Coming Home to the Four Streets by Nadine Dorries (best books to read for success .txt) 📕

Something about it all made him feel just so sad and he knew it was Kitty. She had appeared because she’d sensed he was frightened, and he had instinctively known that. Why did everything have to change, he thought, as he buttoned his trousers back up, ready to run around the entry to the back gate and tell his mam everything. None of it would be news his mother wanted to hear.

Then he heard a voice and, looking up the street, saw Auntie Kathleen seeing Nellie off from number 42. Her granddaughter would be off out with the girls. They would gather together and divide into groups, each taking a street, where they would knock on doors and ask, ‘Can I push your baby up and down the street, missus?’ They would reassemble at the wasteland, comparing knitted bonnets and judging the prettiest babies whilst their mothers rinsed out enamel buckets that lived under the kitchen sink, changed the dirty Napisan water and filled washing lines full of fluffy white terry towelling squares before they peered over the walls to check whose were the whitest.

Kathleen saw little Paddy and made Nellie wait. She called out to the boy, ‘Hang on there, little Paddy, love,’ and disappeared back inside. Seconds later she was back and thrust something into Nellie’s hand. The girl waved to Paddy who ran down the street to meet her, his bag firmly held so as not to jolt Max about.

Nellie grinned as he approached and Nana Kathleen exclaimed, ‘Thank God we caught you, Paddy! I was keeping something for you. I was only thinking at mass this morning how I haven’t seen you all week. Is your mam well? Maggie Trott was asking, only we haven’t seen her since she came to the meeting about the carnival. She’s not been out for a natter or to have her leaves read.’ Before he could blink, she continued, ‘Jerry left without the time to eat his toast so will you have it?’ And without waiting for an answer, she thrust a slice of bread the size of a house brick into his hand.

‘Go on, Paddy,’ she said, ‘you’ll be doing me a favour. I hate throwing good food in the bin.’ And Paddy immediately forgot about his encounter with Margaret Wright. The melting butter and jam were calling out to him and, within seconds, butter was dribbling down his chin.

‘Ah, God, that’s lovely that,’ he said as he licked his lips and grinned up at Kathleen.

The sound of Nellie’s laughter wiped from his mind the harsh and deeply worrying words the woman had spoken and the message he was meant to deliver to his mother. For a brief moment the sheer sweetness of last summer’s strawberries erased his worries about the unpaid rent, but the sight of Peggy running across the road in her slippers, calling Kathleen, soon reminded him. Scamp was hot on her heels and she didn’t appear to notice little Paddy at all.

‘Kathleen, can you do me a favour and lend me two and six? Big Paddy’s been that sick, we’ve had short weeks and, honest to God, I haven’t a potato for the kids’ tea or a drop of tea in the house.’

Kathleen sighed inside, but smiled outwardly. ‘Of course I have, Peggy. Now, do you want to come into ours for a cuppa? I’m just giving your little Paddy some bread I was about to throw out because our Jerry didn’t eat his breakfast.’

Paddy grinned up at his mam, his face smeared with jam and butter, his eyes alight. Peggy’s stomach grumbled so loudly they all heard it and Nellie looked at her gran, with pleading eyes.

‘I’ve more where that came from if you’ve room for a slice of toast with the tea too.’ Kathleen, large and round, eyes twinkling through her glasses, betrayed not a hint of irritation.

Peggy had known kindness like this from Maura every day of her married life and had sorely missed it, but now she felt self-conscious. ‘Well, if you have the time, Kathleen…’

‘I do that, so come on away in. Alice,’ she shouted over her shoulder to her daughter-in-law, ‘put that kettle back on before you go to Cindy’s.’ And then she remembered what she had seen as she had stood at the door with Nellie. ‘It’s Alice’s hair day,’ she said by way of an explanation, as though they didn’t know who Cindy was. ‘Now little Paddy, who was that woman you were talking to?’

‘What woman?’ asked Peggy.

‘She said she’s the police and she’s moving into Maura and Tommy’s house.’

The two women looked at each other, their faces the picture of shock. ‘Are you sure she said that?’ asked Kathleen.

‘Aye, I am,’ said Paddy. ‘Mam, she said you had to wash the nets and clean the step and there was something else too…’ Paddy frowned and thought hard. ‘Oh yeah, he said, no more playing on the wasteland, no more thieving – and something about a fence.’

‘Paddy!’ Nellie, waiting for him to cross the road to the side of the wasteland, called his name from the kerb as Kathleen and Peggy looked at each other, horrified.

‘Well, the cheek of her! Was she calling us thieves, then?’ Peggy looked wounded. ‘That woman needs to wash her mouth out. Who the hell did she think she was talking about?’

‘Little Paddy, did you get a name, love?’ Kathleen’s voice was urgent, pleading and coaxing all at the same time. ‘Did the woman say who she was at all?’

Little Paddy took a deep breath. ‘She did.’ There was silence. Kathleen dared not speak again and she placed her hand on Peggy’s arm to silence her. The event had occurred not five minutes since and if they gave little Paddy enough time it would come to him, eventually. So they stood, they waited and little Paddy blinked and frowned; he looked back across the road, he pursed his lips and then, as if a light bulb had been switched on inside his