The Mersey Girls Read Online Free Page B

rude to talk about knickers, a boy his age should know better. He looked quite a bit older than she, he must be twelve or thirteen she supposed, so he could not pretend that knickers were a suitable subject of conversation between them.
    ‘I was just walking down the road with my messages,’ she pointed out coldly, ‘when you knocked me off my feet. You could have spoiled my Mammy’s new dress and squashed her crystallised fruit. I think I’d better go now, before anything else happens.’
    ‘Where d’you live?’ The boy said, falling companionably into step beside her and ignoring her critical tone. ‘I think I might have seen you before somewhere . . . live round these parts, do you?’
    Linnet turned her head and surveyed him carefully. Mammy had said not to fall into conversation with strangers, but she had not meant
boys,
surely? Linnet went to a small private school run by the nuns, but boys were everywhere, as common and numerous as the raindrops which spotted the flagstones or the snowflakes which had made all this nasty slush. You could no more avoid boys than you could the rain or the snow, and when one actually spoke to you, you could scarcely pretend not to have heard. That would be rude and Mammy did not like rudeness.
    ‘Well, will you know me again?’ the boy said, but not nastily, because he was grinning at her as he spoke. He had a nice face, not clean or handsome or anything like that, just nice. He was thin and brown, with a wide grin and grey eyes and there was something about him, some quality of friendliness and concern for others – he had apologised to the woman and had not tried to blame Linnet for the accident, something a less honest boy might well have done – which made Linnet decide to forgive him for knocking her down and muddying her messages.
    ‘Yes, I’ll know you again,’ she said seriously. ‘I don’t live round here, though. I live on Juvenal Street, in rooms over a shop opposite the back of the fruit market. My name’s Linnet Murphy, what’s yours?’
    ‘I’m Roddy Sullivan,’ the boy said readily. He stuck out a grimy hand. ‘Well, we’re neighbours, Linnet, ’cos I live in Peel Square; that’s off Cazneau and right near Juvenal. So we’ll walk back together, shall us? Come on, lemme give you a hand with them messages.’
    ‘It’s all right, I can manage,’ Linnet said, clutching her string bag defensively close. He seemed nice, but you never let a stranger get his hands on your possessions, no matter how friendly he was; she already knew
that
much. ‘Where did you get that tray from, though, and what were you doing coming down Havey like that?’
    Havelock Street was famous for its steep slope; the elderly and infirm heaved themselves up it with great difficulty, clutching the walls as they went, but Linnet always felt sorry for coalmen’s horses, who had no hands to help them along and had to risk a tumble and broken knees every time they delivered on Havelock Street.
    ‘I were sledging, of course, and the tray’s me mam’s . . . well, she works for James Blackledge, on Derby Road, and the tray comes from there . . . an’ Havey’s steeper’n it oughter be when you’re on a tray,’ Roddy explained a trifle defensively. ‘Good thing you and the old woman was there, come to think, or I’d ha’ charged straight out into the middle of the carriageway. Why, I could of been killed stone dead!’
    ‘It was a mad thing to do,’ Linnet pointed out primly. ‘I daresay you might have been killed, but you might have killed us and all – me, the old lady and the little lad. What’ud you have done then, eh?’
    ‘I’d’ve run like the divil,’ Roddy said cheerfully. He delved into the pocket of his ragged trousers. ‘Here, want a licky stick?’
    He produced two liquorice sticks. They were shaped like tiny walking sticks and were liberally covered in fluff but Linnet accepted one graciously and bit off the curved end.
    ‘Thanks,’ she said.