Liverpool Annie Read Online Free PDF Page A

who took Annie to the shops to buy a white dress and a veil for her First Holy Communion. The same outfit did Marie the following year.
    Auntie Dot insisted the girls visit on Sundays. They did for a while, until Annie, conscience-stricken, decided she should stay at home and help her dad. Despite the long hours he worked, he spent all
    weekend doing housework. At eight, Annie was doing the week's shopping and even wrote the list herself. 'Poor little mite,' Dot said sorrowfully. 'She's old before her time.' Annie learnt to iron, and, as she knelt on the chair in front of the table, she couldn't help but wonder what the hunched, helpless woman in the chair by the window was thinking. About Johnny, her brother? Did she know she had two daughters? Once, Dot said Mam should be m hospital, but that was silly, thought Annie. Where would they put the bandages?
    On the Sundays her mother could be persuaded to go to Mass, Annie felt proud as they walked along Orlando Street, just like a normal family. Mam looked so pretty in her curly fur coat, her long hair tied back with a ribbon, though Annie couldn't help but notice curtains twitching in the windows of some houses as they passed; curious neighbours watching 'the funny woman from number thirty-eight' on her way to church - which was how she'd once heard her mam described whilst she waited, unnoticed, at the back of the corner shop.
    It would be nice to have a mam who wasn't 'funny', Annie thought wistfully, and a cheerful dad like Uncle Bert. One day, she found a wedding photo in the drawer of the big black sideboard. She stared at it for quite a while, wondering who the handsome couple were; the bright-eyed, smiling girl in the lacy dress clutching the hand of a young man with dashing good looks. The pair stared at each other with a strange, intense expression, almost sly, as if they shared a tremendous secret. It wasn't until Annie recognised a younger Dot, and Uncle Bert before he'd grown his moustache, that she realised it was her parents' wedding.
    She showed the photograph to Marie, who looked at it for a long time before her face crumpled up, as if she
    were about to cry. Then she turned on her heel and left the parlour without a word.
    Annie put the photo back in the drawer and resolved never to look at it again.
    When Annie was eleven, she sat the scholarship. The entire class were to take the exam, but she was one of the few expected to pass. Passing the scholarship meant attending a grammar school instead of an ordinary secondary modern.
    Marie was contemptuous. 'Seafield Convent! You'll never catch me at an all-girls' school. When / sit the scholarship, I'll answer every question wrong for fear I pass.'
    The exam was set for nine o'clock one Saturday morning early in June. Annie's dad, who rarely became animated, was concerned she wouldn't arrive on time.
    'I'll wake you when I leave,' he said in his flat, tired voice.
    'Don't worry. Dad,' Annie said cheerfully. 'It's like any other day, except it's Saturday. I'm never late for school, am I?'
    When the morning came, she was woken by the pressure of his hand on her shoulder. 'It's seven o'clock,' he whispered. 'There's tea made. Mam's still asleep,' he added somewhat superfluously, as if Mam were likely to be of use if she were awake.
    'Rightio.' Annie snuggled under the clothes. She heard him manoeuvre his bike into the back entry and the wheels creak as he rode away. Sunlight filtered through the thick brown curtains. She lay, dazzled by the long bright vertical strip where the curtains didn't
    meet. She didn't feel at ail nervous. She liked exams and was looking forward to the scholarship. They'd been doing special homework for weeks.
    But after a while, she began to feel uneasy. Something was wrong. The bed felt sticky and her nightie was glued to her legs at the back. Annie stayed there for a good five minutes trying to work out what it was, then, gingerly, she got up. She gasped in horror. The sheet was stained