Forget-Me-Not Child
A story of struggle and hardship and one girl’s battle for survival from the best-selling author of If You Were the Only Girl and Another Man’s Child.Angela McCluskey comes to Birmingham from Ireland with her family as a young girl to escape the terrible poverty in her homeland. But the dream of a better life is dashed as bad fortune dogs the family.When Angela marries her childhood sweetheart, she has hopes of a brighter future, which are dashed when her husband is called up to fight in the Great War. Tragedy strikes and Angela is left to rear her frail daughter on her own, though the worst is yet to come when Angela suffers another terrible misfortune.Pregnant and destitute and already with one mouth to feed that she can ill afford, there is nowhere left to turn. What destiny awaits Angela and her unborn child? Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, will Angela forever be punished for the choices that she makes?
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Anne Bennett 2017
Anne Bennett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy for 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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008162313
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008162320
Version: 2017-09-08
I dedicate this, my 20th book, to my family for their love and encouragement over the years. I love and appreciate you all greatly.
Contents
Angela could remember little of her earlier life when the McClusky family lived in Donegal in Northern Ireland. As she grew she had understood that her name was not McClusky but was Kennedy, and she was the youngest daughter of Connie and Padraig Kennedy, and that Mary and Matt McClusky were not her real parents at all, though she called them Mammy and Daddy. She also learned that she had once had four older siblings all at school and so when Minnie the eldest contracted TB and Angela’s mother realized it was rife in the school, she asked Mary McClusky, who was a great friend of hers, to care for Angela, then just eighteen months old, in an effort to keep her safe. Mary had not hesitated and Angela lived in the McClusky home, petted and feted by the five McClusky boys who had never had a girl in the family before.
However, before Angela was two years old she was an orphan; for her parents succumbed to TB too as they watched their children die one by one. Mary was distraught at the loss of her dear friend and all those poor young children. And Padraig too, for he was a fine strapping man and well able, anyone would have thought, to fight off any illness.
‘Ah, but maybe he hadn’t the will to fight,’ Matt said. ‘He’d watched his children all die and then his wife had gone as well before he developed it. What was left for him if he had recovered? I imagine he didn’t bother fighting it.’
Whatever the way of it, there was a spate of funerals and though Angela attended none of them she was aware of a sadness in the McClusky family without understanding it.
Eventually Mary had to rouse herself for she had a family to see to, including little motherless Angela, and Matt had a farm to run. Mary did wonder if there was some long-lost relative who would look after Angela, but after the last funeral it was apparent there wasn’t and Mary decided that she would stay with them. She knew there would be no opposition from Matt who had by then grown extremely fond of her, as they all had, and he just nodded when Mary said it was the very least she could do for her friend. Matt too had been badly shaken by the deaths of the entire Kennedy family and was well aware that a similar tragedy could have happened to his family just as easily. This time they had got through unscathed and he readily agreed that Angela should continue to live with them and grow up as their daughter.
‘Angela will be your new little sister,’ Mary told her sons. Not one of them made any objection but the happiest of them all was her youngest, Barry. At five years old, he was three years older than Angela and she was petite for her age with white-blonde curls and big blue eyes that reminded him of a little doll. She was better than any doll though for she seemed to have happiness running through her, her ready smile lit up her whole face and her laugh was so infectious all the McClusky boys would nearly jump through hoops to amuse her. ‘I will be the best brother I know how to be,’ Barry said earnestly. ‘I was already fed up of being the youngest.’
Mary laughed and tousled Barry’s hair. ‘I’m sure you will, son,’ she said, ‘and she will love you dearly.’
