Above the Harvest Moon by Rita Bradshaw Read Free Book Online Page A

time.
     
    When Miriam had made it plain she was eager to provide what Agatha could not, he had gone into the affair willingly, for by then he had been desperate for the release only a woman could give and it had been either Miriam or visiting a brothel. He had wished many times since he had chosen the latter. Miriam had become like a leech and her body had started to hold less and less attraction for him. And with its demise, another desire had grown . . .
     

Chapter 5
     
    ‘Ask your mam, just ask her. She might say yes.’
     
    ‘She won’t.’
     
    ‘You don’t know for sure if you don’t ask. And it’s not like her an’ your uncle an’ aunt ever do much on New Year’s Eve apart from having Mrs Mullen and Mrs Chapman over. Go on, ask, Hannah. I’d love you to come round. We always have such a laugh on New Year’s Eve at home.’
     
    Hannah stared at Naomi. She would like nothing more than to see the New Year in at her friend’s house, but her mother would never agree to it. As she heard her uncle coming through from the storeroom where he had been weighing sugar out of a sack into blue paper bags, Hannah pushed Naomi towards the shop door. ‘All right, I’ll ask but don’t expect me,’ she said under her breath. ‘You know what she’s like.’
     
    The shop bell tinkled Naomi’s departure as her uncle appeared. ‘Who was that?’
     
    ‘Naomi. She called in on her way home from work.’ She didn’t say why. Her friend often stopped a few minutes for a chat in the evening.
     
    Her uncle nodded, turning and placing the bags of sugar in the box he was carrying into their appropriate spot on the shelves behind the long wooden counter. With his back towards her, he said, ‘She’s quite a young woman now - you both are. Has she got a lad yet?’
     
    Hannah swallowed. It was daft but she always felt funny when her uncle talked like this and he was doing it more and more often of late. Saying she was so grown up, that there must be lots of lads after her, things like that. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but . . . She couldn’t explain the ‘but’ to herself. Swallowing again, she said flatly, ‘Her mam said she can’t walk out with a lad until her sixteenth birthday.’
     
    ‘Very wise, very wise.’ He turned from what he was doing, a bag of sugar in his hand. ‘You don’t want to go messing about with lads, Hannah,’ he said softly.‘Take it from me, I know what I’m on about. Young lads won’t treat you right.’
     
    The creeping sensation in her flesh was making itself felt again, not so much because of what he said but the way he said it and the look on his face. She stared dumbly, her heart beating so hard she felt it in her throat. ‘I . . . I don’t. I mean I haven’t got a lad. I don’t want one.’
     
    ‘They’ll tell you one thing and do another. That’s the way it is with youth. And you don’t want that, do you? You don’t want to find yourself in a pickle.’
     
    ‘No.’
     
    ‘I’m talking sense, lass.’ He was red in the face and perspiring although it wasn’t warm in the shop - it was bitingly cold outside with a high wind blowing that spoke of snow. ‘And you’re worth more than that, all right? So you mind what I say and keep yourself to yourself. Will you do that for me, lass?’
     
    She nodded and then almost jumped out of her skin as the door behind her opened and her mother walked into the shop. She was carrying a bag containing her aunt’s medicines which she had fetched from the chemist.
     
    ‘What’s the matter?’ Miriam’s eyes flashed from her daughter to Edward.
     
    ‘The matter?’The thick trembly note had gone from her uncle’s voice. Now he sounded faintly belligerent. ‘Why should anything be the matter?’
     
    ‘I don’t know.’ Miriam didn’t look at Hannah again but kept her gaze on her brother-in-law. ‘So there’s nothing wrong?’
     
    ‘Not that I know of.’
     
    Miriam slanted her eyes and