hand was trembling as she picked it up. So flimsy and yet heavy with destiny. It was going to change her life, she knew it … she just knew it.
She took it out and read it slowly. I never told you but in ’43 I had a child. Her name is Patricia. She’s eight now. Her eyes filled with tears and she swallowed hard. 1943? He had been with some other woman almost as soon as they had been married? He’d been sent abroad just four weeks after their wedding and straight after that, the very next year, he’d been unfaithful?
Please come to fetch her, she read on, I hope that deep down, you can find it in your heart to forgive me … She laid the letter on the table and looked up at him. He was smiling.
‘See?’ he said triumphantly. ‘You think I can’t bloody do it, but I can see? I’ve got a kid of my own. She gave me a kid. She knew how to turn a man on. She knew what to do. Not like you, you bloody cold fish.’
His words cut her into a thousand pieces but all she could think of was that he had had a child with another woman. He had a child … and she didn’t. Why couldn’t he make love with her? Other people thought she was attractive but he was always calling her a cold fish, even though she really tried. She did everything he wanted her to, even things she didn’t like.
‘For God’s sake, stop that snivelling,’ he said sharply and Dottie suddenly realised that she was crying. She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out her hanky. Then she blew her nose quietly and dabbed her eyes. She shouldn’t have done that. It must have been the shock of seeing Gary.
‘I want to get her over here,’ he was saying. ‘I want my little girl here, living with us.’
‘Living with us?’ she said faintly.
‘Why not?’ he challenged. ‘She’s mine. Why shouldn’t I have her here?’
Dottie stared at him, her brain refusing to function. This was all too much for one day. Foolishly she’d always thought he’d been as faithful as she’d been. It never crossed her mind that he’d even had the opportunity. No, she hadn’t thought about it. She’d just presumed … but how wrong had she been? He had a child, a daughter. And now he wanted her to come over here?
Her stomach churned. All at once she felt sick and jumped up and ran to heave over the slop bucket in the scullery.
‘That’s right,’ he bellowed after her. ‘Always got to be the centre of attention. Get yourself noticed. Let’s have the drama queen.’
She steadied herself and wiped her mouth on her hanky, then she walked back into the kitchen.
He was sitting with one hand on his head and the other holding the photograph. ‘I want her here, Dot,’ he said. ‘I want my little girl.’
She couldn’t speak. She wanted to be happy for him, but his joy was her misery. He didn’t seem to care about how she was feeling. She couldn’t think straight. Her eye was drawn to the woman in the photograph.
‘Don’t you see, you daft bat?’ he said looking up at her. ‘This is your chance too. You’ve always wanted to be a mother. Well, now’s your chance. A little girl. Patsy. Nice name, Patsy. We’ll be a family.’
‘But I want a family of my own!’ she blurted out.
Reg leapt to his feet and struck her across the mouth. Dottie tasted blood as her lip split under the force of his blow. ‘Maybe this is the closest you’re going to get,’ he snarled. ‘I can do it with a real woman, but I can’t do it with you. I can’t do it in this house. Doesn’t that tell you something? Eh?’
Dottie leaned against the dresser, utterly crushed.
‘We’re going to get my baby over here,’ Reg said sitting back down again with the photograph, ‘and we’re going to be a real family. Me, Patsy and you.’
Dottie opened her mouth but no sound came out.
He turned and glared at her again. ‘That’s why I don’t want you going near that Gary see? I can’t have my Patsy getting polio.’
Ten
‘You’re very quiet today, Dottie.’
Janet Cooper, Dottie’s Monday and Tuesday employer, gave her a concerned look as she filled the kettle for their afternoon break.
Dottie had been miles away. She couldn’t get the events of the previous weekend out of her mind. Worried about little Gary and upset by Reg’s revelations and rantings, she had gone about her work as quickly and as quietly as she could. She hadn’t stopped for her mid-morning break, neither had she stopped to eat the sandwich Janet had prepared for her as she closed the shop for the lunch hour. Dottie didn’t want to be drawn into a conversation in case she said something she might later regret. She was glad today was Monday and not Tuesday. Dottie helped in the shop on Tuesdays and it was easy to be drawn into long conversations between customers. Janet loved a little gossip. Starved of excitement in her own life, she thrived on the misfortunes of others and had a clever way of weeding juicy bits of gossip out of someone, no matter how reluctant the person might be to part with them. Had it been Tuesday, Dottie would have told her about their day in Littlehampton and little Gary’s illness and, before the day was over, it would have been all over the village. Fine if Peaches told friends and neighbours, but Dottie didn’t want people to hear it from her lips first.
Janet cut across her thoughts again. ‘I see Ellen Riley’s daughter is on the bottle again.’
Dottie gave her a quizzical look.
‘There was a definite bulge in her coat pocket when she came into the shop this morning,’ said Janet, clearly enjoying her tasty morsel of gossip. ‘Want a biscuit with your tea?’
Dottie shook her head and wished Janet a million miles away.
‘It’s the kids I feel sorry for,’ Janet went on. ‘If you can’t be a responsible parent, you shouldn’t have children, that’s what I say.’
Dottie switched off. Monday was the day she cleaned the Cooper house from top to bottom. Upstairs, she changed the beds, hoovered the rooms and dusted. Then she’d come down and spend the rest of the morning putting the dirty sheets in the washing machine. You had to stand over it when everything went through the wringer, but it was a great help and if the weather was kind she would end the day by ironing the same sheets she had changed in the morning.
With the washing on the line, the afternoon was spent cleaning and dusting downstairs. It was one of her heaviest days and yet with the weight of everything on her mind, she hardly noticed the time passing.
She’d been up early that morning. Reg was still in bed when she’d left for the Coopers. After another outburst about not seeing Gary the night before, she had poured him his usual cup of tea in the morning, but instead of making sure he was awake, she’d crept upstairs, being careful not to disturb him. She’d left the tea on the bedside table. He’d groaned and rolled over when she put the cup down and she’d panicked, but she stood very still and almost immediately he’d begun to snore again. Dottie hurried downstairs and out of the house. She didn’t want … couldn’t face talking to him again. Why did she always take him a cup of tea anyway? It had started when he first came home. He was ill then. He was fine now. Well, he could get his own tea from now on, she told herself defiantly.
All day long she’d gone over and over the things he’d said and she was surprised to realise that, for the first time in her whole life, she resented the idea of looking after someone else’s child. If Patsy was already eight, there was no way she could pretend the child was hers. What was she going to say to the people in the village? She hated the thought of everybody talking behind her back.
‘Of course, you know that poor Dot Cox can’t have any children.’
Dottie bristled at the thought of being an object of pity.
‘Can’t blame a man for wanting his own child, can you?’ they’d say.
And