Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [144]
Now what was she going to say to Vi when she arrived to collect Jack? She had known the moment she had seen the way Francine had been holding Jack so tightly and so possessively last night that there was going to be trouble. Jean felt desperately sorry for her nephew and for Fran herself, but she was still shocked that Fran could do something so thoughtless and silly.
Francine watched with a hungry loving maternal gaze as Jack tucked into the fish paste sandwiches she had ordered for him. They were in Joe Lyons, and Jack’s eyes were constantly rounding with curiosity and excitement as he stared about and took everything in.
All she could manage herself was a cup of tea, she was that strung up inside. More than one of Joe Lyons’ famous nippy waitresses had paused long enough to give Jack a brief smile as she had hurried past, causing Francine’s heart to swell with motherly pride. Vi had taught him nice manners, she had to say that for her, even if Francine suspected they had been taught through fear rather than kindness. He spoke well too, not posh, but well, and she thought she could detect a hint of the rhythm of her own voice in his.
She hadn’t had any plans in mind when she had given into the impulse that had brought them here. All she had known was that she was desperate to have him to herself for a while, to pretend that they were what they could have been and should have been if only things had been different.
She had taken him to Lewis’s first to buy him some new clothes, not that there had been much choice, thanks to the war, but at least now he was wearing clothes that fitted him and were new. She had felt so proud and at the same time so humbled when he put his hand in hers of his own accord and before she had reached to take it.
He had lost that reserve and hesitation with her now that he had had at first, and she had felt a dangerous thrill of delight this morning over breakfast when it had been her he had turned to to speak to first and not Jean.
When he wasn’t afraid or intimidated, his smile was mischievous and his eyes so clear of any guile and so lovingly innocent that she felt as though she could eat him up. All she wanted to do was to sweep him up into her arms and keep him safe there for ever. She couldn’t bear to think about what he had been through and she couldn’t bear to think either that he would have to be handed back to Vi.
He was quick and bright, and interested in everything: one minute a little boy, the next a heart-breakingly protective man-child, who obviously saw it as his duty to watch out for her.
Francine had soon learned that Sam and Luke were his idols and that he adored them. Edwin and Charlie he seldom mentioned, and it seemed to Francine that it was fear, not love, that filled him whenever Vi was mentioned.
They had walked from Lewis’s to the church where her mother was buried and Francine had shown him her stone.
‘She was my grandma, wasn’t she?’ he had asked knowledgeably.
‘Yes,’ Francine had agreed with a small choke in her voice. After all, it was true.
There had been one shocking moment when they had walked past the theatre just as Con was coming out with his girl. Francine’s first instinct had been to hide Jack from him, as though there was a risk of Con recognising him and immediately demanding that she hand his son over to him. Which, of course, was ridiculous. The last thing Con would be likely to do was to acknowledge an illegitimate son. He and his wife did