Ginger Street

by Anne Douglas

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

The Millar family live next door to the Riettis on Ginger Street, a row of Victorian tenements on Edinburgh's south side but their circumstances couldn't be more different. Ruth Millar would like to stay on at school but her father's salary as a grocer's assistant is barely enough to put food on the table, let alone such luxuries as an education. By contrast the Riettis own the local corner shop and a little cafe at the end of Ginger Street. Yet despite the differences in their wealth and background this doesn't stop Ruth and her sister Sylvie becoming friends with the Rietti children, Marilena and Nicco. Ruth's father dreams of one day owning his own business. Meanwhile Ruth secretly dreams of Nicco Rietti. But not only is Nicco older, he is Italian and Catholic, three things which make him out of bounds for Ruth, especially with the threat of war on the horizon...

Release date: January 3, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 512

Sample

The children of Ginger Street were coming home. No one met them from school. The streets on that November afternoon in 1929
were safe enough, though dark between the gas lamps. There were lights in the shops, though, and in the jolting trams, and
in the tenements.


Ginger Street, on the south side of Edinburgh, where Newington meets St Leonard’s, was all tenements. Built in the nineteenth
century to one plain design, they lacked the height and faded grace of the Old Town houses. There were no cornices or plaster
ceiling roses here; no reminders of past glories when the quality had shared houses with the poor. On the other hand, none
of the Ginger Street tenements had fallen down, unlike one or two in the Old Town.


Walking home to Number Twenty-Four with two friends and her sister, Ruth Millar did not think of herself as one of the children.
She was fourteen and would be leaving school at Christmas; was already feeling rather apart from the others: her sister, Sylvie,
Millie MacAllan and Vi Smith, who were only twelve. They could still get excited looking at the sweeties in the Italian shop
window, whereas she had to think about finding a job.


Still, she didn’t mind stopping with the others, to look in at Signor Rietti’s display. There were the usual dummy boxes of
chocolates, looking pale in the gaslight, and the tall glass jars of Scottish boilings, ‘soor’ plums and humbugs, buttered
brazils. Looking was all they could do, for they hadn’t a ha’penny amongst them. Ruth and Sylvie got sixpence pocket money
on Saturdays, threepence of which had to go into their moneybox, where it stayed. Millie and Vi, who came from large families,
only got a few coppers when they could be spared.


‘Och, I’m away,’ said Millie, at last.

‘Me, too,’ said Vi. ‘No point in looking when you canna buy.’

‘I wish it was summer,’ murmured Sylvie, as she and Ruth stood alone, still with their noses pressed to the shop window. ‘Then
I’d buy an ice-cream.’ She read aloud the notice on the shop-door. ‘Cornets, one ha’penny; wafers, one penny.’ Ruth gave a
short laugh, as she blew on her gloved fingers. ‘Even if it was summer, you still couldn’t buy anything. You’ve no money.’


‘When you get a job, Ruthie, you could buy me something.’

‘Got to find the job first, and then I won’t be earning much.’

No, it wouldn’t be much, and she didn’t want it anyway, for she would rather have stayed on at school and taken her Leaving
Certificate like Signor Rietti’s son, Niccolo – Nicco, as his family called him. He was at the Catholic secondary school and
said to be clever, his father wanted him to do well. But so was Ruth clever and had been selected to work for the certificate
but, as her mother said, her father only earned ‘buttons’ working in a grocer’s in Nicholson Street, while Nicco’s father had his own shop. That was the difference, you ken. It wasn’t possible for Ruth to stay on at
school, whereas Nicco could.


‘Now, if your dad should ever get his own shop,’ Isa Millar had said comfortingly. ‘We could think again, eh?’

If Dad ever got his own shop! That was a joke. What was he going to buy it with? Those ‘buttons’ he earned at Tomlinson’s?
There was nothing for it but to comb the job adverts every night for something Ruth could try for, but jobs were getting hard
to find, even for badly paid young people. Somebody had said there could be two million unemployed by next year. ‘Will I be
one of them?’ wondered Ruth.


Like Sylvie, Ruth was considered attractive rather than pretty. Both girls had large, blue-grey eyes, though Ruth’s bobbed
hair was dark and Sylvie’s fair, and both had turned-up noses inherited from their mother that they would have liked to change.
Their seventeen-year-old brother, Kester, who worked in a biscuit factory, had their father’s good straight nose. Now why
had that nose not come to them? In the women’s magazines their mother bought when she could afford them, Ruth had read that
turned-up noses were never snub, always ‘tip-tilted’.


‘There you are, Sylvie,’ Ruth said, laughing. ‘Our noses don’t turn up, they’re tip-tilted!’

‘Who says ma nose turns up, anyway?’ cried Sylvie hotly.

She knew and Ruth knew that however their noses were described, they were never going to look like the beautiful Marilena,
Nicco’s sister, who was dawdling down the pavement at that moment, while her cousin, Renata, told her to get a move on, it
was too cold to hang about. Marilena’s face was a perfect oval, her eyes dark and lustrous, her nose classically straight. At only thirteen, she must surely have
had all the boys at the Catholic school dancing round her, but she would know better than to encourage any boys. Why, her
mother didn’t even let her play in the street with girls, never mind boys! And she was never allowed to go to the Saturday
morning cinema shows that everyone else would die rather than miss, and were certainly not missed by Renata, the daughter
of Signor Rietti’s brother, who owned a little café at the end of Ginger Street. But, then Renata was a rebel, a fiery girl
with a mane of black hair she was always threatening to have bobbed and a wide scarlet mouth. It was said her parents didn’t
know what to do with her, and had enough trouble, anyway, with her brother, Guido, who was rumoured to be ‘wild’, though what
Italians called wild and what the Scots called wild might be two different things. He sold his father’s ice-cream in the summer
and worked in Gibb’s biscuit factory with Kester in the winter, but Kester never said what he got up to, if anything.


‘Are you no’ coming in?’ Marilena asked, hugging Sylvie, with whom she was ‘best friends’. Her accent, like all the young
Italians away from home was Scottish. At home, they spoke something else, an Italian dialect that came from their original
village in the mountains. ‘It’s so cold out here!’


‘No money,’ said Sylvie, who was certainly shivering.

‘Ah, come on into the warm! Papà will give us all some sweeties. Renata, are you coming in?’


‘Sure, if there are some sweeties going!’ Renata gave her wide smile to Ruth, who smiled back. She very much admired Renata.

The girls all followed Marilena as she pushed open her father’s shop-door, ringing its bell, and called in their home dialect:


‘Papà, Papà, I’m home!’


The shop was a little bit like home for the Millar girls, too, for they had come here so often and knew it so well. To begin
with, of course, their mother had been disappointed when they’d flitted from a close off the Canongate to Ginger Street. It
was a step up, was Ginger Street; they’d two bedrooms here and their own lavatory. But the corner shop was Italian, would
you credit it? Isa’s brow had darkened and the corners of her mouth had turned down.


‘Now, Jack, how I’m going to manage, unless you bring everything back from Tomlinson’s?’ she had demanded, to which placid
Jack had said he would bring everything back from Tomlinson’s and with a discount too, so what was she complaining about?


‘Well, you ken very well, every woman runs out of something from time to time, eh? And they’ll no’ have ma sugar or ma flour
or ma eggs at an Italian shop! Why, they only sell spaghetti and ice-cream! I bet you canna even get a packet of tea!’


What slander! Signor Roberto Rietti stocked everything a Scottish housewife could wish for, together with – and these were
what the girls loved to smell closing their eyes – all manner of other things they didn’t meet anywhere else. Herbs and garlic, pungent onions on strings, creamy white cheeses,
strong dark sausages, streaky hams, and beautiful, golden, crusty bread that came up from an Italian bakery in Leith. Even
Isa had been won round in the end, grudgingly admitting that it was a grand show the Riettis put on and the vegetables were
certainly very fresh. ‘Just as long as your dad brings me ma proper messages.’ She’d always add, to get the last word, and
the girls would knock each other’s ribs and smile.


On that dismal November afternoon, the shop seemed especially warm and welcoming. If there was a slump on the way and men
being laid off everywhere, at least for the moment things seemed as normal, with plenty of Italian and Scottish customers
ready to buy. Not sitting at the counter, waiting to give their order as they did at Tomlinson’s, but sorting things out themselves
from the tall wooden shelves and putting them together, to be paid for when the signore had time to add them up.


Marilena’s father was a handsome man, but rather thin. He had a high forehead, from which sprang a shock of black hair, and
his eyes were large and melancholy.


‘Why do Italians like Signor Rietti look so sad?’ Ruth once asked her mother. ‘As though they’re missing something?’

‘Well, they are missing something. They’re homesick. For Italy.’

‘But, Ma, they’ve lived here for years! Some were born here!’

‘Still exiles, you ken. For a country they’ve never seen.’

‘I’ve heard they sometimes go back.’

‘When they get the money together.’ Isa had been thoughtful, considering how they might do that and wondering if Jack might do the same. ‘Some do make money, specially in the catering
trade.’


Now Signor Rietti was smiling at his niece and including Ruth and Sylvie in the smile, as Marilena hung round his neck, wheedling
sweeties out of him, and only leaving him alone when he turned to open up the glass jars behind him.


‘What would you like?’ he asked in English, coughing a little, and placing the cigarette he had been smoking on a tin ashtray.
‘Come and choose.’


‘Smoking, Uncle, and in the shop, too?’ asked Renata, shaking her finger at him. ‘You’ll be in trouble if Aunt Carlotta catches
you!’


He put his own forefinger to his lips, and sent a dark gaze skywards, for his wife was in the flat upstairs.

‘Not a word,’ he whispered, and gave the girls their sweeties, brushing aside their thanks. ‘Maybe I’ll put my cigarette out,
eh? Before Nicco sees it, too.’


‘He never comes out as early as us,’ said Renata, who always brought Marilena home. ‘Those secondary school folk have to work
too hard, if you ask me. I’m glad I’m not staying on!’


‘Nicco’s’s a clever boy, it’s no trouble to him, Renata.’ Signor Rietti screwed the lids back on his jars. ‘I want him to
be an accountant, something good in a profession, not working in a shop like me.’


‘Why, Papà, I thought you wanted him to help you,’ said Marilena. ‘It’s the family shop.’


‘Have to keep things in the family,’ Renata agreed.

‘Maybe I’ll ask Guido, then. Who knows?’

‘Guido! He’d be hopeless! Anyway, he has to help with the ice-cream when he’s not at the factory.’

‘All this is just talk, said signor Rietti, turning to attend to a customer. ‘Renata, don’t forget to take the cheese for
your mother, it’s the Bel Paese she likes.’ As the shop bell rang again, he looked up and smiled. ‘And here’s Nicco, anyway!
Marilena, run up and tell your mamma to make him his coffee.’


The tall young man stood in the doorway, taking off his hat and shaking moisture from his coat. His eyes were as dark and
brilliant as his sister’s, he had his father’s good looks without the melancholy, but that evening seemed weary, as though
the day had been long for him and had brought its own burdens. Though Ruth envied him, she also felt sorry for him. It was
well known that his mother doted on him and watched him like a hawk, and though she watched Marilena in the same way, Isa
said that would end when Marilena was safely married and producing bambinos. With Nicco, it would probably never end, whatever
he did. And if his father, too, was watching him, expecting him to do well, no wonder he seemed weary, poor Nicco!


He greeted them all cheerfully enough, however, with special smiles for Ruth and Sylvie, and held the door open for them when
they said they had to go; for, like his father, he was very well mannered. Then his eyes went to the back of the shop, and
theirs followed. Signora Rietti was descending the stairs.


Though she seemed old to the Millar sisters, she was in fact not yet forty, a woman in her prime, with the straight nose and
oval face she had passed to her daughter. Her fine eyes were a little shadowed now, and she was beginning to put on weight,
but everyone in the shop looked at her, and she responded by holding her head with even more grace and treading each step
carefully, as though she were a grand personage. It was her way, they all knew it, and when she reached the shop counter they relaxed and stopped watching, but
then the signora leaned forward, sniffed, and let out a series of cries in her own dialect, followed by: ‘Roberto! Roberto!’


‘Oh, dear,’ whispered Renata. ‘Poor Uncle Roberto’s for it now, Aunt Carlotta’s smelled his cigarette! He’s not supposed to
smoke, you know, doctor’s orders, he has a bad chest.’


‘Quick, Renata, empty the ashtray!’ whispered Marilena.

But it was too late. The signora had seen the cigarette end and as she turned her accusing eyes back to her husband and he
began to make excuses, Nicco, Marilena, and Renata all joined in, expostulating and waving their hands, while the customers
looked on with interest and the Millar sisters, exchanging quick looks, slipped out of the door and made for home.


‘Aren’t Italians noisy?’ asked Sylvie, as they reached their own stairs and ran up lightly to their door. ‘Why do they all
talk at once?’


‘Ever heard Ma get going with the neighbours?’ Ruth countered. ‘But they do seem noisier than us, it’s true. Maybe it’s their
language.’


‘I like their language,’ Sylvie said dreamily. ‘Do you no’ think it’s prettier than ours?’ She flung out her arms. ‘Bellissima! Prego! Grazie!’


‘Hey, what’s all this?’ asked their brother, Kester, thundering up the stairs after them. ‘Have I come to the wrong house?
Oh, scusi, Signorina, per favore!’


‘Is that what Guido taught you to say?’ cried Sylvie. ‘No teasing!’ But he bundled her through the door, laughing, and said
he wanted his tea.


The Millar girls had seen enough poor dwellings to know that they were lucky to live in the flat in Ginger Street. It wasn’t
just the second bedroom and private lavatory that made the difference, though they were deeply grateful for both, but the
way their mother kept things. It was as though she’d never forgotten her time in service and had to keep to the same routines
in her own home. The range was riddled and cleaned and blackleaded every morning and the rooms swept and dusted. The laundry
was done on Monday in the downstairs wash-house, whether or not there was any hope of getting it out to dry. Ironing was done
on Tuesday, bedrooms turned out on Wednesday, living room on Thursday and all floors thoroughly scrubbed every Friday after
baking day. On Saturdays Isa did her sewing and mending, and on Sundays she cooked the joint that Jack bought at reduced price
from a butcher he knew. No one went to the kirk. Jack and Isa were not religious, though they brought the children up to know
what was right and what was wrong. That was what mattered, eh?


‘And where’ve you two girls been?’ their mother asked now, when the sisters and Kester took off their damp coats and hats and went to the range to warm themselves. The table was already
set for the meal, though that was Sylvie’s job, and the vegetables prepared, though that was Ruth’s job. Kester, of course,
did not have a household job, because he was a worker. But when I go out to work, I bet I’m still peeling the potatoes when
I come in, thought Ruth, I’m sure that votes for women are never going to change that.


‘We just went to the Italian shop,’ said Sylvie, rubbing her fingers together. ‘Marilena’s dad gave us sweeties.’

Isa clicked her tongue in exasperation. She was now thirty-eight; attractive without good features, in the way of her daughters,
with wavy brown hair recently bobbed, and quickly darting brown eyes.


‘Eating sweeties just before your tea! Now, woe betide you if you leave that haddock I’m frying! And why could you no’ have
bought the sweeties, anyway?’


‘Spent their pocket money,’ said Kester, grinning. ‘Same as I used to do. Never had two coppers to rub together by Wednesday!’

‘What a way to go on!’ Isa began bustling about the way she liked to do before a meal; calling on the girls to wash their
hands, then help her get the vegetables on, flour the fish, put the plates to warm, their dad would be in before they knew
it!


Everything was ready by the time Jack Millar, big and heavy-faced, came stamping in, shaking his coat, towelling his fair
hair and cheering them all by his vitality, as he always did. Dad’s like a fire you can warm your hands at, thought Ruth,
as her mother dished up the haddock. No one else in the family was like him, it was a sort of gift, she supposed, and hoped suddenly, fiercely, that he would get his
shop, and turn out to be as lucky as he always said he was. But she thought it wasn’t likely.


‘And how was Mr Rietti?’ her mother was asking. ‘I may be wrong, but that feller never looks very well to me.’

‘He’s got a cough,’ Ruth told her. ‘But he’s always in the shop, so he can’t be too bad.’

‘Got into trouble tonight,’ said Sylvie, giggling. ‘Signora Rietti found out he’d been smoking. You should have heard the
racket she made!’


‘That signora!’ Isa said sharply. ‘Thinks far too much of herself. Has that whole family right under her thumb.’

‘Italian mothers are like that,’ Jack remarked, finding more mashed potato in the pan and scraping it on to his plate. ‘They’re
the ones that say what’s what.’


‘Oh, well!’ Isa laughed. ‘Maybe that’s no’ a bad thing, eh?’

When the meal was over and the girls had washed up and made tea, Jack took up his evening paper and Kester said he’d go out
for a bit, with one or two of the ‘lads’.


‘No’ drinking?’ his mother asked sharply.

‘Och, what’s a pint or two, Ma? A feller’s got to go out sometimes!’

‘Lucky to have the money,’ Jack remarked. He tapped his paper. ‘Seen the latest unemployment figures?’

Kester’s face darkened. ‘Aye, I feel bad. But what can I do? I mean, it’ll no’ do the unemployed any good if I just sit around
at home, will it?’


Jack looked at his wife. ‘Seventeen,’ he murmured. ‘Canna blame the laddie, Isa.’

She shrugged. ‘All right, then, Kester. But no’ coming in when we’re all asleep and being sick all over the place, mind.’


He leaped up, grinning. ‘You’ll no’ hear a thing, Ma, I promise, and I’ll no’ be sick because I canna afford to drink enough
for that.’


‘Just as well!’ she called after him, as he grabbed his coat and was away before she could change her mind.

‘Kester always gets his own way,’ said Sylvie, after a pause. ‘Boys are always the favourites.’

‘What rubbish!’ cried her mother, picking up her knitting and beginning to count stitches. ‘Where’d you get these daft ideas?’

‘Marilena says it’s the same for her. Nicco can do just what he likes but she’s no’ allowed to do anything.’

‘Nicco’s older than Marilena, that’s why he has more freedom.’

‘I’m no’ so sure,’ said Jack, lighting his pipe. ‘Italian girls are kept on a pretty tight rein. Their folks seem terrified
of letting ’em out o’ their sight. That’s why they marry ’em off young, so they needn’t worry any more.’


‘Well, you two girls are no’ marrying young, if I’ve anything to do with it,’ said Isa. ‘See a bit o’ life first, eh?’ Her
face changed, as she bent over the heel of the sock she was turning. ‘If you can,’ she added, after a moment.


There was a silence while they all thought of girls seeing life and of how unlikely that was. Even Sylvie, at twelve, knew
that you needed money to see a bit of life, and money was what no one had. No one they knew, anyway.


‘Are there any jobs in that paper, Dad?’ asked Ruth, clearing her throat.

‘Ah, Ruthie, you’re no’ really going out to work?’ Jack was hunting for the adverts page. ‘I think of you as a wee lassie, still.’


‘She is a wee lassie,’ said Isa. ‘But you ken how things are.’

‘I don’t mind about no’ staying on at school,’ Ruth murmured without truth. ‘Plenty of girls are leaving at my age. Renata’s
going to work in her dad’s café. She’s looking forward to it.’


Isa’s brown eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘Renata’s different from you, Ruth. She’s been looking forward to leaving school
since she started. But you could’ve done well. Been a secretary, or a teacher or something.’


‘I might still do that later on.’ Ruth began looking down the jobs column with her father. ‘Let’s see what there is, anyway.’

Jack stabbed his forefinger at a couple of items. ‘Shop vacancies there. How much are they paying?’

‘Experience required’ read Ruth aloud. ‘Minimum age, sixteen. No good to me. The offices usually ask for sixteen-year-olds,
as well.’


‘There’s a kitchen maid wanted,’ said Sylvie, reading over her shoulder ‘You could always be a maid, Ruth.’

‘Over ma dead body!’ cried Isa. ‘Och, I’m no having a daughter of mine running herself into the ground for some daft rich
woman! A factory job’d be better than that!’


‘Well, I don’t leave school till December,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ll be sure to find something by then.’

‘Aye, sure to.’ Isa folded up her knitting and stood up. ‘But away to bed with you girls, now. You’ve school in the morning.’

Jack put his pipe in an ashtray and yawned. ‘How about another cup of tea, then, if you’re putting the kettle on?’

‘If I’m putting the kettle on!’ she cried fondly. ‘Och, Jack, you’re a devil for tea!’

‘Better than beer.’

‘Aye. Oh, now you’ve made me think about Kester. I worry about him, Jack. He drinks more than you ever did.’

‘He’s young, it’s what all young lads like to do. Give over worrying.’

‘You know what can happen if a fellow takes to drink.’

‘He’s not going to take to drink, Isa. Now you go and put the kettle on and give us one of thae shortbreads you made, eh?’

‘I was thinking you could take ’em over to Aunt Addie. It’s your Sunday for going.’

Once a month, Jack visited his aunt in Glasgow. She was his mother’s only sister and his only relative, for his parents had
died when he was a boy and his brothers, less lucky than Jack himself, had not come back from the Great War. Very occasionally,
he would take the family with him to Glasgow, but that was five rail fares instead of one, and Aunt Addie these days was a
wee bit crotchety and said young folk got on her nerves. It was better all round if he visited her himself, and that suited
her, he’d always been her favourite.


‘Ah, come on,’ he said now. ‘You can spare a coupla bits, eh? I’d get wrong for saying it, but your baking’s better than anything
we sell, Isa.’


‘Oh, best butter, you know what to say!’ she cried, laughing, and went to make his tea.

‘Do you no’ wish we had a bathroom?’ asked Sylvie, as she and Ruth shiveringly prepared for bed.

Ruth said she did wish it. There was nothing more fiddling and tedious than having to help Ma fill the hip bath every Friday night with water that was never really hot. Kester had Saturday,
Ma and Dad had other nights, och, there was always somebody pulling that old bath around the flat!


‘When I grow up,’ Sylvie said with decision, ‘I’m going to marry a man with a bathroom in his house. The Italians have got
one, you ken.’


‘Oh, well, maybe you’ll marry Nicco!’ Ruth said with a laugh.

Sylvie laughed, too. She couldn’t imagine marrying Nicco, or anyone, really. ‘No, but if they can have one, why can’t we?’

‘I suppose we might one day. When our ship comes in.’

‘What ship?’ asked Sylvie.

It was some hours later that Ruth, suddenly waking, heard Kester coming home. There now, he’d banged the door and the Dougalls
on the ground floor would be sure to complain! Never missed a chance, did they, to come up and start moaning to Ma about something
her family’d done? Ruth sat up, listening to her sister’s quiet breathing. She couldn’t tell whether her brother had been
sick or not, but one thing was for sure, he’d fallen up the stairs.


Guido Rietti called in early the next morning, to see if Kester was ready to go to the biscuit factory. He often liked to
come in, see them all, pull the girls’ hair ribbons and treat Isa to a display of courtly manners. Sylvie was of the opinion
that he was handsomer than his cousin, Nicco, and perhaps he was, with curly black hair and the strangely blue eyes he’d inherited
from his mother, but Ruth thought him a bit – well, she didn’t know. Couldn’t find the right word. ‘Flashy?’ suggested Kester,
and that was it, that was the word. But Kester and Guido got on well enough, even if they were not particularly close. Guido,
for instance, had not been one of Kester’s drinking companions the night before, and could not help grinning at Kester’s white
face and refusal to look at his porridge.


‘Serves you right!’ cried Isa. ‘Coming in late and waking us all up and getting me in the wrong with the Dougalls again!’

‘Aye, should learn to hold your drink,’ said Jack, who was walking about, still shaving. ‘See Guido here, he’d never over
indulge, eh?’


‘He drinks plenty, only it’s wine, no’ beer,’ muttered Kester, pulling on his coat. ‘Och, I’ll away. Maybe I’ll feel better in the fresh air.’


‘No’ want a cup of tea, Guido?’ asked Isa, smiling at him, but Guido said, no, they’d probably be late clocking on as it was.
The two young men left the flat, Guido lightly running down the stairs on dancer’s feet (he loved dancing), Kester following,
more slowly and more painfully, as Guido grinned.


‘Come on, old man, shall I take your arm?’ he asked, as Kester scowled, but then a knock on the outer door made him halt and
wipe his brow.


‘Postie,’ he muttered. But it was, in fact, a telegraph boy.

Ever since the Great War, telegrams had struck fear into everyone’s heart, and Kester, though he could remember very little
of the war himself, still felt a pang of dread as he looked at the boy on the doorstep.


‘Who’s it for?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘Millar,’ sang the boy. ‘Telegram for Millar.’

Kester looked at Guido. ‘Who could be sending us a telegram?’ he asked, knowing it was a foolish question, and as Guido shrugged,
the boy laughed.


‘Couldnae tell you!’ he said impudently. ‘Come on, mister, I’ve no’ got all day. Want to send an answer?’

‘Watch the lip,’ snapped Kester, reluctantly taking the little orange envelope. ‘Guido, you’d better get on, I’ll have to
give this to ma dad.’


‘Don’t worry, I’ll be late with you.’

‘Wait there,’ Kester told the boy.

Up the stair, Jack had finished shaving and was eating porridge with the girls, while Isa sliced bread and set out jam. ‘Back again?’ she asked irritably, as Kester appeared, but at the sight of the telegram in his hand, turned pale.


‘What’s that?’ asked Jack, though he could see perfectly well what it was. He stood up, as Ruth and Sylvie stared, spoons
suspended, and Guido hovered in the doorway.


‘Telegram, Dad,’ said Kester. ‘The boy’s waiting for an answer.’

‘It must be Addie,’ Isa whispered. ‘I mean, who else?’

‘Why would Addie send us a telegram?’ asked Jack, holding it. ‘Something must have happened.’

‘Open it, Dad!’ cried Sylvie. ‘Tell us what it says!’

‘Here’s a knife, slit it,?