Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [117]
Vi had been wrong about one thing. Con had been both her first and her only lover. Frightened though she had been to discover she was pregnant, she wasn’t going to pretend that she hadn’t enjoyed what had led to that pregnancy. Con had known all the right moves and all the right touches all right, and besotted with him as she was, she had been swept away on a tide of physical longing that had been at full flood. That, though, had been before she had learned that he was married and that she was just one in a long line of girls he had seduced and then abandoned. She had made a promise to herself when it was all over and she was on her way to America that she would never make a fool of herself in the same way again, and she had stuck to that promise, not risking dating any of the many men who had asked her out just in case the body she didn’t feel she could trust any more betrayed her a second time.
She had hated giving Jack up but she had wanted to do the best for him. Despite the disgrace and shame she had brought on herself she had loved Jack from the first minute she had held him in her arms; loved him with a helpless aching love that she hadn’t expected and didn’t understand. She had been sixteen when he had been born, and when Vi had told her that the best thing she could do for him would be to allow her and Edwin to bring him up as their own son she had let her elder sister convince her that giving him up was what was best for him. Jean had been too ill to help her, too ill for her even to talk to her after the tragic death of her own baby. Poor Jean. Francine could only imagine what she must have suffered, knowing how badly she had ached physically as well as emotionally for her own baby in those first months without him, waking up wanting him and going to sleep crying for him. The only thing that kept her going had been her belief that she had done the right thing for him.
‘Come on, Grace, it will be fun going dancing. You might even get that chap of yours on the floor for a smoochy number if you’re lucky.’
‘Me and Teddy don’t want to go dancing, all right?’ All Grace had done since Teddy had told her about his heart had been worry about him. When she was with him she was constantly begging him not to overdo things, constantly trying to make sure that when they were together they didn’t walk too far or do too much, and the anxiety was wearing her down. It wasn’t like worrying about Luke being in France or worrying about Hitler invading England. Those were worries that she shared with other people, and that somehow made them easier to bear. And as well as feeling anxious she also felt guilty. Guilty because she was well and Teddy was not.
‘All right,’ Lillian answered her snappily. ‘Keep your hair on. I was only asking. Don’t come with us then.’
‘No I won’t,’ Grace agreed, equally snappy, picking up the notes she had been studying.
She might as well go to her room as stay here and fall out with Lillian. If Teddy had been properly well she’d have loved to go dancing, and she knew that if she were to tell him what the rest of her set were planning and that they were included, he’d have been eager to join in. But how could she let him? What if something were to happen to him?
She pushed her textbooks to one side and looked towards the window. They were back to double summer time now and the last of the day’s sun was warming her room.
There was a brief knock on her door.
‘It’s only me,’ Hannah called out.
Grace opened the door to let her in.
‘Are you OK, Grace?’ she asked, ‘only you haven’t seemed yourself just lately, and you were a bit sharp with Lillian. Is it because of your brother? I know he’s still writing to her.’
Grace shook her head.