Winners and Losers Read Online Free PDF

there’s no cheese. With so little money coming into the house we’ve had to cut back.’ Megan filled the blackened tin kettle, opened up a hob and put it on to boil. ‘You still haven’t said what you’re doing here.’
    â€˜As I said when I came in, it’s obvious. Your uncle’s emigrating and I’ve come to take you home, not that we can afford to keep you there. You’ll have to find another job –and quick.’
    â€˜Emigrating ...’ Her voice died to a whisper.
    â€˜To Canada. With no job or home to go to, your uncle won’t risk taking his two youngest and he’s asked your mother and me to take them in. We’ve room now that your brothers and sisters have left home. Tea, girl,’ he reminded, as she stood, pale and trembling, beside his chair.

Chapter Two
    â€˜You look exhausted. Sit by the fire and I’ll make a pot of tea,’ Victor offered when Sali walked into the kitchen with her four-year-old son, Harry.
    â€˜I am tired,’ Sali conceded. She unbuttoned Harry’s coat, then her own, carried them out into the passage and hung them away. ‘And thank you for lighting the fire up here.’ All the houses on the lower side of the terrace, including theirs, had a basement as well as an upstairs kitchen. Before the strike, the stoves in both had been lit every day, and the men had used the one in the basement to heat water to fill the tin baths they kept and bathed in down there. But since the strike they had economized by only lighting the stove upstairs and then, like all the other mining families, only for an hour in the morning and late in the afternoon to cook the main meal.
    â€˜I needed a bath and I heated the water up here.’ Victor filled the kettle.
    â€˜You’ve been working in one of the drifts?’ Sali’s eyes rounded in alarm.
    â€˜Don’t worry, no one saw me –no one who is likely to shop me, that is,’ he qualified.
    â€˜That you know about. You heard your father yesterday.’ Sali was more fearful for him than angry. ‘You’re so big, one glimpse of you covered in coal dust or carrying a sack and the police will know it’s you.’
    â€˜You sound just like Megan.’
    â€˜We’ve every right to be worried about you.’
    â€˜It’s all right, Sali. I wasn’t caught.’ Victor smiled at Harry. ‘The hens laid well today considering it’s winter. Want a boiled egg for your tea?’
    â€˜Can I, Mam?’ Young as Harry was, he knew food was in short supply. The teachers had organized ‘feeding centres’ in the schools, where they served breakfast and midday dinners to the children, courtesy of the crache the headmasters coerced into donating food. And every day since the strike had started, Sali had picked him up from his ‘babies’ class and taken him to the soup kitchen in the Catholic Hall. She also gave him a bowl of whatever was on the menu, but the soup had become noticeably thinner over the last few weeks, not because people contributed less, but because more and more colliers’ families were setting aside their pride and arriving at the kitchen to be fed.
    â€˜You most certainly can have an egg, young man.’ Sali gave Victor a grateful smile, knowing he always kept the largest egg for Harry’s tea.
    â€˜And bread and butter soldiers?’ Harry asked.
    â€˜Of course.’ Victor set a pan of water on to boil and went into the pantry to get the margarine.
    â€˜Your father, Joey and Lloyd not back from the inquest?’ Sali took the tea Victor handed her.
    â€˜They are now.’ The front door slammed.
    â€˜Bloody coroner!’ Joey strode into the kitchen ahead of his father and Lloyd.
    â€˜Language,’ Victor reprimanded, carefully lowering an egg into a pan of simmering water.
    â€˜You didn’t hear that, did you, butty?’ Joey ruffled Harry’s hair and sat at