Lime Street Blues

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Coming of Age; Sagas; Women's Fiction; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

It is the heady 60s in Liverpool, and the Flowers, the Baileys, and the McDowds are three very different families bound together by music. The children are determined to be part of the glamour that surrounds the city, so when Sean, Lachlan, and Max form The Merseysiders and Jeannie and Rita become part of The Flower Girls, they put their hearts and souls into achieving success. The greatest star of all is Sean McDowd, who is adored by women; but Jeannie Flowers has married Lachlan and no one is prepared for the deceits and betrayals that lie ahead.

Release date: September 9, 2010

Publisher: Audible Studios

Print pages: 480

Sample

‘Rose!’ Mrs Corbett bellowed. ‘Where are you?’

‘Up here, madam.’ Rose appeared, breathless, at the top of the stairs. ‘Making the beds.’

‘I’d have thought you’d be finished by now.’

‘I’ve only just started, madam.’

‘Huh!’ Mrs Corbett said contemptuously. She always seemed to expect her maid to have begun the next job, or even the one after that, leaving Rose with the constant feeling that she was way behind. ‘Well, get a move on, girl. I want you in uniform by eleven o’clock. The vicar and his wife are coming for coffee.’

‘Yes, madam.’ It was exceptionally warm for June and there were beads of perspiration on Rose’s brow when she returned to the colonel’s room and began to plump up pillows, straighten sheets and tuck them firmly under the mattress. Colonel Max was Mrs Corbett’s son, a professional soldier, presently home on leave. He was a much nicer person than his mother, very kind. She was always sorry when he had to return to his regiment.

Mrs Corbett, on the other hand, was never kind. She apparently thought the more Rose was harried, the harder she would work. But Rose already laboured as hard as she could. That morning, she’d been up at six, as she was every morning, to light the Aga. On the dot of seven, Mrs Corbett had been taken up a cup of tea, two slices of bread and butter, and The Times. The colonel had been given his tea on the dot of eight, by which time his mother was having a bath, the coal scuttle had been filled, the washing had been hung on the line, the numerous clocks had been wound, and Mrs Denning, the cook who lived in the village, had arrived to make breakfast.

While the Corbetts ate, Rose sat down to her own breakfast, although, more often than not, the bell would ring and she would scurry into the dining room to be met with complaints that the eggs were overdone, the kippers not cooked enough, or there wasn’t enough toast, none of which was Rose’s fault, but Mrs Corbett behaved as if it was.

Breakfast over, she’d start on the housework; shake mats and brush carpets, dust and polish the furniture, which had to be done every day, apart from Sunday, Rose’s day off, but only after ten o’clock, when the Aga had been lit and, if it was winter, fires made in the breakfast and drawing rooms, the morning tea had been served and the beds made.

Today, the housework would be interrupted because the Reverend and Mrs Conway were coming for coffee and she would have to change out of her green overall into her maid’s outfit; a black frock with long sleeves, a tiny, white, lace-trimmed apron and white cap. Thus attired, Rose would answer the door and show the visitors into the drawing room where coffee and biscuits were waiting on a silver tray and Mrs Corbett would rise to greet them, her big, over-powdered face twisted in a charming smile.

Rose wasn’t required to show the visitors out. She would change back into the overall and get on with other things; cleaning the silver, for instance, or ironing, the job she disliked most. Mrs Corbett examined the finished work with a hawk’s eye, looking for creases in her fine, silk underwear and expensive crêpe de chine blouses. Even the bedding had to be as smooth as freshly fallen snow. Rose would be bitterly scolded if one of the pure Irish linen pillow slips hadn’t been ironed on both sides, something she was apt to overlook.

‘You’ll make some man a fine wife one day,’ Mrs Denning had said more than once.

‘I can’t imagine getting married,’ Rose usually replied. She did so again today. Both women were in the kitchen, where the windows had been flung wide open in the hope a breath of fresh air might penetrate the sweltering heat. A red-faced Mrs Denning was preparing lunch and Rose was sorting out yesterday’s washing, putting it into different piles ready to be ironed. Mrs Corbett was still entertaining the Conways in the drawing room.

She picked up the iron off the Aga and spat on it. The spit sizzled to nothing straight away and she reckoned it was just about right. She put another iron in its place.

‘You’ll get married,’ Mrs Denning assured her. ‘You’ll not be left on the shelf, not with those big blue eyes. How old are you now, Rose?’

‘Fifteen,’ Rose sighed. She’d been working for Mrs Corbett and keeping The Limes spick and span for over two years, ever since her thirteenth birthday. Holmwood House, the orphanage where she’d been raised, wasn’t prepared to keep the children a day longer than necessary and Mrs Corbett had been to examine her and assess her fitness for the job, which for some reason involved looking inside her ears and down her throat.

‘I want someone strong and healthy,’ she’d said in her loud, sergeant major voice. She was a widow in her sixties, a large, majestic woman with enormous breasts that hung over the belt of her outsize brown frock. She wore a fox fur and a tiny fur hat with a spotted veil that cast little black shadows on her dour, autocratic face.

‘Apart from the usual childhood illnesses, I’ve never known Rose be sick,’ Mr Hillyard, the Governor of Holmwood House, had smoothly assured her.

‘But she doesn’t look particularly strong. In fact, I’d describe her as delicate.’

‘We have another girl that might do. Would you care to see her?’

‘Why not.’

Rose was sent to wait outside Mr Hillyard’s office and Ann Parker was fetched for Mrs Corbett to examine, but rejected on the spot. ‘She’s too coarse; at least the other one has a bit of refinement about her.’ Every word was audible in the corridor outside. ‘What’s her name again?’

‘Rose Sullivan.’

‘She’ll just have to do. When can I have her?’

‘She’ll be thirteen in a fortnight. You can have her then.’

Two weeks later, at the beginning of May, a car had arrived to take Rose away from Holmwood House, a place where she had never been happy and where the word ‘love’ had never once been mentioned or felt. The driver got out to open the door and take the parcel containing all her worldly possessions. He was a handsome man, old enough to be her father, with broad shoulders and dark wavy hair. His skin was burnt nutmeg brown from the sun. She learnt later that his name was Tom Flowers and he was, rather appropriately, the gardener who doubled as a chauffeur when Mrs Corbett needed to be driven anywhere.

He hardly spoke on the way to The Limes, merely muttering that if she was good and behaved herself, she’d get on fine with her new employer. ‘She’s a hard taskmaster, but her bark’s worse than her bite.’

Rose was soon to discover the truth of the first part of this remark, but never the second.

The Limes was a square, grey brick building with eight bedrooms set in five acres of well-tended grounds. Inside was comfortably furnished, though on her first day she didn’t see the rooms she would soon come to know well, as Tom Flowers took her round to a side entrance, through a long, narrow room with a deep brown sink, a dolly tub, and a mangle. A sturdy clothes rack was suspended from the ceiling.

He opened another door and they entered a vast kitchen with a red tiled floor and white walls, from which hung an assortment of copper-bottomed pans, from the very small to the very large. Waves of heat were coming from a giant stove. The shelves of an enormous dresser were filled with pretty blue and white china and there was a bowl of brightly coloured flowers on the pine table that could easily have seated a dozen.

‘Mrs Corbett’s out for the day,’ Tom Flowers informed her, ‘and Mrs Denning, the cook, won’t be back for a while. I’ll show you your room. Once you’ve unpacked, perhaps you’d like to go for a walk around the village. Ailsham’s a nice place, you’ll like it. Just turn right when you leave the gates and you’ll come to the shops about a mile away.’

‘Ta,’ Rose whispered.

‘Come on then, girl,’ he said brusquely. ‘You’re on the second floor.’

He marched out of the kitchen, up a wide staircase, then a narrower one, Rose having to run to keep up. The door to her room was already open, her things on the bed. Tom Flowers said something that she presumed was ‘goodbye’, closed the door, and Rose was left alone.

She sat on the bed. It was quite a pleasant room with a sloping ceiling. The distempered walls, the curtains on the small window, and the cotton coverlet on the bed were white. There was a rag rug on the otherwise bare wooden floor, a little chest of drawers, and a single wardrobe. Later, when she opened the wardrobe to hang her too short winter coat, she found a black frock that was much too long and a green overall that would have fitted someone twice her size.

But Rose felt too miserable to unpack then. Unhappiness rose like a ball in her throat. Tom Flowers’ footsteps could be heard, getting further and further away, and with each step, the unhappiness grew until she could hardly breathe. She lay on the bed and began to cry into the soft, white pillow. She wanted her mother. That could never be because her mother was dead, but she wanted her all the same. All she could remember was a blurred face, a soft voice, soft music, arms reaching for her as she toddled across the room, being cuddled by someone who could only have been her mother. Then one day the soft voice stopped and the music was no more. She had never been cuddled again. The voices since had been harsh, even when she was told that her mother had died. The birth certificate she’d been given with her things stated ‘Father Unknown’. She had no one. Now she didn’t even have the orphanage, where at least she’d felt safe. She was completely alone in the world.

More than two years later, Rose was still not happy, but she had settled into The Limes. Mrs Denning was a cheerful soul and they got on well. She had two sons, one a year older than Rose, the other a year younger, and kept her amused with tales of their escapades. She would never grow used to Mrs Corbett’s sharp tongue and being told she was lazy and stupid, but it didn’t upset her as much as when she’d first arrived. Her favourite time was evening when she enjoyed the solitude of her room, her head buried in one of the books she’d borrowed from the library van that parked by Ailsham Green for two hours every Wednesday afternoon. She was supposed to have time off when lunch was over and before the afternoon visitors were due to arrive. It was wise to escape from the house, otherwise Mrs Corbett was liable to forget it was her free time and demand she get on with some work. Discovering the library van had been a blessing. She liked romances best, stories about men and women falling in love. Rose wanted someone to love her more than anything in the world.

She had just finished the ironing when Tom Flowers tramped into the kitchen for his midday meal, followed by Colonel Max. Neither man was married and they were the best of friends. The same age, thirty-nine, they had played together as children. Tom’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him, had tended the gardens of The Limes since the middle of the last century.

The colonel was delighted to see her. ‘I swear this young lady grows prettier by the day,’ he exclaimed. ‘What do you say, Tom?’

Tom glanced at her briefly. ‘Aye,’ he muttered. He was a taciturn man, though always polite. Rose found it strange that the gardener, with his tall, strong frame and square shoulders, looked far more the military man than Colonel Max, who was small, almost bald, and rather endearingly ugly.

‘One of the pleasures of coming home on leave is having my morning tea brought by the best-looking girl in Ailsham,’ the colonel enthused.

‘I was just saying, she’ll make someone a fine wife one of these days,’ Mrs Denning put in.

‘If I were twenty years younger, the someone would be me.’

Mrs Denning grinned. She knew, they all knew, including the colonel himself, that Mrs Corbett would sooner be dead than allow her son to marry a servant.

Rose’s cheeks were already burning and they burnt even more when she noticed Tom Flowers was looking at her again, not so briefly this time. There was an expression on his face almost of surprise, as if he’d never seen her properly before. She caught his eye and he quickly turned away.

‘Lunch will be ready in ten minutes, Colonel,’ Mrs Denning sang. ‘C’mon, Tom, sit down and take the weight off your feet.’ She and Tom were also friends, having gone to the village school together, though Mrs Denning had been in a lower class. In fact, everyone in Ailsham seemed to be connected in one way or another. Rose felt as if she was living in a foreign country and would never belong.

‘I suppose I’d better get changed.’ The colonel left the room with a sigh, from which she assumed he would much prefer to eat in the kitchen with the servants than with his autocratic mother, but that would have been almost as terrible a crime as wanting to marry one.

Was she really all that pretty? Rose examined her reflection in the mirror behind the wardrobe door before setting out on her afternoon walk. She had brown hair, very thick and wavy, a bit wild, framing her face like a halo. It seemed a very common or garden face, she thought, with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She smiled at herself to see if it made any difference and several dimples appeared in her cheeks, still pink as a result of the colonel’s comments. She shrugged and supposed she wasn’t so bad.

The shrug reminded her that her brassiere was too tight and she needed a bigger one, size thirty-six. The black frock that had been too big when she first arrived would soon fit perfectly.

The countryside surrounding Ailsham was too lonely to wander around on her own and a bit dull. Rose had got into the habit of walking as far as the village where she usually treated herself to a bar of toffee or chocolate, or a quarter of dolly mixtures.

Ailsham was pleasantly ordinary, not the sort of village that often featured in the books Rose so avidly read. There wasn’t a thatched cottage to be seen, nor an ancient stone church with a steeple. She had yet to find a gurgling stream, a hump-backed bridge, or a pretty copse. There were no gently sloping hills, this part of Lancashire being very flat. There was a brook somewhere off Holly Lane, but to get there meant walking along the edge of two ploughed fields and perhaps getting lost.

The village was served by a tiny station, from which trains ran hourly to Liverpool, fifteen miles away, and Ormskirk, only four. The Ribble bus ran twice a day to the same places, early morning and late afternoon, though not on Sundays.

The shops were still closed for lunch when Rose arrived on this particular day; the butchers, where one of Mrs Denning’s sons, Luke, worked, the bakers, Dorothy’s Hairdressers and Beryl’s Fashions where Rose bought all her clothes, including the pink and white gingham frock she had on now and the blue silky one she wore on Sundays. Beryl also sold ladies’ underwear, wool, and sewing things. The biggest shop was Harker’s, which was actually five shops in one; a general store, a greengrocers, newsagents, tobacconists, and post office.

She sat on a bench at the edge of the green and waited for the shops to open. The pub, the Oak Tree, which got its name from the huge tree on the green directly opposite, was busy and customers, all men, were sitting at the tables outside. The pub, the shops, and most of the houses that she’d passed had posters in the windows advertising the Midsummer Fête to be held on the village green a week on Saturday. It was being organised by the Women’s Institute of which Mrs Corbett was a founding member and chairman of the committee. For weeks now, groups of women had been meeting in the drawing room of The Limes to make final arrangements for the fête. There was a perfectly good Women’s Institute hall between the school and the Oak Tree that would have been far more convenient, but the chairman preferred the committee came to her house. Rose wasn’t the only person Mrs Corbett bossed around.

The butchers threw open its doors, followed by the bakers. Soon, all five shops were open, but Rose didn’t move from the bench. She was watching two girls of about her own age, both vaguely familiar, walking along the path that encircled the green, arms linked companionably.

‘Oh, look,’ one remarked as they drew nearer. ‘The door’s open, which means I’m late. Mrs Harker will have my guts for garters.’ She abandoned her companion and began to run. ‘See you tonight at quarter to six by the station,’ she shouted. ‘I’m really looking forward to that Clark Gable picture.’

‘Me too.’ The other girl sauntered into Beryl’s Fashions and Rose recognised her as Heather, Beryl’s assistant. Beryl mustn’t mind her being late.

Rose would have liked to work in a shop and quite fancied going to the pictures, but what she would have liked most of all was to have a friend, someone to link arms with. She rarely met anyone her own age except in the shops. If, say, she went into Beryl’s and bought the brassiere she obviously needed and Heather invited her to the pictures – a most unlikely event – she couldn’t possibly go. At quarter to six, she would be setting the table for dinner, which would be served at precisely six o’clock. It would be well past seven when her duties were finished. By then, she would be too weary to walk as far as the station. Anyway, the picture would be half over by the time she got there.

She jumped to her feet, bought a whole half pound of dolly mixtures, and ate them on the way back to The Limes.

Music was coming from the barn that Colonel Max’s father had turned into a games room for his sons – the colonel’s elder brother had been killed in the Great War. It had a billiard table, a dart board, and a badminton court. The music was jazz, which the colonel only played out of earshot of his mother, who couldn’t stand it. Rose loved any sort of music. She danced a few steps on the gravel path, but stopped immediately, embarrassed, when she saw Tom Flowers regarding her with amusement from the rose garden.

‘You look happy,’ he said.

‘Oh, I am,’ she said, but only because it seemed churlish to say that she wasn’t.

She went through the laundry room into the kitchen, which should have been empty as Mrs Denning went home as soon as lunch was over and didn’t return until half four to make dinner. Rose was surprised to find a cross Mrs Corbett waiting for her, demanding to know why she hadn’t answered the bell she’d been ringing for ages.

‘It was my time off, madam. I’ve been for a walk,’ Rose stammered.

‘Oh!’ Mrs Corbett looked slightly nonplussed. ‘Well, you’re late back. I’m having a bridge party this afternoon. I want you in uniform immediately. My guests will be arriving very soon.’

In fact, Rose was five minutes early, but Mrs Corbett would only have got crosser if she’d pointed it out.

A week later, the colonel’s leave ended and he left for France. Lots of people telephoned or called personally to wish him luck, which had never happened before.

‘Look after yourself, Max, old boy.’

‘Take care, Colonel. Keep your head down, if only for your mother’s sake.’

War between Great Britain and Germany was imminent. Once it started, the colonel’s regiment would be on the front line. Mrs Corbett, who’d lost one son in the ‘war to end all wars’, retired to her room after Colonel Max had gone, and stayed there all morning, emerging as steely-eyed as ever at lunchtime and complaining bitterly that the lamb was tough.

War, when it came, made little difference to Rose’s life. It just became busier. Mrs Corbett joined the Women’s Voluntary Service and held coffee mornings and garden parties to raise funds. Rose was required to make gallons of coffee and tea, and carry it round to the guests. Mrs Denning had to bake mountains of sausage rolls and fairy cakes, yet was still expected to have the meals ready on time.

‘Does she think I’m a miracle worker or something?’ she asked Rose in an injured voice.

It came as an unpleasant shock when, after Christmas, Mrs Denning announced she was leaving to work in a munitions factory in Kirkby at four times her present wage. A special bus came through Ailsham to pick the workers up. Mrs Corbett would just have to find another cook.

‘But I don’t like leaving you behind, love,’ Mrs Denning said. ‘There’ll be no one for you to talk to once I’m gone. Look, why don’t you leave, get another job? There’s loads of work going, what with all the men being called up. You could earn more money and mix with young people for a change.’

‘Yes, but where would I live?’ Rose wanted to know.

‘You’d have to find digs. It shouldn’t be too difficult.’

‘I’ll think about it.’ She was too scared. She felt safe in The Limes, just as she’d done in the orphanage. There was a saying, something about sticking with the devil you know. Mrs Corbett was the devil, and Rose would stick with her, for the foreseeable future at least.

Mrs Corbett had found it impossible to hire another cook. She wasn’t alone. Her friends were having the same problem. Not only cooks, but housemaids, nursemaids, parlourmaids, even charwomen, were abandoning their employers to take up war work. Mrs Conway’s maid had become a WREN. Some women regarded it as unpatriotic. How could they be expected to run their own households without servants?

‘Of course it’s not unpatriotic,’ Mrs Corbett said sternly. ‘We’ve all got to do our bit.’ But she hadn’t been near the kitchen except to give orders since her own cook had left. A stunned Rose had discovered she was expected to do the cooking in Mrs Denning’s place.

‘But I can’t,’ she gasped when the additional duties were explained to her. ‘Can’t cook, that is.’

‘Did you learn nothing from Mrs Denning in all the time you’ve been here?’ Mrs Corbett asked cuttingly.

‘No, madam.’ There’d been too many other things to do to watch the meals being made. She could fry things, boil things, but when it came to roasting meat, baking bread, making cakes, she was lost. The Aga had four ovens that each did different things, she had no idea what.

She coped for a week. Mrs Corbett was invited out to dine several times, but when she ate at home, the complaints increased with every meal. The chops were burnt, the potatoes soggy, the jelly hadn’t properly set. She was a foolish girl for not realising it should have been made the day before.

On Sunday, two old school friends arrived to stay, the Misses Dolly and Daisy Clayburn, who lived in Poplar and were convinced Hitler was about to bomb the place out of existence. On their first morning, Rose found the laundry basket in the bathroom overflowing with dirty clothes they’d brought with them. She took them downstairs and was putting them to soak in the sink in the laundry room, when Luke Denning arrived on his bike bringing a huge piece of meat. It was a horrible morning, very stormy, and the rain ran in rivulets from the brim of his sou’wester and the hem of his oilskin cape.

‘We’re lucky, living in the country while there’s a war on,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Town folk’d give their eye teeth for a leg of lamb that size.’

‘Lucky!’ Rose said weakly.

‘Well, I’ll be off.’ Luke got back on his bike. ‘Oh, by the way. You’ll have to collect your own meat as from next week. I’m leaving Friday. Ma’s got me a job in her factory. ’Bye, Rose.’

‘’Bye.’

Rose carried the meat inside and put it on the draining board. It looked much too big to be part of the little woolly lambs she’d seen frolicking over the fields. What was she supposed to do with it? Should it go in the oven covered with greaseproof paper? If so, for how long? Did it have to be cut into bits and stewed – or was that steak, the cheap sort? Maybe it had to be boiled?

She made the morning tea and took Mrs Corbett’s up first, then returned for the Misses Clayburns’. They were both sitting up in the double bed when she went into their room.

‘We heard the rattle of dishes and were expecting you,’ said one. ‘Oh, this is nice, isn’t it, Dolly? Just listen to that rain! Could we have marmalade with our bread and butter, dear?’

Rose raced downstairs for the marmalade. She was hurrying down a second time, the marmalade delivered, when Mrs Corbett called.

‘Was that Luke with the lamb I heard earlier?’ she asked. When Rose confirmed that was the case, she said, ‘I’d like it roasted for lunch, the potatoes too, served with cauliflower and peas. And don’t forget the gravy. For afters, we’ll have suet pudding and custard. And kindly stop running everywhere, Rose. There’s no need for it. It sounded as if a cart horse was galloping up and down the stairs.’

There was a tight, panicky feeling in her chest as Rose ran through the rain to the coalhouse with the scuttles, filled them, and brought them back one at a time. She was already way behind this morning. The fires had refused to light, the strong wind had whistled down the chimneys and blown the paper out before the flames had caught. She’d had to reset them twice. She wound the clocks, cut the rind off the bacon, and prayed she wouldn’t break the yolks when she fried the eggs, something Mrs Corbett found extremely irritating. Then she remembered she’d used the last of the bread to take upstairs, there was none left for toast and the baker hadn’t yet arrived with a fresh supply – even Mrs Corbett accepted she couldn’t expect her to make home-baked bread.

Her hands were shaking when she set the dining room table. It was quarter to nine, almost time for breakfast. The food had to be served on covered platters on a side table so people could help themselves. She returned to the kitchen and put the strips of bacon in a frying pan on the simmering plate of the Aga, then fried the eggs on the hot plate. All the time, the leg of lamb stared at her balefully from the draining board.

At nine o’clock promptly, Mrs Corbett and her friends came down for breakfast. The bell rang almost immediately, as Rose knew it would. The yolks had broken on five of the six eggs and she was in for a scolding.

‘You seem to have forgotten something, Rose,’ Mrs Corbett said cuttingly when she went in. ‘Although you have provided us with butter, jam and marmalade, there’s no toast to put it on. And why is your hair all wet, girl? You look very untidy.’

‘It must’ve got wet when I fetched the coal, madam.’

‘Did you not think to wear a scarf ? You’re obviously having trouble waking up this morning.’

‘I’m afraid the bread still hasn’t been delivered.’ It wasn’t her fault, but she felt as if it was and the panicky feeling spread to her entire body. Her legs were threatening to give way.

Mrs Corbett rolled her eyes. ‘Please hurry. We’ll just have to do without toast, though it isn’t very satisfactory. My previous cook wasn’t exactly cordon bleu,’ she remarked as Rose went out the door, ‘but she was vastly superior to this one.’

Rose didn’t have time to eat. She hastily cleaned the drawing room, while waiting for the bell to ring when the eggs with the broken yolks were discovered and she’d be subjected to another dressing down. But Mrs Corbett must have decided she’d had enough that morning and the bell didn’t ring again.

She was in the laundry, stirring the washing with the dolly, when the bread arrived, delivered by the baker himself in his van. ‘Won’t be doing this much longer,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to get it from the shop. Petrol’s being rationed soon. I say, you look moidered. I reckon they’re working you too hard. ’Bye, love.’

She hardly heard a word he’d said. She transferred the washing to the sink and rinsed it, then fed each garment twice through the mangle. It was no use hanging the things outside today, so she let down the rack. When everything had been spread as neatly as possible to minimise the ironing, she pulled it back up, something she always found difficult, but it had only gone halfway when she found she could pull it no further. All the strength had gone from her arms. She tried frantically to cling to the rope, but could feel it slipping through her hands, burning the flesh, and the next minute the rack, full of clean clothes, was on the floor.

Rose fainted.

When she came to, she was on the bed in her room and Tom Flowers was bending over her.

‘Just found you lying on the floor, so I carried you up here,’ he said gruffly, his brown eyes puckered with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her body felt as light as air and her head was swimming. She remembered the washing and tried to sit up, but Tom pushed her down again.

‘Stay there,’ he commanded. ‘You need to rest. You’ve been looking fair worn out lately. Mrs Corbett’s a good woman, but she’s expecting too much. There was a time when someone came in to do the laundry and all the maid had to do was clean. Now Mrs Denning’s gone and you’re doing the cooking an’ all. I’ll have a word with the mistress later.’

‘Please don’t,’ Rose implored. ‘She might give me the sack.’

‘Never in a million years, young lady,’ he assured her with a smile. ‘She’d never find a more willing worker than you.’

Rose burst into tears. ‘But I don’t know what to do with the lamb,’ she sobbed. ‘And how do you make suet pudding?’