The Black Family Series

by Elizabeth Gill

Genres: Family Life; Sagas; Historical Romance

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of Miss Appleby's Academy, is the Black Family trilogy - available in omnibus form for the first time. Perfect for fans of Nadine Dorries, Donna Douglas and Diney Costeloe.

Swan Island
When Ella's father dies, leaving the family bankrupt, she must go and live with her grandmother, leaving everyone she knows - and loves - behind her. She eventually settles into a life of domesticity with a local businessman, David Black, but Ella can never quite forget her first love. Will she find the home she's always been looking for?

Silver Street
When Iris Black falls deeply for the handsome Johnny Fenwick, she is devastated to learn about his family's shocking secret and immediately leaves to train as a nurse. Her absence casts a dark shadow on the Black household, and as much as he tries to move on, will Johnny forever be plagued by the memory of the girl who left him behind?

Sweet Wells
After the death of her father, Maddy Grant learns that the home she has always known has been sold to a local businessman, Jonas Ward, who evicts Maddy and her mother. As they scrape to make ends meet and try as she might, she can't keep away from the influence of Jonas and finds herself falling for his handsome nephew. Can she ever come to terms with the ill his family has brought to hers?

Release date: October 26, 2017

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 240

Sample

1951The West Coast of Scotland

It was September, the best time of the year in western Scotland, when the lochs and the sea have had all summer to warm up. The evenings were short, the sun was setting spectacularly in pink, mauve and white from a clear blue sky, and Ella and David Black had arrived at the hotel in time to change before they went downstairs to the dinner of the Steelfounders’ Convention.

There was no time to go to the beach, David had said with regret in his voice. Ella had been glad of it. Coming back here had been hard enough, she did not want to disturb the memories which had not surfaced in her mind in many a long day.

The last time she had been here was before the war. She remembered the little bed and breakfast place standing on its own on the headland, the too-short beds, the lemon-coloured room which Mrs McDonald had been so proud of, the way she and her first husband Jack and their friends, Agnes and Harry, had gone out in a rowing boat at night and caught mackerel, you could see them shimmering in the clear aqua-coloured water.

The silver sands of Morar. Even its name was like a whisper. The tiny roads before you got to Mallaig with their passing places had silence, peace and each time you stopped and got out of the car there was nobody about. She could have been prejudiced thinking that the further you got into Scotland the more spectacular the scenery became.

The lowlands were lovely but there was nothing to beat the way the hills scooped down toward the valleys here, how the mountains would soon become covered in snow, and how every time you reached another little gray and white town with its low buildings in the background against the foothills the lochs were deep, still, mysterious.

She stood in front of the mirror in the hotel bedroom and tried to shake off her mood. There was no point in going back over things. The war had long since ended, the sounds and sights which reminded her of things that were finished were all very well but they had nothing to do with why she was here. She must put thoughts of the past from her mind.

It was a lovely room, nothing like Mrs McDonald’s guestrooms had been. It had its own balcony which faced the beach. David was out there, looking at the view. He had the door open.

‘You’re letting all the cold air in,’ she said.

‘It isn’t cold,’ he said, ‘it’s wonderful. Come out and take a look.’

‘If it isn’t cold then the midges will be out in full force.’

David scoffed at her for being unromantic but she didn’t take any notice of him.

‘We’re going to be late if you don’t hurry up,’ she told him.

He paused, reluctant to come inside, but then did so, closing the glass doors behind him.

‘Pretty dress,’ he said.

Ella regarded herself with satisfaction in the long mirror beside the dressing table. The dress was turquoise satin with silver threads running through it, trimmed with dark raspberry velvet, scooped neck and low with a velvet bow to one shoulder. She thought it suited her dark looks, black hair and blue eyes.

‘Isn’t it? Iris helped me choose it.’

Iris was David’s only sister. She and Ella had scoured the Newcastle shops. He looked good too; he was wearing evening dress, the white of his shirt accentuated his beautiful green eyes and the black of his suit contrasted with his straw-coloured hair. He was tall and slender and had more presence than any man she knew. Elegant was how David looked, she thought; she was very proud of him.

They left their room and for a few moments, as they walked down the hall, Ella wanted to stay there, as though she had had a forewarning about how badly the evening would go. That was ridiculous. They were there for business but it was going to be fun too, she was sure of it.

As David closed the door, however, she regretted leaving the view of the sea and she thought how nice it would have been if they could have stayed there and had gin and tonic and lingered another half hour or so. She knew though that she would not have been able to dismiss from her mind the little blue, black and white fishing boat which she and Jack and Harry and Agnes had hired so very long ago, just before the war. Before everything went wrong. She recalled how they had seen one of the local men fishing, his tortoiseshell cat standing in the stern of the boat, watching as he hauled in what had undoubtedly been her tea.

They had laughed when the cat cried and purred for the fish, as the man beached the boat and helped her out. He had told the cat that it would not be long before the shining catch was cooked and on her plate. It had no doubt also gone on the plates of his wife and himself because with the cat in his arms he had had a bucket over his arm full of mackerel.

Ella brushed off the memories once again and went down the stairs with David ready to enjoy her evening. She didn’t know anybody but it wasn’t difficult. All she had to do was hang on to David’s arm, smile and be introduced to people.

There was a champagne reception. Some of the women wore dresses which were almost as good as her own. They were all long, many off pretty white shoulders and some women wore diamonds around their necks or in their hair. The men all looked alike and made a contrast with what their wives were wearing.

The dining room was huge and the view from its floor-to-ceiling windows was over vast lawns. The curtains were tartan – blue, white and black – like the boat had been and the carpet was also dark. Ella thought it looked good. It was a shame that it didn’t face the sea but then you couldn’t have every room facing the same way. Big white cloths covered the round tables and silver cutlery and crystal glasses glistened and sparkled beneath the chandeliers. It seemed very grand, Ella thought.

The main course was salmon. She didn’t really like fish but it was done simply with new potatoes and fresh vegetables and the wine was a deep golden colour. She and David didn’t have many opportunities for evenings out and she wanted to make the most of it.

There would be dancing later, she had seen the ballroom across the hall and the stage where the band had set up their instruments. Ella loved dancing.

After chocolate pudding and coffee there were speeches. The speeches were boring and they went on and on. She became impatient. Why talk so much when the band was waiting? She could hear, when the speaker stopped talking, the band tuning their instruments, and she thought she could also catch the sound of the waves crashing down on the beach. Or was it just a memory? It was a calm evening, the water was probably just breaking gently on the sand.

Ella longed to escape. By the end of the third speech she smiled at David and got up and walked out as though she was going to the ladies’ room but she didn’t. The doors to the garden were open and they were tempting. She walked out. The night air was warm on her bare shoulders and face, and she walked a little way. She couldn’t go too far in such heels, she wasn’t used to them and she hadn’t worn heels in weeks. She went slowly across to the rose garden.

She had roses at home in Durham, a great oblong bed, edged with scalloped stone, and she treasured them. Her favourite was a huge cream rose which stood right on the edge of the bed next to the path and the green house. It flowered there, somehow out of the limelight but obviously happy where it was, year after year without being disturbed other than pruning in early spring and some manure dug in. All her roses were wonderful with special scents and delicate mauves and pinks to the brighter bolder reds, so dark they looked blue and yellow with red flecks in the centre. There were white climbing roses around the little cottage on the end of the house.

She had a big back garden which you walked into through a red wooden gate and beyond a high dividing wall. On this side there were raised flowerbeds and also beds which bordered the lawns. There were two greenhouses on the same side; the second one connected to the first by a door in the middle. On the other side of the garden were redcurrants, black and white currants, gooseberries, rhubarb, rows of potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers and carrots and further down a leek trench. She loved her garden, but she was always interested to see what other people did.

She was just about to venture further to see the rest of the gardens properly when somebody said her name softly behind her. When she turned around she almost fainted. There, behind her, tall, dark and wearing evening dress, was the only man she had ever truly loved. Harry Reid.

She stared. Her senses told her that he was a mirage, a ghost, and that she should run. That would be foolish. It was obviously just a coincidence. She gave herself plenty of time, drinking him in, thinking how good he looked. He hadn’t altered at all.

No, that wasn’t true, he looked older. He had been so very young the last time she had seen him. Now he must be thirty or more. He looked wonderful, of course, his clothes were obviously very expensive, they fitted him so well.

‘Why, Harry,’ she said. Her lips had turned to putty and would not make any other sounds and her emotions banged against one another in turmoil.

She had hoped they would never meet again, had known very well that he was long since back from the war, had avoided places she had thought he might be, looked for him in crowded streets, imagined meeting him in a hundred different ways but not like this for some reason. It should have been obvious that he would be here.

‘Hello.’ He moved closer. His blue eyes were cold on her. ‘You weren’t expecting me, eh?’

He was smoking a cigarette, one of the Turkish kind that she remembered he had liked so much. The smell of them took her back to the war and all the things that she had tried so hard to forget. She thought that she had succeeded. Now the illusion broke like glass dropped on tiles. How appropriate that they should meet again here, in the place where she had fallen in love with him.

‘I am a shipbuilder, after all,’ Harry said.

He looked down at the cigarette in his hand for a few seconds and then he said, ‘I would say that it was good to see you except that it isn’t of course, not really.’

Ella didn’t know what to say. She stood, unable to move or to speak. She could not even shift her gaze from him.

‘I suppose it was inevitable that we should meet at some point,’ he said. ‘I thought perhaps we could be polite to one another. Now I’m not quite so sure.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

Harry threw down the half-smoked cigarette, put his foot on it, and said, ‘You know I hate it when people say things like that, as though ten years was a bloody eternity, as though passing time wiped everything out, as though people stopped longing for one another when a certain number of years had gone. There are some things you never forget and a great many that you never forgive.’

‘I didn’t say I’d forgotten you,’ Ella said quickly, ‘and it isn’t ten years.’

‘Something like that. I should think you haven’t forgotten me, especially here.’ It was so close to what she had been thinking ever since she got there that she wished she could turn away without being rude or even better run away. ‘You were thinking about me?’

Ella wanted to deny it but it would have been dishonest and would have seemed like a betrayal somehow.

‘This is where I realized that I couldn’t live without you,’ he said.

Ella shook her head as though she could shake off his words, but she said nothing.

‘And don’t think that I’ve forgiven you,’ he said, ‘because I haven’t, or that I ever will. I won’t.’

Ella couldn’t look at the direct blue gaze.

‘I don’t think I want to carry on this conversation,’ she said.

‘After such a long silence don’t you think you ought to give me an explanation?’

‘I wrote to you lots of times.’

‘Did you? I didn’t get anything from you.’ He clearly didn’t believe her and it made her panic, thinking how much time and sweat she had spent over the letters, especially the one telling him she was going to marry David, how she had almost decided not to send it, how she had agonized. All for nothing. ‘That was good of you when I was stuck in the bloody jungle in Burma, my friends being mown down by Japs. The last words you said to me when I left were that you loved me and you would wait for me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What happened?’

‘I met David.’

‘That’s all? You met David? What altered, what changed, how could you … give me up when I wasn’t there? How could you do that to anybody, most of all somebody you had said you loved, who loved you, somebody you had slept with, somebody—?’

‘Harry—’

‘How could you do that to me after all we’d been through?’

She couldn’t even look at him, she tried not to think how in love they had been, of his touch, of his body, of his mouth. He had meant everything to her and she had dismissed him in a letter. It seemed so awful now, such a trivial way of brushing somebody aside. She couldn’t remember how she had felt, she didn’t want to remember.

‘I didn’t know what had happened,’ he said. ‘All through the rest of the war I had to go on without knowing anything. It was torture. Then I came back and I heard that you had married David Black. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘It was only how things worked out.’

‘Worked out? What on earth does that mean? Are you trying to tell me you stopped loving me when I wasn’t there? How could you do such a thing?’

She wanted to tell him that she had not stopped loving him but it was now inappropriate. Perhaps not even true any more.

‘I wanted to give you everything. I wanted to give you the whole world,’ he continued.

‘I should go,’ Ella said. She would have walked straight past him but he got hold of her and somehow she had known that he would. His fingers closed around her arms and she was shocked at how his touch brought back all her old love for him.

When she looked up he said, ‘I have missed you so much,’ and he drew her to him.

She had forgotten how good it felt to be in his arms, the caress of his hands on her back through the thin material of her dress. Thoughts of David finding them rushed through her head.

‘Let me go.’

He didn’t. Ella took a deep breath.

‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘It was dead and buried then.’

He held her tighter.

‘It was nothing of the sort. You gave me up without a single word from me, without giving me a chance or a reason and I don’t believe it was anything but fear because Jack had died and you were afraid the whole thing would happen again. That’s not a decent reason for doing anything and it isn’t like you. It will never be over between us. You know that as much as I do. For whatever reason you married him, it wasn’t because you loved him more than you loved me. I know that. You betrayed me and everything there was between us and for what?’

He kissed her and momentarily Ella gave in because she remembered just how wonderful the kisses had been; they had not changed, despite the years and all they had both been through, and she was afraid now, desperate to get away, to pretend this had not happened. She wanted to run back to the dining room. She struggled, pushed her hands against him. He let her go then. Ella’s heart was beating so hard she could hardly breathe.

‘You gave me up for some ghastly safe little life and after all I had done,’ he said.

‘It isn’t a … a “ghastly safe little life”,’ Ella said, almost crying, ‘you know nothing about it. You know nothing about David and me. We have a wonderful life, it’s—’

‘Liar. He can’t even afford a decent dress for you.’

In those seconds the dress which she and Iris had chosen so carefully turned to rags in Ella’s mind, became something she wished she could tear off, her face burned with shame.

‘It’s a … it’s a beautiful dress,’ she said, thinking even as she said it how stupid she sounded. What did she care what he thought? What did any of it matter now? The past was gone. She had killed it off in her memory when she could stand no more. She was not going to have it resurrected because Harry chose.

She wanted to tell him that she hated him, except it would have sounded so shallow, so pathetic and it wasn’t true; she could never hate him. She knew that he was only saying such things for something to say, anything to delay her departure, because when you loved somebody so very much every second of their time was valuable. Every moment spent in their presence was the best moment you could ever have.

She couldn’t run, her shoes wouldn’t allow it, but she hurried back as fast as she could. Suddenly the thought of another speech or two seemed inviting but when she got inside she couldn’t see for tears and was obliged to dodge into the ladies’ room and repair her face. She needed to recover her emotions before she returned to David.

She sat before the glass and cried. The tears, freed, ran down her face. God knew what it was doing to her carefully applied make-up but she couldn’t see. Sobs wrenched at her body. She tried to control herself but she couldn’t. How hideous, how awful. Why did he have to turn up and ruin everything? Why did she remember everything she had ever felt for him? Had she really thought she could forget it?

As she sat there a girl came out of one of the cubicles. Ella had thought the place was empty and was horrified that she could be heard, seen, that she could not mop her face convincingly and quieten the sobs before the girl came and sat down beside her.

She turned away, dried her eyes and tried to pretend that nothing had happened. Perhaps the girl was the unfriendly type or so caught up in her own life that she wouldn’t notice. She turned back to the mirror and glanced at the other face there.

She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or -three and she was lovely, so beautiful that Ella couldn’t help but look. She sat on the stool next to Ella. She was blonde, her skin was milky, she wore a dress so expensive that it made Ella’s dress look cheap.

There was nothing to it, it was plain black and contrasted superbly with her looks and she wore pearls about her neck, as only the very young can; real pearls, Ella felt sure. Her long smooth neck and bare shoulders were exquisite. She had slender arms and fingers, and on the left hand she wore a wedding ring and a diamond solitaire which glittered so much under the lights it was hard to look at it.

Ella felt physically sick at the thought of the dress. The girl smiled shyly.

‘Are you all right?’ she said. To Ella’s surprise she had a soft Durham accent.

‘Yes, I … I just had a shock.’

‘Summat that made you cry?’

‘It’s a … a beautiful dress you’re wearing.’

‘Me husband chose it.’ She turned her eyes up to heaven. ‘Do you really think it looks all right? I know nowt about things like that.’

‘It’s exquisite.’

The girl grinned suddenly.

‘If you’re crying over a man dinnat bother. None of them’s worth it, not even mine.’

‘You’re married.’

‘Oh, aye.’ She laughed, showing perfect teeth and there was a rueful twinkling look in her eyes. ‘What he married me for nobody will ever know. I married him for his money. At least that’s what I tell everybody. Can’t have them thinking I fancy him.’

‘You’re so young,’ Ella said.

‘He picked me up out the muck. Brave lad,’ she said. ‘Somebody’s not being nasty to you, are they? Because if they are I’ll sort them out for you. Here.’ The girl took a tiny silver flask of brandy from her evening bag and offered it to Ella. She took it and downed a mouthful of the brandy, which was warm and soft as it hit the back of her throat. ‘Is that better, pet?’

‘Much better, thank you.’

They repaired their make-up.

‘You look a treat, you really do,’ the girl said and then they got up together and made their way through the foyer.

The speeches had thankfully finished and the music had begun. The girl walked in front of Ella, who stopped suddenly. She could see Harry Reid, he was standing just inside the door, near the bar. What was he thinking of, waiting there for her?

As the blonde girl reached him, he smiled at her and she kissed him and then he turned to Ella and said, ‘Rosemary, you must meet Ella. She was the girl I left behind me. She married somebody else and broke my heart.’ He spoke lightly but Ella did not miss the bitterness behind the words. ‘Ella, this is my wife.’

The girl laughed but there was now a reserve to it as though she saw Ella differently. Her eyes had changed and were guarded, perhaps even suspicious.

‘It’s grand to meet you. And don’t worry about things, nowt’s worth it.’

Harry led her off to the dance floor and Ella stood, rooted, watching them waltz elegantly about the floor. She felt a kind of jealousy she had never encountered before in her life. It shot through her like a firework. She walked around the edge of the dance floor until she reached her husband. He got to his feet.

‘Would you like to dance?’ he said.

‘I would love to,’ Ella said.

The Great War was over by the time Ella was born. Unlike many of his friends her father had come through it, come home to the girl he loved. Ella was her parents’ only child.

She was born in the tiny city of Durham, in the borderlands between Scotland and England, in Northumbria. They say there are other cities in Britain which are as beautiful as Durham but it isn’t true to the people who live there. As Ella had always lived there she was sure there was no place which came anywhere near in any way.

Her ancestors had lived there for hundreds of years. They were border people, Scots and English intermarried over the centuries with all the fine prejudices which you gain when you live in such a place.

The River Wear loops grey around the city, and the castle and the cathedral, which have been there for eight hundred years, make people gasp at the beauty of the buildings. They sit there stark and exquisite in the light from the Wear, above the city and its bridges, the old houses, the twisting cobbled narrow streets and the little shops. And there is always the warm sound of Durham accents of the people in the town.

Durham voices are as warm as winter soup and the people are kind and hospitable and see to one another, even when they have nothing. Pit people and farm folk and those who run small businesses within the city. People know Durham as the city, Newcastle is always called ‘the town’, and in between there are tiny villages dotted across the landscape, and the Wear runs its winding way through the dales and down the narrow valleys before it hits Durham City.

Ella lived in a particular part of the tiny city, the part they called Swan Island. It was a very long time since the name had been used, most of the area was now known as Elvet, but it lived on in her childhood home.

To her delight home was not called ‘house’ or ‘manor’ or ‘hall’, though it had always been one of the most important houses in the area. It was always just ‘Swan Island’ as though it needed no other explanation. From her house Ella could see the river going in both directions. Up where the road splits in two and becomes Old Elvet and New Elvet, she could see the castle and the cathedral and the people scurrying about the town to work and school, and those pleasure-bound for walks or lovers’ meetings or the local pubs.

Her parents had been born there, had met there, and had been very much in love, but did she remember that they were or was it just that her mother had said so often enough that Ella believed it? She believed in the laughter of Swan Island and the presence of the man that she and her mother had loved, the dark-haired blue-eyed man she knew she resembled so much.

The house in her memories was a great sprawling building of red brick, with high chimneys and huge windows, and from the top of it you could see most of the middle of the city; the narrow streets, the silver rooftops, the castle, the cathedral and the green, and the riverbanks where in the summer people took boats out and there was the regatta and picnics.

She could see the hills which made up the city and several of the roads out, winding their way up to the tops and then to the little pit villages and towns beyond which went to Sunderland, to Newcastle, to the south or to the Durham dales where small farms made up the communities and sheep were dotted across the landscape and way above were the moors where it was harsh in winter and gorse provided a yellow snow upon the land most of the year round.

The house was famous because you could only reach it over a bridge; like the entrance to an old fortified castle there was but one way in and the river surrounded it on three sides. A house had been there for hundreds of years and to Ella’s pride the Armstrongs had lived there all that time. She planned to stay there for ever and ever, to raise her children, should she have any, and to bring her lover when she had one. When Flo, who looked after her, read her stories she thought of the fictional house as Swan Island and the characters as its inhabitants.

The house was always full of flowers, her mother loved them so much; the gardens were great floods of colour and scent and they twisted and turned in crazy paving paths away from the house so that they were secret and mysterious. Here and there high walls shrouded the intricacy, and bushes and shrubs allowed their delicate flowers to fall and strew the path, a carpet for the feet that should walk upon them.

At the end of the gardens lay the ruined church which at one time had been the parish church for that area until another church was built nearer to the main part of the town and people moved on. Ella thought of it and of the time when people would come across the bridge to the little church on Sunday mornings. She could almost hear the tramp of their feet when she was lying in her bed.

She didn’t remember it as anything other than ruined. Inside flowers and bushes took charge and all around it were the graves of local people long dead, the names of the border people, Nevilles and Armstrongs and Elliotts, and dozens of others who were buried there. Her mother was given to seeing that the churchyard there was not overgrown; everything was tended, the gardens, the house, her husband, her daughter.

Ella was very happy with the security and all-absorbing love which an only child can know. She knew her parents adored her. She had a fire in the bedroom, a big room all to herself, she had beautiful clothes and lots of toys and went to a small private school in the city and had friends to tea. She had Flo, who was younger than her parents and had been there all of Ella’s life as far back as she could remember, almost like one of the family except that she went home to her mother each night, but she was always there to look after Ella when her mother was not about.

There was a cook and Mr Frobisher, who did the garden and looked after the car. He would cut and bring in flowers for her mother’s delight all the year round.

The cook was Mrs Robson – another good border name. Ella cared for them all. They were so kind to her. Mrs Robson made coffee cake with chocolate icing for tea. Flo would play games with Ella when she had free time and they would go for walks on the towpath at the riverside, name the flowers and trees and stop and have ice-cream or tea and cake.

The house at Swan Island was everything that a house should be. No other house was ever like that again, even though from time to time through her life Ella tried to make other houses so. It held her heart.

It sounded silly to say such things but it did. It held within it all the dreams of her life, all the sweet memories of her childhood, her father’s love, her mother’s devotion, the songs that her mother would sing, though she had no voice. She used to joke about how she could not hold a tune but all the old songs which her mother sang to her were precious to Ella.

All the silly jokes that her father told her and the way that his face would crease while he told them meant more to her than anything in the world.

Her parents would go to dinner dances and he would wear evening dress, tails and white gloves and black patent leather shoes and her mother would wear a green satin dress with green sequins and a fox fur cape around her shoulders.

They would be gone all night and Ella would sleep in Flo’s room because Flo would stay when her parents went to dinner dances or when they stayed away overnight for any reason.

In the morning they always brought back treasures for her, conical shaped hats with an elastic to go under her chin, paper streamers, little trumpets which made strange noises. They had loved each other then, Ella knew. And they had loved her.

The first ten years of Ella’s life went on in this blissful way and then quite suddenly it ended.

Flo always woke her. She heard the thick velvet curtains being pushed back to let in the daylight. It was raining, it was a dark November morning and she sat up in bed expecting Flo’s voice but her mother came to the bed and sat down.

She pushed back the unruly dark curls from Ella’s face and she looked to Ella as though she had been crying. She couldn’t remember having seen her mother cry before.

‘Ella, there isn’t a good way to tell you this so you’ll have to forgive me for saying it b