The Four Streets by Nadine Dorries Read Free Book Online

into his chest he pulled his arm from underneath and rolled her over onto her back. He kissed her lips gently as he lifted up her nightdress and parted her legs with his knee.
    Somewhere in his Guinness-addled brain, Tommy thought sex would help Maura. It was life affirming, it was comforting, it was a relief in the midst of despair. For Tommy, that was. For Maura, it just made her feel more isolated and bereft.
    As soon as he had finished and heaved his last sigh, Maura left the bed for the bathroom. As she stood to go, with her back to him, Tommy slapped her backside playfully.
    ‘That’s a good girl, now isn’t that more like it, eh? Bet you fecking loved that. Now if you’re still feeling bad tomorrow I’ll give you another.’
    She heard him chuckling to himself in the thirty seconds he took to fall asleep. She looked back over her shoulder. He had no idea. She watched him beginning to snore as he fell into the first folds of sleep, pleased with himself, a self-satisfied grin on his face.
    She would always be with Tommy, she knew that. She loved him. He wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t bad either. He was a man with simple needs, who had no idea how to emotionally support his wife, but tried his best, even though sometimes he got it horribly wrong. She knew she would never have emotional support, unless she asked for it to be expressed physically. Tommy thought that making love to Maura was the best and only way to show his love and, in doing so, in the years they had been married had knocked her up five times and impregnated her with two sets of twin boys. A double feather in his manly cap.
    Before she went to the bathroom, she wondered how he would react if she were to die tomorrow. Would he be a shadow of himself in the way Jerry was?
    When Maura returned to the bed she moved against Tommy to be wrapped in his arms, the only place she felt any comfort or relief. The only place where her tears stopped flowing, even if only for a few minutes. He would hold her tight across her back and she would inhale the smell of him deeply as each breath brought with it a wave of calm and sweet relief to her anguished heart. Maura knew she wouldn’t sleep tonight. How is anyone going to sleep, she wondered, as she thought of Jerry and his mammy and daddy in the house with baby Nellie. She felt their heartache as raw as her own and began to cry again.
    Tommy knew Maura had hardly slept at all since they heard that Bernadette was dead. Later that same night, somewhere between sex and dawn, he had been woken by her sobbing as he had been every night since Bernadette’s death.
    Tommy was confused. At a loss to know how to comfort her, he had tried everything he knew. He had felt irritated and impatient with her one minute and overwhelmed by love and compassion the next. He desperately wanted normality to return as soon as possible. Life was hard enough, working on the docks every hour God sent, without the unexpected calamities that were thrown in their path every now and then. Sure, Tommy was upset too. Who wouldn’t have been? Kitty and the other kids were also distraught. There wasn’t anyone on the four streets that hadn’t cried and wailed upon hearing the news. Bernadette was a legend.
    The women all liked her, the children loved her and the men lusted after her. There wasn’t a man who hadn’t envied Jerry, the man who had it all. No kids until he wanted them, a bit of money in his pocket for the extras, a trip home to Ireland every now and then, and as much Guinness as he could drink. Aye, Jerry had had everything, the lucky bastard, until now.
    ‘Come here, Queen,’ he had whispered to Maura in the dark of the night as she woke him with her muffled sobs.
    There was the slightest hint of exasperation in his voice. He knew she was trying to do everything she could not to wake him and yet he wasn’t sleeping as well himself. She shuffled over from her side of the bed to his and laid her head on his chest as he put his