Then she heard it, a cry but who was crying? The ache in her chest surged up through her throat and then she let it loose.
‘Ronnie, I must go to Ronnie,’ she said.
Chapter Thirty-Four
August 1917
‘Here’s a letter arrived from London,’ an excited Dot said as she ran into the kitchen with the envelope.
‘It’ll be our Kate,’ Ada Truscott said, placing a sleeping Tilly into her cradle and rocking it a few times to be sure.
‘About time, haven’t heard from her in months,’ Kate’s father, Jim, replied.
‘Let me see,’ clamoured Dot, leaning over her mother’s shoulder as she opened the letter. ‘What does she say, what does she say?’
‘Give a person time to look,’ Ada scolded and sat down to read the letter in private.
Jim watched as the expression on his wife’s face changed. Her wide, kindly eyes narrowed and the corners of her smiling mouth tilted downwards.
‘Haven’t you got jobs to do, young lady?’ he said to his daughter.
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘Never mind “yes but”, let your mother read the letter in peace. You’ll be told the news soon enough,’ Jim said with a firmness in his voice that could not be misunderstood.
Dot, eavesdropping just outside the back door, caught the main gist of her parents’ words and knew at once that her sister was in trouble. She shifted uneasily and knocked into the tin bath which scraped along the wall.
‘You might as well come in, my girl, for we know you’re there,’ Ada said.
Dot sheepishly appeared and responded, without hesitation, when her father told her to sit down.
‘Now see here, what you’ve just heard goes no further than these four walls. Do you understand?’ Ada said.
‘Or you’ll know the consequences,’ her father added tapping his belt.
Dot had seen him take the belt off and strap Fred when he’d overstepped the mark, but she’d never received more than a scolding and been sent to bed without her supper. She wasn’t about to challenge her father’s authority though, so she simply nodded her compliance.
‘The village gossips will find out about this soon enough,’ Ada said. ‘But we need to keep this to ourselves for a while. We need to think about what’s best to do.’
Tilly murmured in her sleep and Ada’s eyes went straight to her. She knew the joys and pains of motherhood all too well and now her eldest daughter was to face them without a husband to provide.
The family sat in silence for a good while, each absorbing the information about Kate and the baby. It was Jim who eventually spoke.
‘Well, this is a fine mess. My daughter wants to come home here with some man’s child who we know nothing about. Two more mouths to feed, Ada. My pay from the smithy is barely enough for the five of us. How are we to manage?’
‘There’s my money from the school too,’ Dot said cautiously.
A family discussion ensued which veered from expressions of anger that Kate could have got herself in this mess, to accusations of her being taken advantage of, to sympathies for her poor babe without a father. Ada moved from being disappointed in her daughter, to defending her and Jim threatened to show the culprit the barrel of his gun until Dot reminded him that the father must be a London man.
‘That’s what city people are like,’ Jim fumed. ‘All chancers, you can’t trust them!’
In the end the family agreed that the best place for Kate and her baby was back in Micklewell. Jim was accepting of their decision but sat with a worried frown on his face.
‘Whichever way you look at it though, Ada, there’s still the problem of how we can all live on so little. So, what’s to be done? How will we manage?’ Jim eventually said.
Ada was never one to be defeated and had an answer for him. ‘We should pay the Taylor sisters a visit,’ she replied, ‘They might be able to help. They’re known for their generosity and good sense.’
‘Then you and Dot go, that’s women’s work,’ Jim announced putting on his cap and heading for the back yard.
