A Girl Can Dream by Anne Bennett Page A

tight.
    Now that Ruth had got the hang of smiling, she seemed to do a lot of it; Billy was trying with her all afternoon and Meg told the other children about the smile when they came home from school and they were as delighted as Meg had been when she smiled at them too, but her father only grunted when he was told. Meg refused to let her father’s reaction pull her down or prevent her feeling more positive about the future; she told him that as Ruth only woke once in the night now and was much easier to settle, she would move back into the attic. She knew her decision would be a popular one with everyone – her father would like his own bedroom back and the children would be glad because he would often wake them up when he came stumbling in at night, and Terry said he took up the lion’s share of the bed and snored loudly once he had fallen asleep.
    So, life began to fall into a pattern. Meg still found washday hard, but the worst washdays were when it was wet and the washing couldn’t be hung on one of the lines festooning the yard, raised up on gigantic poles to flap in the sooty air. On wet days the washing would be draped around the house, the nappies airing over the fireguard so that everything smelled and felt damp. Sometimes it wasn’t always dry by Tuesday, so the ironing would hang over to Wednesday.
    Often May came in to help Meg a bit while she dealt with the baby’s needs. Her aunt Rosie called around regularly too, usually armed with a casserole or a pan of stew, and Meg was glad of this because she was able to save a little money, now that the arrears were paid off fully.
    She knew the money would be needed soon to buy coal for the fires and for boots for them all. Maeve had had a new pair of lovely warm lined boots that Meg remembered her father buying the Christmas before, just as she had begun to suspect that she was pregnant, and she had kept them for best so they were like new. Meg’s boots, on the other hand, were worn and shabby and had begun to pinch her feet; yet she hesitated to use any of her mother’s things and all her clothes still hung in her wardrobe or were packed into the drawers.
    ‘Is it awful to think of wearing things that once belonged to my mother?’ she asked May one day when she popped in for a cup of tea.
    May settled herself on the settee and put the tea down on a small table in front of her before saying, ‘How could it? I would call that sensible. What else would you do with them? Give them to the rag-and-bone man?’
    ‘Well, no, I suppose not,’ Meg said. ‘But I feel awkward about it.’
    ‘Don’t see why you should,’ May said. ‘You could do with the things, couldn’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’ Meg couldn’t deny it. In the past year or so her dresses had become extremely short and difficult to fasten over her growing breasts. ‘Mom thought so too,’ she said. ‘She said she would buy me new clothes and shoes for starting work.’
    ‘There you are then,’ May said. ‘She wasn’t able to do that, so you adapt her things to fit you now. You’re good with the needle. And there’s something else to think of.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Your father,’ May said. ‘I imagine he finds it hard to see his wife’s clothes and shoes still there in the bedroom as if she had never died at all.’
    Meg had not really thought about that, but she saw now that May was absolutely right. ‘He’s never mentioned her clothes or anything to me,’ she said to May.
    ‘Probably hurts him to speak of it,’ May said.
    ‘I suppose,’ Meg said, and gave a sudden sigh. ‘I don’t half miss her, May.’
    May leaned forward and squeezed Meg’s shoulder. ‘I know, and, God knows, I miss her too,’ she said. ‘But what can’t be cured must be endured, as my poor mother would say.’
    She took another sip of her tea as Meg said, ‘It might upset me, but Mom’s things have got to be taken out of that room, haven’t they?’
    ‘They have,’ May said firmly. ‘You shouldn’t do