After Hours by Jenny Oldfield

got a bit put by from the old market-stall days, and I can dip into that and find a place for the poor old sod to stay. I’ll pay his rent for a bit.’
    Duke’s frown deepened. ‘You’re sure you can manage that?’
    She nodded. ‘Call it my rainy day money. And if this ain’t a rainy day, I don’t know what is.’
    He saw her mind was made up and began to follow her line of reasoning. ‘It’d be somewhere nice and handy, I take it?’
    â€˜I thought of the tenement down the court. Joe O’Hagan was just saying this new landlord has kicked a lot out for being late with the rent. There’s plenty of rooms free. Willie could take one on the ground floor with no steps.’
    â€˜That’s the ticket,’ Duke agreed, though his heart was sinking. ‘You think he can get by?’
    Annie recalled the wrecked piece of humanity she’d just encountered. ‘No, Duke. I’ll have to look after him.” She looked him straight in the eye.
    He lifted his hand to stroke her hair. ‘I know, Annie,’ he said sorrowfully. He cleared his throat, rising to the challenge of her selflessness. ‘I been thinking about it. We gotta do the right thing, and I’m saying to you now, love you like I do, and will do to my dying day, I gotta tell you you’re free. You ain’t under no obligation to stay on at the Duke, see.’
    â€˜Free?’ Annie repeated the word like a death sentence. ‘You ain’t sending me on my way, Duke?’
    His voice broke down: ‘Never in this world, Annie darling. Only, we gotta do what’s right.’
    Annie went and clung to him. ‘I’m trying. But this is hard. I’d cut off my right hand for this never to have happened!’
    â€˜But it has.’
    They talked long into the night, growing calmer, trying to look ahead into the future. The first thing they wanted to do next morning was to include everyone else in what had taken place. They asked Hettie to break the news to Jess, while Sadie explained to Ernie that Duke and Annie had hit a problem they wanted to share with the family. Everyone was coming to Sunday tea.
    Ernie nodded and went and got his best collar from the top drawer. He polished his boots and paid special attention to his teeth and hair. It was Ernie’s wide, simple smile that greeted Mo and Grace that afternoon as they leaped upstairs.
    â€˜Now you all know this ain’t the sort of Christmas get-together we had in mind,’ Duke began. They’d arrived in Sunday best, as smart a bunch as he could wish to greet; the two men in their tight-fitting suits with wide lapels, the girls beautifully kitted out, thanks to Jess and Hettie’s skill with the needle. His grandchildren were shiny clean in white collars and socks. ‘No need to say why not, worse luck,’ he went on. He looked down at Annie, who sat in her own fireside chair, turning her head this way and that with birdlike precision, her face glad as little Mo scrambled on to her knee.
    Duke stood next to her, back to the fire, with the others gathered round, sitting or standing, and Rob leaning against the mantelpiecein his usual self-assured pose. ‘Annie’s asked me to start doing the talking,’ he said. ‘She wants you to know she ain’t thrilled by Wiggin turning up out of the blue. But he’s a sick man, and Annie wants to look after him.’
    Frances leaned across and murmured to Billy. Jess warned Maurice to hear Duke out.
    â€˜Now, we all know her too well to try and change her mind. So she’s been down the court this morning to have a word with Bertie Hill about renting a room.
    â€˜How sick?’ Maurice asked, in spite of his wife’s warning. It was where everyone’s thoughts were tending.
    â€˜Pretty bad,’ Duke confirmed. ‘But if he does pull through, Annie wants to have me room ready and waiting.’
    â€˜Even after what