That'll Be the Day (2007) Read Online Free PDF

Life is too short to spend it dreaming of what might have been.’
    ‘Easy for you to talk when you’re not faced with the problem, but I’m not sure I could cope on my own.’
    ‘You’re stronger than you think, girl, and should stand up to him more. I’ve told you so a million times. Over those wonderful pictures you paint for a start. It’s a crime, it really is, to hide them away in the attic. Why don’t you set up a stall on the market? They’d go like hot cakes.’
    ‘You know Sam doesn’t like me working. It’s my job to look after the children and the house, though he has no objection to my little hobby. He’s not nearly so selfish as you make out.’
      ‘ Little hobby , how patronising! Why can’t he see that you have real talent? He’s so selfish. I think he likes having you chained to the kitchen sink, but it really is time you started putting yourself first. The kids are older now, and settled at school. How much time does it take to clean one small terraced house which he is rarely in, anyway?’
    The warning look was cooler this time and Lynda saw that she’d gone too far.
    ‘It’s all right for you,’ Judy said. ‘Being single you can do as you please. Sam may not be the best of husbands but he is a good father. You don’t understand how badly it would affect the children if we split up.’
    ‘Now that’s where you’re wrong. I understand perfectly.’
    Judy’s cheeks coloured slightly. ‘Sorry, I tend to forget.’
      ‘Don’t fret, I survived, didn’t I? Mixed up though I may be.’ Lynda frowned. ‘I freely admit that much as I love and support my mother, I’d give a great deal to have enjoyed a normal upbringing with two loving parents but their separation was probably for the best and certainly inevitable.’ She reached for a second sandwich, allowing her mind to drift back to those years, painful though it still was to remember.
    ‘Mam didn’t see my dad for months on end because of the war, and whenever he did get leave I think she wondered what on earth she’d let herself in for. He would bark out orders, expect her to deliver meals at the drop of a hat and she’d resent it, too used to pleasing herself and living life in the sort of muddled disorder she enjoys. Waiting on a man didn’t appeal at all. They were constantly at each other’s throats. Then he’d accuse her of seeing Yanks, which I’m sure wasn’t true, and she’d call him a bully. Young as I was, I can still remember the rows, the frozen silences, the chilling atmosphere, secretly resenting the fact that those few precious days of Dad’s leave always seemed to be spoiled. And then he just stopped coming altogether.’
    Lynda hadn’t set eyes on her father since she was eleven years old when he’d gone back off leave in the autumn of 1943. She hadn’t realised, at the time, that she would never see him again and had kept waiting for him, wondering why he no longer came to see her. He even stopped answering the carefully penned letters she sent him.
    ‘Was he a good father?’ Judy asked, blue eyes soft with sympathy.
    Lynda stifled a sigh. ‘I think so. How can I tell? My memories of him are so hazy, so confused. I can’t even properly remember what he looked like, his face is a complete blank. I think I deliberately shut it out as it was so painful to remember. I do recall a stranger once standing in the kitchen and Mam telling me that he was my dad and I should kiss him. He was very tall and smelled funny and I didn’t want to, so he told me not to bother as he liked boys better anyway.’
    ‘Oh, Lynda, what a thing to say.’
    Lynda blinked, as if even after all this time the tears were still stuck at the backs of her eyes. She gave a resigned shrug. ‘He was in the Merchant Navy, so of course he’d prefer boys. Jake was always his favourite. I tried hard to make him like me but never felt confident that I’d succeeded. Then when he stopped coming home, I was quite certain it was my