Liverpool Lies

by Anne Baker

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Sagas

Synopsis

A series of devastating truths threaten the happiness of two sisters in wartime Liverpool. Anne Baker's Liverpool Lies covers the effects of the Second World War on two nurses, and the disruption of family secrets. Perfect for fans of Cathy Sharp and Lindsey Hutchinson. It is 1941 and Connie and Lottie Brinsley are training to be nurses at Liverpool's Walton Hospital. When heavy bombing is followed by the news that their home has taken a direct hit and their parents and little brother are dead, the two sisters are utterly devastated. Later, they are shocked to discover that their uncle, Steve, is not who they thought he was, and the Brinsleys have been living a lie for years. And Steve's not the only one who's hiding the truth, for when Lottie meets and marries Waldo Padley, no one tells her that he's a liar and a cheat. But, no matter what life throws at them, the sisters find the strength to face the troubles ahead... What readers are saying about Liverpool Lies : 'I found this book very enthralling and enjoyed it so much I have purchased several more books by Anne Baker' ' Excellent storytelling throughout. Could not wait to carry on reading where I left off. Good story and very well told'

Release date: October 24, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 452

Sample

Charlotte Brinsley turned over in bed, pulling the bedclothes high around her head.

‘Lottie, come on. You’ve got to wake up!’

‘Go away,’ she gasped. ‘Leave me alone.’

She felt fuzzy with sleep and craved more. The Blitz was at its height. Last night had been terrible; the bombers had kept coming over, wave after wave. She’d been working flat out. It couldn’t be time to get up yet.

‘Lottie . . .’ It was her sister Connie’s voice. ‘Wake up.’ She felt the blankets being dragged from her. ‘Something awful has happened.’

She forced her eyes open. Her bedroom in the nurses’ home swam round her. Her sister’s face, anguished and tearstained, was a foot from her own. It brought a stab of fear that woke her fully.

‘What is it?’ She knew it must be something dreadful for Connie to look like that.

‘Crimea Terrace – it was hit last night. A direct hit.’

Lottie could no longer breathe. There was a tight band round her chest. She sat up slowly. This was what they’d both dreaded above all else. Their home bombed, their family . . .

‘Are they hurt? Badly?’ Her sister’s dark eyes stared back at her in distress. ‘Dadda? Is he all right? Mam? Jimmy?’ Connie kept shaking her head. ‘Oh, my God! How d’you know? Are you sure?’

‘They’ve been dug out.’

Lottie knew their family went down to the cellar during raids, thinking it as good as any air-raid shelter. Well, Dadda couldn’t get down but everybody else did.

Connie’s eyes were glazed with grief. ‘They’ve all been killed. Mam, Dadda and Jimmy.’

‘All?’ Lottie felt for her sister and pulled her close. Clung to her. She’d heard of this catastrophe happening to others. But now her own family . . .

‘How d’you know? Who told you?’

‘Police message. Matron told me.’

‘What about our Cliff?’

He was the elder of their two brothers. Since he’d turned fourteen he was often out fire-watching during raids.

‘I don’t know. I’ve heard nothing about him.’ Connie burst into tears. ‘He could be all right. I do hope so.’

Lottie leapt out of bed, feeling as though her whole world had collapsed. Her alarm clock told her it was nine-thirty and that she’d had four hours’ sleep. She snatched up her dressing gown and strode down the corridor to the bathroom. She was supposed to be on day duty but now, with the air raids, there was an added rota on which nurses were woken in the night when the normally reduced night staff couldn’t cope. It fell heavily on those who’d had experience of casualty and theatre work and Lottie had had both.

There had been heavy air raids on the last ten nights, and the day staff had been called out on seven of them when casualties came flooding in. Lottie had worked all yesterday on the ward and had come off duty at eight. She’d fallen into bed and been asleep before nine, only to be woken yet again by the chilling rise and fall of the sirens.

Only half awake, she’d slid into her dressing gown, pushed her feet into shoes, grabbed for her clothes and an old blanket and raced down to the shelters. Scores of other girls were doing the same. As she waited in the crush above the shelter steps, she’d heard the throbbing engines of enemy bombers and seen parachute flares floating in the sky, lighting up the city.

Despite the restless tossing all round her, the nervous whispers and coughs, she’d been asleep in moments. It was midnight when she’d been woken up to help in Casualty. They’d been desperately busy attending to those injured in the bombing.

She’d known her own family was in the same danger; they were all equally so. She’d never allowed herself to think about that, and in any case there wasn’t time to think once the bombs started falling. Ambulances kept arriving disgorging patients with dreadful injuries. She’d had to keep her mind on what she was doing.

Last night, Liverpool had had a bad time. She’d heard the crump crump of falling bombs and felt the foundations of Walton Hospital shake more than once. Since the beginning of the month there had been little respite. Lottie knew that fires started two nights ago were still blazing. The smell of smoke and burning was acrid in the atmosphere. She’d found the only way to keep panic at bay was to believe it wouldn’t touch her or those she loved. Now that it had, she felt icy cold with shock and was beginning to shake.

When she got back to her room Connie was lying across her bed. She was officially on night duty. In many ways that was better because she could bank on being allowed to sleep all day. Lottie started to pull on her clothes, and reached for a pair of slacks.

‘Are you sure? That it’s them, I mean? There couldn’t be a mistake?’

Connie mopped at her eyes. ‘It was a police message, how could there be? Mam and Jimmy were crushed, suffocated. Dadda – well, it would have been different for him.’

Dadda had been sleeping in the parlour for two years before the war started, because he could no longer get up and down stairs. At the beginning of the war, Mam had had the electric light put in the cellar, so they could use it as a shelter. It had been black and creepy down there and difficult to see their way down without it.

Lottie had helped to carry down two old beds as well as some easy chairs. But the cellar stairs were even steeper and narrower than those going up to the bedrooms. Cliff had carried Dadda down on his shoulders when the raids first started but after that Dadda had refused to let him do it. He’d said he’d rather stay on his couch in the parlour and if his end came so be it.

That was where Dadda would have been, in the parlour by himself. Lottie clenched her teeth hard as she thought of him being blown to pieces. Mam would have taken Jimmy down the cellar. They’d have been together on one of the beds. Little Jimmy was only nine and he was terrified of raids. Mam always put her arms round him and pulled him close when the bombs started to fall, trying to comfort him. She and Connie sometimes used the other bed, if they happened to be home when a raid started.

Lottie swallowed hard. She felt sick. ‘Where – where are they now?’

‘Been taken to a makeshift morgue, the church hall in Bodmin Street. There’ve been so many killed recently. Matron says we can have compassionate leave to see . . . to see to things.’

Lottie felt as though she’d received a kick in the stomach. The all clear had gone just after two but it had been five in the morning when she’d come back here to sleep. She’d had special dispensation to stay in bed until lunch time instead of getting up to go on duty at seven-thirty.

She reached for her navy blazer. ‘Shall we go now? We have to be sure it’s them.’

‘It is, Lottie. I think they’ve been officially identified – the neighbours, I suppose. We wouldn’t have been informed like this if—’

‘I have to see for myself. Come on, I’m nearly ready.’

That brought Connie rolling off the bed to stand beside her. She peered over Lottie’s shoulder into the dressing-table mirror.

‘Don’t I look terrible?’

Connie’s dark brown eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her face white and waxy as a candle. Lottie stared at her. Although they were sisters they weren’t alike. Connie was both taller and broader; bigger boned. She looked stronger and more mature – well, she should, seeing she was twenty-four already. Lottie had had her twenty-first birthday last month. By comparison, she thought she looked a slip of a girl.

Both sisters had brown hair, though Lottie’s was a few shades darker than Connie’s. She ran a hasty comb through it. She’d had it cut short with a fringe, and left it to nature to bend where it would, whereas Connie worked hard on hers.

She watched her sister pull her white cap free of the clips that held it in place, and start to unpin her rolled-up hair. It fell to her shoulders in long springy curls that bounced when she walked. Connie had pretty hair.

‘I can’t be bothered changing.’ She snatched off her crumpled and bloodstained apron. Usually the night staff put on clean aprons before going in to dinner. ‘I’ll come in my uniform. I won’t be a minute, I’m going to my room for my gabardine.’

‘Then you’ll have to put your hair up again too. I’ll be down in the kitchen.’

Lottie’s mouth was dry, and she craved a cup of tea. She went to see if there was some made, but the kettle was cold and the teapot washed out. It would waste time to make some now. Instead, she drank a glassful of cold water from the tap and shivered. She desperately needed to know for sure.

Lottie knew that buses were rarely able to run to a timetable after a bad raid, because the roads were left full of craters and debris. The sisters tagged on to the queue waiting at the bus stop. Up ahead someone said they’d heard that the bus station had been damaged and some of the buses burned out. Just as they were about to give up and start walking, one came. Everybody crowded on; they had to stand but it was better than walking.

All the way there, Lottie told herself they’d find the bodies were not those of their family, that there’d been some mistake. Easy to make mistakes like that in the aftermath of bombing. She prayed she would be proved right.

She felt numb as they tiptoed into the hall. Connie’s grip was stopping the blood going to her fingers; she could feel her heaving with distress. The bodies were laid out in rows, each covered with a sheet. The number was truly appalling. There were priests of several denominations offering comfort.

Now as she looked down on the faces of her loved ones, laid out on the floor with so many others, Lottie knew her prayer had been fruitless. Mam was here and Jimmy, covered in that dust that always came from gutted buildings.

‘Dadda? Where’s Dadda?’ Connie sounded full of hope. ‘Perhaps he’s all right.’

‘No.’ Lottie swallowed and gripped Connie harder. ‘No, not if Mam and Jimmy caught it. He’d be up in the parlour. It’d be worse for him.’

They were shown a body bag then, labelled Herbert Edward Brinsley, with their address and other information about Dadda. Hot scalding tears ran down Lottie’s face for the first time.

She wept for poor Dadda, who’d been gassed in the Great War and had been unable to do much ever since. War had ruined the last twenty years of his life and now another war had killed him.

She wept for Mam, who’d held the family together. As the district midwife, she’d been the breadwinner. Mam who’d persuaded them both to train as nurses.

‘You won’t be sorry if you do,’ she’d told them. ‘It brings its own rewards and you’ll never starve. There’s always work for nurses.’

Lottie had been close to her little brother Jimmy and grieved particularly for him. Because he was only nine years old, they’d all expected him to be safe. The war would surely be over before he was old enough to be called up. Now his body was crumpled and broken and dead. She clung to Connie, horrified at what she was seeing.

‘Where is Cliff?’ Connie wept. A search was made through the lists for his name.

‘Not here, thank God.’

They’d all been more fearful for Cliff. He was nearly fifteen; in a little over three years he’d be called up to join the forces.

‘He’ll be devastated. We’ve got to find him,’ Lottie sobbed.

The vestry had been set up as a temporary office. A registrar of births, marriages and deaths was in attendance and so was a firm of undertakers. The girls sat there for a long time, giving particulars and arranging for the funerals.

Wood for making coffins was in short supply; it seemed they were now being made from a mixture of plasterboard, papier mâché and even stout cardboard. They chose the cheapest available because they didn’t know how they were going to find the money to pay for it all. They were told that burial grants were available and they filled up the forms they were offered, but even so they were worried about the cost.

Then, feeling sick and disorientated, Lottie found herself out on the pavement in the morning sunshine. It seemed inconceivable that nothing had changed out here. Housewives lining up outside a grocer’s shop told them the queue was for chocolate biscuits. A postman whistled as he rode by on his bicycle and a toddler whose pushchair was filled with poultry meal was yelling that he didn’t want to walk.

‘We’ve got to find Cliff,’ Lottie said. ‘He’s only a kid.’ She felt responsible for him now. ‘He’ll be feeling awful if he knows.’ She felt a rush of anger that the Germans should do this to her family.

‘He’ll be at home,’ Connie said.

‘It’s gone – blown to bits, but where else can he be? Anyway, I’d like to see it.’

‘It’ll be awful.’ Connie’s face was full of dread.

‘We’ve got to look for him. Besides . . .’

Lottie couldn’t stay away. She had to see what had happened to Crimea Terrace before the whole place was flattened to make it safe.

‘Come on. We’re used to seeing bombed buildings and rubble-filled streets. There’s plenty of them everywhere.’

But Lottie had to admit this was different. The landmarks were changed so she hardly recognised that which had been so familiar. Connie was hanging on to her, hardly able to look.

‘Oh, my God,’ Lottie breathed. The devastation in Crimea Terrace was appalling. Part of the roof and some of the upper floors were swinging unsupported, and furniture, fireplaces, woodwork and bricks had fallen to ground level. There was a turmoil of furniture that was almost unrecognisable, mostly in bits. When last she’d seen it, she’d thought the house shabby and much in need of refurbishment.

‘We’ll do it up when the war’s over,’ Mam had said many times. ‘No point now, even if we could get the paint.’

They’d had broken windows and falling plaster in previous raids, but now the main timbers were swinging loose, and broken slates and glass lay everywhere. The smell of the Blitz was horrible, a mixture of leaking gas, charred wood and cordite with the whiff of fractured sewers. She’d smelled it on casualties being brought in. Here it was strong enough to make her put her hand over her nose.

They’d been brought up in the small house that had stood here since Queen Victoria’s reign. Theirs had been the last one in a terrace of twelve, and now only the end wall was standing. Their family had been sheltering in the cellar but that hadn’t saved them.

Three nights ago, Lottie had been in the cellar here with her family. She and Connie always spent their days off at home, sleeping there the night before. Lottie’s hand went across her mouth as she remembered.

‘I changed my day off this week,’ she gasped. The thought was hitting her with the force of an explosion. ‘Oh, my God! If I hadn’t . . . I’d have been here last night.’

Another nurse working on the same ward had wanted today off to meet her boyfriend who was coming home unexpectedly. Lottie hadn’t been keen to change. She didn’t like taking her day off at the beginning of a week; it meant she could find herself working for almost two weeks without a break. She thought she’d been doing her colleague a big favour.

Goose pimples were running up her arms. If she hadn’t been persuaded, she too would have died here last night. It seemed impossible that death could hang on chance like that. Life had never seemed so precarious, so fraught with danger.

‘How awful!’ Connie’s dark eyes were pools of horror. Lottie felt sick. She sat down on a large coping stone that had ended up on the pavement.

Her home had been an anchor to her. A place of retreat from the busy hospital. She’d felt cared for and cherished there, safe and protected. Suddenly she felt very vulnerable.

Through a shimmer of tears, she saw a toy that she’d bought for Jimmy for his last birthday. He’d treasured that red fire engine.

‘I’d like to have that.’

She pointed it out to Connie who tried to reach it, struggling through the rubble, but a policeman waved her back because of the danger. An elderly man in ARP uniform retrieved it. Like everything else it was covered with dust, and the red paintwork was scratched, but otherwise it was unharmed. Lottie wanted it as a keepsake.

‘There’s my wardrobe,’ Connie called excitedly to the man. ‘Please, please . . .’ It was tipped on its side, the mirror on the front was broken and one end had been stove in, but it was still in one piece. He kicked away enough debris to open the door and carried the contents over to them.

Her clothes had been partially protected inside the wardrobe, but everything that survived an air raid got its share of thick grey dust. Pulverised cement and plaster added to dirt and dust that had accumulated under floorboards was expelled with force over everything else. Connie shook off as much as she could, and burst into tears again at being reunited with her best winter hat and coat.

Lottie could see Civil Defence workers still digging into the cellars further up the terrace. She’d known the neighbours who had lived there, they’d been part of her childhood. She clenched her fists in anger that they should all die like this. Old Mr Roper had lived alone at number ten; they were bringing him out now on a stretcher. Connie was hiding her face in her coat, hardly able to watch. An ambulance was waiting and further up the street a WRVS van was dispensing tea.

‘There’s our Cliff.’ Lottie shrieked with joy as she caught sight of his thin lanky figure. She tore up the pavement jumping debris to reach him, glass crunching beneath her feet. He’d been helping to dig Mr Roper out and looked only marginally more alive than the crumpled body on the stretcher. His brown hair was turned to grey by a coating of that awful thick dust. His normally clear skin was grey with it too, though a tear had washed a single furrow down his cheek. Connie was right behind her.

‘Are we glad to see you,’ she panted. ‘We were so afraid you’d been hurt too.’

He relinquished his end of the stretcher to an air raid warden and his sisters each latched on to one of his arms.

‘Mam and Dadda,’ Lottie said. ‘Do you know?’ She could see from his face that he did.

‘Isn’t it dreadful?’ he blurted out. ‘Little Jimmy too. I had to identify . . .’

‘You identified them? Did you see Dadda?’

He pulled a face. ‘What was left of him. Ghastly.’

‘You poor kid, you’re all in. Have you been at it all night long? Working here, digging people out?’

His eyes, usually alert and full of mischief, were red-rimmed pools of despair. Connie put her arms round him. ‘You hadn’t anywhere else to go?’

Lottie felt another shockwave run through her. Cliff had been made homeless. They all were, really, but she and Connie had their rooms at the hospital. Cliff had nowhere to go. Who would look after him now?

Feeling at a loss, Lottie looked round. Mrs Smith who’d lived next door had always been ready to give a hand but her house had gone too. Probably she was under one of those sheets in the church hall. Lottie could feel herself shaking.

It was a relief to recognise the face of someone she knew quite well. Mrs Cooper who lived behind them in Sebastopol Terrace was bustling up.

The last time Lottie had seen her, she’d been seated at their kitchen table, a stout figure topped with iron-grey hair. She’d been complaining to her mother about the boys.

‘I’ve seen your Cliff out by himself at all hours,’ she said. ‘After the siren’s gone too. He needs more discipline.’

‘He’d be fire-watching,’ Mam had returned. ‘Civil Defence duties. He’s nearly fifteen, you know.’

‘Little Jimmy isn’t. I saw him out on his bike after dark last night. I know it’s hard for you, Marion, when you have to work, but they both need a firmer hand. Jimmy will be as wild as his brother in another year or two.’

Mrs Cooper was sharp-tongued but good-natured. For the past three years, her son Sandy, an officer in the Merchant Navy, had been taking Lottie to the pictures and to dances. Now plump arms tried to stretch round all three of them.

‘You poor things, losing your home like this. You must be devastated.’

Connie burst into tears again. ‘Our Cliff’s got nowhere to go.’

‘Come on round to my house, all of you. Our front windows have gone but we’re still standing. What a night it’s been.’ Sebastopol Terrace was two roads further up the hill.

‘You can stay with me, Cliff. Have our Sandy’s room. If you’ll behave yourself.’

‘Course I will.’

‘He’s not wild or anything,’ Lottie protested.

‘We’d be very grateful.’ Connie was drying her eyes. ‘Lottie and me, we’re all right, but Cliff . . . Can’t have him in the nurses’ home.’

‘Wouldn’t want to go.’ Cliff straightened up. He looked shattered.

‘Don’t worry, you can stay with me. Our Sandy would want that, him being so keen on you, Lottie.’

Lottie told her how Cliff had been helping dig people out all night.

‘Cliff lad, you’ve been a right hero and you nothing but a stripling. Come on, you need a bath and then you’ll want to put your head down and sleep this off. Lottie, have you heard from Sandy? He’ll be writing to you as often as he can.’

‘I had a letter from him the other day. He was in Ireland.’

‘Ugh – I hate to think of him crossing the Atlantic.’

‘He’ll be in a convoy.’

‘Yes, but the U-boats . . .’ She sighed. ‘I’ve been expecting him to write saying you two are getting married. I’d be right pleased if he did. When’s it to be, then?’

‘He hasn’t mentioned marriage to me.’ Lottie smiled for the first time that day. ‘Not yet, but when I write back I’ll tell him you’re looking forward to having me as a daughter-in-law.’

‘Eh, you’re just like your mam. Always joking even now when you’ve lost your home.’

‘It’s not only our home,’ Connie gulped.

‘It’s losing our family,’ Lottie added.

‘Yes. Your mam was a real saint. She’d do anything for anybody. You had a happy home. Look, I managed to salvage a few things for you first thing this morning.’

‘My school books?’ Cliff asked. ‘Did you find those? I looked . . . I’d done my geography homework, too. I have to hand it in today.’

‘No, lad. Not your books.’

They’d reached Sebastopol Terrace. Agnes Cooper led them in through the back yard of Number 4, and put the tin bath hanging on the yard wall inside the wash house.

‘There you are, lad. I’ll bring you a kettle of hot water and some towels. You’ll feel better when you wash some of that dust off.’

‘I’ll give him a hand,’ Connie said, running cold water into a bucket from the outside tap. ‘You’ll need your hair washing, Cliff. It’s grey with that awful stuff.’

Lottie helped him off with his jacket. She hardly recognised his school blazer, it was so torn and impregnated with thick grey dust too. She was afraid it was ruined, like his trousers. She noticed his fingernails were broken and his hands covered with cuts and deep scratches.

‘How did you do all this?’

‘There was nothing to dig with.’ He was almost in tears now. ‘Had to get down to Mam . . . fast like, as fast as I could. I thought they might still be breathing . . . but it was no good.’

Lottie shuddered. She thought of Cliff as her little brother. Like her, he looked younger than he was. Not yet fifteen and he’d dug Mam and Jimmy out with his bare hands. Some of the neighbours too, by all accounts. No wonder he was physically and emotionally worn out.

They got him clean and Mrs Cooper found a pair of flannelette pyjamas and some slippers for him. Smelling strongly of TCP, the only antiseptic she could find, which Connie had applied liberally to his cuts and grazes, he let himself be led into the warm kitchen to sit beside the range.

‘I’ve got a pot of tea made. I expect you girls could do with a cup too.’

Lottie was so tired she was beginning to feel dizzy. It was a relief to sit down in a room that was undamaged and sip at the cup of hot strong tea.

‘I can hardly believe it,’ Connie groaned. ‘The house, the family, all gone.’

‘It feels lonely doesn’t it? I feel so alone,’ Cliff had drained his cup.

Mrs Cooper refilled it. ‘Shall I make you a sandwich?’

‘Yes, please.’

Connie’s face was bleak. ‘Out of a family of six, there’s just us three left.’

‘I’ll get a job,’ Cliff said. ‘I’ll earn my own living. I’m old enough.’

Lottie cut in: ‘You’ll stay on at school, our Cliff. It’s what Mam wanted for you.’

He’d won a scholarship to the grammar school and his future looked bright – if only the war would end before he reached the age of eighteen and was called up.

‘You can go to school from here,’ Mrs Cooper told him. ‘Aren’t you sitting your Matric next year?’

‘S’posed to be.’

‘You will be,’ Connie said. ‘And you’ll be staying on to do your Higher.’

‘But now . . .?’

‘You’ve got two big sisters,’ Lottie told him.

Cliff raised eyes that were heavy with sleep. ‘There’s Uncle Steve too,’ he said. ‘We mustn’t forget Uncle Steve.’

Shortly afterwards, Agnes Cooper led Cliff upstairs to Sandy’s bedroom. While she was alone with Connie, Lottie said: ‘We’ll have to make sure our Cliff’s all right. Keep an eye on him.’

‘Yes, of course. He’s not really wild.’

‘It’s just that Dadda never knew where he was. He was always out.’

‘He couldn’t control him.’

‘But he’ll do what Mrs Cooper wants.’

‘It’s asking a lot,’ Connie said. ‘A big responsibility for her to take on.’

‘I don’t like leaving him here by himself. Not now, after what’s happened.’

She could see Connie didn’t either. ‘He hardly knows the Coopers. Not like you.’

‘But we’ve got to. He knows that.’

When Mrs Cooper came down to the kitchen again, she said: ‘He couldn’t keep his eyes open. Poor Cliff. He did very well to keep going all night. He’ll be out for the count now.’

Lottie said: ‘We’d be very grateful if you’d let him lodge with you. There’s nowhere else.’

‘Of course. I’ve said he can stay here, haven’t I?’

‘He’s only a kid but he won’t give you any trouble.’

‘And we know he’d be fine here, with you.’

‘I’ll do my best for him, love. You know that, but there’s things you’ll have to do. I’ll have to have a ration book for him.’

‘I’d forgotten the rations. His book would have been in the kitchen drawer . . .’

‘You’ll have to go down to the Food Office and ask them for another. There’s one in Cobham Street next to the library. I hear there’s no problem when people are bombed out and lose everything. They’ll replace it.’

‘We’ll do that this morning,’ Connie said. ‘We’ll go straight round when we leave here.’

‘We’ll pay you for looking after him,’ Lottie added.

‘It’s all right, I could manage . . .’

‘It’s not fair that you should.’

She’d already discussed with Connie what the funerals were going to cost. It was more than they could afford, but Connie was earning over ten pounds a month with all found as a staff nurse. She could be too very soon, if she passed her finals.

‘Would a pound a week be all right?’

‘Eh, that would be grand, more than enough. Fifteen shillings. I don’t want to make a profit. Not out of the likes of you.’

‘We could manage that, thank you. Every month, we’ll give you a couple of pounds each from our salary.’

Mrs Cooper looked from her to Connie. ‘Your man would be proud of you. All of you. Sticking together like this.’

‘We have to now.’

‘Eh, she was a lovely woman. She’s brought you up just grand.’

Lottie knew their family hadn’t been a normal one. How could it be, when Dadda was incapacitated and Mam had to go to work?

‘There’s another thing. Have you been down to let her boss know? She’ll be wondering why your mam hasn’t turned up for work this morning.’

That made Lottie screw up inside. ‘We haven’t got round to things like that. Not yet.’

‘You should. There’ll be a bit of money coming for you. Your mam’s worked part of this month, hasn’t she?’

‘So she has. Didn’t think of that either. Our Cliff’s going to need new school uniform. New everything, come to that.’

‘We’d better get on and do it.’ Connie stood up and started gathering up her belongings.

Mrs Cooper seemed loath to let them go.

‘I’ve salvaged part of your mother’s best tea service. It’s in the parlour. Come and see the mess in here. There was glass everywhere. George is coming home early to board this window up.’ George was her husband.

She showed them a cardboard box half filled with cups and saucers. ‘Not a chip out of these cups. Do you want to take them with you?’

‘There’s only four.’ Lottie could feel a lump the size of a tennis ball in her throat. There had been six in the china cabinet.

Connie stirred. ‘We’ve nowhere to put them. Can’t carry anything more, either.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after them till you want them. I’ll miss your mother too. Always had a cheery word for everyone, she did. There’s more stuff that’s hardly damaged. I could see that new piece of carpet you had in the front room but there was too much rubble on it for me to lift, but they’ll get everything out befor