The Twisted Way Read Online Free PDF

now ten years old, presented himself as a shy and reluctant page boy in traditional short grey flannel trousers, pressed neatly with deep creases for the occasion, his starched white shirt for once immaculate. He kept close to Alicia’s side, touching her occasionally with a shaky hand for reassurance as she guided him to his place behind the bride. A small blue bow tie adorned his neck. He didn’t like it but did not protest because Alicia had made it for him and there was no way he wished to offend her.
    ‘You look really good, son,’ she said as she brushed his unruly hair and gave it a lick of Brylcream to keep it in place. ‘Fashionable you are, luvvy,’ she said, beaming.
    Annie, Janet’s best friend from her school days, was maid of honour. Annie wore a deep pink crêpe dress refashioned from a pre-war dance dress which had once belonged to an aunt; it was not a good fit despite her best efforts but she was proud of it. It clashed with her bright red hair but that was not important. The austerity of the war years still held them in a vice-like grip; food rationing had not yet been abandoned and things seemed worse than they had been for some time, though hope for a prosperous new era loomed large in the back of all their minds and added to the mounting excitement.
    Tom thought Janet looked like an angel in her soft silk dress. It was a memory he believed he would always cherish. Five years with Alicia Merryweather had made him feel part of her family. He thought of Janet as a big sister, someone he could trust and look up to.
    ‘I feel like a princess,’ Annie had exclaimed earlier that day with unbridled delight as she danced and swirled round the Merryweathers’ small sitting room and admired herself in the large old-fashioned mirror that was propped over the mantelpiece. Two pink roses, picked in the garden, were attached to her short bobbed hair and fastened with cheap light-brown Kirby grips. Precious nylon stockings, the seams dark and straight as a die, clung to her legs and she wore her one pair of wobbly high-heeled shoes which she had painted gold.
    ‘I hope it doesn’t rain,’ she laughed, ‘or there might be a trail of gold down the aisle.’ She held a small posy that had been wired together by Janet, fashioned from gold leaves rescued from a past Christmas and entwined with soft pink roses and white daisies picked that morning in the Merryweathers’ garden.
    Janet had laughed at her friend with undisguised affection as she twisted her own brown hair into a coil and pinned it on the top of her head. It’s elegant, she thought, and quite sophisticated.
    ‘Dear Annie, this is the happiest day of my life,’ she said. Their youthful light-hearted laughter echoed throughout the house.
    To complement her dress as she walked down the aisle Janet was to carry a bouquet of pink and white carnations, grown in a neighbour’s garden especially for the occasion, and tied with a recycled gold thread ribbon that was a little frayed at the edges, but nobody would notice that.
    ‘Make sure you catch the bouquet Annie’, she had told her friend. You will be next.’
    Annie had laughed heartily. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she retorted. ‘I haven’t met Mr Right yet and I’m not likely to in this dump.’
    Tom was puzzled. He thought they were all lucky to live in Enderly. It was not a dump. He knew what a dump was and this was not one. It was a pretty village surrounded by green fields and clean fresh air. His home in London could be described by some as a dump but even that had been a happy place when he had his mum and his dad and they had given him love and affection.
    The small grey stone village church of St Stephen’s had been decorated with loving and skilful hands by a couple of elderly spinsters, Ivy and Pat. They had used simple indigenous greenery together with some of their own garden flowers. An abundance of blooms – red, yellow, blue and vibrant orange lifted their heads from