A Silver Lining Read Free Page A

Street. She’d better get a move on or there’d be no Christmas tips to pick up.
    ‘Want me to take some of that home for you, Alma?’ Iorwerth Hopkins, the son of Edna who ran the shop near the house she shared with her mother in Morgan Street, held out his hand for the tree.
    ‘That would be good of you, Iorwerth. It would save me carting it to the café.’ She smiled as she suddenly thought of a solution to her problem. ‘You know Bobby
    Thomas don’t you, Iorwerth?’
    ‘Yes,’ he answered suspiciously in a tone that said knowing and liking were two different things.
    ‘He dropped this at Wilf Horton’s stall.’ She handed him the newspaper-wrapped jumper. ‘It’s his wife’s Christmas present. I don’t know where he lives so I was going to leave it at the police station, but it would be better if you could take it to his wife.’
    ‘They live in Bassett Street. I’ll drop it in to her when I take Madge home.’
    ‘Thanks a lot, Iorwerth.’ She breathed easier. ‘You’ve taken a load off my mind. I hope it isn’t far out of your way.’
    ‘Not far. Have you met Madge?’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ Alma murmured absently, offloading her tree on to him.
    ‘Madge, come over here!’
    A pretty girl with dark hair and eyes and a glowing complexion left a queue at a fruit stall, sidled up to Iorwerth and smiled shyly at Alma.
    ‘Madge and I are getting married in the New Year,’ Iorwerth announced proudly from behind the Christmas tree.
    ‘Congratulations.’ Alma almost choked on the word. Most days she was too busy scraping a living to think about love, marriage, how much Ronnie had meant to her, or how empty her life had now become. She smiled hollowly at the couple as she dumped the remainder of her packages into Iorwerth’s arms. Why did everything, especially lack of money and Ronnie’s absence from her life, seem so much worse just because it was Christmas?
    The room was an unprepossessing place in which to spend Christmas Eve. High-windowed, its bare walls were painted sickly hospital shades of dark green and rancid cream that appeared to have been selected to blend with the complexions of the most diseased patients imaginable. But as delivery rooms went, it was no better, and no worse, than the ones Bethan Powell had worked in as a trainee midwife in the Graig Hospital in Pontypridd.
    Simply a dismal, uninspiring place in which to make an entry into the world.
    ‘Darling, are you all right?’ Andrew, her husband of three months hovered ineffectually at the foot of the iron bedstead, an anxious frown creasing his handsome face.
    ‘Of course she’s not all right!’ Lettie the cockney nurse snapped tartly. ‘Men!’ she grinned sympathetically at Bethan as she took her pulse. ‘They get us into these states and then have the nerve to ask if we’re all right.’
    ‘I’m fine,’ Bethan smiled weakly, valiantly trying to ignore the discomfort of the thin mattress and rickety bedsprings. ’Really, it’s not that bad.’
    ‘Not yet it’s not,’ the nurse agreed. ‘But believe you me; it’s going to get a lot –’
    ‘ ... worse before it gets better,’ Bethan finished for her.
    The phrase was one she’d used often enough herself during deliveries.
    ‘Midwives! They always make the worst patients. Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor John?’
    Andrew smiled vaguely, too preoccupied with Bethan’s pain to follow Lettie’s conversation.
    ‘I’m only half a trained midwife,’ Bethan corrected, gasping as another pain gathered inside her.
    ‘And it looks as though you’re going to be too busy for a while to see to the other half. Doctor John?’ Lettie looked enquiringly at Andrew. ‘Do you intend to deliver your baby yourself?’
    ‘No. Doctor Floyd’s coming in,’ Andrew replied quickly, deferring to his immediate superior.
    ‘Then it’s time I called him. You’ll be all right for five minutes?’ she asked Bethan.
    ‘Ten if you can’t reach him.’ Bethan continued to