Read Online Dream On by Gilda O'Neill - Free Book Online

child’s cheek had a series of wounds across it that certainly hadn’t come from any playground rough and tumble; she had been cut with something a lot sharper than a stone or a hopscotch marker.
    As soon as she noticed Ginny looking at the red, angry slashes, the little girl instinctively raised her hand to her face and dropped her chin, making Ginny flinch at her victim’s shame.
    â€˜She’s in the scullery,’ the child muttered, then turned on her heel and fled.
    It tore at Ginny’s heart as she watched the poor, scrawny mite disappear up the unlit stairway. She felt as though she could cry out loud with pain, but not only for the desperate youngster.
    Ginny had seen herself reflected in the look that had clouded the child’s pale, careworn little features. It was a look that Ginny sometimes glimpsed lately, when she sat in front of the mirror. No matter how she tried to deny it – to brush it away, refuse to acknowledge it – it was a look that had stained, and that told anyone who chose to see that Ginny was a woman who knew what it was like to have her dreams shattered.
    When Ginny eventually went home she found Ted sitting at the kitchen table eating his tea, with the evening paper propped up in front of him against the sugar bowl.
    â€˜Where d’you think you’ve been?’ he asked, flicking over the page.
    Ginny took off her sopping wet coat, draped it over the back of one of the chairs and stood it in front of the gas stove to dry. ‘I popped in to see Violet Varney, on me way back from work,’ she said shaking out her hat and combing back her damp hair with her fingers. ‘She wasn’t very happy at first that her little one had let me in.’
    Ted looked up at her with disgust. ‘Well, while you was over there chatting, me mum had to do me tea for me. And now she’s so whacked out, she’s had to go up and have a lay down. Satisfied, are you?’
    Ginny thought about her spoilt, idle mother-in-law snoring her head off upstairs, and she thought about how exhausted Violet Varney looked and how skinny and unhealthy the child had been.
    She would have liked to have gone up and dragged Nellie out of bed and across the street to see what being whacked out really meant. She’d have liked to have rubbed her self-regarding nose in it, and she’d have liked to have told the lazy old bugger – and Ted – exactly how she felt.
    Instead, Ginny said nothing. She knew there were lines she shouldn’t cross, so, as always, she acted the appeaser. ‘I wasn’t chatting, Ted,’ she said defensively, as she filled the kettle at the sink. ‘And I only meant to go in for a couple of minutes. You know, to see if there was anything I could do. But when I saw the state she was in—’
    â€˜What state d’you expect her to be in?’ Ted interrupted. He tore a chunk of bread from the loaf, mopped up the gravy from his plate and shoved it in his mouth.
    Ginny didn’t reply immediately. She lit the gas and sat down at the table to wait for the water to boil. Ted liked to have a cup of tea after he had finished his meal. She herself had no appetite after what she had seen across the road, but even if she had, she knew it would have been pointless to ask if Nellie had made anything for her to eat.
    â€˜I didn’t expect her to be as bad as she is, to tell you the truth, Ted,’ she said eventually. ‘She was going on about all sorts. Kind of rambling. She was talking about this place, Southern Rhodesia, wherever that is. A welfare lady went round to see her the other day and said they was offering places at some college over there. And parents who ain’t managing very well can send their kids. Their older ones like. It’s because they need more people in their country or something. I didn’t really understand what Violet was going on about, but she reckoned it sounded like a good thing.’