Authors: Maggie Hope
Molly's War (37 page)
Matron gazed at the diminutive figure before her. She would be sorry to lose Vi, she thought. The girl was a good worker. Vi handed over the card from Molly.
‘Molly Mason, is it?’ asked Matron and Vi nodded. Matron sniffed. Molly Mason was a strong-minded girl. She had refused to put her baby up for adoption which was the only sensible course for a girl in her position. Still, she had been kind to Vi, Matron remembered that.
‘Very well,’ she said, handing the card back. ‘You can take a week’s notice.’
Vi lifted her head and gave Matron a determined look. ‘Eeh, no, Matron. I’m going now,’ she said.
‘
The funny thing is
,’ Molly wrote to Jackson a fortnight later, ‘
that Dora and Vi have taken to each other really well. Dora is thinner and still weak but Vi couldn’t look after her better if she was her own mother
…’
Molly stopped writing and looked over to where Beth lay on the rug. She rolled over on to her stomach and tried to push herself up, her head wobbling a little as she grunted with the effort. Her hands slipped from under her and she whimpered before trying again. Her mother went over to her and picked her up and sat down on the rocking chair with her. She crooned as she rocked back and forwards, the baby laid against her shoulder, and eventually Beth fell asleep.
Molly was supremely happy. She felt that she had never been so happy in her life. There was Maggie, of course, and Frank. They weren’t nasty to her when they found out about Beth, not at all.
‘They are my family now,’ Jackson had said to them. ‘Both Molly and Beth. I don’t want to hear a word against them.’
‘I wasn’t going to say one,’ said Maggie. She and Frank had exchanged a glance, each understanding what the other was thinking. They didn’t want to lose Jackson again and were definitely not going to say anything to risk it.
‘Any road, she’s a fine bairn,’ Frank had said.
Molly stood up and put the baby down in her cot and went back to her letter to Jackson.
‘’
Til we meet again
,’ she wrote. ‘
Watch yourself, my love
.’
Things might seem OK between them but she wasn’t so soft as to think everything was as it had been before Beth. There were bridges to build still. And it was difficult to do it by letter. But when the war was over …
ALSO BY MAGGIE HOPE:
A Daughter’s Gift
Elizabeth Nelson is only ten years old when her mother dies in childbirth. With her father gone, the siblings are separate; her Aunt Betty takes baby Kit. Elizabeth and her brother, Jimmy, are sent to a children’s home and Alice and Jenny are sent into foster care.
Life in the home is hard, but Elizabeth is determined to look after her brother and make a better life for them both. Working as a nurse gives Elizabeth a purpose but she risks everything by falling for local mine owner, Jack Benson. Wounded at Gallipoli, Jack is far above her in wealth and station. Elizabeth cannot marry him and she risks losing her nursing place if there is any hint of impropriety about her conduct.
Then Elizabeth learns that her sister, Jenny, has been adopted by an abusive farmer. Torn between her hopeless love for Jack and her sister, must Elizabeth make an extreme sacrifice to reunite her family?
ALSO BY MAGGIE HOPE:
A Mother’s Gift
Taken in by her grandparents to ease the pressure on her poverty-stricken family, Katie Benfield knows she’s one of the lucky ones. Even so, she dreams of a better life and of pursuing a nursing career. Despite many hardships, Katie achieves her goal, but tragedy strikes Winton Colliery when both her grandfather and childhood sweetheart are killed in a mining accident. Shocked and distraught, Katie finds herself vulnerable to the advances of the owner of the mine, Matthew Hamilton, a married man who wastes no time in taking advantage of her.
Thrown out by her grandmother, her reputation and career in tatters, Katie finds herself facing a home for unmarried mothers. Only Matthew Hamilton offers her a way to keep her baby, but only if she forgoes her principles and becomes his mistress …
ALSO BY MAGGIE HOPE:
A Nurse’s Duty
Torn between love and duty …
Following a disastrous marriage to a miner, Karen has devoted herself to a nursing career. Rising to the challenge of caring for the wounded soldiers returning home from the Great War, she has resigned herself to putting her vocation before any hope of a romantic life.
However, she finds herself drawn to handsome, troubled Patrick Murphy. But Patrick is also a Catholic priest. Dare Karen risk scandal and her position by falling for the one man she cannot have …?
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781448148707
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First published as
The Marble Clock
in 2001 by Piatkus Books
This edition published in 2013 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group Company
Copyright © 2001 Una Horne writing as Maggie Hope
Maggie Hope has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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ISBN 9780091952938
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