Read Home for Christmas for Free Online

and the door opened as they passed. Mr Jarman came out wearing a brown apron that reached to his ankles. He had a broad face, kind eyes and a black moustache that curled over the corners of his mouth. His hair too was black, plastered down with hair cream and parted in the middle.
    His face lit up when he saw Agnes’s mother, the ends of his moustache seeming to curl up closer to the corners of his eyes.
    His voice boomed in welcome. ‘Good day to you, Sarah.’
    ‘Good day to you, George.’
    ‘My offer still stands,’ he called out to her.
    Wearing a slightly bemused smile, Sarah swept on by over the hopscotch squares chalked on the pavement, almost skipping by the time she reached the threshold of her mother’s house.
    It wasn’t so long ago that George Jarman had asked her to marry him. He made a point of asking her every time she visited her mother. He’d even offered to adopt Agnes as his own. ‘Seeing as that wastrel of a husband has never given the child the time of day,’ he’d pronounced.
    Sarah had turned him down. She’d given him no reason as such except to say that she was managing quite well, thank you, and that Tom Stacey might still be alive somewhere, and if she married George, she would be committing bigamy.
    Being an upright man who scorned the public house and attended the Methodist chapel on Sundays, George had nodded sadly on each occasion she’d delivered her answer.
    ‘A man can hope,’ he’d said to her.
    ‘You’re hoping my husband is dead, George,’ she pointed out to him.
    ‘So be it,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll keep hoping and keep asking.’
    Number one Myrtle Street was right next door to the shop and the first on the right in the street. It was also the only one with a brass step, all the others having cold, white marble.
    Henry Proctor, Agnes’s grandfather had been responsible for that. He’d worked in a turning mill in Bristol, shaping metals for various uses. Brass was one of them, and this particular piece, left over from a job, had arrived miraculously at number one Myrtle Street when they’d moved there.
    He was dead now, but Ellen Proctor lovingly polished that step twice a week.
    ‘In his memory,’ she was fond of saying. ‘I keep it shining so his memory will always shine. He’d come back and haunt me if I don’t keep it polished.’
    Agnes followed her mother into the cramped little house, her nose tingling, her eyes beginning to fill with tears.
    The smell of stale food and mothballs mingled with that of old drains and cats.
    Agnes began to scratch.
    ‘For goodness’ sake,’ whispered her mother. ‘Not already.’
    Agnes shrugged. ‘I can’t help it. I don’t dislike cats, but my body does. My eyes do. And my nose.’
    She began to sneeze.
    Sarah Stacey frowned as she began unbuttoning her coat. ‘You do it on purpose. I know you do.’
    ‘I can’t …’
    Agnes sneezed again, a big almighty one into one of Sir Avis’s old handkerchiefs she’d thought to bring with her.
    Sarah Stacey took off her hat and coat. Agnes followed suit without bothering to argue further about the cat thing. Her nose was tickling; her eyes were watering and just the thought of being close to those cats again was making her itch.
    ‘Is that you, our Sarah?’ called a voice from the back of the house.
    ‘Yes, Ma,’ Sarah called back.
    ‘I’m out back, mangling.’
    Sarah Stacey’s sharp eyes took in the amount of cleaning she would have to do whilst she was here. The fact was her mother was getting on in years and not up to doing other folks’ laundry and keeping on top of her own housework. They were only here for a few days, just the other side of London from the house in Belgravia. Between the two of them, she reckoned her and Agnes could sort things out. By then Agnes would have stopped scratching and sneezing. Once they’d seen Ellen all right and had a pre-Christmas party of their own, then they would leave Myrtle Street behind and get the train to