It's Now or Never Read Free

auburn fringe curled damply beneath the rim of her navy-blue school hat. She wore a blazer over a cardigan, beneath which she was clad in a gym slip, blouse and tie. Above her knee-length grey stockings, her legs were goose-pimpled and her feet were freezing in clumpy black leather shoes.
    She would have felt even more chilled if it were not for the navy-blue and gold striped school scarf which she had shoved inside her blazer, criss-crossing the ends so it kept the worst of the cold from her chest. Her mother, Lynne, was always fretting about keeping warm because she had suffered from pneumonia when Roberta was a toddler and even her grandmother had a bad chest, mostly due to the Woodbines of which she’d been so fond, but her Nan’s wheezing and chesty cough played a daily, rattling warning of the pitfalls of not looking after yourself.
    Thinking of her great-grandmother made Roberta feel sad and tears pricked her eyes. Dear Nan, who had led such an interesting life and had so many tales to tell of her days as a dresser in the theatre. The one that Roberta liked best was about when she was a tiny baby and had slept in a box which Nan and Lynne had carried with them from place to place on their travels with the repertory theatre. It had all come to an end just after the war, when her mother had fallen ill.
    Suddenly Roberta slipped in the snow and her heart jumped with fright.
Concentrate on where you’re putting your feet
, she told herself. She thought how it would have been so much simpler for her to catch the number 25 bus outside school as usual and go straight home. That way she and her mother could have visited a local cinema instead of one in town. The thing was that Lynne enjoyed coming into town and so this evening was really to be a treat for both of them. It was Roberta’s own fault, of course, that she was late, having forgotten to tell Lynne that the whole class would be kept in for detention that evening. Her mother was bound to be worrying because she was overprotective of her only daughter.
    Roberta guessed that it could not be helped because like many a war widow, her mother had brought her up without the help of a husband. There had certainly been no help from Robert Donegan’s side of the family, but maybe that was to be expected. After all they lived on the west coast of Ireland and her mother had never met them. As for Lynne’s parents, her father, Nan’s son, was dead and Lynne never spoke about her mother, except to say they had lost touch. Instead she had told her daughter more than once how she and Robert had fallen in love at first sight in an air-raid shelter here in Liverpool and, after a whirlwind romance, had married before his ship had sailed off into the blue – only for it to be torpedoed in the Atlantic.
    Suddenly Roberta felt herself slipping again and she only just managed to save herself from landing flat on her back by grabbing hold of a convenient lamp post. She swung round as she hung on, so she ended up facing the way she had come. It was then she saw the man. Hastily, she dug in her heels and managed to bring herself to a halt. Her heart felt as if it was bouncing about in her chest. For an instant her fingers itched for paper and a stick of charcoal, despite not being able to clearly make out his features due to the brim of his trilby shadowing the upper part of his face. Could it be the same man she’d seen outside her school on Grove Street earlier? She was sure he’d been wearing a black trilby and gaberdine mackintosh but was this one as tall? She hoped that she was mistaken in thinking that he could be following her and wasted no time going on her way.
    After a few minutes she decided that instead of crossing into Hardman Street when she reached the Philharmonic Hall, she would turn into Hope Street at the other end of which loomed the yet unfinished Anglican Cathedral. If he went straight on down to Lycee Street, then she would know that