sashayed down the hallway singing a snatch from an Andrews Sisters number about a boogie woogie bugle boy. ‘Da daah – da da – daah da!’ she
bawled. ‘Da daah – da da – daah da!’
    ‘We’d better be off,’ Mr Elsworth said.
    He tactfully said his own goodbyes when he dropped Charles and Marie at the station.
    Beneath her all-sweetness-and-light exterior Marie was still