Unspoken: A story of secrets, love and revenge by T. Belshaw (best reads of all time .TXT) 📗

Amy stepped away but fired one last salvo.

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Frank Mollison. You took advantage of her. It’s hardly the thing a real man would do.’

Frank held my arm and took me to the railings at the side of the road.

‘Your mouthy friend’s right of course. I should be ashamed, and I am. I was drunk, I was randy and I was wrong. That’s why I’ve been away. I’m not proud of myself.’

I was shocked. I expected him to either deny it, or say I had it coming. I said nothing, so he carried on.

‘I can’t give you back what I’ve taken, I know that. But I can say I’m sorry, I regret it and I hope that one day you’ll be able to forgive me. You’ll obviously never forget.’

He half smiled at me, when I didn’t smile back, his vanished.

‘I won’t ever be able to forget it, Frank, not because it was so memorable, I can’t remember most of it to be honest, but, well, the fact is… Look, I’m going to have your baby, I’m pregnant.’

Again, I half expected him to question whether I was a virgin at the time, or if I’d been with other men since, but he didn’t. He just looked, stupidly, back at me.

‘Jesus,’ he whispered.

‘No, it’s not him,’ I said. ‘I was the virgin: Alice, not Mary.’

He thought for a moment.

‘I’ll face up to my responsibilities, Alice,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll pay you some of my wages every week, once I can find another job that is. I’m a worker, not a shirker, I’ve always worked, always paid my way, always paid my debts, and I’ll do it this time too.’

Amy had crept closer and had been listening.

‘That won’t help her when the rumours start, Frank. It won’t help her when the tongues wag and her name is dragged through the dirt. You’ll just be seen as a bit of a lad, a lady’s man, but Alice will be branded a slut, a prostitute, a lush…’ She ran out of epithets, so she decided to challenge him head on. ‘Are you going to be a proper father? Ask her to marry you, Frank. That’s what a real man would do.’

Frank had had his turn, now it was my turn to be shocked.

‘I don’t want to—’

Amy dug me in the back with her fingers, so I shut up.

‘I need to think about this,’ said Frank. ‘It’s one thing helping pay for the young ‘un’s, upkeep, it’s another thing again marrying someone, especially someone so young. You say people will call Alice names, but I’ll be branded a cradle snatcher. She’s only a kid.’

Amy stared at him, wide-eyed.

‘She was bloody well old enough to shag, wasn’t she? You didn’t think about her age when you were ruining her did you? Go on then, have a good think, Frank, but don’t take too long over it,’ she pointed to my stomach. ‘The secret will out before too long.’

I felt the decision on my future was being taken without me having any say.

‘I don’t want to ma—’

Amy poked me again, harder this time.

Frank sighed heavily.

‘I’ll think things over,’ he said. ‘And I’ll talk to my mum, she’ll know what to do.’ He turned away but instead of entering the pub, he walked back the way he had come.

‘You shouldn’t have to think about it at all, Frank,’ Amy yelled after him. ‘Grow up. Be the man your mother thinks you are.’

Chapter 25

1938

The answer came much quicker than either of us had anticipated.

I had said goodbye to Amy at her gate. She was still under the impression that Frank was a snidely, underhand, midget of a man, but I reminded her that he had offered to help with the baby’s upkeep.

‘But for how long, and can you trust him to keep paying, Alice? It wouldn’t surprise me if he was on the first train out of town in the morning.’

When I got home, I made myself a hot cup of cocoa, looked in on my father, and settled down in front of the pot-bellied stove in the kitchen.

I had just turned to the romance story in the nineteen thirty-six copy of Nash’s magazine that I had found buried in a pile of farm-related papers in my mother’s bedroom, when I heard the back gate open. Puzzled as to who would come calling at nine-thirty at night, I picked up a sharp kitchen knife and crept to the back door. A few seconds later, someone rapped on it, hard.

I took a deep breath, brandished the knife in what I thought was a threatening manner, called out, ‘I’ll get it, George,’ to let any would-be attacker know that I wasn’t alone, and opened the door an inch.

Frank stood on the top step; cap grasped tightly in his hands. He nodded to me as I opened the door wider.

‘Frank? What on earth…’

‘Can I come in, Alice? It’s bloody freezing out here.’ He looked down at my hands where the long, sharp, boning knife was still pointing at him. ‘You won’t need that,’ he said, calmly.

I opened the door, he stepped inside and waited as I closed it again.

I walked over to the kitchen table and waved my hand towards a seat near the stove.

‘Get yourself warm, you’ve got an icicle hanging off your nose.’

Frank sat down and rubbed his nose between his finger and thumb.

‘I’ve erm, talked to my mother. It wasn’t a long conversation,’ he mumbled.

I waited; I wasn’t in the mood to help him out.

He wrung his cap in his hands like he was preparing to hang it on the washing line.

‘She says I should beg your forgiveness and ask you to marry me,’ he blurted out.

I still said nothing.

‘Well,’ he asked after an aptly named, pregnant pause.

‘Is that your mother asking, or you?’ I said, answering a question with a question.

‘Me,’ he said, meekly. ‘Me.’ He hesitated for a moment, then obviously decided to do