Anyone Who Had a Heart Read Online Free Page A

she had found out, his adoptive parents – support her financially. There was some money likely from National Assistance, but that was tiny and would provide little towards their daily costs.
    Until recently, there had been another option; Alan Taylor had asked her to marry him. His daughter, Rita, had once been her best friend, but things had cooled between them for more than one reason. Marcie accepted that they’d grown out of each other and to her mind it was all for the best. At one time she’d desperately wanted her dad to be like Alan Taylor. He’d been so ‘with it’, so understanding of young girls out to have fun. She hadn’t seen through the friendliness to what he’d really wanted. She’d trusted him enough to spend an evening with him, to accept a drink or two. She didn’t remember much about that night. The alcohol he had plied her with had caused her to pass out, and it was only the morning after that she realised what had happened. Her knickers had been on inside out and back to front and she had felt raw and bruised ‘down there’. There was no getting away from the horrible fact: Alan Taylor had raped her. So it was for the best that her friendship with Rita was over along with any contact with Rita’s father.
    Her grandmother was allowing her to live in the old cottage for free and her father helped where he could. However, she had made some money towards her keep from dressmaking, though it would never be enough to fully support her. Basically she needed a job and only the day before she’d seen exactly the sort of job she needed.
    She told her grandmother about it. ‘It’s advertised as full time, but only from eight till four. I thought I’d try and get them to take me on part time …’ She paused, looked at her grandmother and tried to gauge her initial reaction. ‘It wouldn’t be so much money part time, but I was wondering …’
    Rosa Brooks was typical of women born on the islands and countries scattered or surrounding the Mediterranean. Her hair was still jet black, her skin paled from tawny to olive by the lack of sunshine, and her eyes were quick and dark. She wore her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck and as a widow always wore black. Her mind was still quick and her family meant everything to her. Her family was who she lived for.
    ‘You wish me to look after Joanna.’
    It was a statement rather than a question. Marcie nodded. ‘Well. Yes.’
    She felt her stomach turning inwards and wished she hadn’t asked. It was much too big a burden for her grandmother. How could she have even suggested it?
    ‘Of course I will look after Joanna.’ Rosa’s smile brightened her face and sent a sparkle to her eyes. ‘It’s wonderful to have a baby in this house again. Your grandfather warned me you would ask. Your grandfather had such insight you know. I miss him.’
    The last three words sounded tacked on and a little sadder than everything else. Though Marcie’s granddad had long since died, Rosa gift was such that she maintained that she talked to him regularly since his passing. Her grandmother’s words also touched a chord in Marcie that she hadn’t known was there. What would things have been like if Johnnie had lived? Would she still be in London? Would they have a little place of their own where the boards were bare, the furnishings old and battered? Poor as it might have been, they would have been happy. Of that she was sure.
    ‘It’s a sewing room serving the hospital, making nurses uniforms, sewing hems around sheets and making pillowcases. I thought three days and on the other days I could do my own sewing.’
    She wasn’t sure about the uniforms, but hoped that the sewing wouldn’t be confined to sheets and pillowcases. If it was, well, she would have the consolation that she’d be doing her own sewing on the other days.
    ‘Mrs Spontini is very pleased with her funeral dress,’ said her grandmother.
    Mrs Spontini was one of her grandmother’s closest