The Throwaway Children by Diney Costeloe Read Free Book Online Page A

Now, she wondered, was it something to do with the welfare woman Mum had mentioned? Did you have to go to the welfare office and fill in forms for the baby to be able to come out? Mum had decided it was time to fill in the forms so that the baby could be born.
    As Rita finally drifted off to sleep, she thought, I’ll ask Gran. She’ll know.
    The opportunity to ask came the next afternoon. It was Thursday, and Gran was waiting for them at the school gate in Capel Street as usual. On the way home Gran let them stop at the playground where they went on the swings, laughing as she pushed them higher and higher. Rita loved the tall slide and was soon scrambling up the ladder to the top.
    ‘Look at me, Gran,’ she called. ‘I’m very high!’
    ‘So you are, love,’ Gran cried, ‘and too high for you,’ she said to Rosie as she ran to climb up behind her sister. ‘Come on, love. I’ll push you on the roundabout.’ Moments later Rita was there too, clinging to the bars of the little roundabout and scooting it with her foot to make it go faster.
    Lily stood back and watched the two little girls shrieking with excitement, carefree on a warm afternoon and love for them welled up inside her, threatening to spring as tears from her eyes. Her beautiful granddaughters, growing up like so many after this dreadful war, with no father in their lives.
    Does that matter? wondered Lily. Of course it matters! she admonished herself. Every child needs a dad, but must it be Jimmy Randall?
    As they walked on to Gran’s house Rosie skipped trustingly beside her, swinging their joined hands.
    ‘What’s for tea?’ she asked.
    ‘Have to see what we can find, won’t we,’ answered Gran. ‘How does bread and dripping sound?’
    ‘Yippee!’ cried Rosie twisting away and dancing backwards along the path. She beamed at her grandmother and said, ‘I love coming to your house, Gran. I wish it was always Thursday.’
    When they were sitting at Gran’s kitchen table eating the promised bread and dripping, Rita said, ‘Gran, when it’s time for Mum’s baby to be born, how does it get out of her tummy?’
    ‘Well,’ said Gran, ‘when it’s time, the nurse will come and the baby will be born.’
    ‘But how does it get out?’ persisted Rita. ‘Does Mum have to fill in forms for the welfare woman?’
    ‘Welfare woman?’ Gran sounded puzzled. ‘What welfare woman?’
    ‘Mum said the welfare woman had said she just had to fill in the forms.’
    ‘Start again, Reet,’ said her grandmother, frowning.
    ‘I heard Mum and Uncle Jimmy talking about the baby. Mum said she’d been to see the welfare woman, and all she had to do was fill in the forms. She asked Uncle Jimmy to help, but he said they’d already decided and that she could do it.’
    ‘When was this?’ asked Gran, a frightening suspicion invading her mind. She immediately pushed it away. No, it was impossible. Mavis would never… would she? No, certainly not. Rita must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. ‘When did you hear all this?’ she asked.
    ‘I was in bed, and I heard them talking down in the kitchen,’ Rita said, ‘only I couldn’t hear properly so I went out onto the stairs, and that’s what I heard them say.’
    ‘You shouldn’t have been out of bed,’ said Gran sternly. ‘Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves.’
    Rosie looked up from her dripping sandwich. ‘What’s an eavesdropper, Gran?’
    ‘Someone who listens to other people’s conversations when they should be in bed,’ answered Gran. ‘Like your naughty sister.’ She turned her attention back to Rita. ‘I expect your mum was talking about the forms she has to fill in to get a ration book for the baby when it comes. Now, eat your tea and then we’ll have a game of snap.’
    ‘But how does the baby—’ persisted Rita.
    ‘I’ll tell you all about it another time,’ Gran cut in hastily. ‘There’s no time now if we’re going to play snap before you have to