A Girl Can Dream

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Anne Bennett 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014 Cover photograph © Gordon Crabb/Alison Eldred (girl); Hulton Archive/Getty Images (children); Shutterstock.com (aircraft)

Anne Bennett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007359257

Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007383313

Version: 2017-09-08

I am dedicating this book to all the “Novelistas” for the help, support and encouragement they are always ready to give. I appreciate it all a great deal …

Title PageCopyrightDedicationPart One

Chapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter Fourteen

Part Two

Chapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeChapter Twenty-FourChapter Twenty-FiveChapter Twenty-SixChapter Twenty-Seven

AcknowledgmentsAbout the AuthorBy the Same AuthorAbout the Publisher

Meg Hallett would never forget that terrible day. Her mother, Maeve, had been having labour pains since the early hours of the morning. The other children had gone to Mass with their father but, with the new baby obviously on its way, Meg had stayed behind to tend to her mother. The baby was trying to push its way into the world far too soon and Meg wondered if this was due to the fall her mother had had in the yard the day before.

Suddenly Maeve turned anxiously to her fourteen-year-old daughter. ‘Meggie, you will see to the others, won’t you?’ she begged. ‘I know it will be really hard for you … I know I’m asking you to give up all the dreams you have of a future for yourself, the job you had lined up at Lewis’s and everything but you must promise me to keep them together. I’d not rest easy if I thought the family were torn apart.’

‘Mom, please don’t talk this way,’ Meg cried. Beads of sweat were standing out on Maeve’s brow and Meg wiped them away gently with the damp cloth she had ready, noting that her face was as pale as lint and so thin her high cheekbones stood out.

Maeve had always admired those cheekbones. People always said she was a carbon copy of her mother, but though she had inherited her fine bones, luxurious dark hair with a coppery tinge, and deep brown eyes, she doubted her skin was as flawless, or her cheekbones so high. Now, though, her mother’s rosebud mouth looked bruised from where she had chewed it when the pain was bad, her face had lost all vestige of colour, and her hair was lank around her face.

‘Why don’t you lie down, Mom, and try to sleep?’ Meg suggested gently.

Maeve, however, was too perturbed to sleep and she continued as if Meg hadn’t spoken. ‘And you must help your father. Charlie’s a good man and he will be lost. You will manage between the two of you – you would have been leaving school in a fortnight anyway – and Billy will be starting at the school himself in six months. May will be on hand if you need her.’

Meg nodded. Their neighbour had always been very helpful. ‘I know, Mom.’

‘You will do this for me then, sure you will?’ Maeve said, clutching at her eldest daughter’s hand.

‘Mom, you know I would surely take care of the children and the house – and Daddy too – as well as I am able to,’ Meg said in as firm a voice as she could muster. ‘But I hate to hear you talking this way. You’re going to be fine.’

‘No, my dear girl,’ Maeve said. ‘I haven’t much time. My family in Ireland might say you are too young to deal with all the children and they’ll offer to take one or two off your hands but, I beg you, don’t let them go. My father will have them working their fingers to the bone, as he did me and my siblings.’ She stared intently at Meg, reliving her sad memories of home. ‘If he didn’t feel we’d worked hard enough, then we didn’t eat. We were beaten with his belt for the slightest thing. I escaped my life of abuse, thank God, and now I would hate my parents to get their hands on my children.’