and nothing to prepare towards the evening meal did not mean Aidy was free. She still had to go home and check on Bertha. Although neighbours and friends dropped in to see her, time permitting, her gran so looked forward to Aidy’s visit home, for a quick cuppa and a chat to help break the monotony.
For Bertha the time couldn’t come quick enough when the doctor pronounced her broken bones healed and removed the itchy, cumbersome plaster casts. She had always been so active, and this incarceration, day after day, was very testing for her although she did her best to keep her spirits up. Aidy was well aware of it too. Despite her continually assuring her grandmother that she was managing just fine, Bertha was deeply grieved by the fact that she was unable to ease her granddaughter’s burden, either in the house or financially by selling her remedies. Day by day, she could see Aidy’s strength and optimism dwindling.
To Aidy’s surprise, Bertha was fast asleep when she arrived. As there was evidence of several visitors during the morning judging by the dirty cups they’d left, obviously she’d been tired out by them. At least Aidy knew that her grandmother hadn’t been on her own all morning. She would mash herself a cuppa and drink it while she ate a quick sandwich, hoping Bertha would rouse herself before she had to return to work so that Aidy could tend to her personal needs.
Bertha was still snoring softly when, armed with her cup of tea and a plate holding a cheese sandwich, Aidy gave a blissful sigh as she sank down in the shabby armchair by the range. It felt like paradise to her to have a few minutes’ peaceful relaxation before she returned to the hurly-burly of the factory. After she’d eaten her sandwich and drunk her tea Bertha still had not woken and she had ten minutes to go before she had to return to work. How vehemently she wished she hadn’t to go back; that she could sit here all afternoon and rest her weary body …
Aidy hadn’t realised she’d fallen into a deep slumber until a shrill scream jolted her awake. Sitting bolt upright, she stared around, dazed and confused, fighting to comprehend where she was. Then her eyes fell on her grandmother, in a heap on the floor nearby.
As she jumped up and ran to Bertha she cried out, ‘Oh, my God, Gran! What …’ She crouched down beside her, checking her over. She didn’t need to ask if her gran was in pain. The look on her face and the fact that she couldn’t speak revealed that this was serious. Aidy didn’t like the fact that the plaster cast encasing Bertha’s broken leg had split open and the part of it visible inside was swelling like a balloon. What on earth had caused this? She wondered. But the answer would have to wait. Bertha needed medical help, and swiftly.
Gently placing a cushion under the old woman’s head and covering her with a blanket, Aidy ordered her not to move and informed her she’d be back as quickly as she could with the doctor.
She was so consumed by the need to get help for her grandmother, it never registered with Aidy that she should have been back at work, labouring away at her machine, over an hour ago.
Ty was in his kitchen, about to take a much-needed sandwich and cup of tea into the dining room, to eat sitting in one of the unyielding chairs at the table. Secretly he would have liked to have taken his meal into the lounge, sitting in the scuffed but comfortable leather wing-backed armchair. He could have done with the relaxation. But his upbringing dictated he should eat at the table, despite there being no strict parents or formidable nanny around now to make him adhere to their standards.
Ty wasn’t in the best of moods, having been dragged out of bed at four-thirty that morning. He’d been summoned by the extremely anxious works manager of a local factory whose wife was expecting her first baby at the age of forty-three. The husband did not trust a midwife to see to her in case of complications due to his wife’s age, and was insisting Ty himself oversee the birth.
From the symptoms the man blurted out to him, Ty knew that the patient, who had still three weeks to go before her due date, was just experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions, but