Chapter Three

A week passed, and still Bridget had not dared talk to Tom about the child. Since coming home from the party, he had been in the worst and darkest mood she had ever seen. She didn’t know what was bothering him, and was afraid to ask. She was even more afraid to make her dreadful confession, and so, growing ever more anxious, she kept it to herself. But with her belly rising like new-baked bread, she knew she couldn’t hide the truth for much longer.

On Saturday morning she went to market as usual, and there, while queuing for a hank of pork, she saw Mrs Louis, a kindly soul who had more children than she could count and whose loud-mouthed husband was disliked from one end of Blackburn to the other.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Mrs Mulligan,’ she greeted Bridget without preamble. ‘Ted bragged about how he taunted your husband at the leaving party. Ooh! He’s a wicked man at times, and I told him so!’

Bridget was about to ask what she meant when Mrs Louis swung round to display a large, colourful bruise on her cheek. ‘I got this for my trouble,’ she said loudly. ‘Fists and mouth, that’s Ted Louis, and God only knows what I ever saw in the brute!’

‘Mrs Louis, I—’

‘Even the kids are frightened of him. I’ve a bloody good mind to sod off and leave him to rot. It would serve the bugger right, that it would!’ With that, and before Bridget could get a word in, she gathered her numerous children and marched them off. ‘Mouth and fist, that’s all he knows!’ she muttered as she went. ‘Getting wed to that one was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.’

Bridget found herself being stared at by other women in the queue. Embarrassed and confused, she gave them a feeble smile and slipped away, with the intention of coming back when the queue had dispersed.

In the teashop she hid herself in a corner with an iced bun and a jar of sarsaparilla. ‘Poor Mrs Louis,’ she mused aloud. ‘Wonder what she was getting at?’ When a family at the next table gave her a curious look, she pretended to stare out of the window.

Ten minutes later she left the tearooms and returned to the market. She didn’t go back for the pork; instead she bought two fat and juicy fish. An hour after that, what with being caught up in the hustle and bustle and feeling uncomfortable with the growing weight of the shopping bags, Bridget decided to make her way home. As she disembarked from the bus, the heavens opened and she was soaked to the skin.

Tom was already home. ‘I finished early,’ he said, a world of sadness in his eyes. ‘I can’t settle somehow.’ The truth was, he couldn’t stomach working alongside Ted Louis; he was even considering looking for another job.

Bridget thought about what Mrs Louis had told her, that she rued the day she had married Ted Louis, and how he used his fists on her. Tom had never once done anything so bad. In fact, he was a better husband than most, which was why she loathed herself for what she had to tell him. But not yet. Not the way he was.