A Coffin for Charley by Gwendoline Butler Page B

slept badly but saw most things, as Annie knew to her cost.
    After her three shouts, Annie went through to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. Hot tea always helped. It was a family tradition, indeed a national one, that hot tea was a help in time of crisis.
    The kettle began to steam while she watched. Heavens, I’m not keeping a prison here. She warmed the pot, another myth probably but not one she was going to discard, you never knew. Why shouldn’t the girl be late home?
    But Annie knew, none better, the dangers that night anddarkness could bring. There were some things that even hot tea could not assuage.
    She drew back the blind to look at the day. A full moon sailed high but it was blotted every so often by thick clouds, the air was wet.
    Didi doesn’t like the rain. And I bet she’d got on those pale shoes that show every mark. I told her when she bought them that they would show every mark.
    On that moonlit night so long ago Annie herself had been wearing bedroom slippers. Her parents had not looked out of the window to see her, so that they had known nothing until morning. They knew she had been in the garden because of the mud on her slippers and pyjamas. She got a beating for that. ‘Naughty girl, naughty girl.’
    Annie kept quiet about what she had seen for several days after that, nor was she believed at first when she spoke. ‘Little girls shouldn’t tell fibs.’ They believed me in the end, she said grimly to herself.
    She left the kitchen to go to the room in the front, taking her cup of tea with her. She might see Didi just opening the gate. If she went to the gate, then she might see Didi just turning the corner of the road, hurrying home.
    Surely she would not be on her own? He was bound to see her home. Even that rotten Creeley boy would see Didi home. Eddie Creeley, I hate you.
    As she stood there, her daughter crept into the room. ‘Why are you still up, Mummy, and not in bed?’ She managed to make it sound like a reproach. She was sometimes more in charge of her mother than Annie was of her. She dropped her voice a tone. ‘Naughty Mummy.’
    Annie put her arm round the child’s shoulders, thin bony shoulders they were, but giving promise of growth. Wings might sprout from those shoulders and let her flutter away. Annie herself had thought as a child that she could fly.
    â€˜Looking for Didi, still out. She’s the naughty one.’
    â€˜I heard you call out.’
    â€˜You might have done. Just one of my shouts. You ought to try one yourself. Shall we shout together?’
    â€˜I don’t think so, thank you, Mummy.’
    She was a quiet child who gave the impression that she found her mother a puzzle. Annie was not surprised, she found herself a puzzle.
    â€˜Back to bed, love.’ She hoisted the child on her shoulder and took her upstairs, her long legs in trousers making nothing of the steep stairs. She was not a strongly maternal type, although a loving parent. She had to be mother and father both and somehow the father had the best of it. ‘Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.’
    Her daughter gave her a wary, sceptical, but friendly look as of one who had never found that particular bit of whimsy amusing yet could see her mother enjoyed saying it: the two loved each other.
    Annie tucked the child comfortably in the blankets, they never used duvets, but the full outfit of sheet and blankets with an eiderdown in winter. ‘Close your eyes and go back to sleep.’
    The child dropped her eyelids obediently but with every intention of staying awake. She took a quick look.
    â€˜Quite closed,’ said Annie.
    She watched from the door with amusement, guessing her daughter’s intention but knowing that sleep would win. Soon, she saw the light, regular breathing.
    I never was a child like you, my dear, life caught up with me too soon, but you I will protect. I may not be the best of mothers or the most normal of