Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [145]
As bad as that was, it surely couldn’t get any more painful than having the child you had had wrenched from your arms and given to someone else.
Jack’s touch on her arm brought a lump to Francine’s throat.
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he asked her, his appetite for his sandwiches suddenly vanishing. ‘I don’t want to go back to Mr and Mrs Davies. Will Mum make me, do you think?’
Hearing that word ‘Mum’ and knowing it did not refer to her hurt so very much. And Vi wasn’t his mum at all, not really. What if she didn’t take him back to Jean’s? He was her child, after all. She could go back to America and take him with her. Her heart had started to thump far too heavily. She knew that what she was thinking was impossible. Legally, she was not his mother, and apart from anything else what would she tell Jack himself: ‘I’m really your mother but I gave you away’?
The bond she was building with him was too new and too fragile for that. Reluctantly she let the impulse pass and concentrated instead on being practical.
‘Me and your auntie Jean are going to talk to … to Vi and explain to her what happened.’
‘But what if she still wants me to go back?’
This was so heartbreaking.
‘We won’t let her,’ she told him firmly.
‘Promise?’
Francine thought of the way that Vi had so stubbornly refused to tell them where he was and how she had been so determined that she did not see him, and her heart quailed at the thought of giving him a promise she knew that Vi would do her utmost to make sure she could not keep. But he was only a little boy and she could not explain any of the complex adult emotions that underlay Vi’s actions, and so instead she had to say and pray she could mean it, ‘Promise.’
She saw the Wolseley car parked outside Jean and Sam’s as soon as they got off the bus. Immediately Jack tensed and pulled back.
‘That’s Dad’s car.’
Francine had guessed that it must belong to Edwin and her own heart had sunk but she forced herself to sound cheerful and unconcerned.
‘Is it? I expect they’ve come to take you home.’
Home! His home should be with her; she was his home.
Jean let them in, her face set and anxious as she guided Jack into the front room. As soon as he saw his parents he cowered back against Jean, causing her heart to ache with sadness for him and anger against her twin. It wasn’t his fault that he had been born the way he had, and Vi had been the one to say she wanted him. He hadn’t been forced on her although to have heard what she had been saying whilst they waited for Francine to bring him back you’d have thought that she’d had no say in the matter whatsoever, and that Francine had simply left her baby with Vi and Edwin and taken off.
‘At last,’ Vi greeted Francine, giving her an acid look before turning to Jack and saying sharply, ‘Well, I hope you’re pleased with yourself, Jack, causing me and your dad all this worry and upset.’
‘Give over, Vi.’ That was Sam, who had slipped home to support Jean, knowing that Vi would try to bully her. ‘The poor kid’s had a pretty rotten time of it, by all accounts.’
‘By his account, don’t you mean?’ Vi snapped. ‘According to Mr and Mrs Davies when they telephoned us this morning from the village post office, they’ve been off their heads with worry about him. And if he’s been that unhappy why on earth didn’t he write and tell us instead of causing all this trouble.’
‘They told me that you didn’t want me, and that was why you didn’t write to me,’ said Jack.
The adults looked at Jack with varying emotions in their hearts.
Jean could see that Vi wasn’t looking at all pleased that he had spoken up, and although she said crossly, ‘That’s nonsense. Of course I wrote to you,’ Jean suspected that she had not written as regularly as she would want them to think.
It had been ever such a relief when Francine had finally returned. Jean had really thought at one stage that she wasn’t going to.
‘Well, obviously the lad can’t go back to these people,’ said Sam firmly. ‘And if I was you, Edwin,