‘Hallo, Rosie.’
When the shadow at the side of the wall of a house opposite the tram stop suddenly moved, Rosie actually squealed aloud before she took a hold of herself. ‘Who . . . ? Oh, Shane. What are you doing here?’ she asked sharply, her voice slightly aggressive with fright.
‘Waitin’ for you.’
Rosie found she couldn’t move as Shane stepped out of his hiding place, and then, when he was standing in front of her, that nervous, disturbed feeling was back tenfold. ‘Waiting for me?’ She eyed him warily. ‘How did you know I was coming on that tram?’
‘I didn’t.’ He was big and solid and his broad face under its shock of abundant fair hair was smiling. ‘I’ve bin waitin’ for an hour or more since me ma said where you’d gone. She’s given the bairns their tea an’ took somethin’ round for your mam too.’
‘Your mother sent you to meet me?’ Somehow Rosie couldn’t imagine Mrs McLinnie doing that.
‘No.’ His voice was soft and low, and there was a quality to it that made Rosie want to start walking. ‘That was me own idea.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She was standing stiff, talking stiff. ‘Well you needn’t have.’
‘I wanted to.’ There was a slightly argumentative note to his voice now that reminded her of when they’d been bairns playing together and it was oddly reassuring, relaxing her enough to answer fairly normally, ‘Well, thanks, but it’s only a minute or two home.’
‘Aye, but you never know.’ His voice was casual now and his tone ordinary, and it relaxed her still more.
‘No, I suppose not.’
He was a tall lad, all of six foot and big with it, and when he took her arm and drew her along with him Rosie found herself thinking, he’s well set up, good-looking even, so why don’t I like him in that way? Nancy Brown does, she’s mad over him, so Flora said. And Lizzie Hetherington’s set her cap at him, apparently. Perhaps it was because she’d always liked Davey from as far back as she could remember? But no, her feeling for Davey didn’t really have anything to do with the way she felt about Shane McLinnie. Even if she had never set eyes on Davey she could never have contemplated walking out with Shane. Not that he’d asked her, of course, and there was no reason why he should. She’d heard tell he had a lass down Southwick way, and he’d been courting Mary Linney in Roker before that. There had been some trouble about Mary but Sam had never told her what, although it had been after that that he had warned her to stay away from Shane.
‘Me ma says you’re lookin’ to move to Hendon?’
They were walking down Chapel Lane and the snow was coming down thicker than ever, almost obliterating the houses on the other side of the road.
‘Yes.’ There was an inflexion in his voice that made her tone defensive as she said, ‘We’ve got to.’
‘Don’t give me that, you don’t have to.’
‘What?’ She turned to him, her mouth wide, even as a separate part of her mind was saying, Don’t argue with him, don’t annoy him. Just agree with everything he says until you’re home and you can shut the door on him.
‘You want to get away, don’t you? From Forcer Road, from me.’
She felt her stomach begin to flutter, but her voice was firm and steady when she said, ‘Don’t be daft, Shane, of course I don’t. We’re moving because we need to be close to Bradman’s. We . . . we’ve got work there, me and Mam.’ Eee, he was the second person she’d lied to about the jam factory. She was pushing her luck here, it’d serve her right if they didn’t get the jobs.
‘Bradman’s?’
‘Yes, Bradman’s.’
‘Since when?’ he asked a touch belligerently.
Frightened as Rosie was she wasn’t going to put up with this. ‘Look, what’s the matter with working at Bradman’s?’ She forced an equally belligerent note into her voice. ‘You know how we’re placed
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