‘Jack’s tekken her and Emma and Rosie to look at Barney Foggit’s old place, did your da not tell you?’ Peggy lifted the kettle on to the bars of the fire. She gave a great sigh. ‘I do hope she agrees,’ she said. ‘It’s time they had their own home.’
‘You make it too comfortable for her, Ma, doing everything yourself instead of asking her to give a hand.’
‘Yes, but she doesn’t do things ’way I like, so it’s my fault as much as hers. And when she was pregnant … and then there’s Molly, so I let her off.’
Jenny got up to fetch a teapot and cups and saucers from a cupboard, put them on the table and then took the tea caddy down from the shelf above the range. ‘Da said she’d lost the child she was carrying,’ she commented as she spooned leaves into the teapot. ‘A boy? They must have been disappointed.’
Peggy sat down at the table and watched her daughter make the tea. She nodded. ‘Jack was,’ she said. ‘He’s not very happy. A son might have made things right.’
Jenny found a tin of biscuits, and bringing it to the table she sat down too and began to pour the tea. ‘If it’s not a happy marriage, having more children isn’t going to put it right,’ she murmured. ‘But they’ve got to make the best of it, having made their bed, as they say. There’s nothing to be done about it.’
‘Aye. Problem is that they made their bed far too soon. He was too young and immature to be married, and then having a child so quick—’ She stopped.
Jenny sipped her tea and chose a shortbread biscuit. ‘Mmm. Nobody makes shortbread like you do, Ma. You’re right, he was too young. Nineteen, but he got caught, didn’t he?’ She helped herself to another biscuit. ‘When you’ve got a girl’s parents breathing down your neck, what can you do?’
They heard the sound of voices outside and looked at each other. ‘Speaking of angels,’ Jenny said. ‘Good thing I made a large pot.’ She put the lid back on the biscuits. ‘Don’t want anybody spoiling their appetites,’ she grinned.
Peggy laughed. ‘I’ll mek you some more to tek back with you. How long can you stay?
‘I’ll have to catch the two o’clock train tomorrow,’ Jenny said. ‘Sorry!’
‘And you won’t be here for Christmas either?’ her mother said resignedly and wasn’t surprised when Jenny pressed her lips together and shook her head as the door opened and Susan came in.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten you were coming, Jenny. We don’t see much of you.’
Jenny gave a small smile. ‘I have to work,’ she reminded her. ‘How are you, anyway? I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your baby.’
Susan pulled out a chair from the table and sat down. ‘I’m all right. Disappointed and a bit sad. It was a boy, so Jack’s cut up about it.’ She gingerly lifted the teapot lid. ‘Is there any tea left?’
‘Yes, plenty; help yourself,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll have a top up, please, whilst you’re about it.’ She pushed her cup towards her. ‘How did you get on with the Foggit place? It will make a good smallholding, I should think.’ She laughed. ‘I remember that Dorothy and I used to take a short cut across it between her house and ours when we were little, and he always used to yell at us!’
‘Jack wants it,’ Susan said. ‘It needs work on it. Chimney needs sweeping. Distemper is flaking off ’kitchen walls.’
‘There’s still a sweep in the village, surely?’ Jenny asked. ‘There always used to be. So is that all that’s needed? They’ve looked after it, then. And enough bedrooms? I’ve never been in it, have you, Ma?’
‘Aye, many years back, before Foggit took it. It’s a good house,’ Peggy said. ‘Well sheltered by hawthorn hedges. Don’t know about upstairs.’
‘Three bedrooms,’ Susan told them. ‘One of them is onny small, but teks a single bed and a chest of drawers. That’d do for Louisa. Other two could have bigger one.’
‘Three, you mean.’ Jenny smiled. ‘Didn’t you have four daughters at the last count?’
Susan swallowed and looked at Peggy. ‘Your Jack said …’
‘That Molly could stay with us,’ Peggy finished for her. ‘Yes, we did offer. Depends on whether you’d want her to.’
‘And does Molly have a say in this?’ Jenny asked quietly. ‘Won’t she want to stay with her sisters?’
Susan gave a non-committal shrug. ‘She might want to stay here now that she’s tekken a liking to that stray lad Ma’s tekken on.’ She looked down at her fingernails, which were clean and short. ‘But as we don’t know his history or anything about him I’m not too sure about that. I’ll not trust him with any of my girls, at any rate, until we know more about him.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Outside the farmhouse the wind was beginning to howl and the windows rattled.
‘Stray lad?’ Jenny murmured as if she hadn’t heard him mentioned before. ‘Strayed from where?’ she asked, always precise.
‘Strayed away from his mother, or she’s strayed away from him,’ Peggy explained. ‘At any rate, he’s stopping here until she turns up, rather than be shipped off to a children’s home or somewhere. Cos that doesn’t seem right.’ She rose from the table to give the soup a stir.
‘And you don’t know who he is?’
‘We know his name!’ Peggy stood with her back to them and behind her Jenny glanced at Susan, who gave an offhand shrug.
‘Well, I’ll not trust him,’ she repeated.
‘He’s ten, Susan!’ Peggy turned back to face them. ‘He’s a child, ’same age as Louisa and she’s trusted wi’ Molly even though she’s vulnerable. But if you think that Aaron and me are not dependable enough to tek care of her after ’last eight years of doing so, then so be it.’
‘I don’t mean that, Peggy, you know I don’t.’ Susan looked flustered. ‘I didn’t say—’
‘But you think that boy’s a threat
