Read At the Break of Day for Free Online

then, did he?’ she asked. ‘It seems kind of sad. He used to give us toffee, do you remember?’ It was better to talk, to drawl out the words slowly and make sure her voice did not shake. It was better to do that than stand here making no attempt to reach out and touch this girl she had not seen for over six years.
    Norah moved back into the house. ‘That trunk will have to go into the yard. There’s no room in the house,’ was all she said.
    Rosie knew there was no room. The small hall ran into the only downstairs room and upstairs there was just a bedroom and a large boxroom which she and Norah had shared, head to toe. Would that be the case again?
    ‘Hey, miss, how’re we going to get this lot in?’
    The cabbie was out now, heaving at the trunk, and Rosie called after Norah, but there was no answer and so she dumped her bags on the sidewalk and tried to help him edge it out and lower it to the road, but it was too heavy for the two of them.
    ‘I’ll see if those kids will help,’ she said, running on down the road, calling to them, wishing that she was running back to Liverpool, back to Frank and Nancy. But then she heard her name, and then again, and footsteps sounded behind her, closer, catching her. Then a hand caught her arm, slowing her, stopping her, and it was Jack. At last it was Jack, turning her to him, gripping her shoulders, shouting, ‘Where the hell have you come from?’
    ‘I’m back from the cowboys, didn’t you know?’ she whispered. ‘Didn’t you know? Why didn’t you meet me?’ His eyes were brown as they had always been, his smile the same.
    He picked her up now, swung her round.
    ‘Where are your plaits? I’ve always thought of you with your plaits. Where are you going to bung your rubber bands now?’
    It was so good to feel his arms, hear his voice, see the hair which still fell across his forehead, because he was her friend. He had always been her friend. She laughed and cried and held him close and he put his arms round her.
    ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he said and it was almost more than she could bear.
    He pulled her back towards the cab. ‘I didn’t know you were coming back.’ He squeezed her hand then dropped it as they reached the cab.
    ‘But Frank cabled Norah to tell you.’
    ‘Then it’s your own bloody fault I never got the message. You should have known better.’ He was heaving at one end of the trunk and they had it up, and he and the driver went down the alley between the houses, through the alley at the back where the gutter was damp from the drizzle which had now stopped.
    Jack was so tall, his shoulders were wide and his body was thick. He looked more than sixteen. He sounded more. His voice was deep like Joe’s but there wasn’t the tan, there wasn’t the soft quality of the clothes, of her clothes. He was like England, worn and tired. Norah was right. It hadn’t been fair that she had missed all this. She turned and looked at the crumpled skyline of the houses backing on to the alley.
    They were at the back gate and she didn’t want to go in, she held it for them because the yard was home and she couldn’t go in, not yet, because Grandpa was in there, and he hadn’t come to meet her, he hadn’t even stayed awake. He had just dragged her home and she thought she hated him even though he had once loved her so much and she had loved him.
    They walked back to the taxi. She paid the fare, tipped half a crown and didn’t care what Jack thought, even if it was ‘bloody Yank’. He said nothing, though, and she watched the taxi drive away, leaving her here. Her journey was over. She turned to Jack, to his warmth and his smile, and looked at the hands which had written her letters when others hadn’t.
    ‘So where
are
you going to put your rubber bands then?’ He was leaning back against the wall, putting his hands in his pockets, sloping one leg over the other.
    ‘Round my little finger, I guess,’ Rosie said, leaning back on the lamppost