Annie's Promise Read Online Free PDF

better suited.’ She put her hand out to him but he had turned from her, was walking away again.
    ‘Georgie, come back,’ she called as he opened the front door.
    ‘I’m going to Tom’s to tell him we’ve lost the money.’
    Annie ran after him. ‘
I
lost the money. I lost the bloody money, not we, Georgie. That’s the point. It was me.’
    He was opening the car door. ‘Are you coming?’ His face was cold.
    ‘Of course I’m coming.’
    ‘I thought it was the market this morning.’
    ‘Damn the market.’
    They drove in silence, through villages and ironworks that belched foul smoke. She could see the chimneys of Newcastle in the distance. There were sweeps of fields too, darkening and lightening as clouds scudded between the earth and the sun. The barley waved as the wind caught it and all the time Annie’s stomach was taut and her head ached with the tension of their row, with the strain of the silence which hung between them and she wanted to reach out and touch his hand which was tanned and powerful on the gear stick, but she must not give in. Once and for all, she must show him that she was strong, that the shadows of the past had gone, and that, since yesterday, she realised that the future was best in his hands.
    Georgie pulled in for petrol, not looking at her. He stood with the attendant, chatting about the weather, about the north east.
    ‘Born round here, were you?’ the man asked.
    ‘Aye, born a
pitman
,’ Georgie said, and she knew that that was for her ears too and the row was not over yet.
    They drove on, through a pit village with mean dark streets where children played or lounged. George drove carefully,meticulously for mile after mile until at last he was changing gear for the long climb up the hill which overlooked Wassingham. At the top he pulled in, stopped, opened his window, and rested his arm on it but said nothing.
    Annie looked out across their birthplace, seeing the bombed site which had been Garrods Used Goods, the gap where Gracie’s library had once stood, seeing the school where they had all sat at desks and where Davy, Rob and Paul now sat. She could see the football pitch where Da had led out his team of unemployed miners, and way over in the distance she could see the lightening of the sky where the sea washed the shore.
    They sat and out of the silence came the voices of the past, the images, the laughter and tears and now she remembered the warmth of Aunt Sophie’s arms as she held her in that small warm house in Wassingham Terrace, consoling her after her mother’s death, putting aside her own grief at the death of her sister, taking her into her home to live, Don too – baking scones and making toast, rubbing wintergreen on her toes, loving her with every breath she took.
    She remembered leaving Aunt Sophie and Uncle Eric to live with her father and Bet, but at the shop there had been Tom and love and laughter again to soothe the darker days. There had been the heat of the sun in the allotment, the smell of leeks, the sound of metal coins being banged out for the fair, the sound of the bees in the nettles, Georgie’s daisy chains around her neck at the beck, the gangs, Georgie’s kisses as they grew, and such love had grown between them.
    Then there were the tears when Sarah Beeston came and Annie had run to Tom in the morning as he stood outside school, her misery jagged in her chest. She had held him, told him she was leaving but he wouldn’t listen, instead he had pulled at her undone bootlace, shouting at her that she’d get blisters. The tears ran down their cheeks and all the time the cables were grinding up the slag heap, clanging and tipping. ‘It’s like a big black gaping hole in me belly,’ he had said, ‘to think of you gone from here.’
    There had been agony when Georgie had come to the yard to say goodbye. He had leant against the wall, taken out his cigarette paper, rolled it round the tobacco teased along its centre while she had stood close