Diamonds in Danby Walk

by Pamela Evans

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

A young girl discovers that the grass isn't always greener on the other side... Set in London's East End in the 1900s, Diamonds in Danby Walk is Pam Evans' dramatic and heartrending family saga sure to appeal to fans of Dilly Court and Annie Murray. If Ralph Jackson had not been selfishly intent on an afternoon's stolen pleasure with his East End mistress Clara that day in 1900, a great many lives would have been different - most notably that of Amy Atkins, Clara's skinny young niece. Her penniless father George wants a better start for her than the mean streets of Bethnal Green, and if he has to resort to a spot of blackmail to get it, so be it. For fear of his philandering ways coming to light, Ralph offers Amy a job at his posh West London jewellers. With her quick wits and eye for business she attracts the attention of Ralph's handsome son Clifford. But when one thing inevitably leads to another, weak-willed Clifford is quite happy to leave Amy holding the baby. He has reckoned without the powerful influence Amy's father still exerts over Ralph. An amazed Amy finds herself Mrs Clifford Jackson, but even love and gratitude do not blind her to her husband's weaknesses, and when tragedy strikes she is faced with some difficult choices... What Amazon readers are saying about Diamonds in Danby Walk : ' Lovely story' ' Five stars '

Release date: November 17, 2016

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 456

Sample

Had Ralph Jackson known of the serious, long-term consequences of his determination to commit adultery on that bitter winter’s day in 1900, he would undoubtedly have accepted the fact that he was in no fit state to go gallivanting across London, and curled up in bed with a hot-water bottle.

But he was a man of commercial talent rather than prophecy, with a thriving business to his credit, and he was damned if he was going to let a few aches and pains interfere with his love life. The current influenza epidemic might well be creating a boom for undertakers, but it suited him this morning to believe that what ailed him was nothing more serious than the beginnings of a common cold.

Breakfast was progressing ordinarily enough in the Jackson household. Ralph and his wife Florence were seated at the table in the maple-floored dining room of their fine suburban home. The room was well-appointed, with reproduction Jacobean furniture in dark polished wood and heavily patterned wallpaper, most of which was covered with pictures and family photographs. A fire crackled cosily in the hearth which was surrounded by an ornate, wood-carved mantel littered with expensive ornaments and vases, boldly displayed to show the family’s wealth and good taste.

Florence, whose ample proportions were rigidly confined by boned and laced corsets beneath her high-necked day dress, observed her husband with mild curiosity as she daintily stirred her coffee. ‘Are you feeling quite well this morning, Ralph dear?’ she asked, her brown eyes lingering on him quizzically. ‘You look a bit peaky. I do hope you’re not about to go down with this dreadful influenza that so many people are catching.’

‘I’m perfectly all right, thank you, my dear,’ he lied smoothly, struggling not to wince with the pain of swallowing. Even Ralph, who was not normally sensitive to life’s ironies, could see fate mocking him on this occasion. For it was not in his nature to suffer in silence, and had he had less interesting ‘business’ to attend to, he would have welcomed the opportunity to retire to bed, to be pampered and plied with hot milk lavishly laced with whisky. But today was earmarked for clandestine pleasure with a woman as different to his wife as beef broth was to vanilla soufflé. The fiction continued to flow from his lips with practised ease. ‘And it’s just as well I am, as I have important business to attend to in Hatton Garden today. I will leave the shop around mid-morning and travel into the city by train, so Marshall and the carriage will be at your disposal for the rest of the day.’

‘Thank you, dear.’ Satisfied that her husband was, after all, in good health, Florence sipped her coffee and mulled over her choice of apparel for today’s social events. Perhaps the blue velvet dress for her luncheon engagement at the riverside home of a friend in Chiswick, she thought, and the lilac with the embroidered bodice to entertain guests for tea this afternoon here at Floral House. In her mid-forties, Florence was a plain-featured woman who wore her greyish-brown hair piled high on top of her round face which was habitually set in an expression somewhere between complacency and hauteur. ‘It will be cold and draughty for you on the train, though, on such a chilly morning.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said, his deep-set grey eyes lacklustre, plump cheeks stained with a feverish flush. The sandy-coloured hair on the crown of his head had thinned more noticeably than his bushy side whiskers, giving his face an egg-shaped look. ‘But it’s simpler to take the train. The traffic in central London is something appalling these days with more of these newfangled motor cars coming on to the roads. Damned things should be banned, the way they upset the horses with their noise and poisonous fumes.’

‘Quite so,’ she agreed to appease him, though that particular invention had not affected her unduly, for motor cars were still rare on the roads of Ealing. ‘Shall I send Marshall to the station to meet you with the carriage this evening?’

‘No, I’ll walk or take a cab to save him the trouble,’ he said, sipping some coffee to try to ease his sore throat, ‘I’m not sure which train I shall catch.’

‘As you wish,’ she said, glad that she had such a considerate husband.

In fact, Ralph was being artful rather than altruistic. He didn’t want his afternoon ruined by clockwatching. Nor did he want his coachman to get a hint of what he was up to, which was why he always took the train when he made his illicit trips to the East End.

To a man like Ralph, who had firmly established his place in the middle classes through his jewellery business, and whose happiness was measured solely in terms of material wealth and social standing, a mistress was a symbol of success, like having servants and his own carriage, albeit she could not be flaunted in the same way. It did not diminish the importance of his marriage in the least. Florence, who was his age, was a most suitable wife. The daughter of a small-time grocer, she shared her husband’s enjoyment of a higher social status, and had refined her manners to match their position as it had ascended over the years. She was respectable, faithful and practical. She ran their home with maximum efficiency and did not concern herself with his life outside their front door. She had never been a warm or passionate woman, but since he had made other arrangements in that department, he wasn’t unduly bothered.

He saw his liaison as the spice to brighten the boredom of everyday life. The blatant beauty and bold personality of his mistress created a balance with Florence’s staid matronliness. It made him feel young and dashing and assured him that he was still attractive to the opposite sex. And, with discretion, he saw no reason why the affair should not continue indefinitely. Discretion being the operative word, in the interests of domestic harmony.

‘Why are the children not at the table?’ he asked accusingly, as though their absence was entirely his wife’s fault.

‘They’ll be down in a minute, I expect,’ she said with the bland indifference of habit.

‘It’s time Clifford was up and about if he wants anything to eat before we leave for the shop.’ He sipped his coffee, his free hand pulling his fob-watch from his waistcoat pocket. He consulted it, frowning. Breakfast was the only meal of the day at which he allowed a modicum of flexibility, and that was only because he had heard that the aristocracy adopted a lax attitude towards it. ‘And where’s Gwen? She’ll be late for school. Have they been called?’

‘Yes, of course they have. Violet took their hot water up to them some time ago.’ Floral House, which was named from the first three letters of both their names, was one of the few properties around benefitting from a built-in bathroom and wash basins in the bedrooms. But, in common with many other dwellings, it lacked a hot water system which meant that the servants had to carry it up from the kitchen in cans and jugs. ‘Do stop fussing, dear, and eat your breakfast. They’ll be down at any moment.’

And a few minutes later the door opened and seventeen-year-old Clifford swept in, followed by his sister Gwen who was three years younger.

‘Good morning Father. Good morning Mother,’ said Clifford exuberantly, throwing a dutiful glance in his father’s direction and brushing his mother’s cheek with a kiss before strolling to the sideboard and helping himself to a hearty portion of bacon, kidneys, tomatoes and eggs from the silver tureens. Though only in the incipient stages of manhood, he was noticeably handsome with a fine straight nose and fair hair worn fashionably short with a middle parting. Thick lashes of a length to inspire envy in any woman fringed his hazel eyes, and his mouth was well-shaped and attractive despite a tendency to weakness. Like his father he was dressed in a formal business suit with waistcoat and high stiff collar and tie. In keeping with the fashion for a young man-about-town, he was clean-shaven. ‘Mushrooms! Good-o, I’m starving.’

Gwen, a weighty adolescent with docile brown eyes, greeted her parents with less ebullience, for she never had so much to say for herself as her gregarious brother. She followed him to the sideboard, her puppy fat emphasised by the shapeless brown frock which was customary attire for the pupils of the Mary Miller School for Girls, an elite establishment to which the crème de la crème of West London sent their daughters.

When his offspring had settled themselves on the high-backed carved chairs, Ralph said, ‘I won’t be in the shop this afternoon, Clifford, so I shall expect you to keep an eye on things. Mr Rawlings is the senior assistant, it’s true, but you are family and therefore above him. You must make sure the staff keep their place, what with the dratted trade unions giving them ideas above their station. Damned socialists! All this talk about having a Labour group in Parliament only unsettles the working classes into thinking they are entitled to more than they actually are. It’s them and us, Clifford, and they must not be allowed to forget it when I’m not around to remind them.’

‘You can rely on me, Father,’ said Clifford absently, for his social life by far outweighed business interests and he was still thinking about the colour and glamour of a musical comedy he’d seen the night before in the West End. It was useful being able to hop on a train to town without involving Marshall, but one was subject to railway timetables and Clifford had a mind to improve matters in that direction.

‘Percy Grover’s father has bought a motor car,’ he announced, deliberately sowing the seeds of discontent in his pater. ‘A real beauty, a Rover twelve horsepower.’

‘Has he indeed?’ This snippet of gossip about the family who lived in an impressive house at the far end of Orchard Avenue annoyed Ralph intensely because he couldn’t bear to be outdone by his neighbours. I mean, what was Edward Grover anyway but a glorified draper, even if his store was the largest in Ealing and had various departments. Who did he do business with but the hoi-polloi of the town who went to him for dishcloths and bedsocks? He had none of the prestige of a jeweller, patronised only by those in the very highest echelons of society.

‘It might be a good idea for us to get one before very long, eh, Father?’ suggested Clifford hopefully.

‘Dreadful things, motor cars,’ barked Ralph, whose opposition to the machine stemmed from the fact that it was fashionable to dislike motorists because of the noise and pollution they caused. The prestige of car ownership was desirable indeed, but not if it was going to harm his reputation as a respectable and considerate citizen. ‘All they do is break down and belch out horrible smoke. Personally, I wouldn’t be seen dead in one.’

‘Mr Grover is enjoying his, I think.’

‘Humph. He won’t be popular with the neighbours, I can tell you.’

‘Some people say we shall have to get used to motor cars because they will eventually replace the horse altogether,’ said Clifford, tucking into his food with gusto.

‘Nonsense,’ snapped Ralph, who didn’t like the way the day was progressing at all. First of all nature had conspired against him to make him feel ill when he needed to feel well, and now some upstart of a neighbour had upstaged him by becoming the first car owner in the avenue. That was the trouble with new inventions – one had to acquire them or be made to feel inferior by one’s peers. ‘You shouldn’t listen to the fools who talk such rot.’

‘I don’t think it’s rot,’ said Clifford, who even as a small boy had turned convention on its head by making himself very much heard as well as seen. ‘It makes sense, when you think about it. I mean, look at all the changes that have come about in Queen Victoria’s reign. The railways, for instance, and the telephone, and when you think that we even have electric street lighting in Ealing Broadway now instead of gas . . .’

Ralph’s brow furrowed. Education was all right up to a point, but it gave children the idea they were smarter than their parents. ‘You’re talking rubbish, my boy,’ he blustered. ‘The horse will never be replaced.’

‘Motor cars are very expensive, of course,’ continued Clifford, aiming at his father’s most vulnerable spot, ‘but I suppose the Grovers can afford it.’

‘I hope you are not suggesting that a man who sells drapery for a living is better off than me,’ Ralph snorted.

‘Of course not, Father,’ said Clifford artfully. ‘But he can’t be badly off to have bought a car, can he? And that’s not all. Percy was saying that his father is thinking of having a telephone installed in his shop quite soon.’

That was definitely the last straw. Ralph needed to leave this house before anything else happened to threaten his self-esteem. Thank God he was due for a boost to his ego later on. Being with someone of a socially inferior class meant never having to try to go one better. It was wonderfully relaxing. ‘Hurry up and finish your breakfast, both of you,’ he boomed at son and daughter.

‘Yes, Father,’ said Gwen obediently.

Clifford simply got on with his food without comment.

The rooftops and privet hedges were white with frost as Ralph and his children rolled along Orchard Avenue in the carriage towards Gwen’s school in Hanger Lane. Ralph surveyed the scene through the window with satisfaction, his customary feeling of pride diminished only by the debilitating symptoms of his ailment. Hard work and good judgement had bought him a house in this salubrious avenue in the very best part of Ealing.

For many years he’d been in partnership with Harold Cox, and had no doubt whatever that teaming up had been the wisest move he had ever made. Ralph was the son of a pawnbroker from Shepherd’s Bush. Harold’s father had been a watchmaker in the same area. The two boys had been schoolfriends. When Ralph had inherited the family business from his father over twenty years ago, he had sought a change of course, having seen the commercial viability of jewellery retailing from his experience in the pawnshop. When Harold’s father had died, leaving him with a run-down watchmaking business, Harold had seized the opportunity to join forces with Ralph because he lacked the other man’s confidence and needed a partner to lean on. They had changed the dismal watchmaker’s premises into a stylish jeweller’s shop and it wasn’t long before they were doing well enough to open another branch.

Prosperous Ealing had been the obvious choice of district, with its growing population drawn from the middle classes whose wallets were bulging with money they were only too eager to spend. The less adventurous Harold hadn’t wanted a change of area, but Ralph had jumped at the chance of a move to the Queen of the Suburbs. He and his family had lived in a modest house at first, moving to one of the more impressive homes in Orchard Avenue as soon as they could afford it.

The partnership continued to work well to this day. Harold looked after their interests in Shepherd’s Bush, with the help of his son, Ned, while Ralph ran things in Ealing’s prestigious Danby Walk, with Clifford who was learning the business. Both Ralph and Harold had agreed to take their sons into the business legally at twenty-five by means of each partner transferring a proportion of his shares to his own offspring.

Ralph turned his attention back to the scene through the window. Situated to the north of the town, Orchard Avenue was lined with horse chestnut trees on wide grass verges. Built some fifteen years ago on land that had hitherto been the country estates of the aristocracy, the ‘high-class villas’ were all detached with good-sized grounds and stabling facilities, for most of the residents kept their own carriages.

Errand boys with bicycles and carts were out in force this morning for the owners of these houses were a shopkeeper’s dream, living lavishly as they did. Large quantities of bread, milk, greengroceries and meat were being deposited into the safe keeping of cooks and servant girls in well-organised kitchens, out of sight of their employers. The street reverberated to the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, the rumble of carriage wheels and the chirpy whistling of the delivery boys.

Turning into Hanger Lane the ambience became quieter and more rural, the bare trees arching overhead beneath heavy grey skies, the gaps in the hedges showing fields suffused with white. Depositing Gwen at the gates of her school, a one-time country mansion standing in large grounds, Marshall turned the carriage back towards Ealing Broadway.

Approaching the District Railway Station, plastered with posters advertising ‘reduced fares to the city’, Ralph’s poor aching head was buffeted by an increase in street noise as the pace of life quickened. Here the pavements were thronged with people. Men in dark city suits poured into the station; shoppers hurried towards the stores, heads down against the cold, the women’s coats brushing the ground. The newsboy’s placard bore the announcement of a new chief for the army in the Boer War. A row of horse-drawn cabs was lined up opposite the station under the leafless trees that edged Haven Green.

Coming into the Broadway with its smart stores and elaborate buildings, they turned left and drew up outside Jackson & Cox in a promenade of high-class shops lined with plane trees. The main road was crowded with horse-drawn carts, carriages and cabs. A horse bus rolled by, boldly extolling the virtues of Nestlé’s Milk. The faces beneath the top hats and bowlers on the open upper deck were screwed up with the cold, and the driver’s legs were wrapped in a blanket.

Ralph had just alighted from the carriage when his mood was depressed further by the grinding roar of a motor car passing by. A figure whom Ralph assumed to be Edward Grover, though he was barely recognisable in goggles, tied-on hat, heavy coat and leather gloves, waved triumphantly from the driver’s seat. Ralph raised a reluctant hand and forced a smile. ‘You’d think he’d do the job properly and have a chauffeur, wouldn’t you?’ he grumbled to Clifford, as they walked towards the shop.

‘I expect he’s enjoying driving himself,’ said his son. ‘They say it’s awfully good fun.’

Clifford walked on, smiling, a striking figure in his dark overcoat and Homburg hat. He was confident that he would be at the wheel of the family car at sometime in the near future. Father wouldn’t be able to resist getting one when a few more of the neighbours began to travel in style. Clifford also knew that when they did get a car it would be the smartest, most expensive one around. What a dash he would cut with the girls then! Ah, but it was good to be young and rich at the dawn of the new century.

Walking towards the shop, Ralph was shivering uncontrollably, his limbs throbbing with a persistent ache. Thank goodness he was taking most of the day off. He’d do only what was absolutely necessary at the shop, then make his way round the corner to the station as quickly as possible. Once he was with Clara, he would forget all about this wretched cold of his.

Dusk was falling in Bethnal Green. The yellow glow of an oil-lamp lit the second-hand stall outside the butcher’s shop in Green Street where young Amy Atkins was working. Market barrows lined the pavement for as far as the eye could see. Fruit; flowers; vegetables; sweets; fish; cakes; old clothes; pets, were all on offer here, the stall-lanterns creating a cheerful radiance in the sooty air. Crowds coughed and chatted and haggled with traders. Horse traffic rattled by on the muddy road, the spray of dirt and horse dung lessened by the fact that it was frozen hard in places.

The penetrating cold coupled with an empty stomach was making Amy feel sick and faint. She breathed in the smell of pease pudding and saveloys from the butcher’s shop as though this might somehow give her sustenance. Feeling ill with cold and hunger was nothing new to her. In fact she usually felt like this when she was working at the stall, which was every day after school for a couple of hours while the stallholder, Mabel, took a break. Saturdays Amy was here all day working alongside Mabel. For this she was paid twopence a session and sixpence on Saturdays which her mother relied on to help feed the family of four children.

‘How much is that bird, love?’ asked a man with straggly ginger hair and a battered trilby hat, pointing to a hideous stuffed owl with sad staring eyes that made Amy want to weep with pity every time she looked at it.

‘Sixpence,’ she said, managing a friendly smile despite her personal discomfort. Her painfully thin frame was wrapped in a black shawl which she wore over a grey flannel frock, holey woollen stockings and boots with the toes worn through.

‘It ain’t worth that much,’ he said, a bargaining gleam in his eye.

‘That’s the price, mister,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And I won’t take anything less.’

‘Daylight robbery.’

‘No, it ain’t! It’s a good quality bird,’ she told him, accepting his remark without offence since it was all part of the job. ‘I bet yer it won’t be ’ere tomorrow. So if you wannit, you’d better snap it up quick.’

‘I’ll give yer threepence for it,’ he said.

‘Fivepence,’ she countered.

‘Fourpence.’

‘Fourpence-ha’ penny.’

‘Fourpence-farthing, and that’s me last offer.’

‘All right, mister, you’ve twisted me arm,’ she said, grinning and handing the poor deceased creature to him in its glass case. ‘You’d be doing it a kindness if you buried it rather than putting it on show, I reckon. The poor thing looks as miserable as sin stuck on that perch. When things is dead, they want putting to rest.’

The man laughed. ‘I want it for the missus. She thinks this sort of thing looks classy in the parlour. All the nobs ’ave em.’

‘Oh, well, what can you expect from that lot?’ laughed Amy.

‘You waited till I said I’d ’ave it before telling me you don’t like it, I notice.’

‘Course I did,’ she grinned. ‘I ain’t daft.’

‘You’ve got some cheek for a little un.’

‘You need it when you work in a market.’

He handed her his money with a grin, for he found her chirpy frankness rather endearing. ‘Mmm, I daresay you do.’

The soot-filled air had darkened her skin as well as the naturally fair hair that poked from beneath her smutty straw hat. But she had a sparkle about her for all that, her perky little face dominated by round blue eyes that still managed to shine despite the fact that she was underweight, undernourished and dirty. Poverty had made her defensive; an active mind had tempered that with defiance. She knew a system that allowed people to starve while others made gluttons of themselves couldn’t be right, even if it was the accepted way of things. She listened to what adults said, she noticed what went on around her. She might not have travelled far from the East End but she’d been up West a few times. She’d seen how the other half lived.

‘Whoever runs this stall has got a treasure in you,’ he said.

‘I only ’elp out after school.’

‘Still at school, eh?’

She nodded. ‘I’m leaving soon though.’

‘Will you work here all the time then?’

‘No, Mabel can’t afford a full-time assistant.’

‘Oh, well, you’ll find something, a bright gel like you,’ he said. ‘Tata, ducks.’

‘Tata, mister.’

A flurry of business occupied her thoughts for a while. She sold a chipped vase, a tarnished pocket watch, a woman’s coat and a pair of men’s shoes. She turned a blind eye to a street urchin stealing an apple from the fruit barrow next to hers. The poor soul looked as though he needed it.

Two rough-looking boys of about her own age swaggered up to her stall. ‘I fancy that picture, don’t you, Tommy?’ said one of them, pushing his greasy checked cap back from his brow jauntily and pointing towards a framed landscape at the back of the stall.

‘Yeah, that’s a bit of all right, I reckon.’

‘’ow much is it?’ asked Greasy Cap.

‘Sevenpence,’ said Amy.

‘It’ll look nice on the wall in your ’ouse,’ said Tommy, as though Amy hadn’t spoken.

‘Sevenpence,’ she repeated, her stomach churning as she sensed trouble.

Greasy Cap, who was a thin, spotty individual with dark sullen eyes and matted hair sticking out from under his cap, gave Amy a lazy smile. ‘Talk sense, gel, where would we get that sort of dosh?’

‘I dunno,’ she said, guessing that a spot of friendly haggling wasn’t what these two had in mind. ‘But without it you don’t get the picture.’

He took a furtive look to either side of him. ‘Oh, yeah, and who’s gonna stop us from taking it?’

‘I am,’ she stated categorically. One cry from her and any number of traders would rush to her side, but she’d only call for help as a last resort. These toe-rags needed to know she wasn’t afraid of them or they’d come back again and again to torment her whenever she was here alone. They certainly wouldn’t dare while the awesome Mabel was around.

‘Did yer ’ear that, Tommy?’ sneered Greasy Cap. ‘She’s gonna stop us. Ain’t that a scream?’

‘Funniest thing I’ve ’eard all day,’ said Tommy.

As Greasy Cap’s grimy hand snaked across the goods towards the picture, Amy reached under the stall. In a matter of seconds the riding whip that was kept there for just such emergencies came down across his fingers with such a swipe he moved back, yelping and clutching his hand to his chest.

‘Why, you little bitch!’ he rasped, through gritted teeth, his eyes narrowed on her venomously.

‘Like I said, the picture is sevenpence,’ she said. ‘So clear off unless you’re gonna pay it.’

After hurling some strong abuse at her, the boys moved away into the crowd. She was used to dealing with bullies like them. You had to stand up for yourself on the streets of Bethnal Green or louts like that terrorised you.

A stout, toothless old woman in a dirty grey coat and a black straw hat with a feather in it appeared, smoking a pipe. ‘Everythin’ all right, ducks?’ asked Mabel, back from her break.

‘Yeah, everything’s fine,’ said Amy, giving her employer a brief account of what had happened while she’d been away, including the incident with the boys.

‘Little buggers,’ growled Mabel, in a voice made husky by too much strong tobacco. ‘Still, it sounds as though you sorted them out good and proper.’

‘I sold that horrible stuffed owl an’ all,’ said Amy.

‘Thank Gawd for that,’ said Mabel with a raucous laugh. ‘They say there’s one born every minute.’

Amy shivered and hugged her shawl around her.

‘You’d better get off ’ome for your tea,’ said Mabel, handing the girl the two pennies she’d earned.

‘Ta, Mabel.’

‘See you tomorrow, ducks.’

‘Yeah. Tata, Mabel.’

The young girl jostled her way through the crowds, feeling the warmth and vigour of street life throbbing around her, for a strong, recalcitrant spirit prevailed among the local people despite their crippling poverty. She passed barrows and buskers, tramps and rogues, and ordinary housewives out buying something cheap for tea. She passed the pie shop, the faggot shop, the Jew’s shop, the pawn shop, and stood gazing wistfully for a few moments at the glass jars in the sweet-shop window. Her hand closed over the two pennies in her frock pocket, her mouth watering at the thought of a ha’porth of acid drops. But her money was all accounted for. Her mother would be waiting for her to get home with it to send her out for some bread and marge for tea.

At the corner of the street a horse-drawn tram rattled by and there was a log jam of other traffic. As she waited to cross the road, the conversation she had had with the stuffed-owl buyer came back into her mind. Amy was not given to despair, she saw no point in it, but she did find herself anxious at the thought of the changes imminent in her life. In three months’ time, at Easter, she would leave school and go into full-time employment. This saddened her because she enjoyed lessons and the teachers said she was quick to learn. She was good at sums and everyone said she was the best in the class at drawing.

But it was no use wishing for the impossible. Girls like her couldn’t stay on; their parents needed them to be earning. Most of her friends were planning to go into domestic service, but she didn’t fancy that. She was hoping to get a job in a shop. In the big stores the staff lived in, she’d heard. You got regular meals, too, by all accounts. If she did manage to get herself fixed up, at least it would be one less mouth for her parents to feed, which would help them considerably since she would expect to hand over part of her wages to them whether she lived at home or not.

Whether it was because she was cold, hungry and tired, she didn’t know, but for a split second she was overwhelmed with a feeling of panic. It was as though she didn’t feel ready to go out into the world alone to earn a living yet, which was really quite ridiculous considering the fact that her thirteenth birthday was almost upon her. The traffic cleared and she hurried on her way, admonishing herself for having such childish doubts which wasn’t like her at all.

Making her way home through the narrow cobbled backstreets, the gaslit street lamps shone eerily o