Such Sweet Sorrow Read Online Free PDF Page B

there may be jobs on offer at a higher rate than I can pay, and I don’t want you to miss out. So if you get a chance of anything better …’
    ‘Than this?’ she laughed. ‘I’ll see a flying pig first.’
    Wyn had upped her wages from twelve and six to a pound a week since she’d started working for him. There weren’t many other shop assistants in Pontypridd earning that kind of money.
    ‘I’ve got work to do. We’ll talk again soon.’ He was reluctant to leave. Diana was the only one, apart from his sister, he confided in, and the one person he counted on as a disinterested friend. Desperate to keep that friendship, he was concerned about imposing on her good nature. ‘Perhaps we could meet for tea in the New Inn on Sunday? I’ve heard that they’re still serving cakes there.’
    ‘I’d like to, but I’m not sure what I’ll be doing.’ Wyn knew her secret; and she had a great deal more than just her job to be grateful to him for. He had proved himself a true friend when she had been most in need of one, and that had led to her seeing the man behind the ‘fairy’ and ‘queer’ gibes. To her, he was an essentially good, kind man, and boss, and it bothered her that William and her cousins had joined the rest of the men in the town in shunning and ridiculing him. She’d even quarrelled with William over Wyn, telling him in no uncertain terms that she was old enough to choose her own friends, and meet with whom she pleased.
    ‘I’ll see you some time.’
    ‘It’s just that –’ the secret he was a party to brought a flush of colour to her cheeks – ‘Tony Ronconi’s asked me to marry him.’
    ‘And you’re going to?’
    ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to tell him everything.’ She forced herself to look into Wyn’s eyes. ‘Everything,’ she reiterated, ‘about me and that night. Then it will be up to him.’
    ‘He’d be a fool to turn you down, Diana.’
    ‘You don’t think it will make any difference?’
    ‘Not to someone who loves you.’
    ‘Thank you for that, and for being there whenever I’ve needed help. If I do get engaged to Tony I hope you’ll come to the party?’ It was suddenly important to her that Wyn approve of her choice of husband.
    ‘I’d like to, and congratulations.’
    ‘Congratulations are a little premature. He only asked me last night, and I haven’t told anyone apart from you, and William. Tony isn’t even going to tell his family until tomorrow, so you will keep it quiet, won’t you?’
    ‘Of course. And thanks for telling me. I won’t feel so bad about having to close the shop if you marry Tony. You’ll be needed in the cafés. Particularly after the boys have left.’
    ‘I’ll balance the books and bring them down to the New Theatre shop at seven.’
    ‘See you.’
    Wyn closed the door behind him and walked to the van he’d bought only a year ago. It had seemed a good investment then, because in addition to the two sweet shops he’d set up a small wholesale confectionery round, supplying some of the cafés in Pontypridd and the Rhondda that were run by people who had neither the time nor the transport to visit the wholesalers themselves. But now, when he faced being called into the army, and his father was too ill to leave his bed for more than an hour at a time, he looked on it as a millstone. Myrtle would never be able to nurse his father and run the businesses. Something would have to go. The war had brought everything tumbling down around his ears, as well as honing a keener edge on his fraught relationship with his father.
    He slammed the doors shut on the back of the van and checked the cardboard hoods on the lights. It still wanted a full hour to daylight, and if hadn’t been for the coat of white paint he’d given the running boards and bumper he doubted he’d have found the door to the driver’s side.
    He climbed inside and hunched over the wheel. He had a difficult round ahead of him and he’d never felt less like facing