The Loom Read Online Free Page B

into bed. This wouldn’t happen once! Oh no, he’d be doing it all night – up and down, up and down. You can imagine next morning he’d be worn out. And so was I.’ Emma would laugh as she told the story and wipe her eyes with her pinny at the end of it.
    What she’d never talk about, and never would, was the other side of the separation: the heartache, the soul wrenching torment, and constant misery, living in the hope that the situation would improve. Then the shattering of her married life by Harold’s philandering, the devastation she’d felt. No, she’d never reveal that side of it!
    Leah was aware that her mother was just dozing: her breathing was lighter, she coughed a few times, itched herself now and again, sighed. She always felt so warm and safe in the middle, although she did take up most of the bed.
    ‘ Like the Queen of Sheba,’ Emma would say in exasperation. ‘And why you have to lie with your elbows stuck out, I’ll never know. Janey and me’ll end up on the floor one of these days. It’s like sleeping on a clothes line!’
    Leah sometimes felt guilty, but she couldn’t bear any one touching her when she was asleep, rather difficult when there were three in a small double bed. How she would love to have her very own bed. One day she would, she vowed as she heard Emma turn over with a slight a groan.
    Emma was not the woman who had thrown coal all those years ago. Time had not been particularly kind to her; the continual strain of rearing three children on her own, the years of scrimping and saving to make ends meet on a wage that was only a fraction of a man’s, had all taken its toll.
    Emma awoke fully as the clanging noise finally petered into her consciousness. Her eyelids fluttered and without turning, for she was aware that Leah was awake, she said. ‘Time to get up, lass.’
    ‘I will in a minute, Mam.’ Leah watched her mother heave herself out of bed, more like a fifty-year old than the thirty-five years that she was. Emma sometimes felt that the mantle of age was settling on her like swaddling clothes, strangling her. Leah could see the bony vertebrae through her thin nighty as Emma bent to pick up her clothes off the chair. She turned to look at Leah.
    ‘ Its cowd this morning. Wait till I get the fire going. I’ll give you a call.’ Leah nodded. Janey continued to sleep next to her. She’d need a good nudge to wake her .
    Emma made her way down the dark, narrow staircase, her clothes tucked under her arm. She trod quietly so as not to wake Darkie in the room across the landing. He'd been on the late shift and she’d heard him climbing the stairs in the early hours.
    As Emma opened the living room door, which led off the staircase, a cold blast of air hit her. The fire had gone out completely and she shivered as she hurriedly went to stoke the remnants of it, then picked up a newspaper, twisted it into tight wads and pushed them between. She soon had the fire going again and watched the flames leap, casting shadows around the room. Who would have thought that two weeks ago she’d been sweating in here! She piled some coal on the small fire and soon it was roaring up the chimney. The room suddenly looked cozy.
    She got a chair and placed it in front of the fire and put her clothes on it to air. Then she put the kettle on the range for a cup of tea, as well as a pan in which oats had been steeped for the porridge. She hastily tidied up what had been left about the night before. There was Leah’s knitting, and Janey’s pictures.
    Janey had an annoying habit of cutting out all the pictures of movie stars and leaving them lying around, even when she knew they could end up in the lavatory. Emma put them all in a pile on the old green painted dresser against the back wall, which held their meagre supply of crockery: four unmatched mugs, four plates and three dishes.
    With a last twitch to a cushion Emma straightened with a slight groan. Her back ached a lot these days,