Free The Hawthorns Bloom in May by Anne Doughty

shadows and anxious fears.
    Morning after morning, she would rise cheerfully, see John off to work and then findher plans for the day falter and fade. Baking and sewing seemed a labour. She was even reluctant to write letters, something that had never happened before.
    ‘This won’t do, Rose. This really won’t do,’ she said to herself, as she studied the soft foliage she’d cut from shrubs overspreading the path.
    She chose some sprigs of red weigelia to add colour to the prunings she couldn’t bear to throw away, turned back into the house, arranged the assorted fragments in a vase and set the result of her efforts in the middle of the kitchen table. She dropped down into her chair and sat staring at the fresh foliage and bright blooms, trying to work out what made her feel so sad on such a lovely morning.
    From long ago, she heard the familiar voice of her mother-in-law, Sarah, with whom she and John had lived happily for the first ten years of their married life.
    ‘
We all get depressed, Rose. Sometimes it’s just our bodies telling us we’re tired. Or maybe there’s something we should be paying attention to that we’re not
.’
    Well, she wasn’t tired. She had plenty to do, sure enough, but never so much that she couldn’t sit down and sew or read her book if she felt weary. She hadn’t been sleeping well, her nights broken with sudden fevers and bizarre dreams, but sheoften closed her eyes in her chair. Surely that would make up for any sleep she’d lost.
    ‘
Don’t lose any sleep over it, Rose dear
.’
    That was her mother’s voice. Strange she could still hear it so clearly after all these years. When she’d had problems with her young mistress, Lady Anne, or been scolded by Mr Smithers, the butler of Currane Lodge, she’d ask her mother what to do and Hannah would reassure her that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. It never helped to worry. She’d be all right if she just did her best.
    Time and time again, events had proved her mother right, but on this lovely May morning the problem was she could put no name to what was troubling her.
    She sat still, listening to the tick of the American clock. The sun climbed higher and the bright patch it cast on the floor moved slowly towards the hearthrug. Soon the brightness would fall on her boots like a rising tide.
    She shuddered and pushed out of mind the now familiar thought of a rising tide. It had been with her for weeks now, ever since the first news of the
Titanic
disaster. No matter how she had argued with herself she could not be free of the image of the water slowly rising. The thought of standing on the deck knowing there was nothing you could do. That there was no seat in a lifeboat for you, no way back to the loved ones who had already left the sinking ship.
    ‘Waiting. Just waiting for what you know is going to happen. And having no power at all to stop it,’ she said, looking round as if she hoped there would be some reply from the empty room.
    She leant her head back and closed her eyes as the bright beams of light moved closer.
    ‘
What are we gonna do, Hannah?
’
    The voice was her father’s. He was standing by the door of their house in Ardtur. She could hear the sound of walls falling and smell the dust that was swirling round him as Adair’s men demolished their neighbour’s houses. But when she looked at him again, it wasn’t her father, it was John. He had a white envelope in his hand.
    ‘
They can’t put us out, can they? And us with children?
’
    ‘Oh yes they can,’ she said to herself. ‘Anything can happen. All those poor people on the
Titanic
. They thought she was unsinkable, but no one is safe from disaster. You can lose your home, your livelihood, your health, your loved ones. Whether you’re the richest mill owner in Belfast or the poorest widow in Banbridge you can still lose what is precious to you.’
    She opened her eyes with a jerk, blinked in the sunlight and saw her daughter appear in the