Corner House Girls

by Lilian Harry

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

The first in the Corner House series, set in a Lyons Corner House in London on the brink of the Second World War. When cousins Jo and Phyl decide to become Lyons Corner House waitresses, or 'Nippies', as they are known for their speedy service, they have no idea how their lives are about to change. They are whisked from family life in Woolwich to digs in London; they are transported from a factory and a grocer's shop to the wonderful dining rooms of Lyons, Marble Arch, and they swap their old overalls for the smart uniforms of the Corner House girls. Jo and Phyl settle in and make friends with both waitresses and customers. There are boyfriends, lovers and fiancés, friendship and romance, but as the Second World War becomes increasingly imminent, the future of these men and women seems more and more uncertain.

Release date: August 19, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 314

Sample

From today, nothing would ever be quite the same again.

Today, 11 May 1937, was Coronation Day, and it would change the lives of the new King and Queen for ever. And also – although they didn’t yet know it – the lives of cousins Phyl Jennings and Jo Mason, who had spent the night sitting beside a fat lady on the pavement alongside the Mall.

‘I don’t know what our Dad’s going to say when I get home,’ Phyl said nervously. ‘I mean, I know I left a note, and your Dad said he’d have a word, too, but I’ve never gone against him like this before. He’ll be that wild.’

‘Well, there’s not much he can do about it, now you’ve come,’ Jo observed. ‘I dare say he’ll rant and rave a bit, but he can’t actually lock you up, can he? And maybe by then he’ll have come round a bit. Anyway, whatever happens, he can’t take this away from you, can he?’ She looked around at the crowded pavement, the flags fluttering proudly from their tall poles, the decorations. ‘You’ll always be able to remember seeing the new King and Queen go by in their carriage, with their crowns on and everything.’

Phyl nodded, her brown eyes sparkling. She took a deep breath and tried to push away any uncomfortable thoughts of the argument she had had with her father over whether she should come at all.

‘Stay out all night?’ Stan Jennings exclaimed. He stared at his daughter, his brows knotted like tufts of scorched grass. ‘I don’t know about that. Ten o’clock’s your time, and has been for the past two years, since you turned sixteen. Can’t you go up in the morning, early?’

‘Dad, we won’t be able to get anywhere near the procession if we do that,’ Phyl said impatiently. ‘They say there’s going to be thousands there. I bet there’ll be people in the best spots a week beforehand. Even going the day before, we’ll be lucky to get a good place.’

‘Not much use in trying, then, is there?’ he said maddeningly. ‘You’d be better off stopping at home and listening to it on the wireless. They’re going to broadcast it all over the world, you’ll surely be able to catch a whisper here in Woolwich.’

‘But we won’t see anything that way. Please, Dad.’ Phyl gave her father her most appealing look, tilting her head to one side and widening her brown eyes. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to us. We’ll be with thousands of other people and they’ll all be there to see the procession, same as us. We’re not going to get lost or kidnapped or anything.’

‘That’s a pity,’ remarked her brother Norman, who was standing at the scullery sink, stripped to the waist, washing off the dirt and oil that had accumulated during a day of working in the dockyard. ‘I thought for a minute there was a bit of hope there.’

Phyl made a face at him and then turned back to her father. ‘Please, Dad.’

Stan Jennings sighed. He knew – and his daughter knew, too, all too well – that he scarcely ever refused her when she looked at him like that. The spitting image of her mum she was, with those dark curls and big brown eyes, and he’d never been able to deny his May anything either. It wasn’t fair to mankind, he’d remarked to his brother-in-law Bill Mason over the fence that divided their homes, it wasn’t fair of God to make three of them so alike – May and her twin sister Carrie, and now young Phyl. Just as well Bill’s girl Jo took after her dad instead of her own mum, or none of the rest of them would have stood a chance.

All the same, a father had to set his limits, especially for a girl as bright and pretty as his Phyl. And to tell the truth, he’d been feeling a bit at a loss with her just lately. She’d got too independent, that was the trouble, too set on her own way and showing him she was ‘grown up’, and it made him feel frightened in a funny sort of way, and all the more determined to keep her on a short leash.

‘No,’ he said, sounding harsher than he’d meant to because he didn’t like taking that cheeky grin off her face. ‘I’m sorry, Phyl, but I’m not having you gallivanting round London all on your own all night. No, I know you said Jo’d be with you—’ he held up a work-roughened hand to still her protest ‘—but as far as I’m concerned, that’s the same as you being on your own. Worse. There’s no knowing what a couple of giddy young girls’ll get up to up there. You can stop here and listen to it on the wireless like the rest of us.’

‘We’d be able to come back and tell you all about it,’ Phyl wheedled, her hand on his arm. ‘I bet Mum’d like that, and Auntie Carrie. They’ll want to know about the Queen’s frock and the carriages and all the other kings and queens what’ve come to see it. And I don’t suppose we’ll ever get another chance, not till we’re too old to care, anyway.’

‘I said no.’ His tone told her this ought to be the end of it, but Phyl couldn’t let it rest. She tilted her head again.

‘You know how you’ve always told us about the time you saw Queen Victoria when she was really, really old. Well, I want to be able to tell my kids I saw King George going to his coronation. You wouldn’t want me to have to tell them my dad wouldn’t let me go, would you? You wouldn’t want your own grandchildren thinking you were too mean—’

‘If they’ve got any sense,’ he said, bringing his hand flat down on the table, ‘they’ll think that their grandad had a bit of sense, not letting his daughter go sleeping all night in the open in London. You don’t know what could happen to you up there, my girl, and I’m not going to tell you. Now, just take no for an answer for once. I don’t want to hear another word about it, d’you hear?’

Phyl opened her mouth to protest again, but the look on her father’s face told her that she was in danger of going too far. Stan Jennings was a steady enough man on the whole, but he did have a temper and he believed in strict discipline. As in many households, there was a thin cane hanging behind the kitchen door and both Phyl’s brothers had felt its sting on more than one occasion. Stan had never struck Phyl, and she didn’t think he was likely to start now, but just to incur his anger would be frightening enough.

She thought of this as she sat on the pavement with Jo. There was no doubt that leaving a note behind to say she’d flouted his orders and gone to London anyway was going to result in real trouble. But, as Jo had said, there wasn’t really anything he could do, apart from be angry with her when she got home. And maybe her mother and Auntie Carrie and Jo’s father – who had agreed to his own daughter coming to watch the procession – would be able to talk him round before Phyl even had to put her head round the door.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jo said, seeing her pensive look. ‘He’s not really mean, your dad – he just doesn’t think his little girl’s grown up yet, that’s all. He’ll be all right when he sees you come home, safe and sound.’

‘Not grown up!’ Phyl exclaimed. ‘I’ll give him not grown up! I’m eighteen, after all – old enough to go out to work, old enough to get married—’

‘Not without his say-so.’

‘I could if I lived in Scotland. Not that I’d want to, not yet, anyway. I want to have a bit of fun before I get tied down.’ Phyl stared restlessly across the Mall. ‘I tell you what, Jo, I’d like to get a job somewhere away from home. Be independent. I’m fed up with having to be in at ten of an evening and stop home on Sunday mornings to help cook the dinner. And I’m sick and tired of that awful factory job!’

‘Well, I can’t see your dad letting you leave home, not if he won’t even let you spend one night away to watch the Coronation,’ Jo said.

‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly be sleeping on the pavements, would I?’ Phyl grinned. ‘Anyway, let’s forget it now, Jo. I’ve come to enjoy myself, and I’m blowed if I’m going to let anything else spoil it.’

‘That’s right, girl,’ said the fat woman sitting close by on a heap of cushions and a raincoat. ‘That’s what it’s all about. A bit of enjoyment. That’s what we all needs, when all’s said and done, and that’s just what we’re going to ’ave. ’Ere – ’ave a Marmite sandwich. And I got a flask of tea to keep the chill off – you can ’ave a sup of that, too.’

Phyl accepted a Marmite sandwich, and Jo produced a fruit cake her mother had given her and shared that around. Darkness was drawing in, but the Mall was lit with gaslamps and fancy lanterns, and quite a lot of people had hurricane lamps or torches. Everyone else was spreading blankets on the ground and getting out food, too, offering it about. It began to seem like a huge party, and Phyl forgot her father’s wrath and began to enjoy herself.

Dawn came with grey skies, and rain fell like tears on the crowds camped on the pavements.

‘Tears of ’appiness, that’s what they are,’ declared the fat woman as she drank coffee from another battered Thermos flask and ate increasingly soggy Marmite sandwiches for breakfast. ‘Tears of ’appiness.’ She thought for a moment, then added darkly, ‘Not like the tears we mighter cried for the Prince of Wales, when he told us all he was going to put that American hussy before his own country. Nor like what we mighter found ourselves crying if he hadn’t done it, and bin crowned King after all.’

Today, any tears shed would be of excitement, to welcome the new King, George the Sixth, who had been pushed on to the throne whether he liked it or not. And for his Queen, Elizabeth, the lovely young woman with the cornflower eyes, and the two Princesses – Elizabeth, who would herself one day be Queen, and little Margaret Rose.

As Phyl had prophesied, there was already a large crowd gathering beside the route, and if they hadn’t arrived the previous evening they would never have managed to find a space by the edge of the pavement. Jo had brought a blanket and a couple of cushions, and Phyl’s brother Norman, who had been let into the secret, had produced an old ground-sheet, left over from the days when he’d been a Boy Scout. They huddled underneath it, giggling. A drop of rain never hurt anyone, Phyl said stoutly, they weren’t made of sugar, and they’d got the rest of their lives to stay dry.

‘I wish we lived in London,’ Jo said, gazing around. ‘Properly, I mean, not out where we are. It’s all so exciting – there’s always something going on. Just imagine what it must be like to go out never knowing if you might see the King or Queen go past in a carriage or a big car.’

‘Or film stars,’ Phyl agreed. ‘Or actors and actresses from the big shows. We could go to see the shows, too, any time. It’d be smashing.’

They sat for a while talking about what they’d do if they lived in the middle of London. Go to Hyde Park every day. Go for boat-rides on the Serpentine. Go to the Zoo. Stand outside the stage doors of the big theatres – this was Phyl – and get famous autographs. Go to the big sports stadiums and watch all the best athletes – this was Jo. There seemed to be no end to the fun two girls could have in London.

‘It’s getting jobs that’s the problem,’ Phyl said despondently. ‘And all I’ve ever done is that awful riveting and soldering in the factory. There’s not many factories in the middle of London, and I don’t really know what else I could do. I suppose I could go to night-school to learn typing and shorthand, but it’d take such a long time – I want to go now.’

‘There’s plenty of greengrocers’ shops,’ said Jo, who worked in one with her mother, ‘but the wages wouldn’t be enough to live on up here. Anyway, I bet there’s no jobs going. You know what it’s been like these past few years, with the Depression and all. We’re stuck where we are, Phyl, that’s the truth of it.’

They had tried to sleep, but what with the chilly rain and the discomfort of the pavement, even with cushions and blankets, and the strangeness of trying to sleep amongst thousands of strangers, neither of them did much more than doze. As Jo had predicted, the food they had brought gave them something to do, and the fruit cake, shared with the fat woman in exchange for some jam sandwiches – so she did have something besides Marmite, Phyl thought – was soon gone. But at last it was morning, and the fat woman was saying that the clouds were shedding tears of happiness – she liked poetry, she’d told the girls at some point during the night, read a lot of it she did, in magazines – and then London itself was waking up and the crowd’s excitement growing as the hour approached for the procession to begin.

‘I’ve never seen anything so gorgeous,’ Phyl breathed when it was all over at last. They stood together in the crowd, gazing up at the balcony of Buckingham Palace. ‘Look at that, Jo, Queen Elizabeth in that beautiful frock, King George in all that ermine – and real crowns on their heads. Remember when we went to the Tower to see the Crown Jewels? We never thought we’d actually see them on their heads, did we, Jo? We never thought we’d see them driving in that gorgeous carriage down the Mall to Buckingham Palace itself. And then standing on the balcony, waving to everyone. Waving to us.’

‘It’s smashing,’ her cousin agreed. ‘Mind you, old Queen Mary looks a bit strait-laced, but, then, she always does. Thinks it’s a bit beneath her to smile at the peasants, I reckon! This new Queen’s different, she looks as if she likes a bit of fun. And he’s nice-looking, too, got a kind sort of face. They say he’s ever so shy – seems funny for a king to be shy, doesn’t it?’

She stopped speaking to cheer with the crowd, and waved her hand vigorously as the Royal Family beamed down from their high position on the front of the Palace. The two Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, wearing their own coronets, smiled shyly and around them the courtiers, dressed for the fine occasion it was, stood watchful and attentive. Then, to the disappointed sighs of the people, they all turned and disappeared inside, and everyone knew that the show was over.

Phyl turned to Jo and rolled her bright, dark brown eyes. ‘I’ll tell you what, if I was run over by a bus at this very minute, I’d die happy, straight I would.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ Jo retorted tartly. ‘Think what it’d be like for me, having to scrape you up off the road and take you home to Auntie May in a paper bag. She’d have my guts for garters, and that’s nothing to what your dad’d do. Anyway, haven’t you got a date with Dave Willett on Saturday night? You wouldn’t want to miss that.’

Phyl made a face. ‘Oh, him! Well, I suppose going to the flicks with him is better than being run over by a number seven bus – but only just!’ She sighed and gazed up again at the balcony of the Palace. ‘Well, I suppose that’s it. They’re not going to come out again, are they? They must be tired out after a day like that – I bet they’re in there now, taking off their shoes and flopping down on the settee and getting a servant to bring them a cup of tea.’

Jo grinned at the thought and caught her cousin’s arm as the crowds swirled about them. ‘Talking of tea, let’s go and get a cup ourselves, and a bite to eat. I’m just about starving after all that standing about and cheering, and we’ve got nothing left of all that cake and stuff. My tummy thinks my throat’s been cut. Where shall we go, eh? Somewhere a bit flash, to make a real day of it?’

‘Let’s go to the Corner House at Charing Cross,’ Phyl suggested. ‘They’ll be busy but it’s a smashing place and the food’s always good. And they play music, too – there was a gipsy band when I went with our Norman once, when we come up for that football match.’

The two girls cast a last long look at the balcony and then turned to push their way through the mass of people surging along the Mall. Over a million people had come to London on this May day to see the coronation procession of King George the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth. Even the back streets were decorated, banners and rows of coloured flags strung between the houses, and every official building sported a Union Jack – most of them the right way up – and a festoon of coloured bunting. Everyone was in good humour, even though many, like Jo and Phyl, had been there for over twenty-four hours now, and all around them the girls could hear the excited chatter of people whose patience had been rewarded, and who had at last seen their new King and Queen in all their triumph.

‘He’s a nice, quiet sort of chap. He won’t let us down, like the Prince of Wales did.’ … ‘Ain’t she a smasher? I never seen such blue eyes.’ … ‘She looked right at me, she did, and smiled. At me!’ … ‘And what about the little Princesses, then, eh? That Elizabeth looks a little queen already, but I bet you young Margaret Rose is going to break a few hearts before she’s done …’

‘Come on,’ Jo said, thrusting a way through the crowd. ‘We’ll nip through this way, it’s a bit quieter.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ Phyl panted, struggling to keep up with her. ‘You’re so tall you can see over everyone. All I can see is people’s chests.’

‘Well, stick close and you’ll be all right.’ Jo’s bright chestnut head shone like a beacon as she forged through the people, all of whom were intent on getting somewhere – either to Buckingham Palace, even though it was too late to see Their Majesties, or into the park or towards one of the Underground stations. She looked back every minute or two to make sure that Phyl was still behind her, but the crowd was in good humour and parted to let them through. At last, without much idea of how they’d got there, they found themselves under Admiralty Arch and then, breathless, opposite Charing Cross station and the white façade of one of Lyons’ Corner Houses.

‘Blimey,’ Phyl said, ‘look at the queue! We’ll never get a seat.’

‘Yes, we will. They can serve hundreds at a time. And it’ll be the same wherever we try, so we might as well join a good queue as a bad ’un.’ Jo strode swiftly across the road, still so thronged with people that no traffic had a chance of getting through, and took up position at the end of the long string of people waiting to get into the restaurant. Like every other building in London, it was decorated for the occasion, with streamers fluttering from the windows and a huge Union Jack draped across its front.

The procession had been a long one, with representatives from all parts of the British Empire, as well as from other countries, each in either a grand carriage or a smart limousine. There had been platoons and regiments from all the Armed Forces, accompanied by their own bands, immaculately turned out, some marching on foot, others riding splendid shire horses that were not only dressed in gleaming bridles and harness but looked as if they’d had a going-over themselves with Cherry Blossom boot polish. It was a spectacle such as had not been seen in London for years, and it seemed to betoken an end to the hard times of the Depression and the lean years and a beginning of hope. For a few hours, the British and their Empire could shake off the shame of King Edward’s abdication, could forget the bad news – the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, the crash only a week before of the great airship Hindenburg, the muttering threat of Hitler’s Nazis – and rejoice. For a few hours, they could sweep themselves back into the peace of the early years of the century, and feel themselves great again.

As Jo had predicted, the queue moved steadily, but it was still an hour before the two girls were inside the great restaurant. Once through the big plate-glass doors, they were faced with a choice of going downstairs to the Brasserie or upstairs to the more formal dining hall, but the quickest movement was in the cheerful, brightly lit ground-floor restaurant, and they nodded at the smiling ‘seater’ who guided them swiftly through the big room to a vacant table.

‘Isn’t it smashing?’ Phyl whispered as they took their seats. ‘I mean, it’s like a palace itself, isn’t it? All this lovely carpet and those gorgeous lights, and the pictures on the walls. I feel as if I’ve just been crowned myself!’

‘I’ll crown you if you don’t pick up that menu and decide what you’re going to have to eat,’ Jo retorted. ‘And so will all those people still waiting to get in. Come on, Phyl, stop chattering and make up your mind. The waitress will be here any minute and she won’t want to hang about.’

‘She’s not a waitress, she’s a Nippy.’ Phyl did as she was told and they gazed at the printed menu together. ‘That’s what they’re called, Nippies, because they nip about so quick. They’re smart, too, aren’t they, in that black frock with the white apron, and that little white cap? And I like all those little buttons down the front of the frock, they really set it off.’

‘You might not like ’em so much if you had to do them up every day,’ a voice said, and they looked up, startled, to see one of the Nippies standing beside them, her face round and smiling under her white cap, her notebook held ready to write down their orders. ‘And woe betide you if you’re caught with one of them loose – or not sewn on with the proper red cotton – or off altogether.’

‘Well, you don’t look too hard done by,’ Phyl said, grinning back. ‘I wouldn’t mind working in a place like this, I can tell you. It’d beat slaving away in a factory morning till night.’

The girl raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t run away with the idea it’s easy. I tell you, we work pretty hard. But – yeah, I reckon you’re right, it’s better than a factory any day.’ She lifted her notebook and pencil. ‘Decided what you want? The poached eggs on toast are good, and come quick. We’re trying to serve as many people as possible today.’

‘Sounds all right to me,’ Jo said decisively. ‘What about you, Phyl? And a big pot of tea, we’re shrivelled up.’

‘And a plate of cakes,’ Phyl stipulated. ‘My brother’d kill me if I went home and told him I’d been to a Corner House and not had any cakes.’

‘Poached eggs on toast twice, a big pot and a plate of assorted,’ the girl said. ‘Be here in a jiffy.’ And she whisked away, threading her way swiftly between the tables to the serving door.

Phyl watched her go. ‘She’s nice, isn’t she? I bet they’re all nice here. Not like that crowd down at the factory, spiteful cows. I tell you, Jo, if I thought I could get a job in a place like this I’d ask for me cards straight away, I would. I mean, it doesn’t matter how hard you have to work, it must be better in a place like this, with music playing and everyone cheerful, than stuck at a bench doing riveting.’

‘I reckon it must.’ Jo looked thoughtfully around the big restaurant. Although there must have been over a hundred people sitting at the tables, the sound of voices was little more than a murmur and the silver notes of the gipsy band drifted like perfume through the air. The lights glowed above their heads and the walls were richly decorated with pictures and heavy, draped curtains. The Nippies walked briskly back and forth, holding large round silver trays in front of them and sometimes even over their heads, laden with fresh food or piled with used crockery. In one corner a girl was changing a stained tablecloth, so swiftly and neatly that the surface of the table wasn’t exposed for a second, and two Nippies stood by the cashier’s desk, writing out bills. Everything was done quickly and efficiently and everyone was smiling.

‘It’s better than working in a shop, too,’ Jo said. ‘Specially a greengrocer’s.’ She looked ruefully at her hands, always stained by vegetables and soil no matter how hard she scrubbed them. ‘Tell you what, Phyl – when that girl comes back, why don’t we ask her about it? See what the chances are?’

Phyl stared at her, round-eyed. ‘You mean – try and get a job here? Us?’

‘Well, why not? I bet we could do it just as good as any of these other girls.’ Jo watched the hurrying waitresses. ‘It wouldn’t do any harm to ask, anyway.’

Phyl ducked her head a little and drew in her mouth. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I could carry one of those trays without dropping everything. I mean, suppose I spilt soup all down a customer’s neck – I’d die!’

‘Well, at least you’d die in a nice place,’ Jo remarked. ‘Look, it’s not going to kill us to ask, is it? You were the one who said you’d like to work here. And we were both talking about what it’d be like to be right in London.’

‘Yes, but I never really thought—’ Phyl broke off as their own Nippy arrived, bearing a tray on which rested a large teapot, water and milk jugs, sugar and cups and saucers. Quickly and neatly, she removed them from the tray and set them on the table.

‘Oh, thanks, I’ve been dying for that.’

‘Poached eggs’ll be along in a mo,’ the girl said, and was gone before they could say anything else. Jo raised her eyebrows at her cousin.

‘Well, will you be mum, or shall I?’ Without waiting for an answer, she lifted the pot and began to pour out the tea. ‘What d’you say, Phyl? Shall we ask her? See what it’s really like to work here?’

Phyl gazed at her, brown eyes sparkling. Her rosy face lit up as her dimpling smile broke out, and she giggled with sudden excitement, nodding so vigorously that a curl the colour of dark chocolate escaped from her hairband and fell across her forehead. She pushed it back impatiently and took a sip of tea.

‘Yes. Yes, let’s. Let’s find out what you have to do and how you apply and everything. Just think of it, Jo – you and me, working in the middle of London. What a lark, eh!’ Her eyes brightened further as a fresh thought struck her. ‘Here – we might even get some of the actors and actresses coming to our tables – people like Flanagan and Allen, and the Crazy Gang, and Joan Fontaine. And—’

Jo put down her cup, laughing. ‘All right, don’t get carried away. We all know you’re mad about the theatre. You’d be here to work, remember, not go out on the town. Anyway, we haven’t even decided if we’ll apply yet. They might not want girls at the moment, and if they do they might not want us.’

‘Well, we’ll find out. Like you said, it can’t do any harm to ask. Look, here comes our Nippy now.’ They watched as the girl made her way towards their table, her tray now set with two plates of poached eggs on toast and a dish of cakes. She smiled and began to set the food out in front of them.

‘That looks smashing,’ Phyl said, and then looked up into the girl’s face. ‘Look, d’you mind if we ask you something?’

‘Ask away, only don’t take too long, will you? We’re run off our feet today.’

‘I know. It’s just – well, we’ve been wondering how’d you get to be a Nippy? What’s it like working at a Corner House? And – and, well, d’you think we might stand a chance?’ The words tumbled from Phyl’s lips, leaving her slightly breathless. Her cheeks were pink.

The Nippy raised her eyebrows and laughed. ‘Well, that ain’t a quick question! It’s a whole load of questions. Look, I’ll tell you as quick as I can. Like I said, it’s hard work but we have a lot of laughs and Lyons is a good company to work for – they look after you. The pay’s not a fortune, but you get tips and presents and sometimes the customers even ask girls out. You’ve got to be eighteen to be a Nippy, but if you’re younger than that they’ll take you in the kitchens, or you can be a Trippy – serve hors d’oeuvres and cakes on trolleys. You apply to Head Office and they’ll give you an interview and then some training. And you might have to live in digs, if your home’s too far away – but they make sure you’ve got a good place. And there’s a smashing sports and leisure club out at Sudbury, we have dances and all sorts of fun there.’

‘What about—?’ Phyl began, but the girl shook her head and picked up her tray.

‘Sorry, can’t stop any longer. I told you, we’re up to our ears today. Tell you what, I’ll write the address down on your bill and if you’re interested, all you got to do is write and ask, see?’ With a quick smile, she was gone, clearing a table which had just been vacated and setting it with fresh cutlery, and in a moment she had disappeared to take another order.

Jo and Phyl looked at each other. Although the daughters of twin sisters, they were quite different. Phyl, like her mother May, was small and quick like a wren, with a bubbling sense of humour and a sense of mischief that came from pure merriment. Jo was tall and lean like her father Bill, with long arms and legs, a wide forehead with clear grey eyes, a mouth she considered too large and a mane of chestnut hair. Although a month younger than her cousin, she was usually taken for the elder, mainly because of her height. Always a tomboy, she still preferred swimming and netball to the dancing Phyl loved, and the thought of finding a sweetheart hadn’t even entered her head.

‘Well, what d’you think?’ she asked now. ‘I like the sound of that sports club. I wonder what they play.’

‘She said they have dances, too. I bet there’s no end of fun. Let’s do it, Jo. Let’s write and ask, at least, and find out all about it.’ Phyl picked up