Tell Me It's Not True

by Ken McCoy

Genres: Sagas; Historical Romance

Synopsis

1914. Mining engineer Tommy Birch goes off to war, leaving his new wife Rita behind in Pontefract. On the front line, Tommy runs afoul of a German mine and is reported as missing, presumed deceased by his fellow soldiers. But Tommy isn't dead.

Found behind enemy lines, wearing only a pair of boots stolen from a dead German, Tommy is picked up by the enemy who believe him to be one of their own. He spends weeks recuperating in a German military hospital, where he meets, and quickly falls in love with, a nurse named Anna Kohler who tends him back to health.

Meanwhile, back in Pontefract, Rita is living with Tommy's family when she receives notification that Tommy has been killed in action. But his body still hasn't been found, and Rita never gives up hope that Tommy is out there somewhere, so great is her love for him.

Will Rita ever be reunited with Tommy, or is she destined to spend a lifetime wondering if her husband is still alive?

Release date: April 27, 2017

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 432

Sample

‘What’s it all about, Dad?’

‘What’s what all about?’

‘This flippin’ war. It was supposed to be over by Christmas.’

Edith Birch looked up from the Pontefract and Castleford Express at her dad who was standing at the window, rubbing his shoulder and sucking on his dead pipe, trying to bring both muscle and pipe back to life as he looked out into the backyard, wondering if a couple of big pot plants might liven the place up a bit. He’d seen some in Castleford market, tanner a time including a half-decent plant pot. They’d blind the bin and be something more pleasant to look at through the back window. How to get them home on the bus, that might be a problem. He’d been thinking about making a trailer for his bike – now that would be really handy. The stuff he could cart about with a trailer. His tool-bass for a start.

Thursday was both payday and early finishing day in the building trade. It was twenty-five past five and Charlie Birch had been home ten minutes, after cycling from site on his boneshaker bicycle with his jute tool-bass slung over his shoulders and banging against his back every time he stood on the pedals to ride uphill. It was a difficult machine to ride at the best of times, never mind having to carry a heavy bag which caused him to ride at a funny angle and which, he reckoned, had also caused him to pull a muscle in his right shoulder, the one he used for sawing timber. He decided that tomorrow he’d go on the bus, which was also something of a boneshaker but he wouldn’t pull any muscles. Ha’penny there, ha’penny back – penny a day; a tanner for a six-day working week. Next to nothing really when you consider that a badly pulled muscle might cost him a day’s pay, or maybe two or more days’ pay – ten bob, maybe a pound, maybe more. Didn’t bear thinking about.

Agnes, his wife, was keeping an eye on a pan of potatoes bubbling away on a gas ring. They were in the largest room in the house: combined living room, dining room and kitchen – better known as t’back room. It was a modest room in a modest home with an atmosphere of friendship, love, humour, pipe tobacco and boiled potatoes. The front room, better known as t’room, was kept for best and was permanently tidy. In t’back room there was a fire burning in the Yorkshire range, with a wooden clothes horse standing in front of it, investing most of its heat in drying young Stanley’s steaming clothes which he’d got muddied falling in a puddle on his way home from school. He did a lot of falling did Stanley. His dad maintained that if he had as many ticks on his homework as he had scabs on his knees he’d be a genius. He was sitting at the table in his pyjamas, engrossed in The Boy’s Own Paper – a comic for boys of Stanley’s age – ten.

‘I’d like to know which Christmas they’re talking about,’ said Edith. ‘It says here they’ve got recruiting people over at the Prince of Wales today. It says here that the West Riding Coal Owners’ Association are raising a Miners Battalion for the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.’

‘It says that there, does it?’

‘Yes, Dad, that’s what I’ve just said.’

‘Koylis eh?’

‘That was your father’s regiment,’ said Agnes.

‘I know,’ said Edith. ‘But what do they want miners for in the infantry? What’re we going to do for coal if all the miners go to war?’

‘Worried about your big brother are you?’

‘I am, Dad, yes. I hope he hasn’t gone and joined up.’

‘Our Tommy? No, he’s only just finished his apprenticeship. He’s on man’s money now.’

‘He can be as daft as a brush when he tries, Dad.’

‘I know, but he’s still studying for his exams. This is his last year then he’s fully qualified. He’s not that daft, surely.’

‘He’s down the pit this week doing some surveying stuff and if the army turn up banging their drums and blowing their bugles, it might set him thinking.’

‘No, he’s a bright lad, our Tommy.’

‘I hope he’s too bright to have signed on.’

‘He won’t have signed on, love.’

‘Anyway, I don’t even know what it’s about.’

Charlie Birch took a spill from the pot on the mantelpiece, lit it from the fire and reignited his pipe. He gave a few puffs on it, enough to envelop his head in smoke as he gathered his thoughts. Edith sniffed it in. She liked the smell of her dad’s pipe, which was just as well.

He stood up a lot did Charlie. In fact he spent much of his waking time on his feet. At work it was more or less necessary, at home it was to ease the discomfort that came from time to time. At such times he would curse Squinty McBride who had died within seconds of inflicting the accidental wound on his sergeant but in times of buttock discomfort it does no harm to have a genuine target for your venom. ‘A bullet in the buttock is a wound for life,’ was the medical assessment the army surgeon had given him, and you can’t argue with experts.

‘I’ll tell you what it’s about, Edith. It’s about a bunch of damned bullies throwin’ other people’s weight about.’

‘Right.’

She knew he’d need time to expand on his theory. She also knew his pipe might well go out again before this happened, but not this time.

‘There’s one thing fer sure,’ he said, from somewhere within the blue cloud hovering around his head. ‘It won’t be their own weight they throw about. Never is in a war. It’ll be the little man who gets killed, and at the end of it no bugger’ll be better off.’

‘So I take it you won’t be signin’ up.’

He gave a dry laugh. ‘I wouldn’t sign up again even if I were twenty years younger.’

‘I’ve seen women giving white feathers to boys who aren’t in uniform,’ said Edith. ‘It’s to say they must be cowards. Ernie Clayborn came home with one yesterday and he’s barely sixteen. It’s not as though he’s big for his age. Some women need their heads testing.’

‘Yer father’s too old,’ called out Agnes. ‘He’s forty-three next. War’s a young man’s game, eighteen to thirty-five, after that they slow down.’

‘Will I have to go to war when I’m eighteen, Dad?’ asked Stanley, without looking up from his comic.

‘When you’re eighteen, lad, this war’ll be over and done with, and it’s to be hoped them in charge’ll have learned enough sense never to go to war ever again.’

‘I’m glad you’re too old, Dad,’ said Stanley.

‘Hey, I could give them young ’uns a run fer their money, lad. Any road, I did my bit fighting them damned Boers.’

‘He got medals for that,’ said her mother, ‘and he got shot in his bum.’

‘We know,’ said Edith, who was grateful her father had never shown her his wound. He obviously had more respect for her than he had for his pals at the Pontefract Working Men’s Club who had all been treated to many a viewing of Charlie Birch’s heroic left buttock. Charlie was a foreman joiner for a local building contractor.

‘Any woman shows me a white feather I’ll show her me arse,’ said Charlie, puffing on his pipe.

‘Language, Charlie!’ scolded his wife.

Charlie grinned. ‘Trouble with me is I look young for me age.’

Edith looked in amazement at her mother who smiled and shook her head. Her daughter also smiled and looked down at her newspaper as her father expounded his unique knowledge of war.

‘The last time we were invaded were nearly nine hundred years ago, and that were another King Billy. He conquered England but he never conquered Yorkshire. No, the Yorkshire lads back then took bugger-all notice of him and his foreign ways, and that made him as mad as hell.’ He looked at Edith. ‘Did you ever learn about the harrying of the north at school?’

She shook her head. ‘Can’t say I did.’

‘That’s when old King Billy the Conquerer decided to teach us Yorkshiremen a lesson for not behaving ourselves. He came up with his armies and burnt all the farms and villages but when they got to Pontefract they couldn’t get across the river because our lads had knocked the bridge down. Stopped the buggers in their tracks it did. That’s why it’s called Pontefract – comes from the French for broken bridge.’

‘So, what’s this war all about, Dad?’

‘This war? I’ll tell yer what this war’s about. It’s to do with a load of damned treaties.’

‘Treaties?’

‘Yeah. You show me a treaty and I’ll show you an idiot, in fact I’ll show you a bunch of idiots.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I’ll tell you why. You see, there’s Austria and there’s Hungary who’ve teamed up to form this big empire called the Austro-Hungarian Empire or some such thing, and they’ve got an emperor called Franz Joseph who’s got a useless sod of a nephew called Fernando or Ferdinand or summat who he sends on a visit to Serbia, which is not a friendly country at the best of times. Now yon silly sod gets hisself shot dead swanning about in the back of an open motor car which is probably why his uncle sent him there in the first place if the truth be told.’

‘So his uncle wouldn’t be all that bothered that his nephew had been shot?’

‘No, not one bit. For a crown prince his nephew was as thick as two short planks. It’s what they do, these kings and emperors. To them, having children’s just a means to an end. Yer see, in this case, apart from getting rid of a useless crown prince it gives Austria and Hungary an excuse to attack the Serbians who they’ve never got on with, and what’s more yon barmy German bugger Kaiser Bill was egging ’em on saying he’d help out, as and when necessary. He’s been busting for a fight for years. Cut from the same cloth that lot.

‘Anyway, what they weren’t bargaining on was that Serbia has this treaty with Russia, who go to help Serbia, and this is where it really kicks off, because Germany attacks Russia.

‘So now yer’ve got…’ Charlie used the strong, gnarled fingers of his left hand to count countries, one by one… ‘yer’ve got Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Germany and Russia’ he was now holding up all five fingers, ‘all at it like silly sods, then bugger me, but it turns out Russia has a treaty with France who wake up one morning to find they’re at war with half of Europe. Are yer getting me drift, Edith?’

‘Sounds like a load o’ daft lads ganging up on each other because they’ve nowt better to do. Not sure how we come into it, though.’

‘Belgium, that how we come into it.’

‘How does Belgium come into it?’

‘Because we have a treaty with Belgium, so when Germany invade Belgium so they can get to northern France it brings us into the war.’

‘Why would we need a treaty with Belgium?’

‘No idea, love. Bugger Belgium, that’s what I say. Lerrem all get on with it. We’re an island. Best country in the world and we’ve got the world’s best navy to protect us. Why should we send our lads ter get killed? War’s a lot different now from when I fought in South Africa. This war’ll be mechanised. Great big guns that can fire massive shells five miles, machine guns that can fire a thousand bullets a minute. They can drop bombs from aeroplanes and they’ve bombs they can just throw at each other. Wars used to be about cunning and strategy and bravery, this war’ll be all loud noise, misery and hellfire. You mark my words. It’ll be industrialised killing.’

‘There must be more to it than you just said, Dad, surely to goodness.’

‘That’s the trouble, love, there isn’t any more to it, except that Kaiser Bill’s been busting to throw his weight about Europe for years and he took advantage of Austria to make a start. If it wasn’t for that big silly sod there’d be no war.’

‘It can’t be right that one man can cause so much misery.’

‘If that man’s a German he can, and unless they wipe Germany off the map there’ll be another war comes along. It’s in their blood.’

‘So there is a good reason for going to war – to wipe Germany out.’

‘Yes, love, but our lot won’t do that because when the war’s over you get politicians taking over, and it’ll be easier for them to make Germany pay for the damage, then leave them alone. It’s a major job taking over a country that doesn’t speak your language.’

‘Supposing Germany wins. Will they do the same?’

‘Not the Germans, love. They’ll occupy every country and make us speak their flaming language even if it’s at the point of a gun.’

‘So it is a war worth winning.’

‘Oh, it’s a war worth winning all right but there’s no need for us to be in it. This war’ll be a right bugger. There’ll be no honour in this war. Nowt’ll come of it, other than pain, poverty, misery and death. Wars cost money and we live in a world that doesn’t have much money.’

‘So, why did you become a soldier?’

His pipe tilted upwards as he smiled. ‘I could say it was travel and adventure. A young man in my position had only one way to see the world and that was to join the army or the navy. I joined up when I was twenty-five and got posted to South Africa. A year later we were at war with the Boers.’ He looked at Edith and grinned. ‘Hey, nothing to do with me – I didn’t start it. Last year of the century that was.’

‘So, you were already married to Mam when you joined up to see the world?’

‘Well, there was actually a bit more than that to it, love. Our Tommy was four, you’d arrived, times were hard in the building trade. I kept getting laid off work as a joiner – I spent as much time laid off work as I did working. The army was a regular job and we were allocated married quarters straight away. When I got posted most of me money came straight home to yer mam. I signed on fer three years, after which was when the war finished, more or less.’

‘Was I here then?’ asked Stanley.

‘Nay, lad,’ said his father. ‘You took us by surprise a bit later on.’

‘Oh,’ said Stanley.

‘It was a pleasant surprise,’ said his mother, quickly. ‘Yer father spent ten months over there after the war, working at a diamond mine.’

‘What? You worked down a diamond mine?’

Charlie laughed. ‘No, yer wouldn’t get me down one o’ them holes. I helped to build accommodation blocks for the workers.’

‘He was the boss,’ added Agnes. ‘Weren’t you, Charlie?’

‘Well there was a bit of a shortage of men who knew what they were doing out there, and with me being an apprentice-served joiner they put me in charge. Great money, and I was back to doing a job I was trained for. Stood me in good stead when I came home.’

‘So, you didn’t see us for nearly four years?’ said Edith.

‘Well, I came home for recuperation when I got shot, then I went back after three months and came home once the war were finished. We moved to a rented house and I went back to Africa to do the building job. The money was enough to put a decent deposit down on this place and make a few improvements to it.’

It was an end-of-terrace house and Charlie had spent some of his money knocking the wall through from the scullery to the outside lavatory, providing an inside bathroom. It was the only house in the row with such facilities.

‘I’d have taken you three with me but it was a rough old place where I was working. Grand weather, though.’

Her mother added, ‘It’s easier to stand your husband being away from home when you know he’s in no danger.’

‘But you were glad to get me back for good, weren’t you?’

‘Aye, I suppose I was.’

He caught her eye. Edith looked up at them both and saw the mutual but silent love there, and she wondered if she’d ever know such love. She was fifteen and had never had a proper boyfriend unless you counted Tinley Bateson who once kissed her in Pontefract Park, but she hadn’t kissed him back so it didn’t count. She’d set her sights a lot higher than Tiny Tinley Bateson who was a bit vulgar, barely five feet two tall and a butcher’s delivery boy who showed no promise of ever bettering himself. Her brother Tommy was her yardstick when choosing a boyfriend. Trouble was, there weren’t too many lads around who could match Tommy, not that she’d ever tell him that.

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed six o’clock which meant it was twenty to six. It was a family tradition to keep it twenty minutes fast to ensure good time-keeping. This made no sense to Edith or Stanley but it wasn’t their clock so they didn’t argue.

‘Tommy’s late,’ said Edith.

‘He told me he was meeting Rita straight from work,’ said her mother. ‘They’re going to that new picture palace in Knottingley.’

‘What’s he gone to see?’

‘Oh it’s a cowboy picture, but Tommy’s really gone to see them funny pictures that’s on with it. He likes that little tramp feller with his bowler hat and moustache and walks with his feet at ten to two.’

‘Charlie Chaplin?’

‘That’s him. Our Tommy thinks he’s ever so funny. Never seen him myself. I think it’s magic the way they have them photos moving about as if they’re alive.’

‘Next thing you know they’ll have ’em talking,’ said Charlie, still puffing away on his pipe. ‘You mark my words.’

‘Don’t talk so daft, Dad. How can they do that?’

‘Well they’ve got them phonograph things. Stands to reason if you ask me.’

‘Blimey, Dad!’ said Stanley. ‘Talking photos. Did you hear that, Mam?’

‘Nowt your dad says surprises me, love. Right, it’s sausage and mash for tea. Extra sausage, with Tommy not being here. Who wants peas?’

Tommy Birch walked out into the pit yard with Billy, his chainman. He was carrying his theodolite in its case while Billy was carrying the tripod and a staff. They both wore canvas mining caps with a leather brim, on which was a leather lampholder, onto which were clipped their carbide lamps. Billy was also carrying a hand-held lamp to help them in their work. Surveying work down a mine was a precision job and required a lot more light than was necessary to hack out coal. They both handed their lamps and identity tokens in at the lamp cabin and made their way to the washroom, a facility not available to the miners – pithead baths were still twenty years away. Despite neither of them doing any actual mining work their faces were blackened by the coal dust. Tommy was due to meet Rita at the bus stop in half an hour.

Washed and changed, Tommy made his way towards the pit gates, passing the manager’s office on the way. Several of the pit yard workers were standing around the doorway. Tommy went over to see what was going on. Outside the manager’s door was a big poster depicting a silhouette of a group of soldiers and a field gun, along with a quotation from Lord Kitchener:

 

Be honest with yourself.

Be certain that your

so-called reason is not

just a selfish excuse.

ENLIST TODAY

‘They’re recruiting for the army, Tommy,’ said a passing miner. ‘I’ve just signed up. It’ll all be over by Christmas and we get paid to go to France – brilliant! Never thought I’d ever go abroad.’

A large man with a bushy moustache and three stripes on his khaki uniform was standing in the doorway. He called out to Tommy. ‘You’re just what we’re looking for, big strapping lad. We’re the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. We’re raising a Miners Battalion. Just suit you, lad.’

‘I’m not a miner I’m an engineer and I’m not all that strapping,’ said Tommy, studying the poster.

The sergeant grinned. He had a face like a benevolent ogre. ‘Better still. This is a pioneer battalion, we need engineers. Come on, lad, you don’t want to be one of them who stays at home while there’s all that going on in France. What’ll everyone think? Come inside, let’s have a chat. No obligation, lad. When that next shift comes off there’ll be a queue a mile long.’

Signing on had crossed Tommy’s mind several times. The KOYLI was his dad’s old regiment and they had their garrison in Pontefract. A lot of his pals were already over in France. Some had been home on leave, swanning around in their uniforms, heroes already. He was beginning to feel a bit left out. He allowed himself to be ushered into the manager’s office which was full of excited young miners, all eager to sign up and go to France, as if it were some sort of free holiday. The manager wasn’t looking too pleased. Tommy knew him well enough to seek advice.

‘What do think, Mr Atkinson? I’ve only just finished my apprenticeship.’

‘I’m not supposed to say one way or the other, Tommy. But the bosses say we’re not to stand in the way of any under twenty-five year olds who want to go. Miners are needed as much as soldiers in this war.’ He said the last bit loud enough for the recruiting officer, sitting at a table, to hear.

‘Well, I’m only nineteen,’ said Tommy, ‘So I suppose I ought to sign up.’

Despite him being classed as ‘management’, Tommy was popular with all the young miners who gave a cheer when they heard him.

‘Hey up, lads, Tommy’s coming with us!’

Their enthusiasm and back-slapping left Tommy with no option but to sign on. He left the manager’s office completely bewildered as to what he’d just done – turned his life upside down with no planning and no forethought. He was fifteen minutes late meeting Rita who wasn’t too worried. There was another bus due and they’d still get there in time. It was the look on his face that worried her most.

‘What is it, Tommy? There hasn’t been an accident at the pit has there?’

Tommy looked at her and knew that what he said to her, and its repercussions, would have to be repeated again when he got home. He’d promised his mam he wouldn’t sign on without talking it over with her and his dad… and his sister Edith for that matter.

‘Oh heck, Rita,’ he said. ‘I think you’re gonna get cross with me.’

 

They sat through two Charlie Chaplins and a Fatty Arbuckle comedy without so much as a smile. Tommy was wishing he’d walked straight out of the pit yard without being nosey about what was happening at the manager’s office, but he knew the recruiting people would be there tomorrow and the odds were that he’d have signed up at some time. That’s what he told himself. The alternative would be to see the war through with every young man in Pontefract except him out there fighting the Hun, as the recruiting people called them. The main feature film came on, a Western called The Bargain Hunters. Tommy put his arm around Rita.

‘What would you have thought of me if I’d been the only young man in Pontefract not fighting for the country? There’d have been women giving me white feathers.’

‘I’d have given them black eyes,’ said Rita, turning to him. ‘Tommy do you have to go? I mean, what about your exams?’

‘Exams can wait, the war won’t. Can’t get out of it now, love. I’ve got two weeks before I’m off to Otley for training.’

‘How long does that take?’

‘Not sure. About three months I should think.’

‘It could be that the war’s over before you finish your training, and Otley’s not so far away. I bet you can come home on a weekend.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, thinking this was something he could put to his mam when he told her the news. But ‘Over by Christmas’ was a possibility that was fading with the passage of time.

‘I want to go home,’ Rita said.

‘What now? The big picture’s just starting.’

‘My dad’s out and he won’t be back until late. We’ll have the house to ourselves.’

The prospect interested Tommy. Since he’d first met Rita the indoor opportunities for serious courting were few and far between. A house to themselves was an opportunity not to be missed.

‘What time will he be back?’

‘I don’t know. He’s out with his fancy woman. He might not even come back tonight. Not that I’m bothered.’

‘Right. Off we go then.’

A man behind Tommy, who had heard the conversation, tapped him on the shoulder and wished him the ‘best of luck tonight, lad’. The man’s wife was still digging her husband in his ribs and telling him not to be so mucky as Rita and Tommy shuffled out along the row of seats.

 

They’d been courting five weeks. She was nineteen and worked as a cashier at the Yorkshire Penny Bank which was situated on Ropergate in Pontefract, a road known among the local young people as t’Bunny Run. It was a tradition that girls walked up and down the street in order to catch the young men’s eyes. Rita had caught Tommy’s eye just as she was leaving work late one evening. She wasn’t meaning to catch anyone’s eye. The only thing she intended catching was the bus home. It was her long, flowing, dark, glossy hair that took his eye and had him following her to the bus stop. Tommy was a big admirer of beautiful hair on a woman but he hadn’t yet got a proper look at her face. Quite often the face turned out to be something of a let-down. He knew that if this girl’s face lived up to the promise of her hair she’d be a real beauty indeed and this was an excellent start in choosing a girlfriend. It was a shallow way to assess a potential girlfriend but Tommy was a young man and shallowness and young men go together like eggs and bacon. At the bus stop he stood by her side as if he was also waiting for the bus, and stole a glance at her profile. Her face did indeed match her hair; she was the prettiest girl he’d seen for a long time and he was now trying to think of something to open a conversation with her.

‘I think you and me have got something in common,’ he said, eventually, not yet certain how he was going to follow this opening remark. She turned and looked at him. He was a good-looking young man with an easy smile and lots of fair hair that needed a good comb.

‘Oh, what’s that?’

‘Banks,’ he said. It was the first word that came into his head. ‘We’ve got banks in common.’

‘Really?’

‘That’s right. You work in a bank. I plan on robbing a bank one day.’

Why he came out with that he didn’t know. Sometimes his mouth worked a lot faster than his brain.

‘How do you know I work in a bank?’

‘I followed you.’ No harm in telling her the truth for a change. It gave him time to think of a follow-up line that might interest and amuse her. ‘That’s how we bank robbers work.’

‘So, is that your job – a bank robber?’

‘Not full time. It’s more of a sideline at the moment. You and me should get together to work out my master plan. Then we can run away together and live the high life off the proceeds.’

‘What’s your plan if we get caught?’

She was going along with his nonsense. Beautiful, with a daft streak. He liked her style.

‘Or we could just go dancing one night and forget all about robbing the bank. I take it you know how to dance?’

‘Yes, I know how to dance.’

He was now on more solid ground, talking about something he knew. ‘Well, there’s a whist drive and dance on at the Ponte Welfare Club on Friday. Do you play whist?’

‘Not really.’

‘Then I need to teach you. The best way to do that is for us to go for a drink and get a table to ourselves and I’ll bring a pack of cards, or are you one of these temperance ladies who hate the demon drink? If you are that’s okay by me. Live and let live is what I say.’

Rita was smiling at his cheek and charm. ‘I don’t mind a small sherry now and again.’

‘Sherry? Ah, as I thought, a lady of some style.’

‘There is a bit of a problem, though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I have a boyfriend who takes me dancing.’

‘Drat! I should have known a beautiful young lady such as yourself would have a boyfriend. I might have to throw myself under the bus when it comes.’

‘Or you could get on the bus with me and pay my fare to Featherstone.’

‘I like your idea best.’

The bus arrived. They got on and sat together. Rita was quite amazed that she’d only known him for a few minutes and yet she liked him immensely.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked him.

‘Same place as you, then I’m coming back. I live in Pontefract. I know of a ripping hotel just this side of Featherstone with a very nice cocktail lounge – suitable surroundings for a young lady of your obvious social standing. Perhaps you would accompany me there on Thursday evening to compensate me for my broken heart.’

‘Perhaps I could.’

‘My name’s Tommy.’

‘I’m Rita – and please don’t tell me it’s your favourite name.’

‘My fa. . .