Her Mother's Secret

by Natasha Lester

Genres: General Fiction; Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

A sweeping story of love and ambition from England to the Manhattan of the 1920s and 1940s by the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Seamstress 1918, England. Armistice Day should bring peace into Leonora's life. Rather than secretly making cosmetics in her father's chemist shop to sell to army nurses such as Joan, her adventurous Australian friend, Leo hopes to now display her wares openly. Instead, Spanish flu arrives in the village, claiming her father's life. Determined to start over, she boards a ship to New York City. On the way she meets debonair department store heir Everett Forsyth . . . In Manhattan, Leo works hard to make her cosmetics dream come true, but she's a woman alone with a small salary and a society that deems make-up scandalous. 1939, New York City. Everett's daughter, Alice, a promising ballerina, receives a mysterious letter inviting her to star in a series of advertisements for a cosmetics line. If she accepts she will be immortalized like dancers such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and Ginger Rogers. Why, then, are her parents so quick to forbid it? Her Mother's Secret is the story of a brave young woman chasing a dream in the face of society's disapproval. '[Lester's] engaging writing style and ability to create characters that connect with readers make her a welcome addition to the historical fiction market.' Herald Sun ' Had me at page one. This book should come with a 'Do Not Disturb' sign' VANESSA CARNEVALE 'Lester's storytelling is truly captivating; her voice an essential addition to Australian fiction' AUSROM TODAY ' utterly compelling ' Good Reading ' A delightful and multi-faceted romp through the jazz era ... Her Mother's Secret is a sweeping historical saga about an inspiring woman tackling society's expectations head on, war paint and all' NATALIE SALVO Praise for A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald 'A glamorous, transporting read.' Woman's Weekly 'Loving A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald - it's wonderful!" KATE FORSYTH 'I love this book' RACHAEL JOHNS 'Stunning. Will have you captivated' LIZ BYRSKI 'If you're mad about the roaring twenties and all things Gatsby, this romance will have you enchanted' Woman's Day 'At the novel's heart is the sparkling Evie, an endearing combination of intelligence, determination and naivety' West Australian 'Wonderful. I love this author. You will not be disappointed' SALLY HEPWORTH

Release date: March 28, 2017

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 368

Sample

SUTTON VENY, ENGLAND, NOVEMBER 1918

The jar in Leonora’s hand contained a substance as black as the sky on a new moon night. She unscrewed the lid, her friend Joan watching eagerly over her shoulder.

‘It worked,’ Leonora said.

‘Try it on!’ Joan said.

Leonora dampened her finger and rubbed it over the mascara she’d made the day before, creating a film of black liquid. She applied it to the curve of her lashes, cautiously at first, before dipping her finger back into the jar and adding some more. ‘How does it look?’

‘Wait.’ Joan picked up a hand mirror and the copy of Pictures and the Picturegoer magazine that was lying open on the workbench in front of them. She held the mirror in front of Leo and the magazine, opened to a photograph of Theda Bara as Cleopatra, beside Leo’s face.

Leo smiled at her reflection, green eyes made larger and brighter by the mascara. ‘It’s better than I hoped it would be. Here.’

She passed the jar to Joan, who coloured her lashes as Leo had done.

‘I think next time I’ll add some oil to make it shinier,’ Leo said as she studied her face. ‘Cleopatra’s lashes definitely have more gloss.’

‘Given it’s the only mascara available for hundreds of miles around, I think it’s a very good first effort.’

‘Would you believe it’s just soap flakes and lampblack? I tried Vaseline and lampblack, but it was too gooey. This is easier to put on, but I think I can make it even better.’ Leo sighed, looking around the mess of the stillroom, workbench cluttered with salves and ointments and her cosmetic experiments. ‘That’s if I can find the time in between making medications for venereal disease.’

‘I can understand why the boys do it though,’ Joan said sadly. ‘The ones I’ve nursed told me they were prepared to do anything to feel a bit of love in the midst of what they’ve had to face.’

Leo shivered, imagining Joan in the hospital of the army camp situated about a mile out of Sutton Veny, listening to such admissions while she bandaged wounded men. ‘Are we awful, do you think? To stand here talking about the movies and mascara while …’

‘Of course not!’ Joan was emphatic, her Australian accent always more pronounced in moments of fervour. ‘I spend twelve hours a day trying to keep men from dying and you spend just as long making medicines for the same purpose. Not to mention keeping up their morale; making the run to the chemist to collect supplies is the most popular job at camp.’

Leo blushed. ‘Are we going to the cinema or not?’ she asked.

‘I just need some lipstick to go with my lashes.’

Leo passed Joan a jar filled with a glossy red cream.

‘You’re a treasure. I’m sure you keep the nurses here better supplied than the ladies of London are.’ Joan dabbed some colour onto her lips, smoothed her hands over her brown hair, put a navy cloche hat on her head and nodded with satisfaction.

‘What if Mrs Hodgkins sees us?’

Joan shrugged. ‘What if she does? It’s not illegal to wear mascara.’

‘Not yet. But probably only because nobody understands quite how much we all want to.’ Leo pointed at the magazine. ‘Do you think “Theda Bara made me do it” is a reasonable excuse?’

Joan laughed. ‘Let’s go. Then I can tell you my news.’

‘I’ll check on Daddy first.’ Leo flipped the closed sign on the door labelled Harold East, Dispensing Chemist and Apothecary and ran up the stairs to the flat where she and her father lived.

Harold East was sitting at the table, supposedly reading the newspaper, but he had taken off his glasses and his eyes were closed. He looked thin and even paler than usual and Leo wished for the thousandth time that she could get him the food he needed; rationing was fine for someone young like her, but not for her father, whose health had floundered from the effects of grief since his wife had died in childbirth, the strain and deprivation of war making him age all the quicker.

‘Daddy,’ she whispered, putting a hand on his arm.

He jumped, eyes flying open. ‘What’s happened?’ he said, searching for his glasses.

Leonora found them beneath the newspaper and passed them to him, but he only held them in his hand and looked at her through eyes she knew were too foggy to see her properly. ‘I’m sorry I scared you,’ she said softly. ‘Nothing’s happened. I came up to say goodbye. I’m going to see a film with Joan, remember?’

‘Of course you are.’ Her father beamed and held out his arms.

Leo kissed the top of his head. ‘You had some bread?’

‘I even licked the plate clean of crumbs,’ he said. ‘You go off and have a good time. You spend too much of your life here with me.’

‘How did things go in the shop this morning?’

‘Fine. Some soldiers came in and were most disappointed to hear you were out tending to a luckier bunch of soldiers at Sutton Veny House. And you’ll have to make another batch of Leo’s Cold Cream. We’ve sold out again. Mrs Kidd told me it was even better than Pond’s.’

‘I knew they’d love it. Maybe now you’ll let me sell lip colour too.’

Her father shook his head, but he was still smiling. ‘Imagine what Mrs Hodgkins would say about that!’

Leo knew all too well what Mrs Hodgkins, who’d appointed herself responsible for Leo’s moral upbringing, would say. She thanked God that her father hadn’t put his glasses on and couldn’t see her lashes. ‘I don’t need mothering from anyone except you,’ she said.

Her father’s eyes filled with tears, and Leonora knew he was thinking of her mother, who’d never even had the chance to hold her daughter. ‘Well,’ he said, voice quavering a little, ‘it’s your shop really. I’m hardly in it any more. You should do what you like in there. I might head off to bed, my love. I’m tuckered out.’

Leo watched him shuffle away, touching the wall once or twice for balance. Then she hurried downstairs to Joan. ‘Sorry that took so long.’

‘Is he all right?’ Joan asked.

Leo shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It’s like the war is draining the life out of him, making him frailer than ever.’

‘Can I do anything?’ Joan squeezed Leo’s hand.

‘No.’ Leo dabbed at the dampness in the corner of her eye. ‘Let’s go.’

They set off along the high street, Leo waving to her neighbour, Mr Banks, who did a slight double-take when he saw them, though he waved back nonetheless. Leo felt her shoulders relax. It was nice to go out for the night and forget, for a short time, what the world had become. It was nice to add a little colour to her face to compensate for the fact that her dress was four years old, faded to a dirty grey, and had been mended so many times it felt almost as if it was made from thread rather than fabric. It was nice to laugh with Joan, rather than being always on edge, waiting to hear who was the latest of the boys from the village to die.

As they walked, their feet crunched through the elm leaves on the road, leaves that appeared in autumn as quickly as the new gravestones in the cemetery. Leo opened her mouth to ask Joan for her news when a group of soldiers from the army camp came streaming towards them. The presence of soldiers, Australian nurses like Joan, and an army camp was so familiar to Leo now that she could hardly remember what the village had looked like before the neat rows of identical huts, and the hospital where Joan worked had been erected. In the distance, she could see the butts on the shooting range, rectangles of white, like hankies set out to dry. A biplane flew overhead, preparing to land in the grass near the camp but Leo still ducked, still unwilling to trust anything that fell from the sky.

All of a sudden, Joan grabbed Leo’s hand. ‘Quick,’ she hissed. ‘Mrs Hodgkins is over there and if we don’t move, she’ll see you.’

The crowd of soldiers, so many that the villagers going in the opposite direction had to stand aside to let them pass, provided Leo and Joan with a good place to hide.

‘Leonora!’

At the sound of her name, Leo smiled up at the familiar face of the boy – well, he was a man now – in army uniform who she’d known all her life as Albert from Gray’s Farm. He’d taken her for a walk the last time he was on leave, and also to a film. When he’d escorted her home, he’d kissed her hand and Leonora had closed her eyes and willed herself to feel it, the bolt of lightning that always struck lovers in books when they touched. But all she’d felt was a wish to be elsewhere – back in London, perhaps, where she had spent three years at school before the war had started and she’d returned home, bringing with her a yearning for more than was hardly satisfied by running a black market in lipstick between the chemist shop and the nurses at the hospital.

Albert didn’t reach for her hand this time. ‘What have you done to yourself?’ he asked, eyes wide with bafflement at the sight of her darkened lashes.

Leo felt the joy she’d painted on her face fade away.

What had she done? Making mascara while men were fighting to save her country. She stared down at the pavement, shame at her own frivolity flooding through her.

‘You look like a …’ He stopped himself just in time. ‘You’ll make yourself a laughing-stock, Leonora. What will your father think?’

What will your father think? Of all the things Albert could have said, that was the worst. Her own shame she could bear, but not her father’s.

‘Excuse us,’ Joan said crisply. Taking Leo’s arm, she led her into the Palace Cinema, where she chose seats right up the front, a safe distance from the soldiers who tended to occupy the back rows.

As Leo sat down, her spirit reasserted itself. ‘Honestly, why is there such a fuss made about a little bit of make-up?’ she said, vexed that she’d been so affected by Albert’s judgement. ‘It’s all right for a man to contract VD from a French prostitute – who’s probably wearing lipstick, I might add – but a woman isn’t allowed to do something as innocuous as make her lashes darker?’

‘Don’t pay any attention to him.’ Joan lit a cigarette and offered one to Leo, who shook her head. ‘You look beautiful and he’s scared of that.’

‘Do you think, one day, everyone will stop being scared?’ Leo asked. ‘That Mrs Hodgkins will ever stop bleating about the horror of so many ankles on display beneath the nurses’ uniforms, that Mr Ellis won’t ask me to turn off that rubbish! when he comes into the shop and hears Marion Harris playing on the Victrola instead of “Oh! It’s a Lovely War!”?’

‘Probably not any time soon,’ Joan admitted.

The newsreel flickered onto the screen and the lights dimmed. Leo had just settled back in her seat when she had a sudden thought. ‘Why is Albert back?’ she whispered. ‘And so many other soldiers?’

‘They shipped an entire regiment back this morning,’ Joan said, ignoring the reproving stares of their neighbours. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. Pete wrote that he’d be here in a few days.’

‘Really?’ Leo asked.

She was reprimanded with a loud ‘Shhhh!’

‘Maybe the war is nearly over,’ she whispered.

‘Maybe.’

Leo grinned. ‘If that was true, I’d cartwheel around the theatre.’

‘Pete asked me to move to New York with him when he’s discharged. That made me feel like cartwheeling to the moon.’

‘New York! But what about Sydney?’

‘Shhhhhh!’ Even more people scolded them now.

‘I’ll tell you after the show’s over,’ Joan said.

They turned their attention to the screen, but Leo couldn’t concentrate. She could see New York in her mind, the legendary city, a place filled with love and hope and skyscrapers-in-the-air; buildings that reached into the solid foundation of the ground so that the dreams they flung into the air must surely become real, as they had both bedrock and backbone to support them. If the war was nearly over, then the future might come after all; life would begin again, rather than being stalled as it had been for so long. Then what might she do?

Her smile remained on her face throughout the shorts, the feature and back out onto the street, where a soldier whistled. Even then, Leo couldn’t stop smiling. Who cared if it looked like she was flirting? Wasn’t it wonderful that she was here and that the soldier was still alive and that they could do something as simple as flirting?

‘Did you say yes?’ Leo asked, threading her arm through Joan’s as they stepped onto the pavement, walking fast to escape the November wind biting viciously through their cloaks and mittens. ‘To New York?’

‘I did and you should come with me.’

‘I can’t,’ Leo said. ‘Daddy wouldn’t survive a journey to New York and he certainly wouldn’t survive if I upped and left him.’

‘Joan!’ A shout from behind made Joan and Leo whirl around, straight into the wind that had swept up like a cavalry charge, pounding their cheeks.

‘You have to come back,’ a nurse panted as she caught up to them.

‘What is it?’ Joan asked.

‘Spanish flu,’ the nurse said sombrely.

With those dreadful words sounding like a requiem in the night, Joan was off into the darkness and the wind, leaving Leo shivering.

Influenza. Not again. Not now, not when the boys were coming home, when the war was so close to ending. They’d been through it once already, back in the spring, and Leo and Joan had both been laid low for a fortnight with it. But she’d heard whispers from the towns and villages it had already struck that this one was worse.

She hurried the rest of the way home, unable to shake off the worry that fluttered relentlessly in her stomach. The first thing she did when she arrived, even before she took off her cloak, hat and gloves, was to creep along the hall to her father’s room. She opened the door a crack and could see his huddled shape in the bed, could hear him snoring loudly, lost in a deep and lovely sleep. She smiled, throwing off her cloak and her fears.



The next morning, Leo woke early and went downstairs to the stillroom at the back of the shop. If influenza had come to the army camp, she’d be in for a busy day. She made certain she had enough liniments for chests and tinctures for coughs before she took advantage of the quiet dawn hour to pull out the stepladder and reach up to the highest shelf, which held her father’s books. Chemistry books, science books – books filled with long and seemingly obscure words, but Leo had found that, if you spent time getting to know those words, they were among the most enchanting in the English language. Petrolatum was both an unctuous and hydrophobic mixture of hydrocarbons, but add some lampblack and you had mascara. She ran her hand along the spines and stopped when she reached her treasures: an enamelled Fabergé powder compact in which was nestled a swansdown puff, and a Coty perfume bottle, made by Lalique in the shape of a dragonfly. They were the most precious things Leo owned, both because they had belonged to her mother, and because Leo wished her cosmetics could be placed inside something just as lovely, lined up in rows on the shelves of a shop. She climbed down the ladder decisively. Provided this influenza wasn’t too bad – and in the pale gold light of an autumn morning it didn’t seem possible that it would be – she really would put some lip colour in the shop rather than just joking with her father about it, and who cared what Mrs Hodgkins had to say about that!

She took out a saucepan and wooden spoon – her crude version of a mixing kettle – and heated and stirred beeswax, carmine, almond oil, blood beet and oil of roses until it was the perfect shade of red. She poured the mixture into several small jars to set – soupçons of beauty in the midst of the horror in which they lived.

Then she went back upstairs. ‘Daddy?’ she called.

‘I’ve slept in a bit today, love.’ Her father’s voice came from his room. ‘Be there in a minute.’

Leo boiled two eggs, put out a slice of bread for each of them, then made the tea, with just half a scoop of leaves rather than the three her father liked; tea had become as rare as good news these last few years.

When her father appeared, he sat down heavily in his chair, body shaking.

‘You’re cold!’ Leo cried. ‘Let me get you a blanket for your lap.’

‘Don’t fuss. I’ll be fine after my tea.’

Leo passed him his cup. ‘Drink up then,’ she said mock sternly. ‘And I’ll make you another.’

‘You’re a good girl, Leo. How was your night?’

‘I saw Albert. His regiment’s been shipped back.’

‘I’ll wager he was glad to see you,’ her father said in a tone Leo couldn’t quite decipher.

‘I don’t know. I was wearing mascara. He was a little shocked.’

‘Pffft!’ her father scoffed. ‘He’s been in a trench at war but he gets shocked by black stuff on your lashes? He’s not the man for you. None of them are.’

‘You’re just being a protective father,’ she teased.

‘I’m not,’ he said decidedly. ‘He’ll ask you to marry him, mark my words. And you’re to say no. Don’t let yourself get stuck here. As soon as the war is over, I’ll find a way to get you back to London, you see if I don’t.’

‘I won’t leave you, no matter what you say.’

The sound of church bells sang through the window, interrupting them. ‘It’s not Sunday,’ Leo said.

She ran to the window and threw it open, heedless of the cold air that streamed in.

The bells rang on and on, and people thronged the street. The sound they were making was unfamiliar to Leo’s ears at first. Then she realised – they were laughing.

‘What is it?’ she called down to Mr Banks, who was standing outside his solicitor’s office next door, beaming.

‘The war is over!’ he shouted back.

Leo flew to her father and squeezed him so tightly he began to cough. ‘It’s over!’ she cried.

He clapped his hands and laughed. ‘Well, don’t stand around here,’ he said. ‘Off you go!’

Leo pulled out her handkerchief and wiped the tears of relief off her father’s face. ‘I love you,’ she said.

Then she tore down the stairs and outside, hoping to find Joan and dance with her in the streets. But it was almost impossible to move, as with every step she met a soldier who wanted to take her hands to twirl her around or lift her high in the air. One even tried to kiss her and she let him because it was a day when proprieties had ceased to matter.

‘Thanks,’ he shouted, grinning at her before running off.

The town went mad that morning: shops were left unmanned, cows unmilked, breakfasts uneaten. The church was full of people giving thanks, the Woolpack Hotel proprietor passed mugs of frothing beer out to anyone who waltzed by, the policemen ignored such flagrant violations of the rules and even the trees seemed to join in the celebrations, dropping leaves like blessings onto Leo’s red-gold hair and the heads of all the villagers gathered together in an impromptu celebration on the high street.

Leo was sipping a beer and joining in an improvised circle dance when someone tapped her shoulder. ‘Miss, my mum needs something for her cough.’

The words were like a slap on the cheek and Leo realised that she hadn’t seen Joan, that very few nurses were out enjoying the revelry. But look how many soldiers had come into town. The influenza couldn’t be too serious. Still, unease made her sober. ‘I’m coming,’ she said to the lad in front of her.

As she turned towards the shop, it began to rain. Her skirt was quickly muddied, the hem weighed down with clay and water. Back at the shop, she gave the boy some medicine for his mother, asking him about symptoms, frowning as he described fevers and coughs and headaches. After he left, she ran upstairs to see her father, who was still sitting at the table where she’d left him.

‘The influenza’s come,’ she said without preamble. ‘You’re to stay up here. I couldn’t bear it if you caught it.’

‘Don’t be a goose,’ her father said fondly. ‘I’ll be right as rain. But I might lie down for a bit till that cup of tea oils my joints.’

Her father safely in his room, Leo returned to the shop. The flow of customers that afternoon was steady, but not overwhelming. A few coughs and fevers, but it was autumn. She closed the shop at six, made her father eggs and toast again for supper and went to bed, only to be awoken at five by a loud knocking on the shop door. Dread made her dress hurriedly, knowing that only those caring for the very ill would seek help so early.

‘What is it?’ her father called from his room.

‘Just a customer whose clock mustn’t be working.’ She made her voice sound light, as if it was a minor inconvenience having to get up at dawn, nothing more.

But there wasn’t just one customer; there were many. Their faces were dazed with the bewilderment that they’d beaten one merciless opponent – the war – only to have another that might be just as brutal land on their doorstep. They all wanted something Leo didn’t have: a cure. A miracle. A way out of the hell this world had become.

In the space between yesterday and today, influenza had reached out its hand and gripped as many as it could by the throat, and it wasn’t letting go.

Leo did her best all that long, long day, frantically making up more liniments to ease coughs. She gave away all the muslin masks she had left, not charging a penny for anything. She’d thought the worst moment was when the baker’s wife ran in, eyes wild, shouting that her husband had turned purple. Leo knew it meant the end was nigh; the cyanosis that was such a distinctive feature of this flu had set in. There was nothing Leo could do.

‘Be with him,’ Leo whispered, hugging her.

But then the news came in that Albert – Albert, who’d never done anything wrong – had succumbed too.

After that, Leo turned off her thoughts. She concentrated on helping those she could, advising everyone to keep their hands washed, to thoroughly clean all bedding and handkerchieves, to stay off the streets. By mid-afternoon, there was nowhere to go anyway. Most shops had closed. The church was closed. The Palace Cinema. The Woolpack Hotel. There would be no more celebrations of the armistice. Instead, their village of five hundred people, already decimated by war, would start to bury more dead, until the dead almost outnumbered the living.

When night fell, she hurried upstairs to her father. She expected to find him at the table with a pot of tea for a companion but the flat was in darkness. Surely he wasn’t in bed already?

Then a sound reached her ears. A wet, hacking cough. Dear God. Leo threw open the door to his room. ‘Are you all right? I thought I heard …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

‘I have a fever,’ her father rasped.

Black fear clogged Leonora’s heart. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said, aiming for cheeriness but falling a million miles short. ‘I’ll make you some broth.’

‘No. I’ll sleep it off.’ His eyes closed, but rather than finding peace in sleep, his lungs rattled with every hard breath in and out.

Leo fetched a cloth and basin then sat down beside his bed. She laid the damp cloth on his forehead. She rubbed his back when he coughed so hard he seemed almost to lift off the bed, holding a basin to catch the sputum, washing it out and returning just in time for the next spasm. She changed his sheets when they became soaked through with sweat. Occasionally he quietened and she perched on the edge of her chair, fingers worrying a hole the size of a handkerchief into her skirt. Then another violent paroxysm of coughing racked him, not stopping for what felt like hours. For its long duration, Leo’s father clung to her, as if he was her child, and she held his hand and tried to sing him into sleep, just as a mother would.



It was dawn when she realised the only sounds she could hear were roosters and the delivery boys’ carts. The relief that her father’s coughing had settled made her woozy; the room tipped a little at the edges and she breathed in deeply and slowly to set it to rights. Through the first sliver of morning light creeping under the curtains, she could just make out his shape, curled on his side, resting peacefully.

She tiptoed from the room. She’d make him some porridge while he slept; it would warm him, give him strength. She even tipped in a little precious sugar. When it was steaming hot, she carried it down the hall, sure he would have smelled it cooking, that he’d be waiting with a hungry stomach for this unexpected feast.

But he hadn’t moved.

‘Daddy? I have some porridge for you.’

No response.

‘Daddy!’ The word cracked in two.

She knew she could move to the bed, touch his shoulder, watch him jump awake and flounder for his glasses. Or she could remain where she was, in a space that existed out of time. She could stop the future from coming, if only she waited there long enough. A tear fell into her father’s porridge. Then another.

She shook her head. It was her silly imagination, an imagination that Mrs Hodgkins had often said should be kept in check. Well, check it she would. She marched down the stairs, out the front door and knocked at Mr Banks’s house.

But when Mr Banks answered, she found that the bravado she’d mustered had deserted her. She stood mute, eyes damp, hands clenched into fists.

‘What is it?’ Mr Banks asked.

‘Father,’ she said. ‘Influenza.’

‘Oh, Leo.’ Mr Banks embraced her and she stood stiffly in his arms, wanting nothing more than to break down. But that would only make it true.

‘I’ll go and see,’ Mr Banks said.

Leo nodded. She followed him into the flat and waited in the kitchen while he went to her father’s room. She’d left the cooker on, she realised, and the kettle was still whistling. But her father hadn’t come out to turn it off. The minutes scraped past.

Then Mr Banks appeared. He shook his head.

It felt like a knife had been plunged into her very core, shearing off everything that had ever made her Leonora East.

She hurried into the bedroom, pulling back the sheet that Mr Banks had drawn up over her father’s face. That precious face, a face that was more familiar to her than her own, had vanished in the night, leaving behind something cold and livid. And his mouth – it was stretched open as if he’d been calling for her when he’d passed. But she hadn’t heard him, would never know what he had wanted to say.

She sat by her father’s side all day, wordless, tearless, holding his cold, cold hand. From all over the village, she thought she could hear coughing, people choking on the crimson fluid that filled their lungs, fluid that had suffocated her father. She pushed away the Bible someone tried to put in her hands. Who wanted God? Instead she raged at God, that He would do this to her, to Daddy, to everyone. She called God every bad name she could think of, including words she’d never said before.

Then they came to take her father’s body away. ‘No!’ she hissed, jumping up from the chair. ‘You can’t have him.’

‘Hush,’ Mr Banks soothed her, holding her tightly in his arms so she couldn’t stop the people lifting her father out of bed. ‘You have to let him go.’

‘How?’ Leo whispered. ‘How can I ever do that?’

Only when her father had gone did the tears start to fall, hard and fast, like iron bullets shooting into her father’s now, and forever, empty bed.

Death and silence. Later, that was all Leo would remember of the next three months. Dead leaves unswept from the streets and left to rot. Silent customers with wooden stares, too exhausted for small talk. The brown slush of winter taking all colour from the world. And through it all, one song, the only sound Leo heard:

I had a little bird

Its name was Enza

I opened the window

And in-flu-enza.

The children’s chanted words echoed as they skipped rope in the streets. And Leo found she couldn’t shake the tune from her head. She hadn’t been able to stop and grieve; people needed a chemist. So from November to January, she passed out masks and liniment and let her neighbours weep on her shoulder as everyone around them succumbed to that awful violet death. Meanwhile, her grief waited patiently in the pit of her stomach.

Until the influenza finally relented. Until the flow of customers to the shop slowed and she had long, ghastly moments of idleness in which she would see around her more signs of despair: the thick dust on the wooden shelves her father had built himself and that he used to dust every day. There was no need for Boots’ style tea rooms and libraries if you had clean shelves. Leo could hear his voice as clearly as if he’d been standing right before her and she looked around for him, but then remembered he was gone, and that time stretched out relentlessly before her, empty of her father.

One day in February, Mr Banks and Joan, who came most days to check on her, found her sitting on the floor, weeping. She’d knocked into a stack of boxes, sending glass jars shattering to the floor where they spilled their contents, red like fresh blood.

‘Are you hurt?’ Joan exclaimed, seeing the pool of red around her.

‘It’s just lip colour,’ Leo said.

‘Thank God,’ Mr Banks said, reaching out a hand to help her up.

‘I made it that morning in November,’ Leo explained haltingly. ‘When I thought the influenza wouldn’t be very bad. I was going to put it in the shop window. To try and