Anyone Who Had a Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

bus.
    It was true. She just couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I am,’ she said exuberantly. ‘I’ve just got a job.’
    ‘Best of luck to you, darling and may you be happy in your work.’
    Marcie said that she would be. It was just the kind of job she’d been looking for: three days a week.
    Yet again she thanked her lucky stars that she’d opted not to mention having a baby. She suspected that should they ever hear of it they’d fire her right away and no way must that happen.

Chapter Four
    BABS HAD LEFT her job at Woolworths following the move into a council house, but had managed to get two days’ cleaning a week. On those days she brought her youngest, Anne, round for Rosa to look after, with Marcie’s help of course.
    Marcie’s half-sister was now walking well and, although Marcie didn’t mind looking after her, she was beginning to get into mischief. The fact was that Marcie was still working on her two days off. She’d started designing and making dresses. The patterns were based on the pictures she saw in magazines. Seeing as they were basically what was termed a ‘shift’ dress, that is straight up and down, very short and with few darts, she found them easy to make. If she included working on weekends, she managed to make two and a half dresses a week, sometimes three.
    Her father, being a cheeky bugger at the best of times, had acted as her salesman and managed to coerce Sheppey’s first and one and only boutique to sell what she made.
    ‘You’ve just got to go along and see the woman in charge . Her name’s Angela. I said you were as good as that Mary Quick woman …’
    ‘Mary Quant,’ Marcie corrected.
    ‘That’s the one. Anyway, get yourself along there and show her what you’ve got.’
    In the past Marcie would have curled up inside at the thought of doing something like that, but that was in the days when she only had herself to think about. The fact that she was doing this for Joanna made a big difference.
    Her grandmother helped her put the dresses on silk-covered hangers inside a full-length polythene cover. Her quick hands smoothed out the wrinkles, patted the sleeves straight and lay the whole package over Marcie’s arm.
    She did this silently. At times like these Marcie felt the old guilt descend about getting pregnant before Johnnie had married her. Her grandmother was old-fashioned. She’d been brought up in a different world. Marcie wondered …
    ‘Gran, I’m sorry to have been so much trouble …’
    Her grandmother looked at her. The olive-skinned face was composed: neither condemning nor implying that everything was in order.
    ‘God made it happen.’ Her hand patted her granddaughter’s shoulder and she smiled. ‘You have blossomed from a rosebud into full flower. Who are we to question?’
    Marcie noticed that the jet-black eyes were moist and there was a proud jut to her grandmother’s chin. A lump came to her throat. She could say nothing in response, but she knew what her grandmother meant. First she’d procured the job at the hospital and now there was this. In a small town on a small island this counted as success.
    ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, her lips brushing her grandmother’s cheek. The skin was very soft and also very thin. It struck Marcie that her grandmother was getting old. She’d never thought of her as old before now. But Marcie was older too, no longer the innocent little girl not long out of school. In the space of a year she’d grown up considerably.
    It would have been difficult to carry three dresses on the bus into Sheppey, but her father had offered her a lift. By hook or by crook – most probably the latter – Tony Brooks had acquired a car. Marcie couldn’t recall whether her father actually had passed a driving test, but didn’t question his right to be cruising down the road with the window open. Every so often he flicked a cloud of cigarette ash from a smoking Woodbine. He was in a good mood, his spirits at an all-time