Dream On by Gilda O'Neill Page B

grandchild.’
    â€˜What, Nellie? Are you sure? With all that screaming; and crying keeping her awake all night? Clothes-horses full of wet nappies all over the place. She’d go barmy. And you know Ted can’t stand fat birds,’ she added with a sudden flash of inspiration. ‘And with your legs and figure, you’d blow up like a barrage balloon. You do know that, don’t you, Ginny? You’d be like a right flipping elephant. Stuck in a chair, day in day out, with just Nellie for company. You’d hate it. I’m telling you.’
    â€˜That’s what happened to me,’ chipped in a sharp-nosed woman in a peculiar brown felt hat, who was sitting across the aisle from Ginny. ‘Didn’t it, Charlie?’
    Charlie nodded. ‘It did. Just like an elephant she was. And her legs . . . You’ve never seen nothing like ’em.’ He winced at the memory. ‘Went all veiny and horrible, they did. And her ankles! Swollen up like a pair o’ prize marrows they was. Months she was like that. Couldn’t get a pair o’ slippers near her feet, let alone a decent pair o’ shoes on her. And as for her guts . . .’ He shuddered. ‘Talk about taking over the Bile Beans factory She must have swallowed a hundred boxes of the bloody things. But nothing worked her. Bunged up like a bottle with a cork, she was.’
    Dilys was triumphant. ‘See! Can you just imagine what Ted would have to say if he had to put up with all that for nine months?’
    That was enough for Ginny.
She knew
Ted could be difficult and that Nellie wasn’t exactly a loving mother-in-law, but Dilys didn’t have to let the whole bloody bus know. She stood up and jerked the string above her head to ring the bell.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ she muttered to the woman next to her, ‘I wanna get off.’
    â€˜Where you going?’ Dilys bellowed, as Ginny shuffled sideways along the aisle towards the back of the bus.
    â€˜Home. But I’ve decided to walk. All right?’
    Dilys raised her eyebrows in surprise, then turned to face the steamed-up window. ‘Suit yourself. But you must be garrety, it’s started pouring down out there.’
    By the time Ginny eventually got back to Bailey Street she was cold, wet through and thoroughly miserable; but even though all she felt like doing was going indoors, slipping into a warm dressing-gown and sitting in front of the fire with a nice, hot cup of tea, she couldn’t bring herself to walk past Violet Varney’s without at least knocking on her door to see how she was getting on.
    In the four months since the poor woman had heard of her husband’s death, Ginny had called on her most evenings, although Violet usually found a reason not to let her over the street doorstep. It was obvious, even from the brief glimpses Ginny had of her, that she was not doing very well.
    Ginny rapped on the glass panel in the door. ‘Violet? You there?’
    Violet’s youngest, a skinny, hollow-eyed child of about ten, opened the door just wide enough to peer through the crack. ‘Who is it?’
    â€˜It’s me, babe. Ginny, from over the road.’
    The little girl opened the door wider. ‘Me mum’s in the kitchen,’ she said, nodding along the passage.
    â€˜You sure it’s all right if I come in? Mummy usually talks to me out here.’
    â€˜Mum only said I was to say she wasn’t in if it was the rent man, or the bloke for the tally money. She never said nothing about you.’
    Ginny nodded, but she wasn’t actually listening to what the child was saying, she was far too preoccupied with the look of her. There had been talk that Violet was neglecting the kids, giving them a beating even – something that nobody would ever have thought of accusing her of before – and here, right in front of Ginny seemed to be proof that the gossips were right for once. The