Kitty and Her Sisters

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Siblings; Sagas; Women's Fiction; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

Another wonderful Liverpool saga from bestselling author, Maureen Lee. At the age of nineteen, Kitty McCarthy has decided she is going to live a life less ordinary - although she doesn't know quite how to go about it. What she does know is that she doesn't want to get married and raise children in Liverpool like her elder sisters: Claire, who is a mother-hen; easy-going Norah and elegant Aileen. But Kitty's resolve is tested by the unexpected direction her life takes. The combination of an impetuous youthful decision and a chance meeting twenty years later are to have momentous repercussions that will stay with her for ever, and it is her sisters who are the constant thread when other relationships come and go. They know her best, they say, and in the end they know what's best for her - although Kitty would almost certainly disagree...

Release date: September 9, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 548

Sample

‘I wonder why people still sing war songs?’ I mused. ‘“Roll Out the Barrel”, “When the Lights Go On Again”, that sort of thing. I’d’ve thought they’d want to forget the war, not be reminded of it, particularly at a wedding.’

My friend, Marge, just grunted. We were sitting by a window watching our Norah have her photo taken with her new husband, Roy Hall. Norah’s going-away outfit was a pale-pink costume with a white hat, gloves, bag and shoes. Like me and my other sisters, Norah was neither tall nor short and had the same dark red hair, blue eyes and wide mouth. None of the four McCarthy girls were exactly pretty, but we were often described as striking.

It was my opinion that Norah was wasted on Roy Hall, a most unattractive individual with heavily Bryl-creemed hair and the sort of moustache sported by the late Adolf Hitler. He worked as a clerk with Bootle Corporation.

The wedding reception had reached the stage that I always thought of as ‘half-time’. Any minute now, Norah and Roy would leave for their honeymoon. Most of the food had been eaten, and what remained was spread on a table by the door for people to help themselves. Some of the older guests had already gone home, the smaller children had fallen asleep on their weary mothers’ laps, while the older ones lounged around, looking bored out of their skulls while they waited for the activities to recommence.

‘It stinks in here,’ Marge said, holding her nose.

‘I’m not surprised.’ Layers of smoke floated beneath the ceiling, and the room smelled of stale cigarettes, beer and sweaty bodies. I saw my brother, Jamie, who was seventeen and should have known better, sneakily burst a balloon, making everyone jump. The pianist had disappeared, leaving an empty tankard in the hope it would be refilled, and an unnatural hush had fallen on the scout hut where the sound of us enjoying ourselves had only recently threatened to bring down the walls and lift the roof. The double doors were wide open to the late-afternoon sunshine. It was June and had been a perfect day for a wedding.

‘Your Norah should have worn a pink hat,’ Marge remarked. ‘I read in a magazine that you should never have more than three accessories the same colour.’ Marge wore a smart tan linen suit with dark-brown shoes. Her hat, a tan beret, had been deposited in the cloakroom. The trouble with Marge was she always bought clothes a size too small so that the jacket was buttoned tight across her breasts and the skirt wrinkled on her thighs. As usual, her pretty face was plastered with make-up and her long brown hair had been permed to a frizz. I wished someone would tell her she looked like a tart – I didn’t have the courage.

‘It’s a bit late now to inform Norah she bought the wrong colour hat,’ I said. ‘In a while, I’m going home to change out of me bridesmaid’s dress. Things will liven up later and it might get ripped or someone will spill beer on it. Anyroad, I loathe the damn thing.’ The dress was lilac slipper satin with puffed sleeves, a full gathered skirt ending in a double frill, and a sash that tied in a huge bow at the back. I’d got rid of the lilac picture hat, but still felt like a doll perched on top of a Christmas tree.

‘You’ll feel more comfortable in something of your own,’ Marge said idly.

‘I hope you’re not saying that because I look desperately beautiful and you’re madly jealous.’ I grinned.

Marge contrived to look hurt. ‘As if I would! Your Claire’s already changed, but Aileen’s still wearing hers.’

‘Poor Claire. She didn’t know she’d be expecting when Norah ordered the bridesmaids’ outfits. The dressmaker had to let it out to accommodate the bulge.’ The minute the photos were taken, Claire had swapped it for a maternity frock. ‘And Aileen’s only waiting for Norah to leave to change into something else.’

Marge gave me a nudge. ‘Have you noticed Ada Tutty keeps staring at your Danny as if she’d like to eat him?’ she said in a low voice. ‘She’s hardly taken her eyes off him all afternoon.’

I transferred my gaze to a rather mournful young woman clad in a frock more suitable for someone three times her age, who was watching my other brother with a look of longing on her plain face. Ada was the daughter of our next-door neighbour in Amethyst Street. I always felt dead sorry for her. ‘She’s mad on our Danny,’ I said. ‘Sundays, she waits by the parlour window until he leaves for Mass, then follows and kneels as close to him as she can. No matter what Mass he goes to, the very first or the very last, she’s always there. It drives him doolally.’

‘I quite fancy your Danny meself,’ Marge confessed. My brother was currently flirting outrageously with a friend of Norah’s. He was twenty-two and I could see nothing remarkable about him, but he must have had sex appeal because girls were attracted to him like flies to jam.

‘Would you like me to tell him?’ I offered.

‘Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, don’t you dare do such a thing!’ Marge gasped.

‘It’d be nice to have you for a sister-in-law, Marge.’ We were both nineteen and had been friends since we started school together at five.

‘It’d be the gear,’ Marge agreed, ‘but if you breathe a word to your Danny I’ll never speak to you again.’

We moved our chairs to allow my ten-year-old niece, Patsy, who was wearing one of the bridesmaids’ hats, to gather the confetti that had collected underneath.

‘What are you going to do with that?’ I asked.

‘I’m keeping it for when I get married,’ Patsy announced. ‘I only want the silver bits, I like them best.’

‘Why do little girls always assume they’ll get married?’ I wondered aloud when Patsy had gone.

Marge shrugged. ‘Because it’s what little girls do when they grow up.’

‘Not all of them,’ I argued.

‘Only if a man doesn’t ask them and they end up sad old maids.’

‘What if a women chooses not to get married no matter how many men ask?’ I felt rather put out by the idea that a woman without a man would automatically be sad.

‘Then she’d be crazy,’ Marge said flatly. ‘No one in their right mind would be an old maid when they could have a husband. I want kids and you have to be married for that.’

‘Does that mean you’d marry any old man just to get a ring on your finger?’

‘As long as he didn’t have a face like a horse and had a decent job.’ She looked at me defiantly. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Not on your nelly, no.’ I’d been out with plenty of chaps in my time, but there hadn’t been one I’d wanted to spend a whole day with, let alone the rest of my life.

‘Now you’re talking like a soft girl, Kitty McCarthy.’

I couldn’t be bothered arguing any more. ‘Oh, look! Norah and Roy are coming in to say tara. Don’t you think he’s a drip?’ Perhaps Marge was right in a way, because I was convinced our Norah had only married Roy because she was twenty-four and worried she might be left on the shelf when Peter Murphy jilted her after they’d been courting for three whole years. ‘Me, I’d sooner be an old maid any day than marry a drip like Roy Hall,’ I said defiantly.

After the newly married couple had made their goodbyes, Norah tossed her bouquet – Marge caught it, much to her delight – then departed in Roy’s brother’s van for the honeymoon in Cornwall.

Aileen came up. ‘I can’t wait to get out of this horrible frock, sis. I didn’t like to before in case I hurt our Norah’s feelings, but now I’m going to Amethyst Street to get changed. Mam and Dad went back a couple of minutes ago.’

‘Did Mam seem all right?’ I asked, alarmed.

‘Fine,’ Aileen said reassuringly. ‘She said she just felt like a decent cup of tea and a little lie-down.’

‘That’s all right, then. Hang on a mo while I find me bag; I’ll come with you.’

‘It looks the gear on you – the dress, that is,’ Aileen remarked as we strolled along Marsh Lane towards the house where we were born. Four years ago, Aileen had married Michael Gilbert and now lived in Maghull. She had a good job as an overseer in Wexford’s Biscuit Factory on the Dock Road where Michael was head of Accounts. The first McCarthy to live in a bought house, she considered herself a cut above the rest of us.

‘It looks nice on you, too,’ I said loyally. ‘And it would have looked nice on Claire if she hadn’t been in the club. As it was, she looked like a badly wrapped parcel.’

‘I wouldn’t mind looking like a badly wrapped parcel if it meant I was pregnant,’ Aileen said wistfully. She was desperate for a baby.

‘Never mind, sis, it’ll happen one day,’ I promised recklessly. ‘Have you noticed everyone’s staring at us?’ I was glad the shops had closed so there weren’t as many people about as usual.

‘I’m not surprised. I feel like a dog’s dinner in this outfit. I was hoping Norah would pick silk or crêpe de Chine and a less sickly colour. Then we could’ve taken them up and worn them again. Now I don’t know what to do with the stupid thing,’ she finished in disgust. ‘I can’t think of a single thing I can make from it.’

‘Pin cushions?’

Aileen rolled her eyes. ‘Sometimes,’ she said when we turned into Amethyst Street, ‘I wander around my three-bedroom semi and wonder how ten of us managed to squeeze into one of these little terraced houses. In those days, the lavatory was at the bottom of the yard and we got bathed in a tin tub in front of the fire.’

‘Yes, but things have improved since then.’ Dad had fitted a bath and lavatory in the washhouse with the help of Danny who was a plumber. A door had been installed leading to the kitchen. The old lavatory had been removed and we now used the place to keep coal.

‘Not before time,’ Aileen sniffed.

‘I’m dead sorry our Norah’s gone,’ I tried hard to sound sincere, ‘but it means I’ll have a double bed to meself for the first time in my life.’

‘In other words, you’re not sorry at all.’ Aileen paused opposite a lamp-post over which a rope had been thrown; a little boy was swinging round and round, his eyes blissfully closed. ‘I used to have some fun on that,’ she said nostalgically. ‘When we were little, me and our Claire had some terrible fights over who had first go on the swing.’

‘Who usually won?’ I hadn’t been born until Claire was twelve and Aileen ten.

‘Me. I was the smallest, but I had the strongest punch.’

All these years later, it was impossible to imagine my sisters, elegant Aileen and motherly Claire, involved in a fistfight.

We arrived at number twenty-two. Aileen put her hand through the letterbox and pulled out the key attached to a string. She unlocked the door and stepped inside, then turned to me, whispering, ‘Mam’s crying. It sounds like she’s upstairs. Dad’s with her.’

I made a face. ‘I thought she was better. I haven’t heard her cry for months.’ We crept down the hall and sat at the bottom of the stairs to listen, our dresses floating around us with a breathy sound before settling in folds at our feet.

‘I’m sorry, Bob,’ Mam wept. ‘I’m sorry if I’m spoiling the day for you, but ever since I woke up this morning I haven’t been able to get our Jeff and Will out of me mind. They should have been at Norah’s wedding and I kept seeing them among the guests. Like ghosts, they were, smiles on their dear faces, but whenever I looked again they’d disappeared. I managed to hold meself together for Norah’s sake, but as soon as she left all I wanted to do was come home and have a good cry.’

‘Cry as much as you want, Bernie, luv,’ Dad said gently.

‘I kept thinking, Jeff would be thirty if he were still alive and married to Theresa – those children of hers would have belonged to him. And Will would be twenty-seven. Oh, Bob!’ she cried, ‘I’ll never get over losing me lads, not if I live to be a hundred.’ The sobs tore at her frail body and her breathing was hoarse and wretched.

I felt an ache come to my throat. Tears were trickling down Aileen’s cheeks. Then my sister held out her arms and we clung together at the bottom of the stairs as we listened to our mother weep her heart out.

When the war had begun eleven years ago in 1939, there’d been eight McCarthy children – four boys and four girls – but by the time it ended six years later, only two of the boys were left. The first to go was Jeff, only twenty-four when he was hit in the chest by a sniper’s bullet as the Allies fought their way across Occupied France. We were still in a state of shock when Will, three years younger, had gone down with his ship in the icy waters of the Baring Sea when it was ripped apart by a torpedo, a present from the German U-boat lurking underneath.

Losing Jeff had been bad enough, but for Mam Will’s death had been the last straw. She’d removed the crucifix that used to stand on the sideboard and every single holy picture and statue from the house, as if she’d given up all faith in God, although she still went to Mass and Benediction on Sundays. As the years passed, she hardly ate, and became thinner and thinner, weaker and weaker. Sometimes, I wondered if she was doing it deliberately, willing herself to die so she could join her sons, entirely forgetting she had a husband and six children who still needed her.

Lately, though, it seemed she was coming to terms with the loss of her two strapping lads. Perhaps it was the preparations for Norah’s wedding that had taken her mind off it a little. But now Norah was married, did it mean it was all going to start again and we would have to continue watching our mother fade to nothing in front of our eyes?

‘What exactly happened when they died, Bob?’ Mam was saying in a thin, shaky voice. ‘Did the bullet that struck our Jeff in the chest kill him instantly? Or did he lie there in agony before he passed away? And was it the torpedo that did for Will or did he drown when the ship sank? It gnaws away at me all day long. I’ve lived through their dying moments a million times.’

‘There, there, sweetheart.’ Dad’s voice held a note of desperation. Perhaps he had no words of comfort left. He’d had no opportunity to mourn his sons, no one to make a fuss of him as he’d done of Mam. His remaining children had tried, but it wasn’t enough. Only another parent could properly understand how he felt inside. I wouldn’t have dreamed of saying it aloud, but I often wondered if Mam was wrong to unload all her misery on to our father when he already had enough of his own. Tragedies should be shared, not borne by a single pair of shoulders, however strong they might appear to be.

‘I left my clothes in the front bedroom,’ Aileen whispered, ‘but I can’t very well disturb them. I’ll go back to the reception and get changed later.’

‘So will I.’ My clothes were in the bedroom I’d shared with Norah, but I thought it best not to venture upstairs just now.

*

When we got back to the scout hut, the atmosphere had livened up. Fresh sarnies had appeared, the pianist had returned – his tankard had been refilled – and he was playing a lively march for the children, who were involved in a game of musical chairs.

‘It’s like the war all over again,’ Claire said disgustedly when we joined her. She looked dead tired. I wondered guiltily if it was her who’d had to make the sarnies. ‘The bigger kids are throwing the little ones all over the place in order to reach a chair. My three are already out and they’re not very pleased about it. Patsy’s lost all her confetti, Colette’s limping, and I’m sure our Mark didn’t have a black eye when we left the house this morning.’

‘You’d better keep out of the road in your condition,’ I advised when my pregnant – and favourite – sister looked in danger of being mown down by a decreasing circle of frantic children waiting for the music to stop so they could fight their way to the chairs.

Claire backed away. ‘I thought you both went home to get rid of them ghastly outfits?’

‘We did, but Mam was crying upstairs and we thought we’d leave it till later,’ Aileen said. ‘Poor Dad, he sounds at the end of his tether.’

‘Mam said she kept seeing Jeff and Will at the wedding like ghosts. Perhaps we should have guessed today would upset her,’ I added.

‘I don’t want to know about it, not right now,’ Claire said harshly. ‘Me kids are all hurt in one way or another, me husband’s disappeared and the baby’s kicking the hell out of me. I’ve got enough to worry about. In fact, I wouldn’t mind going home.’ She looked close to tears. ‘Oh, and you might like to know our Jamie’s as drunk as a lord.’ The youngest McCarthy was always getting into mischief of some sort. Claire turned away, muttering, ‘Mam’s not the only one who saw ghosts at the wedding.’

I had also thought about my brothers throughout the day, but didn’t say so. Instead, I changed the subject. ‘Have we got a prize for whoever wins at musical chairs?’ I asked. The game was nearly over, there was only one chair left and a muscular-looking girl of about ten from the bridegroom’s side of the family was competing with a weedy lad of indeterminable age whom I’d never seen before. He was exceptionally fast on his feet.

‘If the girl wins,’ Claire said threateningly, ‘her prize will be a smack on the gob. She’s the one who tripped up Colette and made her limp.’

Fortunately for the girl, the boy won, and he didn’t seem to expect a prize – the applause and feeling of achievement were clearly enough.

I went to look for Marge and found her talking to Ada Tutty – she must have taken pity on the girl. ‘Did you know Ada’s going to night school to learn to speak French and Spanish?’ she asked.

‘Really?’ I didn’t know much about Ada other than she had a crush on Danny and had been in the year behind me and Marge at school. She was clever and had passed the scholarship, but her mother refused to let her go to secondary school, saying she couldn’t afford the uniform. Ada was very small with a little pale face and thin pale hair – the sort of girl who was never looked at twice.

‘I want to be an interpreter,’ she whispered.

‘Is there much of a call for interpreters in Bootle?’ Marge asked. She winked at me from behind Ada’s back, but I ignored it.

‘No, but there is in London and abroad.’

‘Are you thinking of going to work abroad, Ada?’ I was impressed.

‘I might.’ Ada blushed, and her eyes flickered towards Danny. He was now flirting with a different girl, who was fluttering her eyelashes at him coyly.

‘That’s a marvellous idea.’ I genuinely meant it, though got the distinct impression Ada wouldn’t dream of going abroad if she could get her hands on our Danny. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing it meself. I wouldn’t mind going to night school, either. I’d take English. At school, my spelling was hopeless and my grammar even worse. I’m not even sure where to put a comma.’

‘What point would there be in that?’ Marge demanded.

‘Knowing where to put commas?’

‘No, learning English, soft girl.’

‘Well, I could write a decent letter for one thing,’ I said stoutly.

‘How many times a year do you write a letter, Kitty?’

‘Two or three, and I’m reaching for the dictionary every other minute.’

Marge sniffed. ‘You’d be better off taking cookery. At least it’d be useful. You’re a hopeless cook.’

‘Oh, no!’ Ada’s little plain face was suddenly transformed and she looked quite animated. ‘There’s plenty of time for Kitty to learn to cook, but writing letters – writing anything – is terribly important. You have to know how to express yourself and what words to use. I write poetry,’ she added shyly.

‘See!’ I gave my friend a challenging look. ‘I’ve never written a poem in me life.’

‘And a fat lot of good it’d do you if you did.’

I would have liked to continue the discussion, but the pianist struck up the Gay Gordons and Liam, Claire’s husband, asked me to dance.

‘I hope you don’t mind, but Claire’s not up to it and I need the exercise,’ he said, stamping his huge feet like a member of the Gestapo. I liked Liam Quinn, a big, noisy man with brown curly hair, laughing brown eyes and an extrovert personality. He played football for Bootle Rangers, an amateur team, and he and Claire were extremely happy with each other.

‘Claire said you’d disappeared,’ I said accusingly.

‘Just went round to a mate’s house to listen to the cricket results on the wireless and have a quiet brew. By the way, ’case you’re interested, North Korea has invaded South Korea. It said so on the news.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Another war,’ Liam said laconically. He twisted me round and we marched back the way we’d come.

‘But it’s only five years since the last one ended!’

‘Don’t I know it, Kitty. I was in the Lancashire Fusiliers, remember?’

‘Will you be called up again? Will our Danny have to go? And what about Jamie? He’ll be eighteen in December. Oh, this’ll kill Mam,’ I wailed.

‘I dunno what’s going to happen.’ He shrugged. ‘North Korea has the Soviet Union behind it, and America backs the South. This could be the start of the Third World War and we’ll end up atom-bombing each other to bits. We’ll just have to see. Come on, Kitty,’ he urged as he tried to twirl my limp body around, ‘it’s like dancing with a sack of sawdust. I’d’ve been better off with Claire and she’s six months pregnant.’

‘I’m sorry, Liam, but I don’t feel like dancing any more.’ I walked off the floor.

‘Oh, come off it, luv. I was exaggerating about the war.’ He followed and grabbed my arm. ‘It’ll just be a storm in a teacup, that’s all.’

He was still holding my arm when I went outside, where the sun was setting. It felt cooler. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, Kitty,’ he said contritely. ‘I was exaggerating, like I said before.’

‘But there might be a war. Oh, Liam, I hate wars.’ I’d loathed sitting in the shelter listening to bombs explode all over Bootle, hated going to school next morning and seeing the empty spaces where houses had once stood and the empty desks of my classmates who’d lived in the houses and were now dead or injured. Most of all, I’d hated losing the brothers whom I’d loved with all my heart, then seeing my mother turn into an old woman almost overnight.

Liam took me in his arms, patted my back and said, ‘There, there,’ in the same tone my father had used to my mother earlier on. I was about to push him away, ashamed of appearing weak, when Claire appeared in the doorway.

‘Should I divorce you now, Liam, for having an affair with me little sister, or wait until I’ve got more evidence?’ she asked, smiling. She’d recovered her good humour.

‘I just told Kitty some bad news I heard on the wireless,’ Liam explained. ‘She’s taken it hard.’

‘Trust you not to be able to keep your big mouth shut, Liam Quinn,’ Claire said amiably. ‘You can tell me the bad news tomorrow. I’m not in the mood for it right now. Come on, Kitty, luv, let’s go in the kitchen and I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

‘I wonder if our Norah’s reached Bridgnorth yet?’ Claire said. She switched on the urn in the shabby kitchen and put two spoonfuls of tea in a giant metal pot.

‘I’m not sure how far away Bridgnorth is.’ Norah and Roy were staying the night there and carrying on to Cornwall in the morning.

‘Neither am I.’ Claire grinned. ‘I don’t envy her, sleeping with Roy Hall for the first time – or it might not be the first time, who am I to say? I can’t understand why she married the chap.’

‘’Cos Peter Murphy jilted her, that’s why.’

‘Yes, but all she had to do was wait a while and someone else would’ve come along, someone with a bit more spunk in them who didn’t look like death warmed up.’

‘And have a moustache like Hitler’s,’ I added.

‘And have a moustache like Hitler’s,’ Claire agreed with another grin. ‘In fact, I can’t understand why women are always in such a rush to get married.’

‘You did when you were twenty,’ I pointed out.

‘Yes, but I had to, didn’t I? Didn’t you know that?’ she said when my eyes widened in surprise. ‘I thought the whole world did, or at least the whole of Amethyst Street. Our Patsy was born seven months after the wedding. Oh, Mam went round telling everyone she’d arrived early, but no one believed her.’

‘I did,’ I said indignantly. ‘I expected to see this titchy little baby, but Patsy was quite big and I wondered what she’d have looked like if you’d gone the whole nine months.’

Claire laughed. ‘Poor innocent little Kitty! Anyroad, not long after Patsy came along, Liam was called up and, instead of spending the next five years doing war work and having a good time with me mates, I was stuck in the house with a baby to look after. I love the bones of Liam, but I wish we hadn’t had to get married when we did.’ Her expression grew serious. ‘Take my advice, Kitty, if you ever feel tempted to go with a feller, make sure you don’t fall for a baby and end up having to marry him. It might not be someone like Liam Quinn you get stuck with, but a chap like our Danny, who I wouldn’t trust any further than I could throw him. He’d make a terrible husband.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ I vowed.

Of course, I didn’t. The day came when I made the same mistake as Claire but, in my case, it turned out very differently.

The night wore on. Mam and Dad returned, both looking rather strained. Our Danny asked Marge to dance twice, and her face bore a triumphant smile as she whirled past in his arms. Me and Aileen agreed we couldn’t be bothered to go home and change our frocks. No one mentioned the fact that North Korea had invaded the South – or was it the South had invaded the North? I’d never heard of Korea before and could have got it the wrong way round. Liam found our Jamie in a drunken sleep at the back of the scout hut. Claire told him to leave him there.

‘Let him sleep it off, the daft little bugger. Serve him right if he wakes up in the middle of the night and everyone’s gone home.’

‘You’re a hard woman, Claire Quinn,’ Liam said, shuddering.

‘Don’t I need to be with an idiot like you for a husband?’

Liam looked at me, as if to say, ‘What have I done wrong?’

Roy’s mother exchanged blows with her husband, and my father had to separate them. An old lady fell asleep in the only lavatory and couldn’t be budged until someone climbed over the door. Ada Tutty had to take Mrs Tutty home when she swore she was having a heart attack, but it turned out to be indigestion.

All in all, it was a typical Liverpool wedding and, apart from one or two hiccups, I quite enjoyed myself. It was the day I began to look very differently on life. Perhaps it was Norah getting wed to drippy Roy Hall, the things Claire had said about not marrying young, Marge going on about old maids or the way Ada had looked at our Danny, but it was on that day that I decided I wasn’t willing to stay in my dead-end job until a fellow came along and rescued me. I would find another job, go to night school and be taught where to put commas. Oh, and I’d only get married to a man I was head over heels in love with. If I didn’t meet one, then I’d be quite content to become an old maid, though I promised myself I wouldn’t be sad.

I’d worked in the packing department of Cameron’s Shoe Factory in Hawthorn Road since I left school at fourteen. I wrapped shoes in tissue paper, placed them in the right-sized box, and stuck a label on the end: Lady’s Red Court, size 4; Gent’s Grey Brogue, size 10; Child’s Brown Sandal, size 1. The label also had a little drawing of the model inside and a reference number for reordering. It wasn’t exactly an inspiring job, but I worked with three other women – Betty, Enid and Theresa. We got on well and had a good laugh.

Betty and Enid were both sixty if a day, and Theresa I’d known for years, long before I came to work at Cameron’s, as she’d been engaged to our Jeff. They were going to get married when the war was over. I’d always admired her lovely serene face and smooth brown hair, which she still wore coiled in a bun at the back of her neck. She was now married to a chap called Barry Quigley and had two children, a boy and a girl. Her mother looked after them during the day.

‘How did the wedding go?’ she asked when I arrived on Monday. It looked as if Betty and Enid were going to be late.

‘Fine,’ I told her. ‘I’m sorry you weren’t invited, but Mam couldn’t stand the idea of seeing you with the children. It would’ve reminded her too much of Jeff.’

‘Perhaps I’d’ve been too much reminded of Jeff an’ all,’ Theresa said quietly. She’d never said anything, but I don’t think she was very happy with Barry. ‘Your mam wasn’t the only one whose heart was broken when Jeff was killed,’ she went on in the same tone. ‘But you have to move forward, not live in the past and make everyone around you as miserable as sin. You know, luv, I shouldn’t say this, but it’s about time your mam came to terms with the fact that Jeff and Will are dead. Oh, I’m not suggesting she get over it, that’d be too much to ask, but it’s not fair on the rest of you for her to keep on grieving so that it stays fresh in your minds, as if it on