Queen of the Mersey

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Family Life; Friendship; World War II; Sagas

Synopsis

A wonderfully involving family story that begins in Liverpool at the beginning of the Second World War and spans forty turbulent years. Liverpool, 1939. The Second World War is about to start when pretty Laura Oliver meets Queenie Todd. Laura is twenty-one and happily married. At fourteen, Queenie lacks Laura's confidence and has been deserted by her good-time mother. The two become friends, but when the air raids begin Queenie is trusted to look after two young children, and the three of them are evacuated to a small town on the coast of Wales. At first, it is a haven of peace and quiet. The girls have a wonderful time - and then something happens, so terrifying that it will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Release date: September 9, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 530

Sample

Lizzie O’Brien escapes her dark Liverpool childhood when she runs away to London – towards freedom and a new life. But the past is catching up with her, threatening to destroy her dreams . . .

There’s a party on Pearl Street, but a shadow hangs over the festivities: Britain is on the brink of war. The community must face hardship and heartbreak with courage and humour.

1940 – the cruellest year of war for Britain’s civilians. In Pearl Street, near Liverpool’s docks, families struggle to cope the best they can.

War has taken a terrible toll on Pearl Street, and changed the lives of all who live there. The German bombers have left rubble in their wake and everyone pulls together to come to terms with the loss of loved ones.

Just as Annie Harrison settles down to marriage and motherhood, fate deals an unexpected blow. As she struggles to cope, a chance meeting leads to events she has no control over. Could this be Annie’s shot at happiness?

When Millie Cameron is asked to sort through her late aunt’s possessions, she finds buried among the photographs, letters and newspaper clippings, a shocking secret . . .

War tears Josie Flynn from all she knows. Life takes her to Barefoot House as the companion of an elderly woman, and to New York with a new love. But she’s soon back in Liverpool, and embarks upon an unlikely career . . .

Sisters-in-law Alice and Cora Lacey both give birth to boys on one chaotic night in 1940. But Cora’s jealousy and resentment prompt her to commit a terrible act with devastating consequences . . .

Ruby O’Hagan’s life is transformed when she’s asked to look after a large house. It becomes a refuge – not just for Ruby and her family, but for many others, as loves, triumphs, sorrows and friendships are played out.

1960s’ Liverpool, and three families are linked by music. The girls form a successful group, only to split up soon after: Rita to find success as a singer; Marcia to become a mother; and Jeannie to deceive her husband, with far-reaching consequences . . .

Queenie Todd is evacuated to a small town on the Welsh coast with two others when the war begins. At first, the girls have a wonderful time until something happens, so terrifying, that it will haunt them for the rest of their lives . . .

Victoria lives in the old house on the corner. When the land is sold, she finds herself surrounded by new properties. Soon Victoria is drawn into the lives of her neighbours – their loves, lies and secrets.

Cara and Sybil are both born in the same house on one rainy September night. Years later, at the outbreak of war, they are thrown together when they enlist and are stationed in Malta. It’s a time of live-changing repercussions for them both . . .

Kitty McCarthy wants a life less ordinary – she doesn’t want to get married and raise children in Liverpool like her sisters. An impetuous decision and a chance meeting twenty years later are to have momentous repercussions that will stay with her for ever . . .

Escaping their abusive home in Ireland, sisters Mollie and Annemarie head to Liverpool – and a ship bound for New York. But fate deals a cruel blow and they are separated. Soon, World War II looms – with surprising consequences for the sisters.

Amy Curran was sent to prison for killing her husband. Twenty years later, she’s released and reunited with her daughter, Pearl. But Amy is hiding a terrible secret – a tragedy that could tear the family apart . . .

‘What are you doing here?’ Vera Monaghan enquired.

‘I live here, Mam,’ Mary replied, grinning. It was a game they sometimes played.

‘Well, I’ve never seen you before. When did you arrive?’

‘Five years ago last week,’ Mary said promptly.

‘Ah, I remember now! You’re me little girl. What’s your name? I can’t rightly recall.’

‘Mary.’

‘So it is. You know, Mary, sometimes I can’t believe you’re real.’

Mary pinched herself. It hurt. ‘I am, Mam. Honest.’

‘Come and give your mam a hug so she’ll know you’re really real.’ Vera threw her fat body into a chair and held out her arms.

Mary scrambled from under the table where she’d been tying knots in the fringe of the chenille cloth, sat on her mother’s knee, and showered the beloved red face with kisses. ‘D’you believe I’m real now, Mam?’

‘I do, I truly do. You’re me little angel, the best surprise a woman could ever have had.’

‘And a man,’ Mary reminded her, thinking of her dad.

‘And a man,’ Vera agreed.

Mary had arrived, quite unexpectedly, when her mother was forty-seven and already had eight children, all of them boys, the youngest seven and the eldest almost twenty-one. She had thought her childbearing days were long over and Mary had taken her and Albert entirely by surprise. The lads had considered the whole thing hilarious. They hadn’t realised people as ancient as their mam and dad still indulged in a bit of nooky, and if ever a boy woke in the dead of night when the old folk were in bed, he would listen hard, just in case they were at it again.

When Mary was brought home from the maternity hospital, the entire family stood around the cot, staring down at the tiny baby. They had a girl!

‘Girls don’t have willies,’ remarked Tommy, nine. ‘How will she wee, Mam, without a willy?’

‘She’ll find a way,’ his mother assured him.

‘She’s pretty,’ said Caradoc, the youngest.

‘You were all pretty when you were babies.’ Vera looked at her eight big lads whom she loved with all her heart and found this hard to believe. Dick, the eldest, was six feet two and excessively hairy.

‘I wasn’t pretty,’ growled Victor, aged twelve.

‘Oh, all right, so you weren’t.’ Anything for a quiet life, she thought, although Victor, with his long dark lashes and rosy cheeks, had been the prettiest of the lot.

‘We’ve got a sister,’ Dick said in awe.

‘I’ve got a daughter,’ Albert Monaghan said in much the same tone.

Mary became their pet, better any day than a kitten or a puppy. The younger boys brought their paintings home from school to show their sister and were hurt when she tore them to pieces with a delighted shriek.

‘She doesn’t understand great art,’ their mother told them. ‘Not yet.’

The four older boys were working. On Friday, pay day, they would buy Mary sweets or chocolate, sometimes a toy. Once, Mrs Monaghan found her two-year-old daughter’s mouth stuffed with bubble gum that took a good ten minutes to remove.

‘She’s getting spoilt rotten, Vera,’ Albert would say fondly, though he was the worst of the lot. Mary had more dolls than she had brothers.

‘Too much love never hurt anyone,’ his wife would reply.

They were a contented couple, the Monaghans, happy with each other, loving their children, and Mary had been the icing on the cake. Vera had once been pretty herself, but bearing nine children had created havoc with the body that had once been described as a figure eight and now resembled a great big nought.

‘Everything’s collapsed,’ she would tell people dramatically. ‘Me breasts, me tubes, me womb. Everything.’

Her shape hadn’t been helped by her diet during the early years of marriage, long before any of the boys had gone to work, and money had been short. Albert didn’t earn much as a tram conductor and there were a lot of mouths to feed. Often, the family would sit down to a plate of scouse, sometimes blind, if meat couldn’t be afforded, while Vera sat down to nothing at all.

‘I had mine earlier,’ she would explain when her husband wanted to know why she wasn’t eating. All she’d had was a couple of slices of bread dipped in the scouse pan.

Albert believed her because she was putting on weight, not losing it. Vera ate bread like there was no tomorrow. She particularly enjoyed it fried. It reminded her of what a proper meal would taste like.

Then Dick had started working, followed shortly afterwards by George, then Frank, Billy, Victor, Charlie and Tommy until, by the time Mary was five, there was only Caradoc still at school. Money wasn’t exactly rolling in, but they were flush compared to the old days. Yet still Vera couldn’t keep off the bread. She’d grown used to it. Anyroad, people said it was the staff of life. Her excess flesh was soft and doughy and Mary liked to poke it with her finger and watch it slowly rise back up.

She did so now, sitting on her mother’s knee, then examined the red, shrivelled elbows that always fascinated her.

‘Why aren’t mine like that?’ she wanted to know.

‘I’ve told you before. ’Cos you’re not fifty-two, that’s why. Now that we’ve established who you are and what you’re doing here, are you going to stay on me knee all day?’

‘If you like.’

‘What I’d like,’ Vera said, trying to sound stern, ‘is for you to untie the knots you’ve made in the fringe of me bezzie tablecloth. I’ve only just noticed and it looks dead peculiar. That cloth was a wedding present off your Auntie Dolly.’

‘All right, Mam,’ Mary said equably. She slipped off the soft, cushiony knee, and was under the table, undoing her morning’s work, when there was a knock on the door.

‘Who on earth can that be!’ her mother exclaimed when she went to answer it. It must be a stranger, because the front door was wide open. Everyone they knew would have walked straight in.

Mary heard a voice babbling hysterically and a few minutes later, her mother returned with a girl about her own age.

‘This is Hester,’ she said. ‘She only lives across the street. Her poor dad’s had an accident at work and her mam’s had to rush off to Bootle hospital, so we’re looking after her for a while.’

‘Hello,’ Mary said brightly as she continued to undo knots.

To her and her mother’s consternation, Hester burst into tears. She reminded Mary of one of her dolls, the one with the bouncy cascade of golden ringlets and frilly frock that she’d christened Shirley after Shirley Temple. Hester’s frock was pink with puffed sleeves and lace edging around the collar and hem. Like the Shirley doll, she had bright blue eyes and a mouth like a petal. Mary had seen her before, but they’d never spoken. She lived almost opposite, had no brothers or sisters, and never played in the street with the other children. Afternoons, she went for walks with her mam. On Sundays, her dad went with them. They both looked younger than some of Mary’s brothers and ‘kept themselves to themselves’, according to her own mam.

‘I want my mummy,’ Hester sobbed.

‘Sorry, luv, but you can’t have her. You’ll have to make do with me for the time being.’ Vera picked up the girl, threw herself back into the chair she’d not long got out of, and gave her an extravagant cuddle. After a while, Hester stopped crying and complained her frock was getting creased.

Mary and her mother exchanged covert winks. It wasn’t the sort of house where people worried about creases. Hester was set down and told to amuse herself with Mary, while Vera got on with the dinner. Half the boys came in at one o’clock for a meal, including Dick, now twenty-five and living in rooms in Shelley Street, having been married for two years to a rather odd young woman called Iris who was out at work all day. There was mince ready to be served up on a thick slice of dry bread. On the assumption Hester would eat her share, Vera would have to make do with just the bread. She didn’t mind.

Glover Street was a narrow cul-de-sac of flat-fronted, three-storey houses less than a hundred yards from Gladstone Dock, Bootle. When their growing family could no longer be squeezed into their nice house in Southey Street where Vera had dozens of friends, the Monaghans had been forced to move to a property with more space. They were one of the few families in Glover Street to have a house to themselves, the rest mainly having been split into flats or lodgings. There were fewer children than in her old street, and people came and went by the minute. She hadn’t made many new friends.

Vera wasn’t one to complain, she was a lucky woman and she knew it, but she’d never felt entirely settled in the new house. The properties were stoutly built, the rooms spacious, and they even had an inside lavatory, but as the years crept by, the cul-de-sac had become surrounded by factories and warehouses, until by the time the Monaghans moved in, industry held Glover Street in its tight, forbidding grip.

The most dominating feature was the rear wall of the grain silo at the end, almost twice as high as the houses, blocking out the sun from midday on. During working hours, a nearby foundry emitted a never-ending thudding, hissing noise and a terrible, choking smell. Vera’s favourite time had once been early morning, when she would wake, Albert sleeping peacefully at her side, to the harsh cry of the seagulls soaring overhead and the mournful hoot of the boats on the river. She would listen to the busy Dock Road as it came to life; the rumble of the overhead railway, the crisp clip-clop of a horse and cart on the cobbles, the clatter of lorries. She would look at the sun through the bedroom window if it was shining, savour it, knowing that, unless she managed to get out of the house, she might not see it again that day.

Lately, Vera Monaghan had wished she didn’t wake quite so early. She’d sooner not have her thoughts to herself. During those dawn hours, she’d imagined the boys leaving home, getting married, happily settling down and providing her with grandchildren whom she would love to bits. When that happened, she would move back to Southey Street with Albert and Mary. But now the only thing that preoccupied her was the war that was likely to start any minute. There were signs of it everywhere; air raid shelters had appeared at the end of every other street and gas masks had been delivered – Vera had hidden theirs in the cellar so she wouldn’t be reminded of the horror that might face them. Worst of all, she had four strong lads over eighteen who would make fine soldiers; Dick had left home when he got married, the others might be leaving much sooner than expected, and Vera wasn’t sure if she could stand it.

Laura Oliver hurried down loathsome Glover Street, also worried about the war, about her husband, about her daughter, about every damn thing. How long would Roddy be off work with a sprained ankle? She supposed she should thank God it hadn’t been broken when he’d fallen off that stupid ladder. On the other hand, a broken ankle might have delayed his call-up, even put it off for ever. She’d known a chap who’d broken his leg falling off a horse and he’d walked with a limp ever after. Roddy wouldn’t be allowed in the Services with a limp. On the other hand, would he still be able to climb a ladder?

She knocked on the open door of number seventeen, the house where she’d left Hester, and prayed she hadn’t been too distressed without her mummy. The woman in the house was obscenely overweight, but looked quite kind. Her husband went out in a uniform of some sort, so clearly had a respectable job, and she had a whole tribe of very presentable sons as well as an impish little daughter, always laughing, unlike Hester who hardly laughed at all.

The fat woman came into the hall and gave her a warm smile. ‘Oh, there you are, luv! I’ve been thinking about you all afternoon. How’s your husband? Hester’s in the yard with our Mary playing bat and ball. Come in, girl. I’ve just put the kettle on for a cuppa.’

‘I should be getting back . . . oh, but I’d love a cup of tea. Thank you.’ Laura was drawn to the caring, sympathetic face, the warm smile. She was badly in need of sympathy at the moment. ‘I’d better introduce myself,’ she said courteously. ‘I’m Laura Oliver.’

‘And I’m Vera Monaghan. Laura’s a pretty name. I’ve never come across it before.’

She followed Vera Monaghan along the narrow hall into a comfortable room overlooking the tiny backyard. It had too much furniture, most of it chairs. A mother-of-pearl crucifix stood in the centre of the mantelpiece, accompanied by holy statues and photographs of the Monaghans’ numerous children at various stages of their lives.

‘How’s your husband?’ Vera asked again.

‘It turns out it was only a sprained ankle. He fell off a ladder.’

‘That’s good, luv. Still, a sprain can be very painful.’

‘Yes, but he thought he’d broken it, so he’s quite pleased. They’re sending him home in an ambulance later this afternoon. Has Hester been all right?’ she asked anxiously.

‘She was a bit upset at first, but she soon settled down. She ate a good dinner, and she’s been with Mary in the yard ever since. I’m afraid her frock’s got a bit dirty.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘What was your husband doing up the ladder?’ Vera enquired.

‘Putting in a window.’ Laura grimaced. ‘He works for a builder.’ It hurt to say it. Roddy’s ambition had been to become an architect, design grand buildings. He had intended to take a degree in the subject at university. Instead, he hadn’t even completed his final year at St Jude’s, missing his matriculation.

‘Our George is a builder’s mate. He sawed the tip of his finger off on his first day. Fortunately, it was on his left hand, so it didn’t inconvenience him too much.’ Vera had gone into the kitchen while imparting this piece of information. She returned with tea in two severely cracked cups that didn’t match the saucers. ‘You don’t come from Liverpool, do you, luv? At least, you haven’t got the accent.’

‘No, I’m from Sussex, a little village not far from Eastbourne.’ She didn’t add, ‘Where my father is the vicar,’ and wondered, as she often did, if he was sorry he’d sworn never to speak to her again. He’d probably thought she’d return home with her tail between her legs, meekly beg his forgiveness, profess sorrow for the sin that he would never cease to remind her of for the remainder of his days. It hadn’t entered his head that she and Roddy loved each other so much they were prepared to run away. They’d never regretted it, even though they’d ended up in Bootle, in Glover Street, so different to anything they’d known when growing up that it could have been in China.

Hester came running in. ‘Mummy!’ she cried, as if Laura had been there all the time. ‘I’ve got a bump on my head. Mary hit me with the bat.’

‘It was only an accident.’ Mary followed behind, a pretty girl, with short, dark, curly hair and a mischievous face. ‘Anyroad, she knocked the ball right into me belly. I bet I’ve got a bump there too.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ exclaimed Hester.

‘Neither did I.’ The two girls glared at each other, until Mary said, ‘Would you like to come upstairs and play with me dolls?’

‘Yes, please!’

‘Come on, then.’ They rushed out of the room and their light footsteps could be heard scrambling up the stairs. Laura felt a tiny bit hurt that she hadn’t been missed, but then supposed it was a good thing. Hester was starting school in September. Mother and daughter would be separated for the first time. It would help if she got used to other people in the meantime.

‘She’s not a bit like you – Hester,’ Vera remarked.

‘No, she’s got thinner features, like Roddy, but the person she’s most like is my mother.’

‘I bet she’s pleased about that, your mam.’

‘I’m afraid she’s dead. She died when I was eleven.’ Her father had immediately packed his only child off to boarding school. He’d always been disappointed that she wasn’t a boy. Laura had often wondered what her mother’s reaction would have been when she’d had to confess she was pregnant.

‘I’ve seen your husband on his way to work. He’s very handsome, lovely and tall.’

‘Isn’t he!’ Laura glowed. She was neither tall nor short and her own face had been described as ‘wholesome’. It had character, she’d been told. Her eyes were a quite ordinary brown, her mouth far too wide, and her nose was merely a nose, not quite straight, but almost. Her best feature was her hair, which was glossy black and very thick and wavy. It was the only thing about her that the girls at school had envied. She wore it long and held back with a slide. It looked old-fashioned, but Roddy liked it, and that was all that mattered.

‘Has Mary started school yet?’ she asked.

‘No, luv. She starts next term at St Joan of Arc.’

‘Hester’s going to Salisbury Road. It’s not that far away.’

‘You’re not Catholic, then?’

‘No.’ Laura took a sip of the tea, which was lovely and strong. ‘I’ll take Mary to school for you, if you like,’ she offered. She felt almost glad Roddy had fallen off the ladder. It had enabled her to get to know at least one of her neighbours. They’d lived in the street for almost a year and this was the first proper conversation she’d had with anyone other than her husband. She was too shy, too unhappy, and had imagined people making fun of her posh accent.

‘That’s nice of you, luv, but the thing is . . .’ Vera paused and Laura had an awful feeling she was going to say she didn’t want a non-Catholic going anywhere near her daughter, but Vera said in a rush, ‘They’ll be closing down St Joan of Arc’s if there’s a war. It wouldn’t be safe from the air raids, being so close to the docks, like. The kids are being sent miles away, to St Monica’s up Orrell Park way. I don’t know what’s happening to Salisbury Road.’

‘If there’s a war!’ Laura whispered. ‘I can’t imagine there being a war. I can’t imagine there being air raids. It’d be total madness.’

Vera’s face had lost its smile and her eyes were bleak. Laura had a feeling it was a face that people didn’t see often, if at all. ‘Madness,’ she echoed in a voice as bleak as her eyes. ‘The boys don’t realise. They claim to be looking forward to it, as if it were just a game.’

‘Roddy’s a bit like that, though he’s worried what will happen to me and Hester.’

‘Men!’ Vera sniffed and looked as if she might cry. ‘I won’t let them talk about it. It upsets me too much.’

‘We won’t talk about it, then,’ Laura said. ‘I’m sorry the subject came up.’

‘I don’t mind talking about it with you, luv, another woman. Women can see war for what it is, anything but a game. Would you like more tea?’

‘I’d love some, thank you.’

Vera fetched the tea, which was even stronger than before, and explained that she had four lads of call-up age. ‘Next March, our Victor turns eighteen, and Charlie the year after.’

‘According to Roddy, it won’t take long to give Adolph Hitler a kick up the backside – they’re his words, not mine,’ Laura added hastily. ‘He thinks it’ll all be over by March.’

‘That’s if it starts at all.’

‘I pray every night that it won’t.’

‘Me too, Laura. Me too,’ Vera said sadly.

‘Oh, Albert, she’s ever such a nice girl!’ Vera told her husband that night. ‘Only twenty-one and she talks like Queen Elizabeth. Her mam died when she was eleven and her dad sent her to boarding school. Boarding school,’ Vera repeated, struck all of a heap. ‘I’ve never met anyone who’s been to boarding school before.’

‘And you’re not likely to again, not in Bootle,’ Albert replied drily, not the least impressed.

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Albert. Her husband went to boarding school too.’

‘But he’s not from Bootle, is he? People here have got more common sense. When they have kids, they look after them themselves, not dump ’em on other people.’

‘Actually,’ Vera dropped her voice, though there was no one within earshot, the older lads having gone out and the others scattered about the house, ‘I suspect something went on.’

Albert raised his eyebrows. ‘Went on?’

‘Don’t ask me what, I dunno, but they’re both dead posh. What are they doing in Glover Street, I’d like to know, when they’ve been to boarding school? She must’ve only been sixteen when she had Hester. I reckon she got in the club and her dad chucked her out.’

‘You’ve been reading too many of them daft magazines, woman.’ Albert rattled the Daily Herald that had been left on the tram. He would quite like to do a bit of reading himself. ‘Make us a cuppa, there’s a good girl, then I’d appreciate it if you kept your gob shut for the next half hour, so’s I can catch up on the news.’

Across the road, in number twenty-two, Roddy Oliver sat on the sofa with his legs stretched out so Laura could nurse his heavily bandaged ankle. His thin, handsome face looked terribly worn, she thought compassionately, and the palms of his hands had been badly grazed as he slid down the ladder. Hester, more tired than usual after her activities that afternoon, had been put to bed hours ago.

‘Does it still hurt, darling?’ she asked.

‘It throbs a bit, that’s all,’ he said stoutly.

He was enjoying being made a fuss of for a change. For a long time now, he’d been terribly brave, burdened by far too much responsibility for someone so young, yet never once complaining.

When they had first run away together, they’d had money. Roddy had been left five hundred pounds by his grandfather. The first thing he did was buy Laura a wedding ring. From then on, she had handled the money carefully, or so she’d thought at the time. They’d rented a flat in Islington, thinking that they were slumming it rather, and she’d bought the cheapest food. Hester had been born in a private nursing home, Laura unaware that she could have gone into a maternity hospital, which would have been considerably cheaper. Baby clothes were bought from an inexpensive High Street shop.

In retrospect, the flat had been a palace compared to the places they’d lived since. The ‘cheap’ food – lamb and pork chops, spare ribs – had become nothing but fond memories. The only meat they ate these days were sausages, mincemeat and streaky bacon.

Still, they’d thought they were managing wonderfully. Straight away, Roddy had got a job as a messenger with a bank – they were sensible enough to realise the money wouldn’t last for ever. It was a job with prospects. He decided to forget about architecture and take an accountancy course at night school, make banking his career, but had been sacked within a fortnight.

‘I thought you were too good to be true,’ the manager had snarled halfway through his second week.

‘I said to him, “What do you mean?”’ Roddy told Laura that night, visibly shaken. ‘Apparently, he wrote to St Jude’s for a reference and they said I’d left, “under a cloud”.’

‘Oh, dear!’ Laura said inadequately.

‘It means there’s no use applying for another job where they’ll want a reference.’

‘Oh, dear!’ she said again. ‘What will we do now?’ What she really meant was, ‘What will you do?’ because she was barely sixteen, five months pregnant, terrified out of her wits, and unable to do anything other than ineffectually keep house.

‘I’ll just have to find a job where they don’t care about references,’ Roddy said grimly. Almost a year older, he had matured with astonishing swiftness over the last few months.

He’d gone to work in a menswear shop where the wages were so poor they wouldn’t even pay the rent, let alone buy food. They moved to a smaller flat, then an even smaller one, just one large room. By then, Hester had been born. She was an irascible baby, always crying. The nappies had to be washed in the communal kitchen and there was nowhere for them to dry.

It was about this time, Laura remembered, as she sat on the sofa in Glover Street nursing Roddy’s ankle, that he’d suggested she went home to her father.

‘Do you want me to go home?’ she’d asked, her heart in her mouth.

‘Lord, no!’ He shuddered. ‘I love you so much, I can’t imagine life without you but, Lo, darling, the five hundred pounds has virtually gone. At least your father would provide a roof over your head. You and Hester would be warm and have enough to eat.’

‘My father would never accept Hester. She’d have to be farmed out, adopted. I’d never see her again, and I’d never see you, either. He wouldn’t allow you near the house, and your family wouldn’t allow me near yours.’ Laura managed a smile. ‘We’re outcasts.’

‘Then we’ll have to stay outcasts.’ He looked at her ruefully. ‘I wish I weren’t so hopeless, though. And helpless. At St Jude’s, it was taken for granted we’d give orders when we grew up, not take them. We weren’t taught to do anything sensible. I can’t even knock a nail in straight.’

The mention of nails reminded her that he’d given in his notice at the shop and was starting work on a building site on Monday. He’d been told it was the best paid unskilled work, if not exactly regular. She could tell he was dreading it.

Laura had flung her arms around his neck. ‘You’re anything but helpless and hopeless. You’re the most capable man I know and I’ll love you till the day I die.’

The building site was hard, back-breaking toil and, at first, he came back to their squalid room full of cuts and bruises. The other labourers, mainly huge, fiercesome Irishmen, made fun of the fine-featured, graceful young man who’d been to public school and spoke with a cutglass accent but, as time passed, they began to admire his tenacity and willingness to work as hard as they did, sometimes seven days a week. They became goo