Coming Home to the Four Streets by Nadine Dorries (books that read to you .txt) 📗

a funny feeling something was wrong and that woman down on the dockside – she was sure it was definitely Auntie Peggy.

Chapter Twenty

Maura and Tommy had never before made love in a bed that wasn’t their own and she had found the experience both frightening and exciting all at the same time.

‘I’m not sure if we can,’ she had whispered, terrified of making a noise and trying to work her dates back in her mind. ‘When am I due?’

Tommy, a man who always depended on his wife to ensure they did not make love on the days she was likely to be caught, for fear of another pregnancy, had thrown caution to the wind. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ he had said as he pulled her towards him.

‘Tommy, have you lost your senses? And you’ve left the light on; what are you thinking of?’

Maura had also only ever made love to her husband in the dark and the urgency of his need was confusing her. It felt as though she was in bed with another man.

‘Maura, how did you feel when we were leaving Liverpool to move back to Ireland and start our great big adventure? When I made the biggest mistake of my life and bought us the Talk of the no feckin’ Town? Were you happy? Was I happy?’

‘I don’t know, I’m not sure, there was so much to do, with the kids and everything…’

‘Maura, if we had been doing the right thing, nothing would have mattered, so how did you feel? Think, remember!’

Maura had no idea what had just possessed her husband, a man of few words, to own up to a mistake. Usually he had to be worn down into submission first.

‘Scared, I suppose,’ she blurted out.

‘Aye, me too. What do you feel like now? Tonight, here in this bed and breakfast?’

Maura’s face broke into a tentative smile. ‘Excited.’

Tommy threw his head back and laughed out loud. ‘Yes, so do I. That’s because we are going home. We should never have left. It was the money, it went to our heads.’

Maura pulled a face. ‘Well, it won’t now because there’s hardly any left.’

And Tommy had almost told her his secret, the news it had half killed him to keep from her for days.

‘Tell her now,’ Liam had said to him as they shook hands.

‘No,’ Tommy was defiant, ‘I’ll tell her on the deck, as soon as I can see Liverpool,’ and since that conversation, the secret had burnt in his mouth desperate to escape and each time he almost told her and didn’t, he felt a sense of atonement for his mistakes of the past.

The only time Kitty was ever spoken of was late at night, in the dark, in bed but not tonight.

‘Maura,’ Tommy said, ‘it’s time to look to the future, for all of us – and I can’t think of a better way to do that than with a new babby, can you?’ He had pushed Maura’s dark hair away from her face. ‘Don’t you be looking like that,’ he said, noting the sadness that crossed her eyes. ‘No one can ever replace our Kitty, but a new birth, that would be exciting for the others and especially for Angela. It might make her smile and you, you’re not too old yet, missus.’

Maura had grinned. ‘You have a nerve, you. If we weren’t sleeping under someone else’s roof, you wouldn’t get away with that.’

Tommy had silenced her as his lips found hers and, as it had been throughout their married life, Maura was lost. Despite the fact that they had been together for all of the years they had, he could still make her insides flip over at his gentlest touch and that night, he was like a man possessed. Maura knew, as the first watery light of morning had slipped in though unfamiliar curtains, that she was with child…

*

‘Mammy, are we nearly there?’ asked Angela as she lifted her head from her father’s chest and rubbed her sleepy eyes. They were in a taxi which Tommy had hailed at the Pier Head to transport them on the last leg of the journey home. The cobbles of the Dock Road rumbled beneath the tyres as the taxi jolted along past the tall red-brick warehouse buildings that towered above them.

‘We are, Angela, can you smell the Mersey?’ said Tommy. They had been on the road since before first light and they were all exhausted, but as the ferry had drawn closer to the shore and the lights of Liverpool sparkled before them, Maura had perked up.

‘Would you look at that,’ Maura had said to Tommy. ‘The Liver Birds. Tommy, we’re home!’

Her eyes had filled with tears at the sight of the three graces and the skyline of Liverpool that lay before them. Tommy had slipped his arm around her shoulder. ‘We are, queen, and I never thought I’d say it, for I will always be an Irishman through and through, but Liverpool is where my kids belong and that is where my heart is. Fancy that! I call a country that produces wet potatoes, home.’

Maura felt the familiar grip of guilt tighten around her heart. ‘What about the money, the inn, is it gone forever, do you think?’

Tommy had fixed his eyes on the shore. ‘Maura, I have something to tell you. Liam bought it, not what we paid for it, but enough to make a difference to our fortunes and I ask you, what more do we need?’

Maura had pulled away from him. ‘What? You sold it to Liam? For how much?’

Tommy couldn’t help himself, a grin passed across his face and he picked up one of her hands and slipped it under his arm. ‘Maura, we have almost five hundred pounds! I have a hundred in my pocket and four in the bank so we are going to be just fine.’ Maura was speechless. ‘I have just one condition, mind; I have eight of it for the