One Blue Moon Read Free Page B

five minutes.’
    ‘Ronnie ...’
    ‘One more word out of you, Angelo, and you’ll be working every night next week.’ He looked at the girls. ‘When you hear the horn, get Maud ready. I’ll come in and carry her outside.’
    ‘Thanks, Ronnie.’ Diana was grateful to him for not making her beg for the lift. She finally picked up her tea from the counter and sugared it.
    ‘There’s no need to thank me. I owe Will a favour. And you,’ he glared at Tina. ‘Take a good look at these two and think twice before you try to nag Papa or me into letting you leave home again.’
    ‘See what you’ve done, Diana,’ Tina hissed as Ronnie went out. ‘Now they’ll never let any of us leave home.’
    ‘Except to visit our grandmother in the back end of Italy,’ Angelo crowed. He’d never had any desire to leave Pontypridd.
    ‘Don’t you dare go rubbing it in, Angelo Ronconi,’ Tina snapped.
    ‘Leaving home’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Is it kid?’ Diana helped Maud to sit up while looking around for Wyn. She wanted to thank him. The first familiar face in Pontypridd had shown her that she no longer had to shoulder the problem of Maud’s illness alone. But she couldn’t see him anywhere.
    Maud closed her eyes again, too weak even to voice agreement with Diana. At that moment she would have given every penny that she’d managed to save since September to turn the clock back two years. She wanted to be fourteen again. Curled up in her big, warm, comfortable, flannel-sheeted double bed, a stone footwarmer at her feet, and her big sister Bethan to soothe and cuddle her. But Bethan wasn’t home, and before she’d be allowed go to bed she’d have to face her mother. One glance at the apprehension on Diana’s face was enough to tell her that she wasn’t the only one dreading the encounter.

Chapter Two
    ‘You’re going the wrong way,’ Diana protested, struggling to prevent Maud from falling on to Ronnie as he swung the Trojan around a sharp left turn a third of the way up the Graig hill. Ronnie had insisted on sandwiching Maud on the bench seat between them, but with Maud still teetering on the point of collapse, Diana was finding the drive up the hill more of a strain than the train journey.
    ‘I’m stopping off at Laura and Trevor’s,’ Ronnie announced. ‘What’s the point in having a sister married to a doctor if you don’t make use of him occasionally?’ The eldest of eleven children, he was accustomed to making decisions and assuming authority. Authority strengthened by the business responsibilities his father had thrust upon him at an early age, and his mother’s habit of deferring to him almost as much as she deferred to her husband.
    ‘I think Maud should go straight home to bed,’ Diana said forcefully.
    ‘And I think she needs to see a doctor,’ Ronnie countermanded, swinging the van round to the right and pulling up outside a low terrace of stone houses that fronted directly on to the pavement. ‘And if you’re worrying about Trevor’s bill, don’t. Your uncle pays Trevor his penny a week same as all the other families on the Graig. Trevor won’t charge him any more for looking at Maud now.’
    ‘I didn’t think he would.’ Diana flung open the door of the van and turned to help Maud, but Ronnie had already lifted her cousin from the van. Cradling Maud in one arm, he opened the front door of one of the houses with his free hand.
    ‘Laura!’ he shouted, walking straight past the parlour, down the narrow passage and into the back kitchen.
    ‘Ronnie?’ Laura answered from the range where she was stirring a pot of stew. ‘I am honoured,’ she said sarcastically. ‘What brings you here in the middle of the day, and a market day at that ... Dear God!’ She stepped back, dropping the spoon to the floor as Ronnie carried Maud into the tiny room and set her down in an easy chair comfortably placed in front of the fire.
    ‘She’s ill,’ Ronnie announced somewhat