The Telling

chapbooks in beside them, and all the while the pair of them were sitting there at the fire, my father smiling and watching me as I made the arrangements. Mr Moore didn’t look around at me, which was good, because I could not have easily met his eye.
    It was pitch dark by the time Sally and I had got the bedding spread out and undressed and laid ourselves down to sleep. The fire was a low smoulder. I was beginning to drift into sleep, thinking that another night, when I was not so tired, I’d stir up the flames a bit, put a few sticks on, and I’d be able to read in the firelight, and it wouldn’t be so bad. It was good just to be lying down, and I didn’t really feel the hardness of the floor, and my eyes were closing, and I was thinking how Agnes hadn’t seen the new chapbook yet, that I’d take it over and read to her in bed tomorrow evening, and when she was well enough, she’d sit in her kitchen, and I’d do her cleaning or some baking for her.
    ‘Are you never going to get married?’
    I opened my eyes. ‘What?’
    ‘You were nineteen last birthday,’ Sally said.
    ‘I know how old I am.’
    She took a noisy breath. ‘I was thinking what with Agnes having the baby now, you would be thinking of it, you could marry Thomas and move out and have babies of your own.’
    ‘You’ll wear yourself out, thinking like that.’
    She rolled on to her side, pulling the blankets with her. ‘You could have your own room then too, though I suppose you’d have to share it with Thomas.’
    ‘Leave off, will you?’
    She sniffed indignantly. ‘It isn’t just me.’
    I leaned up on an elbow, looked over at her. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Oh nothing.’
    I prodded her. She yelped in protest. I said, ‘Tell me; you’ll have no rest till you do.’
    She rolled back over and looked me in the eye. I remember her eyes, dark and glossy, catching the firelight, and her smooth young skin glowing pale. ‘Our mam was saying that we’re too crowded here, I heard her say it. And Dad agreed.’
    ‘They should have thought about that before they invited that man in. There’s just him taking up a whole room to himself while us two have to sleep down here, and that’s just daft, it makes no sense at all.’
    Sally shrugged and heaved herself over again; ‘He could hardly have the boys’ room, it’s too small, and you wouldn’t wish this on our mam at her age.’
    Just as I was about to ask whether she knew if he’d be stopping long, she said, her back still turned to me, ‘I’m to be apprenticed soon, you know, Mrs Forster is arranging it for me.’
    ‘Who to?’
    ‘Mrs Forster’s milliner at Settle; one of the girls is leaving to set up for herself, and when she does, I’m to be indentured in her place.’
    I rolled on to my back, lay there with the blanket pulled up to my chin. ‘What did our mam say?’
    ‘It’s clean work, and I’ll be mixing with a better sort of people. She’s glad.’
    Time passed in silence, and the church clock chimed ten.
    ‘Good for you,’ I said.
    Sally muttered something, but her breath was coming softer, and I knew that she was almost asleep. The blanket scratched against my chin. I turned, tugged at the covers, and saw that there was light overhead, sieved by the boards, slipping down between them, hair-thin, golden. He was awake up there, up in our old room. He had a candle burning. He sat in light.

 
     
     
     
    I t was barely a town at all. Just a motorway exit, a railway station, a grimy, busy crossroads with traffic thundering through. Dirty great lorries and 4x4s and car after car after car. No one stopped. I waited at the traffic lights, looking down the curved slope of the high street. A greengrocer’s, an off-licence, a post office, a couple of charity shops, and three estate agents.
    I parked outside the train station. It was practically derelict. Dusty windows gave on to dim empty rooms. Rails curved off north and south towards their vanishing points.
    I carried a plastic bag of paperbacks, another of coat hangers, and one with her jumpers in it, lifted from the wardrobe, still just ever so faintly scented with her perfume.
    I phoned Mark as I walked up the street, all the bags clutched in one hand. The signal was fine. He spoke discreetly, in that atwork kind of way. I asked how Cate was doing; he said that she was fine. His mum was going to pick her up from the childminder, and he’d drop around to get her after work. This was all as we’d agreed. I