Read Online Cross My Heart and Hope to Die by Sheila Radley - Free Book Online

head. They bought my uniform and games equipment and a satchel and a second-hand bike, and I rode down to the village every morning and left the bike at the shop while I went to Breckham Market on the bus.
    I thought I would probably like the new school, once I made some friends and stopped losing my way in the long corridors. The best thing of all was not having Andy Crackjaw there. But Mum was right, it certainly put ideas into my head. Before, I’d never stopped to think whether we were rich or poor. Well, obviously we were poorer than the Vernons up at the farm, but people like that are so different that you don’t make comparisons. Most of us in the village lived in more or less the same way, but at the grammar school nearly all the others were town girls, and I soon realized that they were living in a different century.
    Of course I envied them. And I hadn’t the sense to realize that it wasn’t a good idea to go home and say, ‘Why haven’t we got a bathroom?’ and ‘Why can’t we have a car?’
    Mum was furious. ‘I knew how it would be, spend good money and deny ourselves to send her to grammar school, and she turns out a snob. If this is what education does for her she can leave as soon as she’s old enough and work for her living, same as we had to.’
    But Dad knew it was no use shouting at me. That evening he sat down and took out his biro, borrowed a sheet from my rough notebook, and gave me a lesson in home economics. On one side of the paper he wrote down his weekly bring-home pay, and on the other side he wrote down our expenses. Half of them I’d never heard or thought of: rent and rates and coal and electricity and shoe repairs and television licence, not to mention food, and my school clothes and dinner money. He told me to have a go at balancing our budget myself. I just couldn’t do it, there wasn’t enough money to go round.
    â€˜That’s your answer, then,’ said Dad. ‘We couldn’t manage as it is if your mother didn’t grow our veg and keep the hens and rabbits, and go out to work as well. We can’t afford anything else.’
    When Mum found out what he was doing she let rip even more. I must have been about twelve at the time and from the way she carried on you’d have thought he’d been telling me the facts of life.
    â€˜You’ve no business to let her know what you earn, Vincent Thacker! It’s not right, at her age.’
    â€˜She’s a sensible girl,’ said Dad. ‘If I hadn’t told her she’d think she was hard done by. Now she’ll know better.’
    Naturally I had a few bright ideas, such as why didn’t Dad get a better-paid job? Mum exploded again, I’d never seen her so mad with the pair of us. Dad sighed, but patiently.
    â€˜Think about it, our Janet. What well-paid job could I get round here?’
    I thought hard about what other children’s fathers did for a living, but the fact is that there’s not much choice of jobs in the village. Some do farm work, like Mr Crackjaw, but Dad said their wages were no better than his. Some men drive lorries, but Dad couldn’t drive. As long as we stayed in the village, it looked as though he would be stuck with his job at the shop.
    â€˜Couldn’t Gran Thacker pay you more?’
    Mum snorted. ‘That’ll be the day.’
    â€˜Mother pays me the regulation wage. And this is her house, she lets us have it cheap because it isn’t modernized. We’re lucky to pay so little rent.’
    â€˜Well, couldn’t we move to Breckham Market? You could get a good job there.’
    â€˜Not without any qualifications, I couldn’t. Besides, if we lived in town we’d have to pay so much rent that we’d be worse off than we are here.’
    I’d almost run out of helpful suggestions. There didn’t seem to be any way round the problem, not while they were keeping me at