Daisy's Secret by Freda Lightfoot Read Free Book Online Page B

done her best to make us comfortable, and we must be grateful and make the best of it. She just didn’t expect quite so many of us.’ Daisy brightly remarked, wishing she felt as confident as she sounded.
    There came a chorus of excited barking from the back garden and all three clambered up to peep out of the window to see what was going on. They couldn’t, unfortunately, see anything beyond a tangle of weeds and shrubs but they could hear Miss Pratt’s strident voice clearly enough. She was talking to the dogs, calling them to her and then after a few minutes all went quiet.
    ‘She’s happen giving them some dinner,’ Megan whispered.
    ‘Can I have mine now?’ Trish piped up. ‘I’m hungry.’
    Moments later they heard the old woman pass by the kitchen door, muttering to herself as she strode back along the lobby, followed by the slam of the front door.
    ‘P’raps she’s gone shopping.’
    As they sat huddled together for warmth on one of the beds, waiting for her to return with food for their dinner, it slowly began to dawn upon Daisy as the minutes and then an hour, and then two hours ticked by, that she might not return at all, or if she had, she’d entered through a different door and they hadn’t heard her come in. Either way, she seemed to have forgotten all about them.
    ‘Come on,’ Daisy said at last, her voice sounding strained and over-bright as she rallied the drooping children. ‘She’s made me responsible for you both, so that’s what I’ll be. Responsible!’ Surely, she thought, with a quaking sensation in the pit of her stomach, she hasn’t taken me at my word and left me to cope with these children on my own? ‘Let’s raid the kitchen cupboards and see what we can find.’
    They could find disappointingly little. A large bag of flour, one of oatmeal and a smaller one of salt. Further explorations revealed a larder with slate shelves upon which Daisy located a tray of eggs and boxes of potatoes, onions, leeks and other vegetables. ‘Oh, look at these. Treasure indeed!’
    She quickly set about gathering the ingredients for an omelette, but was then confronted by the next challenge. How to cook it. Faced with a stove that might well have been put in at the same time the house was built in 1644, judging by its rusty appearance, it proved, as Daisy suspected it would, depressingly difficult to light. By the time they’d finally got it going, driven more by their intense hunger rather than any notion of the correct procedure, not only had the morning passed by but much of the afternoon as well. By which time Megan was almost in tears, Trish was curled up on a piece of sacking with her thumb in her mouth and Daisy could easily have eaten the eggs raw.
    At last, however, grit and determination paid off and some small measure of heat began to filter through. Daisy found a frying pan, a knob of beef dripping and soon an appetising aroma of frying onions was filling the kitchen, making young mouth’s water and eyes shine with anticipation. Then she beat up six eggs in a jug and tipped those over the onions into the hot fat, smiling in delight as the mixture bubbled and frothed.  
    They all felt much better after the meal, washed down by a large mug of tea each. There was even a little bit of milk left over for the cat. But then came the realisation that the autumn day was drawing to a close and dusk was falling with no offer, thus far, of the much longed for hot baths.
    In the circumstances, this was unfortunate in the extreme. It had soon dawned upon Daisy that although she herself came from one of the worst parts of Salford, her mother’s puritan strictness had ensured stringent cleanliness, even if she rarely bestowed upon her daughter the smallest scrap of love.  
    Young Trish and Megan, though more blessed in that department, assured of their own mother’s love and concern for them, could not, by anyone’s estimation, be considered clean. Each child bore the telltale, sweet-sour