After Hours Read Online Free PDF Page B

ain’t even as if he’s nice to talk to.’
    In the background, Rob snorted.
    â€˜But you’ll still tell Walter what you done?’ Annie checked.
    Overwhelmed by family pressure, and her own swelling sense of guilt, Sadie gave her promise. Rob heaped more insults on to Richie’s head, calling him a no-good drifter who’d end up on the scrap-cart before too long. She watched as Annie calmed Rob down, and saw her efforts to cheer Duke up, before she dried her own eyes on a handkerchief and slid off to bed.
    In her own room, Sadie found Hettie sitting in the wicker chair, her long hair flowing over her shoulders.
    â€˜It was only a little fling,’ Sadie insisted quietly, defiance stiffening her stance once more. ‘I weren’t never going to see him no more!’
    â€˜I know. I heard.’ Hettie looked her full in the face. ‘Walter’s the best there is, surely you know that?’
    â€˜I do, I do! No need to rub it in, Ett!’ Sadie rolled back her sheets and stumbled into bed. She pulled the covers tight under her chin. ‘I could kill that Maurice,’ she muttered. ‘Landing me in this fine mess!’
    Hettie shook her head. ‘I don’t know about him landing you in it, but did you notice Pa?’ she asked anxiously across the darkened room. ‘I been worried about him lately, Sadie. I don’t suppose you saw how he took it all?’
    But Sadie, exhausted, was already falling asleep.
    Jess worked quickly and expertly, running up seams on the machine, watching with satisfaction as the dress took shape. The trimming would be a wide band of glass beads handsewn around the hem and plunging neckline. A sash would tie tight around the hips to show off the straight shape that all the customers preferred these days.
    She thought back to the lime when she and Hettie had rustled up an outfit ready for her to go with Maurice to the Town Hall Christmas dance. That had been the beginning of it all for her; the escape from drudgery and the stigma of Grace’s illegitimate birth. That tight bodice and clinched waist seemed to belong to a different world. How long was it, for instance, since she and Maurice had been out dancing? Before they came to the new Ealing house that faced on to the Common? Before Mo was born? Well, staid, well-to-do women didn’t dance along to the new whispering baritones, or cavort to the Charleston. What would people think?
    She used one of Maurice’s phrases to laugh at her own silliness, then snipped a thread and held the dress up for inspection. Not going straight up to bed with him had been her small act of defiance after their scratchy conversation about Sadie. Now that was lost in a sea of reminiscence, as she delved deep into their marriage.
    There was no doubt about his success as the forward-looking manager of the biggest cinema chain in the city, and it had given them a lot of what other people could never dream of having. They’d moved away from their East End roots, and up in the world. With careful planning, they were able to instal a telephone, and gradually buy the new, streamlined furniture that was replacing the carved mahogany style of her childhood. Soon Maurice would start looking for a Morris Cowley motor car; not brand-new, but still dearer and more stylish than the Model T, as far as small cars went. Jess tilted her head from side to side as she re-ran word for word the endless conversations about whether they could afford to buy and run a car, and if so, what type? And how much? And petrol at one and six a gallon.
    The biggest problem for Jess in all this, setting aside the wrench of having to move away from family and friends, was a growing feeling that Maurice’s ambitions were all well and good, but that he gave no room for Jess’s own dreams to take root and grow. They basked in the sunshine of his success, his good business sense and eye for fads in the fast-moving picture trade,