Читать книгу Some Sunny Day - Annie Groves, Annie Groves - Страница 9

FOUR

‘You’re still on for Saturday at the Grafton, aren’t you, Rosie?’ Ruth asked cheerfully as the girls put on their coats to leave work.

Rosie hesitated before replying. The truth was that the last thing she felt like doing was going out dancing, but she didn’t want to let Ruth down by backing out now.

‘Of course she is, aren’t you, Rosie?’ one of the other girls laughed. ‘You won’t catch me missing out.’

‘Meet us outside at half-past seven, Rosie,’ Ruth told her, adding with a wink, ‘And thanks for sortin’ me dress out for me. I’ll write and tell my Fred not to be so eager next time.’

As she walked down Springfield Street half an hour later, Rosie wondered whether or not she should call at the Grenellis’. Don’t be so soft, she chided herself. There was no call to go getting all upset and taking it to heart because Bella had been a bit funny with her. Chances were that she had only been like that because she was so worried and feared for her dad and granddad. She had probably read too much into Bella’s wild talk. Reassured by her own thoughts, Rosie felt her spirits start to lift as she headed for number 16. She had missed Bella even though it had only been a couple of days since she had last seen her.

It was Maria who opened the door to her knock, hugging her briefly, her expression betraying the strain she was under.

‘If you’ve come to see Bella, she’s round at Pod’s,’ Maria told her before Rosie could ask after her friend.

‘Who is it? Oh, it’s you, is it?’ Sofia announced in a hostile tone, answering her own question as she came into the kitchen. ‘Where’s your mother, or daren’t she show her face here after what she’s been doing?’

‘Sofia …’ Maria protested.

‘What’s wrong?’ Rosie demanded, indignant at her mother being talked about in such a way even though she had been feeling ashamed of her behaviour herself these last few days. ‘What’s my mother supposed to have done?’

‘There’s no supposed about it,’ Sofia answered bitterly. ‘Seen at it, she was. Acting cheap around our men, wi’ them wot’s guardin’ ’em and we all know why. Some of us have allus known what she is, even if others …’

Sofia’s voice was rising higher with every word she spat out. She was trembling with fury whilst Rosie had started trembling herself. All her life she had thought of the Grenellis as her family, never imagining that anything could change the deep bond she had believed they shared. That belief had been turned on its head the moment the trouble had started in Liverpool.

‘Sofia, please …’ Maria begged her sister urgently in a low voice.

Rosie heard her but she was too shocked to be able to react. Somewhere in a corner of her mind she had always known that her mother’s behaviour wasn’t like that of Maria and Sofia, but she had put that difference down to the fact that they were Italian, not because … She couldn’t stand here and let Sofia call her mother cheap without defending her. She took a deep breath.

‘I know my mother went to Huyton Camp but—’

‘She had no right to go there,’ Sofia shouted her down angrily. ‘What’s she to us? Nothing! And you can go home and tell her we don’t want her coming round here any more. Not that she’ll dare to show her face here after what she’s done …’

Rosie looked helplessly at Maria, not knowing what to say or do and not really able to understand why Sofia was so worked up.

‘You’d better go home, I think, Rosie,’ Maria advised her, bustling her out of the room. ‘I’m sorry that Sofia spoke to you like that. She’s not herself at the moment.’

‘I know how much you must all be worrying, Maria,’ Rosie agreed, swallowing down the tears that were thickening her voice. ‘How is la Nonna? Have you managed to get any word of the men?’ The questions she wanted to ask came tumbling out on top of one another as Maria hurried her towards the back door.

‘You’re a good girl, Rosie. A kind girl,’ Maria told her, without answering her. ‘But with things the way they are, it’s best that you don’t come round for a while. Just until things settle down and Sofia’s back to her normal self.’

The tears burned in the back of Rosie’s eyes. She wanted to throw herself into Maria’s arms and be told that everything was all right, just as she had done so many times as a little girl: when she had lost both her first front teeth and had been teased at school; when she had not been chosen for the school pantomime; when the goldfish her father had won for her at the fair had died, to name just a few of the small sadnesses that had coloured her growing up. But this was different. Everything was not all right, and she wasn’t a little girl any more. Poor Maria. Rosie could hardly bear to think about what she must be going through.

Squaring her shoulders, she reached out and gave Maria a fierce silent hug, and then hurried away before her emotions got the better of her.