Flowers on the Mersey Read Online Free PDF Page B

the trouble with some of these rebels. They lack a sense of reality.’
    ‘Yes, Papa.’ She was suddenly thinking that Daniel had seemed the most real person she had ever met.
    There was a silence and she felt her father pull down her skirts. Relief made her body sag. Then he demanded, ‘But why did you go with him in the first place?’
    Rebekah tensed again but thought quickly. ‘He wanted to know how Old Mary had been. He hadn’t seen her for a while.’
    The room was silent again but for the sound of his heavy breathing. ‘I hope that’s the truth, Becky. I’ve never known you to lie to me before, but—’
    ‘It is the truth,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And don’t be thinking, Papa, that he’ll try and see me again because I told him that we were leaving Ireland.’
    ‘Good!’ He sighed. ‘Thank God we’re going at last. Your poor mother worrying about everything and everybody. The never knowing who might be next.’ He wiped a hand over his sweaty face. ‘We should have gone years ago.’
    ‘But we’re going now,’ she said. ‘Mama will get better.’
    ‘Yes. But there’s nothing definite settled. There’ll be uncertainties still, but I’ve been thrifty so that’s in our favour.’ He stared at the switch in his hand and violently threw it across the room. ‘I shouldn’t have hit you so hard,’ he said jerkily. ‘I’ll send Hannah up and she can wash and anoint the weals.’
    ‘No!’
    He stood up, frowning, ‘I don’t want to be upsetting your mother. There’s been enough of thatlately due to that aunt of yours – so no mention of this, and I’ll expect you down to dinner.’ He held out a hand. ‘I’ll see you to your room.’
    She ignored his hand, shrinking from physical contact with him, and got herself up.
    He left Rebekah outside her room and within moments she was lying on her stomach on the bed, easing off her T-strap shoes. She was in pain, and her emotions were a tangle of hurt, anger, guilt and resentment. She could understand her father’s fears but was still shocked by his violent reaction to having seen her in Daniel’s company. He had never been an over-indulgent father but he had been approachable, if on the whole leaving most of the decisions concerning her upbringing to her mother. Only in the matter of religion had he insisted that she attend his church, although he had never quarrelled with her mother’s insistence that teaching her something about Quaker beliefs would not harm her. Only in the last two years had father and daughter rubbed each other up the wrong way. He had found her a job in the tax department where he had a position of authority. (The previous man had left because of the tenuous hold the British government had in Ireland.) Making friends had not been easy and young men had been wary about approaching her. In a way life had become simpler when her mother had collapsed while shopping and she had to give up her job.
    As Becky remembered the tedium of those earliermonths of her mother’s illness, she compared her life then with what had happened today. Her mother had been frightened to be in the house alone, and scared of going outdoors. Becky had been almost completely tied to her. She remembered how relieved she had been when Hannah first arrived, until she had got to know her better. As an example of a Quaker and Liverpudlian, Becky could have been put off both if it had not been for her mother. Being cast out of the Liverpudlian meeting house had not embittered her. She had a genuine love for her home town, a belief in the brotherhood of all men and women, and abhorred violence. If Becky had not met Daniel she would have had little to regret in leaving Dublin. It was no longer the safe place of her childhood.
    Were her father’s suspicions about Daniel true? She did not want to believe that he was a killer. The word sent a shiver through her, conjuring up images. Then she remembered his words and the feel of his arms and decided that