Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [142]
Now bathed and fed and wrapped in a towel – she couldn’t let him put his own filthy and shabby clothes back on again – and his story told, he was leaning against her so exhausted that he was falling asleep.
Very carefully Francine lifted her arm and put it round him, pulling him close to her. It seemed like a small but very special miracle that he was here, this thin ungainly boy who was all arms and legs but whose body curved as sweetly and rightly into her hold as he had done the day he had been born. Her arms tightened around him.
She was still holding him half an hour later when Jean and Sam came home.
Jean’s face lost its colour when she saw him.
‘Oh, Francine, what have you done?’
Francine shook her head and said quietly, ‘It isn’t what you think,’ as Jack woke up and looked uncertainly at Jean.
‘Well, Vi will have to be told.’
‘But not yet, Jean,’ Francine pleaded. ‘At least let him have a decent night’s sleep.’
Sam had carried Jack upstairs and laid him on Francine’s bed when he had fallen asleep again halfway through retelling his story to Jean.
‘Fran’s right, love,’ he said. ‘Let the poor lad at least have his sleep.’
‘But Vi will be so worried.’
‘Mebbe, if she knows what’s happened, but my guess is that this couple that had the lad and were supposed to be looking after him won’t be in any rush to report him missing. Not after the way they’ve been treating him. They probably think he’s around somewhere and that he’ll have to come back to them. It will probably be the morning before they let anyone in authority know that he’s gone, and even then I doubt anyone will be in a rush to let your Vi know. It was a real bit of luck for the lad, him getting on a train for Liverpool. He could have ended up anywhere.’
‘He was so desperate to get away from those dreadful people that he probably would have risked doing that,’ said Francine.
‘Well, I suppose you’re right, Sam, but if I were our Vi and it was my son—’
‘But that’s the whole point, isn’t it, Jean?’ Francine pointed out emotionally. ‘If he had been your son, this wouldn’t have happened.’ Francine’s voice broke. She got up and ran into the hall and up the stairs.
‘Oh, Sam, I feel so awful. Fran’s right. If we’d had him—’
‘I’m not having you blaming yourself for any of this, Jean. Like I’ve said before, you were in no fit state to do anything for anyone when Jack was born. If anyone’s to blame then it’s the so-and-so who went and got your Fran into the trouble in the first place, and then your Vi for not doing right by Jack when she and Edwin took him on. I’m not saying that I don’t feel it’s a damn shame that the poor little tyke’s bin treated the way he was, and I’m not saying neither that I don’t feel like going and finding the chap who’s bin treating him so badly and letting him know what I think of men like him, because I do. But we both know that it’s ruddy Edwin who should be doing that. Not that he will. Let Francine have her bit of time with Jack, love. It’s little enough, and even if your Vi does know that Jack’s gone missing, which I doubt, it won’t do her any harm to worry about him for once.’
Jean looked at her husband. ‘Well, if that’s what you think, Sam …’
‘It is,’ he told her firmly.
‘Hello, there.’
Seb’s voice might sound weak but there was no mistaking the fact that he was a lot better than he had been twenty-four hours ago, Grace acknowledged, hoping that her smile wasn’t quite as wobbly as it felt and that it looked properly professional.
‘Nurse Reid told me that it is thanks to your kaolin poulticing that I’m not going to lose my arm.’
Grace knew that she was blushing now.
‘It’s Staff Nurse Reid,’ Grace reproved him firmly, ‘and I dare say she said no such thing.’
She was doing a locker round and Sister encouraged her nurses to chat to the patients whilst doing this chore because she believed that giving the men a chance to talk about themselves