Read Online Daughters of Liverpool by Annie Groves - Free Book Online

was up to her to fuss over him. The boy meant nothing to her. He wasn’t her responsibility, after all. But somehow she couldn’t stop worrying about him.
    She wasn’t going to admit to herself that she was disappointed because he wasn’t there, and the sandwiches that she put out earlier were, or that she’d woken up in the night thinking about him,wondering where he slept and if he had a proper bed, or even a proper home. That was daft doing that, and no mistake. Why should she care about some dirty boy? She didn’t.
    She was only coming down here because it gave her an excuse to keep an eye on Con, and that new piece he’d taken up with.
    The boy wasn’t going to come now. The late December afternoon had turned into winter darkness and it was cold, with a thin mean wind whining up the alleyway and making her shiver, despite her padding of fat and her warm coat.
    She bent down to pick up the sandwiches. She couldn’t leave them here. They’d have rats coming after them. A thin whisper of sound from the bins against the wall caught her attention. Emily frowned and listened, but she couldn’t hear anything. It must have been the wind. She picked up the sandwiches and turned away. There, she’d heard it again. She turned back, and reached into her bag for the torch she carried for the blackout, switching it on and pointing its beam towards the bins.
    It was his legs she saw first, bare to the knee and mottled red and purple with cold, and so thin she could see his bones. She hurried towards the bins, her heart pounding so heavily she felt breathless.
    He was curled up between the bins, looking more dead than alive, his face all bruised and his lip cut, with dried blood on it. What had happened to him? Had he been set on by some bigger, heavier boys? He looked as though he was too weak tomove. Emily wanted to pick him up, take him home with her and look after him properly, but instead she sat down beside him in the alleyway and unscrewed the Thermos, pouring out some soup.
    It was her own home-made nourishing broth, made from a chicken carcass and vegetables. He was so weak that she had to hold the Thermos cup to his mouth so that he could drink, and take it away from him as well when he tried to drink too much too quickly.
    ‘You’ll be sick if you take it too fast,’ she warned him. ‘And I’d like to know who’s been knocking you around as well, because I’d have a few words to say to them. Now you can have a bit more. Gently, there’s no need to drink it so fast, like you’ve got no manners. No one’s going to take it from you, not whilst I’m here, so you take your time and then you can start on these sandwiches, and this time you and me are going to have a bit of a talk, because you can’t go on like this. It will be the death of you, and me too with all the worrying about you I’ve been doing. I’ve got a good mind to take you home with me, where I can keep an eye on you, and see that you get looked after properly.’
    The boy hadn’t said a word, but he was listening to her and taking in everything she was saying, Emily knew that.
    ‘Of course, if you’ve got folk of your own and a home of your own then it’s them that you should be with.’
    Silence.
    ‘And if you’re one of those boys that’s got himself into trouble …’
    Now there was a reaction. Not just his hands but his whole body was trembling, and Emily suspected that he would have got up and run from her if he’d been strong enough.
    It was well after half-past five, the matinée was long over, and the queues would already be forming at the front of the theatre for the evening’s first house. It wasn’t unknown for the actors and members of the chorus to slip out through the stage door for a bit of fresh air between shows –and sometimes something rather less innocent than a breath of air, as she had good cause to know, since Con wasn’t above slipping out for a bit of a kiss and a cuddle with his latest girl if he