An Orphan's Secret by Maggie Hope

Author:Maggie Hope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Seventeen

Meg eased herself out of the bed she shared with Wesley, her usually deft movements slowed and awkward because of her advanced pregnancy. Wesley moved restlessly and she paused, looking apprehensively at his bulk under the blankets. But he turned over on to his side and slept on, for which she was thankful. If he had woken he would have insisted that she got back into bed with him. Sometimes she thought his appetite for the sexual act was insatiable.

Quietly, she pulled on her clothes, shivering in the icy cold air of the bedroom. Picking up her boots, she tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen before sitting down and putting them on. She grimaced slightly and gingerly felt her left breast, feeling the imprint of Wesley’s fingers on a place which had already been sore.

He was on night shift, the shift which went down from three in the afternoon until twelve midnight, but he had gone for a beer with his marras afterwards and hadn’t come home till three o’clock in the morning, falling heavily into bed beside her and demanding his rights.

‘No, Wesley,’ she had protested. ‘The babby, man. It’s almost due, you’ll hurt it.’

‘Hadaway wi’ you,’ was all that Wesley had answered. And the baby had kicked and turned as he climbed on top of her, almost as if it was fighting back.

Meg sighed as she thought of it. The baby was quiet now at least. She picked up the iron coal rake from the hearth and raked away at the ash in the grate, looking to see if there was any life left in the fire. One or two cinders glowed and sparked and she drew them to one side and laid thin shavings of wood on top of them. There were sticks chopped from the ends cut off pit props in the bottom of the oven drying out, and she criss-crossed these across the shavings. She soon had these alight, and after pulling down coal from the fire back, put up the tin blazer, standing back in satisfaction as the flames roared up the chimney.

Jane had come into the room as Meg was settling the kettle on the coals. She had a shawl wound tightly round her thin frame. Her bony shoulders jutted out through the wool.

‘You’re late with the tea this morning,’ she grumbled by way of a greeting.

‘It won’t be a minute,’ answered Meg, ‘the kettle’s singing already.’ She moved away from the fire, giving place to her mother-in-law. Jane Cornish hadn’t been well since Christmas. What had started off as a feverish cold had settled into a racking cough which plagued her day and night.

‘How are you feeling the day?’ Meg asked as she got out the loaf and cut slices from it.

‘None the better for you asking,’ snapped Jane peevishly, but Meg took no notice, she was used to it by now. She stuck a slice of bread on the end of a toasting fork and handed it to Jane to hold against the bars of the grate.

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