Page 84 of The Winter Bride

‘I’ll tell yer now, though, she ain’t playin’ the part of a grievin’ widow very well,’ Peggy went on in her usual forthright way. ‘It’s as if she couldn’t get ’im in the ground quick enough an’ it were a right low-cost funeral. She buried ’im yesterday an’ word ’as it she ’ad the cheapest coffin she could get an’ not even a wake after the service. There weren’t many attended that either. But that’s enough about that,’ Peggy said. ‘How are you an’ ’ow is Nancy?’

‘I’m fine and Nancy is getting better by the day. She’s still not quite right enough to look after Adam, so I’m leaving the running of the shop to Ruth. But to be honest she’s doing as good a job as I could and I’m starting to feel a bit like a spare part. I don’t even really need to be here.’

‘Sounds to me like yer up fer another challenge,’ Peggy chuckled. ‘We’ll ’ave to ’ave a talk about that the next time yer home. An’ it’s not long now to the weddin’, is it?’

‘Not long at all, I can hardly wait. You’re going to make a lovely bride,’ Annie told her.

They talked for another few minutes and when Annie put the phone down a wave of homesickness swept through her. Perhaps it was time to start thinking of going back for good.

Chapter Forty-Two

Annie sat reading the newspaper late one evening, a couple of days after Peggy’s call, when there was a resounding crash and a brick came hurtling through the window, missing Annie and Alfred, who was lying by her feet, by inches. She screamed and rushed to the window just in time to see a dark-clad figure racing away in the street below.

‘What the ’ell was that?’ Nancy asked as she appeared in her nightgown at the bedroom door. There was glass everywhere and Annie was shaking.

‘Someone just threw a brick from down there,’ Annie croaked as the cold wind whistled through the broken glass making the curtains billow.

‘Did yer manage to see who it were?’ Nancy asked fearfully.

Annie shook her head. ‘ I saw someone running away but it was too dark to see who it was.’

‘Then we’d best phone the police an’ report it afore we start cleanin’ the mess up.’

‘No, you go back to bed, I’ll do it,’ Annie insisted.

‘But why would anyone want to do that?’ Nancy questioned.

Annie shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea but I’d best try and get something to block this window up till morning else we’ll freeze to death. I’ll give the police a ring first, though I doubt they’ll do anything. They’ll probably just say it was youths larking about again.’

She was right. The police did call round to file a report, but admitted that the chances of catching the culprit or culprits were slim. ‘It could have been youths or someone on the way home from the pub who’d had a skinful,’ a fresh-faced young police officer informed her as he snapped his notepad shut.

‘But surely there have been too many incidents now for it to be as simple as that?’ Annie said worriedly. She went on to tell him of the shop break-in, about Nancy being attacked out in the yard, and then again in the street, and about the shadowy figure that she sometimes saw across the road.

The young constable simply shrugged. ‘As I said, I doubt it was anything sinister. We have incidents like this happening in London all the time. And so if there’s nothing else will you be all right now, ma’am?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine.’ Annie sighed with frustration.

After she’d seen him out, she found a large piece of cardboard to cover the broken glass as best she could, before starting the clean-up operation. But she was badly shaken. It had only been a short while since the attack on Nancy, and now she felt vulnerable again and had a horrible feeling that the incidents were linked.

Marie was horrified when she called in the next day and heard what had happened. There were already men there replacing the broken glass but she could see that Annie was upset.

‘And you ’ave no idea who might ’ave done this to you?’ Marie questioned. She was becoming concerned now.

Annie bit her lip before admitting. ‘There is one person who would be capable. That’s Reggie, but he’s back in Nuneaton. Surely he wouldn’t come all this way just to hurl a brick through my window? Oh, I’m probably letting my imagination run away with me.’ She sighed as she rubbed her forehead where a headache was forming. ‘I’m just relieved that whoever it was didn’t hurl it through the shop window, it could have caused even more damage down there.’

‘There we are then, missus. All done,’ the glazier said shortly, standing back to inspect the new pane of glass.

‘Thank you.’ Annie paid him and saw him on his way before putting the kettle on. She’d been up for most of the night making sure that she’d swept up all the broken glass and she was exhausted.

‘You know, I’m beginning to think it’s time to go back to Nuneaton,’ she confided to Marie. ‘Ruth doesn’t need me to run the shop here and now that I’ve finally found my parents I’d like to spend more time with them. Oh, I know the circus will be moving on after Christmas, but they visit our town regularly, so I’d still see more of them if I lived there than if I stay here. There are just two things stopping me. The first is Reggie – the further I can keep away from him the better. And the second is Nancy. I’m not so sure that’d she’d want to come with me and leave Jamie.’

‘Yes, and you also forget that you rent your house out to Susan and Tim now,’ Marie pointed out sensibly. ‘So where would you live?’

‘As it happens, I wouldn’t want to go back to that house even if it was empty – it holds too many memories of Monty,’ Annie admitted sadly. ‘So, I’d probably rent somewhere else for us until I could find another little place that would be suitable.’

Marie looked sad. ‘Then you must give this a lot of thought. But if you do go, I will miss you terribly. I was ’oping that you would be ’ere for the birth of my baby. I was going to ask you to be godmother.’

Annie smiled. ‘Wherever I live I shall be here for that,’ she promised. ‘And I’d be honoured to be a godparent. Now let’s have this tea before it goes cold.’