Nearly Always

by Ken McCoy

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Lucy Bailey is not a girl to take no for an answer. When she asks her friend Billy Wellington to help her rescue a stray dog, she has no idea of the potential repercussions. A serious crime is committed while Billy is absent from the children's home where he lives and, when suspicion falls on him, the police decide that the safest thing for everybody is to lock him away in a mental institution.

Lucy refuses to believe that Billy has done anything wrong, and enlists her cool-headed teenage brother Arnold to help. DI Daniel Earnshawe, who has his own doubts about the police's conclusions, turns out to be unexpectedly helpful, and Billy has someone else on his side too: Helen Durkin, a beautiful, damaged girl who has been seeking to make amends for her past.

With so many daring and resourceful people battling on his behalf, it looks as though Billy's freedom will soon be won – before an unexpected development sees Arnold too fall foul of the law. Refusing to give up hope of winning freedom for them, Lucy chases up the few remaining clues while Daniel and Helen resort to an alternative form of justice . . .

Release date: April 28, 2016

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 448

Sample

 

‘You okay, love?’

The weather was seasonal for Yorkshire – cold, miserable, wet. Just like the shivering girl. She wept as she walked by the light of a guttering gas lamp over treacherous stone flags, awaiting just one careless step. She tripped over a crack and gave a cry of anguish, almost going headlong but recovering her balance at the last second. The man who’d been passing by at the time showed his concern but she didn’t answer. He muttered, ‘Suit yersen, love,’ and hurried on.

Of course she wasn’t all right. How could anyone be okay in this cruel world? One that had just forced her to do the most awful thing a person could ever do. She wasn’t being rude, just dumb with despair. What she’d just done – what she’d been forced to do – was making it difficult for her to breathe, much less answer a stranger’s question, no matter how well-meaning.

She passed darkened windows that reflected her own mood of desolation; her wet hair plastered to her scalp; her eyes were focussed somewhere beyond the pavement passing beneath her boots. She almost tripped again. She blinked away a few tears and remembered to concentrate on where she was going.

Tread on a crack marry a rat, tread on a line marry a swine. That’s what kids used to say about walking on stone flags. It’d never apply to her. She had her own motto: Never trust a man with testicles. She’d got that from Marie Garside who lived next door but one. She hadn’t really known what testicles were but, when Marie explained, it had seemed a good motto. Marie pronounced her name ‘Marry’ as in Marie Lloyd the Music Hall star, but it took all the class out of it somehow.

William pronounced Billy, that’s what they’d call him. Billy was okay, she didn’t mind Billy. Bill would be even better… stronger.

She really and truly wished she were dead.

A loud, grating engine noise had her glancing over her shoulder at a double-decker bus, the number 33, coming into Leeds city centre from Menston. The driver, in his enclosed cab, was having trouble changing up from second gear to third, and was cursing the mechanics at the depot who were supposed to have fixed the problem. He was crouching over his steering wheel and peering forward to make out whatever lay beyond his labouring windscreen-wiper. All the passenger windows were lit up cheerfully against the dark night, two tiers of misty figures staring out at the foul weather into which they’d soon have to venture. None of them could possibly have known of her misery.

All she had to do was throw herself in front of the bus. The heavy vehicle would squash this wretchedness out of her in the blink of an eye. All gone… so tempting. She stepped up to the kerb and felt all emotion drain from her as she waited for it to arrive. Decision made. Here it came. All she had to do was step out smartly in front of the lumbering vehicle. Three quick steps, no more. Then an upsurge of guilt because she could see the driver and it wouldn’t be right to make him carry her death on his conscience. Plus there was the sudden and terrifying thought that death might not be the end of it all. There could be further repercussions – God might not be too pleased with her, for instance, although at that moment she wasn’t too pleased with God.

Maybe death was too easy… Her momentary hesitation gave the bus chance to pass her by. Its wheels splashed through a puddle, soaking her, but couldn’t add to her cup of misery, which was already overflowing. She walked on, soaked to the skin, eyes to the ground, sad to be alive.

Her two-week-old baby would have been found by now. Even as she’d hurried away from the empty Wellington Street bus station people had been arriving. He was such a beautiful baby that he’d have no trouble finding parents who would look after him a lot better than she ever could. She’d left a note with him, telling them his name was William. Maybe she should have told them his birthday. Too late now.

The baby’s father – her stepfather – was away at sea and due home soon. The very thought of that monster made her retch. But she had to go home. She had nowhere else to go but to the house where it had all happened, and would continue to happen when he returned. Unless she did something about it – unless she stabbed him in his sleep.

Oh, the delight and the joy and the sheer relief that would bring! A knife through his putrid heart would take away his life and restore hers. Surely they wouldn’t hang her for killing an animal like him. She might get out of prison before she was thirty if she told them why she’d had to do it. The way she felt now, it wouldn’t matter if they did hang her…

She was walking up Briggate when the distress became too much for her and she fainted, collapsing on to the pavement. An ambulance was summoned to take her to the Leeds Public Dispensary on North Street, where she was kept overnight before she was brought home by her mother the following morning.

Her name was Helen Durkin and she was fourteen years and six months old.

 

Leading Wren Helen Durkin was a military messenger, more commonly known as a dispatch rider, based at HMS Ambrose, a shore establishment near Dundee. She had left school without her School Certificate at Christmas 1936 – three convenient months before William was born. Two months after she’d left her baby at the bus station she had got a job at the Leeds Grand Theatre as a general dogsbody: clerical assistant, stage hand, runner, walk-on actress, and anything else the theatre needed her for. She was a pretty girl, which always helps in such a job. The work was modestly paid but she enjoyed the atmosphere, especially once she started getting the odd minor part in productions as she grew older. The theatre wasn’t the real world but the real world wasn’t for her. Not after what the real world had done to her. She spent part of her meagre wages on acting lessons and her future was pretty much mapped out. Or at least it had been until war was declared which was when she’d volunteered for the Wrens, subsequently to become a dispatch rider. It was a skill that might prove handy once the war was over. Acting wasn’t the most secure of jobs.

She was riding her Triumph Tiger along the coast road, heading east towards Carnoustie, when she heard the aircraft above. Its engine was spluttering and the pilot was obviously trying and failing to maintain height. She slowed down and watched as the plane’s engine cut out completely and the propeller slowed right down until it was just idling in the moving air. The pilot swung his now gliding aircraft out over the Tay Estuary and then back to shore and into the west wind to pick up air speed for the safest landing possible. It was a big, cumbersome biplane, a Fairey Swordfish, nicknamed the Stringbag due to the jungle of bracing wires holding it together. It was a relic from the First War, but still in use as a torpedo bomber. This one didn’t look as if it would be in use for much longer.

Helen gazed across its prospective landing area. The narrow strip of shingle beach didn’t look too promising. She could see the airmen quite clearly, three in line, no doubt bracing themselves for a very nasty landing… or worse. She opened the bike’s throttle and rode parallel to them, keeping up with them, looking down at her speedo – fifty-five miles per hour. The pilot brought the nose up, the wheels touched the beach; the Swordfish bounced twenty feet into the air and came down again. This time the wheels dug into the shingle, the nose dipped, the tailplane cartwheeled over the nose several times, with bits of the superstructure flying off all over the beach, before the stricken plane came to a halt, right side up but with flames licking outwards from the engine.

Helen gasped with shock and rode straight over a grassy mound leading to the beach. The pilot was still in the cockpit, motionless. The other two men – the observer and the rear gunner – had been thrown out of their seats on to the beach but were still in grave danger should the aircraft explode; they were making no move to save themselves. Helen abandoned her motorbike and ran straight for the aircraft. She yanked at the pilot’s arm but he was still strapped in.

‘Oh, hell!’

She took a step back from the searing heat to recover then ran in again. Her crash helmet, goggles, gloves and riding leathers staved off the worst of the flames. This time she unclipped his safety harness and pulled him halfway out before the heat got to her again. She stepped back once more then went in again. She got a good grip on him but he was unconscious, a dead weight. All the time she was cursing at the top of her voice.

‘Move yourself, man! Come on, move your bloody self!’

With no help from him, she dragged the pilot clear. By now one of the other airmen had got to his knees. She grabbed him under the arms and hauled him away from the flames. She then went back for the third man, whose flying suit was already on fire. Helen flung herself on top of him to put out the flames before dragging him clear. Exhausted by then, she sat down beside all three of them, coughing and gasping for air.

Other people had arrived on the beach by now, most of them having witnessed Helen’s bravery. All four of them were helped well clear of the blazing wreckage. She had recovered some of her strength and went to retrieve her bike but she was in no fit state to ride it. An ambulance arrived, as did police and RAF personnel. Helen sat still, reliving what she’d just done. There was praise for her bravery, all of the spectators amazed that it was a mere woman who had put her life at risk to save three men, but no one was more amazed than Helen. She didn’t regard herself as brave, merely uncaring for this damaged life of hers thanks to her stepfather’s callous treatment of her. She hadn’t been scared of dying just now, though she’d wanted to avoid the pain of being burned to death.

All three airmen survived. The pilot needed extensive plastic surgery but it was better than being dead, and she received a wonderful thank you letter from his wife, plus similar letters from the mother and the fiancée of the other two airmen; letters she treasured even more than the British Empire Medal awarded to her by the King at Buckingham Palace three months later. Helen didn’t feel that she deserved it.

 

Billy’s grey flannel bags flapped around his ankles, almost obscuring the size eleven boots bought from the Army and Navy Stores. His haircut was a short back and sides with not much on top, and his green jumper had been knitted by one of the many women whose hobby it was to help kit out the mentally handicapped children of the Archbishop Cranmer Children’s Home. Billy’s jumper had been made by one of the less talented knitters.

It was a fine, blustery day. Lucy and Billy were walking up Harehills Lane. A lone tram rattled past, as did a horse-drawn cart driven by a dishevelled man, shouting, ‘Aaraggabone! Any owd raaags?’ A woman loudly chastised him for breaking the ragman’s rule of not working on the Sabbath. He shouted back and stabbed a grimy finger at a row of medal ribbons on his shabby overcoat, which apparently gave him divine dispensation to work on the Lord’s day. She hurled a string of unchristian profanities his way. He accepted defeat and clicked his unkempt horse into a trot, quietly pleased when the animal took his side by treating her to a farewell fart.

Cars, almost exclusively black, passed by at infrequent intervals, some struggling up the incline and belching out blue exhaust smoke. Cyclists laboured wearily up or freewheeled happily down. Branching out to either side of the road were crowded rows of brick-built terrace houses, constructed in the late-nineteenth century and liberally coated with early-twentieth-century soot from the many engineering works and industrial chimneys scattered around the city. Clothes lines were strung out across the cobbled streets, festooned with drying washing flapping in the spring breeze – another rule of the Sabbath broken, but this was the first decent drying day in over a week.

They passed a school and the Hillcrest Cinema. On The Waterfront was showing, but not on the Sabbath. A poster depicted a defiant Marlon Brando sitting in the back seat of a car next to Rod Steiger, who was pointing a gun at him. Lucy stood in front of it with her hands on her hips, head angled slightly to one side, absorbing the story it told her.

‘Look at Marlon Brando. He doesn’t look a bit scared, does he? You can’t scare Marlon Brando, you know. It’s a well-known fact that you can’t scare Marlon Brando. Even when he’s acting, he can’t act scared. He doesn’t know how.’

Billy stood beside her and looked at it with less appreciation. It was a picture of two unsmiling men. He didn’t know them, nor did he want to know them.

‘I wanna go an’ see that,’ Lucy said. ‘Our Arnold’s seen it. He says it’s a great picture but it’s an “A” an’ I’m only fourteen so I’ll need someone who’s sixteen or over to take me in.’

‘Am I sixteen or over?’ Billy asked.

Lucy looked up at her seventeen-year-old companion. ‘Not really,’ she said.

‘Oh, I thought I was.’

‘You might be one day, with a bit of luck.’

They moved on, with Lucy planning the freeing of a dog which she’d found in the woods and had kept there as a pet until it had been picked up by a dog van two weeks previously. Billy was wondering why he wasn’t sixteen or over.

‘Did you sing in church this morning?’ Lucy asked him.

‘I did. They give me two bob to sing me songs.’

‘Two bob… where is it?’

‘Missis keeps it for me.’

‘What did you sing?’

‘Don’t know what it’s called. I only know the words. I know four songs now.’

‘They’re called hymns.’

‘I know but I think that’s daft. It’s same as calling ’em hers.’

Billy had a beautiful counter tenor voice and had been singing solo in St John’s Church since he was fourteen years old. Lucy thought it was a miracle that he’d learned the words to four hymns when he couldn’t remember what he’d had for breakfast.

*

As Lucy and Billy were talking about hymns, Ethel Tomlinson, another resident of Archbishop Cranmer’s Home, was talking to a man who had smiled at her in the street and stopped for a chat. This never happened to Ethel. People never stopped to chat with her. They usually walked straight past, maybe giving her a wary glance as if people such as she weren’t safe to be near. Sometimes they sniggered, especially the younger ones; sometimes they called her cruel names, such as Daft Ethel. What they never did was stop for a chat with her. Most girls would have been on their guard with such a man but Ethel didn’t have a guard. 

She was a year older than Billy and like him was classified as mentally sub-normal. She was also a very friendly girl who wasn’t aware of the advances being made to her. The man was telling her how pretty she was and asking if she would like to take a walk with him in the wood behind the home. She went with him but still didn’t understand what was happening when he tried to kiss her. Ethel had never been kissed before, nor had she ever had anyone try to put his hand up her dress. She knew that was wrong. She’d been told that was wrong and to report any of the boys at the home who tried to do such a thing. Which was why she began to cry. 

*

Lucy and Billy walked on in silence. ‘If somebody doesn’t rescue Wilf they’ll just kill him,’ she said, at length.

‘Why do they want to kill him?’ Billy asked.

‘’Cos I bet they think he’s ugly and he’s not been taught proper. Wilf never does as he’s told, and he slobbers a lot, and he nearly bites your hand off when you give him sausages.’

Billy laughed. ‘Wilf likes sausages! Missis never knows I nick ’em, y’know.’

Lucy glanced at him sidelong and despaired at the way he’d been dressed by the home. It was the era of the teenage Teddy Boy – drape jackets with velvet collars were worn with drainpipe trousers; beetle-crusher shoes with inch-thick crepe soles were the only kind to wear, and hair had to be styled into a proper DA – the polite way of saying Duck’s Arse. Even Lucy’s brother Arnold, who was hardly a follower of fashion, wore Levi jeans with fifteen-inch peg bottoms and had his hair styled in a Tony Curtis quiff, which she thought was ridiculous. Like Lucy he’d inherited their mother’s Irish complexion and fair hair. Arnold’s would be better described as ginger, although he referred to it as auburn.

‘It’s better than nickin’ sausages from the Co-op,’ Lucy said. ‘The coppers’d have us for that an’ lock us up.’

‘They won’t lock me up,’ said Billy.

‘Why not?’

‘’Cos I’m a potty.’

‘Don’t they lock potties up?’

‘No.’

‘Who says?’

‘Missis says. I once nicked some currant teacakes from Mr Sizer’s shop an’ when the police came to the home, Missis said they’d have ter let me off ’cos I’m potty, and they couldn’t do me for it. Din’t even tell me not to do it again ’cos Missis says I know no better.’ He grinned and added, ‘So they know I know no better. I bet you can’t say that.’

Lucy didn’t try. She knew he’d have been practising it. Billy did that. He practised phrases he heard people use and stuck them into conversation, usually out of context. Not this one. He’d got this one right and he knew it, which pleased him.

‘It must be great being a potty,’ she said, ‘and getting away with all sorts o’ stuff. I never get away with nowt, me.’

‘’Snot bad.’

Then he laughed because he’d said snot.

‘D’yer gerrit? I said “snot bad”.’

They’d been walking for an hour and Lucy still hadn’t established if Billy was going to help her or not. It had started out as just a walk as she didn’t want to complicate things too much by giving him a destination and a mission for them to accomplish. Best to break it to him in stages. That would have been Arnold’s advice. She made a start now by bringing the subject up.

‘I bet you wouldn’t even get into trouble if we got caught rescuin’ Wilf.’

‘I bet I wouldn’t as well.’

‘So, you’re gonna help me?’

‘How d’yer mean?’

‘Are you gonna help me rescue Wilf?’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It means we’re going to get him out of the dogs’ home and take him back with us. And I need you to help me.’

Billy gave this some thought, then asked, ‘Have yer got any sweets?’

‘I’ve got two sherbet lemons. You can have ’em both as a reward if you help me.’

He shrugged again. ‘Okey-dokey.’

Lucy handed over the sherbet lemons. Billy stuck them both in his mouth at once and carried on talking. ‘How d’yer know his name’s Wilf?’ His voice was more garbled than ever, talking through a mouthful of sherbet lemons.

‘What?’

He repeated his question. Lucy caught the gist of it. ‘I’ve told you sixty-three times,’ she sighed.

‘I never heard you tell me sixty-three times.’

‘I called him Wilf. It’s what me dad was called.’

‘I didn’t know you had a dad.’

‘Blimey, Billy, I’ve told you that as well.’

He opened his mouth to comment but Lucy cut him off before she could get involved in another numbers argument with Billy, who struggled to count up to ten. A sudden gust of wind almost knocked her off balance.

‘Blimey!’ she said. ‘It’s a bit windy today.’

Billy wet his forefinger in his mouth and made a show of holding it in the air to test the wind. He’d seen it done and it was a clever trick in his opinion. ‘It’s not as windy as what it was before it was as windy as what it is now,’ he said.

Lucy tried to unravel this but gave up. It made sense to Billy so it was okay by her. Billy didn’t understand her most of the time so why did she need to understand him?

‘I haven’t got a dad any more,’ she said. ‘He was blown to pieces by the bloody Germans and him only five foot six in his socks, is what me mam always says.’

‘Does she always say that?’

‘Nearly always.’

Billy fell into deep thought then said, ‘I don’t know what that is.’

‘What what is?’

‘Nearly always.’

‘It’s when stuff happens a lot but not all the time.’

‘That’s me, that is. Stuff happens to me but not all the time. I nearly always do daft stuff but not all the time.’

‘All lads do.’

‘Who’s that man what lives in your house? Is he yer dad?’

‘Billy, me dad’s dead.’

‘Aw, I’m sorry yer dad’s dead. I didn’t know he were dead.’

‘No, yer won’t know the next time I mention him, neither.’

‘I haven’t got no dad,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got no mam neither.’

‘You might have. They sometimes just bugger off when you’re born and give you to someone else to look after. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that, y’know.’

Billy nodded vigorously as he tried to absorb this baffling piece of information. ‘Who’s that man then?’ he said.

‘That’s Weary Walter. He just thinks he’s me dad.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s a vegetarian.’

‘Is that like being a Meffodist or a Cafflic?’

‘No, it’s like being full of wind.’

‘Right,’ said Billy, who hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. After that he didn’t say a word, just followed Lucy, who was three years his junior and the only kid on the estate with any time for him. Most of the others made fun of him, but not when she was around.

‘She’s a right mouth on her has young Lucy,’ was what his house-mother, Mrs Sixsmith, said. ‘If she’s on your side, you’ll come to no harm.’

Billy just called his house-mother Missis. He couldn’t quite get his tongue around Mrs Sixsmith. It was Sunday afternoon and the stray-dog centre in Crossgates would be open until half-past four. It was where Wilf had been taken when he was picked up as a stray. One of Lucy’s friends had seen the dog van pick him up and they’d read the address on the side. Lucy’s brother Arnold had ‘cased the joint’, to quote him. He told her it would be easy to nick a dog from the centre. What you had to do was unbolt a kennel door when no one was looking and throw the dog over the wall which wasn’t all that high. Lucy wasn’t all that high herself which was why she’d asked Billy along. He was six foot tall and very strong due to his labouring job on a building site for which he was paid two shillings and threepence an hour – half the going rate for a general labourer.

All they had to do was get past the woman at the reception desk. Arnold had told his sister to talk sense and be polite. If a kid did that it always impressed adults no end.

‘I’ll do all the talking,’ said Lucy. ‘Don’t you even open your gob.’

‘Is that ’cos she’ll think I’m potty?’

‘She’ll know you’re potty – all lads are.’

‘Good job you’re not potty as well,’ said Billy.

‘That’s ’cos I’m not a lad.’

They came to the York Road and ran over to the central reservation where the tram tracks were. A number 18 was rattling towards them, advertising both Tizer and its destination – Crossgates.

‘Tizer tram,’ said Billy as it stopped at a shelter. ‘Good trams, Tizer trams.’

Lucy nodded, impressed that he’d recognised a word. ‘They’re your favourites, are they?’

‘Yeah. I like Tizer trams, but I don’t like Tetley’s Bitter trams. Oh, no! Missis says Tetley’s Bitter makes you pass wind, but I don’t know what that means.’

‘It’s… er… when you fa— oh, never mind.’

They crossed to the far side of the road and made their way to the dogs’ home, which was down a quiet street just off the main road. Arnold had given detailed instructions on how to get there. They’d walked four miles from the Moortown council estate where they both lived – Lucy with her mam, Arnold and her stepfather, Walter. Billy’s children’s home was on the same estate. The sound of barking dogs guided them to a compound halfway down the street. Lucy gave Billy his final instructions.

‘If I tell the woman names that aren’t ours, you’re not to say anything.’

‘Is that tellin’ lies?’

‘It is, yeah. Sometimes it’s okay to tell lies.’

‘Okey-dokey.’

The only entrance to the compound was through a wooden reception building painted dark green, with a sign over the door reading East Leeds Animal Centre. Underneath was a list of the opening hours, which Lucy examined. The centre closed at 4.30 p.m. She didn’t have a watch but she reckoned it couldn’t be any later than a quarter to far so they were here in plenty of time.

Lucy opened the door and the two of them went into the office. It had a faint whiff of disinfectant, wet sawdust and cigarette smoke, which Lucy didn’t find at all unpleasant – it was just how a dog place should smell. There were posters on the wooden walls – mainly instructions to would-be dog owners, and a large and incongruous picture of Blackpool Illuminations. The floor was covered in worn, brown lino, which still held a trace of yesterday’s muddy footprints.

A woman of around sixty was sitting on a high stool behind a counter, smoking a Woodbine and reading the News of the World. She was wearing glasses which were apparently only good for reading as she looked over the top of them to peer at the visitors – or rather kids – a lad and a young girl. Up to no good, probably. Having made this assessment she told them to bugger off and returned her attention to an item in the paper: apparently a bill that proposed to give eighteen-year-olds the vote had just been defeated in Parliament.

‘I should damn well think so!’ she muttered. ‘They know nowt at eighteen.’ She shook her head, wondering why they printed such boring rubbish in a sex and scandal newspaper. She looked up at Lucy again.

The girl smiled, politely, as per Arnold’s instructions. Be polite and well-mannered to grown-ups and it always throws ’em. They don’t expect kids to be polite and well-mannered.

‘Hello,’ she said, ‘I’m Maggie Butterworth.’

Maggie Butterworth was Lucy’s sworn enemy at school.

‘Are yer really?’ said the woman.

‘Yes, my dad sent me to look at the dogs. He says if I can find one that’s not too much trouble, we can keep him.’

The woman glanced up at Billy, then back at Lucy. ‘So this dog’s for you?’

‘Yes, this is my friend George. He’s just come to show me where the dogs’ home is. I didn’t know where it was but George’s been before.’

‘Is he all there? He doesn’t look the full shilling ter me.’

Lucy didn’t like the observation though it was true Billy had a vacant smile and a slight cast in his left eye, which didn’t help his appearance.

‘No, he’s not all there, he’s all here,’ said Lucy.

Billy nodded his agreement. He was good at nodding his agreement. Lucy’s cheeky reply was made with a disarming smile and she got away with it. The woman concentrated on her.

‘How old are you?’

‘Fourteen.’

Arnold had told her that they don’t let kids have dogs, only adults got to take them away.

‘If I see a dog I like, my dad’ll come back with me. He’s got a van and I’ll sit in in the back with the dog – that’s if you have one I like.’

The woman put her newspaper down and placed her cigarette on the edge of an ashtray. ‘Well, with it being Sunday I’m on me own so I can’t show yer round. But I suppose yer can take a look on your own, if yer like.’

Arnold had told her about the woman being on her own on a Sunday. He was in the sixth form, studying A-level physics and chemistry, and destined for university – that’s if his stepfather didn’t try to make him go out and work for a living. Lucy knew that wouldn’t happen, though. If the subject came up, Arnold had an answer ready for it. Arnold had answers for pretty much everything. He was annoying in that way, but very handy to have on your side.

‘The kennels all have numbers,’ the woman told her, ‘so, if yer see an animal yer like, just come back and tell me the kennel number and I’ll tell you all about the dog. Whatever yer do, though, don’t let it out.’

‘I won’t,’ lied Lucy. ‘How much does it cost to buy a dog?’

She had no intention of buying one as she had no money and wouldn’t be allowed to keep Wilf at home. On top of which she didn’t have a proper dad. She’d kept her mam out of the subterfuge just in case things went wrong and the police thought she might be involved. Lucy always tried to think things through beforehand.

‘Yer don’t actually buy it,’ said the woman. ‘There’s an administration fee of seven and sixpence, which includes a year’s licence.’

‘Yeah, that’s what my dad said. Well, he said three half crowns, but that’s the same, isn’t it?’

Arnold had told her to embellish her story to make it sound more authentic. Lucy trusted her brother. He was a big daft lad but he always looked out for her.

‘It’s through that door,’ said the woman. ‘The dogs might start barking when yer go through, with ’em thinking it’s me comin’ ter feed ’em, but as soon as they see it’s not me they’ll quieten down.’

Lucy had one more question. ‘If they don’t get bought, what happen. . .