Daisy's Secret Read Free

he still loved her but that it was too soon, the timing was all wrong, as if the baby were an unwanted gift that could be sent back.  
    And then one day he’d come to her triumphant.
    ‘There’s going to be a war, Daisy, so that settles it. I’ve volunteered to join the Navy. You’ll have to get rid of it, or do as yer mam says and have it adopted. Best thing all round I’d say. There’s plenty of time for us to start having babies, later, when the war’s over.’
    Daisy was filled with fear. She knew nothing of this talk of war. She’d been far too caught up with being in love, and the youthful exuberance of simply enjoying herself to even care, let alone understand what was going on in the wider world. If she’d noticed any rumblings on the wireless, or overheard worried comments from her parents, Daisy had ignored them, imagining that such things didn’t concern her and certainly would not affect her life in any way. How wrong could she be? The war was taking her sweetheart away from her.
    As if that wasn’t bad enough, there had been one almighty row when she’d happily told her parents the news. Her father, as always, had simply looked mournful and said little, leaving it to her mother to rant and rave, though that was after she’d almost fainted with shock and needed the application of Sal Volatile to recover.
    Daisy was their only child and Rita Atkins had never really accepted that her daughter had grown up. She believed in keeping her safe at home and never allowing her to have many friends beyond those she met each Sunday at chapel. Percy had been kept a secret as Daisy feared he might be disapproved of, his family not being quite so low in the pecking order as themselves since they were market stall holders, for all they lived only a few doors down. Daisy recognised instinctively that although her mother might have an inflated notion of her own worth and take on airs, this was simply her way of hanging on to her pride, a way of proving she wasn’t quite in the gutter for all the lowly status of her husband’s job. As a humble rag-and-bone man, Joe Atkins owned nothing more than the horse and cart which he drove around the streets of Salford, handing out donkey stones for rubbing doorsteps in exchange for other folk’s cast-offs.
    Rita told Daisy she’d never fit in with that stuck-up lot, and that she was far too young to wed. She scoffed when Daisy explained how she was in love, and that she’d intended to marry Percy anyway, insisting that at sixteen her silly daughter really no idea what love was all about. Rita was a strong willed woman, and, in her opinion, there was only one way to do things: her way. She made it abundantly clear that Daisy had let her down by such loose behaviour.
    Discussions on what should be done about ‘the problem’ had gone on interminably and neither parent, it seemed, was prepared to listen to a word Daisy said, or cared a jot about what she wanted. It was made clear to her, in no uncertain terms, that she must give up her precious baby the moment it was born.
    She’d cried for weeks in the Mother and Baby Home but no sympathy had been forthcoming. Her mother maintained she was fortunate to have family willing to help; that they’d chosen a good Christian place and not a home for wayward girls, which was most certainly what she deserved. Though how they’d managed to afford to pay for it, Daisy didn’t quite understand, since to her knowledge her parents had never had two halfpennies to rub together. Daisy endured countless sleepless nights agonising over the prospect of giving her baby away but whenever she tried to object, Rita would relate horrific tales of girls driven to having a back street abortion, or to taking their own lives rather than shame their families. She would listen to all of this with deepening dismay and no amount of argument would deflect her mother from her purpose.
    Percy went off to join the navy, kissing her goodbye and promising to