Some Sunny Day by Annie Groves

Author:Annie Groves [Groves, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780007279630
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2006-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

The service was over but the worst ordeal was still ahead of them, Rosie acknowledged, as she stood with her father beside the newly dug grave – one of so very many in this small graveyard, trying to push out of her head the knowledge that it was her mother who was lying in the wooden coffin that was now being lowered into the ground.

Someone – one of their neighbours, Rosie guessed – sobbed aloud.

Her father’s voice shook as he burst out, ‘She allus hated the dark.’

‘Don’t, Dad,’ Rosie begged him tearfully.

He was crying himself, silent tears running down his face as he let the dark soil fall from his hand and onto the coffin.

Silently Rosie did the same. She couldn’t believe that this was really happening. Rob had come to stand at the graveside with them, the strong bulk of his body protecting her from the icy-cold wind.

And then it was over, the final goodbyes said and the mourners moving slowly away. Rob had positioned himself protectively between her and her father, offering them each the strength of his arm to lean on as he supported them back out onto the street.

Mrs Harris came up, tear tracks plainly visible through her powder.

‘You need to get everyone down to the church hall, Rosie, before they freeze.’

Rosie looked at her blankly.

‘The wake, lass, remember?’

Numbly Rosie nodded and allowed Mrs Harris to lead her down to the church hall where their neighbours and the other mourners were already gathering, the dreadful mood of the graveside giving way to the discreet and respectful hum of conversation, interspersed here and there by the laughter of children.

Like a sleepwalker, Rosie moved amongst the mourners, she and Rob shepherding between them her father with his bowed shoulders and grief-stricken face, whilst her aunt, suddenly in her element, held court in one corner of the room, dabbing non-existent tears from her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief.

Most of the mourners had already left when the event Rosie had been dreading happened.

She was standing with her father, Rob and her aunt when one of her mother’s friends from the hairdressing salon came over to say goodbye. Marion, a thin woman with peroxide hair and a giggly, girlish manner, which Rosie had always found embarrassing in a woman well into her forties, was both crying and hiccuping, the latter, Rosie suspected, caused by her having had rather too much to drink.

‘I still can’t believe she’s gone,’ she sobbed noisily. ‘She were my best friend, you know – at least we was afore she took up wi’ that—’

Rosie froze, knowing sickeningly what Marion was about to reveal and yet unable to say or do anything to stop her.

‘Yes, you must have missed her when she went to work at the munitions factory. She often said what good friends you had all been, didn’t she, Rosie?’

Rob’s voice, his words calm and friendly and so totally believable, brought Rosie out of her temporary paralysis. Giving him a grateful look she took hold of Marion’s hand.

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