The Girl From Barefoot House

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Sagas; 20th Century Romance; Family Life

Synopsis

A powerful and compelling Liverpool saga of one woman's life from bestselling author Maureen Lee. For Josie Flynn, the war was just the start of a journey that began in heartbreak when she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle. Life took her to Barefoot House as the paid companion of an elderly woman, and seemed to promise lifelong happiness in New York with the handsome, charismatic Jack Coltrane. But once again, life is not turning out the way Josie has imagined and she finds herself back in Liverpool, alone. As she renews old loves and former friendships, and reflects on her time at Barefoot House, she embarks upon a career which is as unlikely as it is successful.

Release date: November 10, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 532

Sample

‘Hello, Petal. I’m home.’

‘Mam!’ Josie raised her arms and was lifted out of bed and hugged so hard she could scarcely breathe.

‘I see you drank your milk and ate your cream crackers like a good girl.’

‘Yes, Mam.’ She snuggled her head against Mam’s neck, into the curved space she thought of as especially hers.

‘I’ve missed you, Petal. Now, I’ve got a visitor, so you sit on the stairs for a little while. Take Mam’s cardy, and don’t forget Teddy. I’ll be out to get you in the twinkling of an eye. Then I’ll make us a cup of cocoa and a jam butty, like always.’

‘All right, Mam.’ Josie slithered obediently to the floor, and Mam gently placed the navy blue cardigan around her shoulders.

‘How old is she?’ The gruff voice came from a dark corner of the candlelit room, by the door. A man stepped forward, very tall, with a bent nose and black curly hair. His face was hard, but his eyes were troubled.

‘Three.’

‘Bit young to be left on her own all this time, isn’t she? It’s not safe.’

‘What do you mean, it’s not safe?’ Mam said tartly. She removed the long pearl pin from her brown felt hat. ‘There’s a fireguard, and I leave something to eat. She knows I’ll always come back. Anyroad, what’s it to you?’

‘Nowt. Just put her outside so I get what I’ve come for before you pass out. You’re stewed rotten, and I’ve been waiting all night long for this.’

‘It’s what I was about to do before you shoved your big oar in.’ The voice changed as she turned to her child. ‘Go on, luv,’ she said softly, shoving her through the door and on to the landing.

Josie sat at the top of the stairs and held Teddy up so that he could see the stars peeping down at them through the skylight and the filmy cobwebs floating eerily in the light of the moon. Then she wrapped the sleeves of the cardigan around her neck, and tried to tuck her bare feet inside the ribbed hem. It was cold in her nightie on the landing. Their attic was the warmest place in the house according to Mam, because heat rose, and they got the benefit of everyone’s fires, as well as their own. The attic was where the maids used to live a long time ago. It had a small iron fireplace and a triangular sink in the corner. There was a tiny window just below where the roof peaked.

The stairs in the tall house in Huskisson Street, a mere stone’s throw from the Protestant cathedral, had their own special smell, a mixture of all sorts of interesting things: of food – mainly boiled cabbage or fried onions – scent, smoke, dust, a peculiar smell that Mam said was dry rot. The house had once been very grand, having been owned by a man who imported rare spices from the Orient. The rooms used to be full of fine furniture; exquisite rugs and carpets had covered the floors. Everywhere, apart from the attic, had been wired for electricity, which was very up to date, as not everyone could get light at the flick of a switch. Most people still used gas.

Mam spent ages describing how she imagined the place might have looked. ‘But now it’s gone to rack and ruin,’ she sighed. All that remained was the opulent wallpaper in the downstairs rooms. Even the bathroom had lost its grandeur: tiles had fallen off the walls, and the taps provided water at a trickle. The chain in the lavatory was just a piece of string, and no one could remember it having had a seat.

There was a party downstairs, lots of voices, music – someone was playing a mouth organ. Josie never seemed to be awake when the house was quiet. Perhaps it never was. Perhaps there were always people having parties, shouting and screaming, fighting or laughing, crying or singing. Sometimes the bobbies came, stamping through the house as if they owned the place, up and down the stairs, banging on doors, not waiting to be asked in. When this happened, Mam would sit Josie on her knee and be reading a story when a bobby barged in and demanded she come to the station.

‘How dare you!’ she would say in the frosty, dead posh voice she kept specially for such occasions. ‘I’m just sitting here, reading me little girl a story. Since when has reading been a crime?’

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ the bobby would say, touching his funny big dome of a hat, followed by something like, ‘I didn’t realise respectable women lived here.’

Mam would toss her great mane of brown hair and say, ‘Well, they do, see.’

On Sundays, after she and Mam and some of the girls had been to Mass, everyone would be in a great good humour and they would gather in one of the downstairs rooms for a cup of tea and a jangle. There were six other girls besides Mam – fat Liz, tall Kate, buck-toothed Gladys, black Rita, Irish Rose and smelly Maude. Maude was much older than the others and going bald, but was still called a girl. She smoked a lot, and the fingers of her right hand were a funny orange colour. Mam was fondest most of Maude. Josie, in her best dress, would be in her element as she was made a desperate fuss of, passed from one knee to another and petted almost to death. The girls often bought her presents – a bar of chocolate, a hairslide or a little toy. It was Maude who’d given her Teddy for her first birthday.

‘They’re dead envious because I’ve got you,’ Mam would whisper. ‘They’d all like a little girl like my Petal, though they’d never admit it. At nineteen, Mam was the next to youngest there, but the only one a mother. This made her very proud, as if she had one up on the others.

Josie was quite definitely not a burden or a cross to bear, as some of the girls suggested. Okay, she could have earned two or three times as much if she had been on her own, but she made enough to keep body and soul together, thanks very much. The Sunday before last, when the subject had come up again, Mam lost her temper when Kate said, ‘Let’s face it, Mabel, someone in our line of work would be far better off without a kiddie.’

‘Cobblers!’ Mam flashed angrily. ‘You’re only saying that because you’re jealous. Our Josie’s more important to me than anything in the world.’

‘Why should I be jealous when I got rid of two of me own?’ Kate countered. ‘If you cared about your Josie all that much, you wouldn’t be here. This is no place to raise a kid. You had a proper education, not like us lot. You’re always on about that chemist’s shop where you used to work. If you put your mind to it, you could get a decent job like a shot.’

Like much of the conversation that she overheard, this went completely over Josie’s head, but she noticed Mam’s rosy cheeks turn white. ‘No, I couldn’t,’ she whispered. ‘Not while I’m stuck on the booze.’

The door to the attic opened and the man with the crooked nose came out. He said kindly, ‘C’mon, kid. I’ll take you back in.’ He scooped Josie up, carried her into the room and sat her on the bed. Mam was in her pink nightie, twisting her long hair into a plait, which made her look like a beautiful saint. She swayed and nearly fell.

‘You may well be a good screw,’ the man snapped, ‘but you’re a lousy ma. If you’re not careful, one of these days the kid’ll be taken off you.’

‘You bugger off, you,’ Mam said in a slurred, trembly voice. ‘You’d go a long road before you’d find a bonnier child. And, anyroad, she’ll be four in May.’ She sat on the bed and put her arm around Josie’s shoulders. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you, luv?’

Josie looked up from tucking Teddy under the bedclothes so that just his head and arms showed. ‘Oh, yes, Mam.’

‘See!’ Mam said challengingly.

‘She looks fit,’ the man conceded grudgingly. ‘As to being happy, well, she don’t know any better, does she? She probably don’t know what happy means.’

After he’d gone, Mam filled the kettle from the sink in the corner and put it on the hob to boil, talking to herself all the while. ‘I wonder if we should move, find somewhere else?’ she muttered. ‘Though I like it here, the girls are a scream, well mostly, and the landlord’s more or less decent. But I’ll have to start using a different pub. I don’t want to come across that geezer tonight a second time, nosy-poke bugger that he was. I’ll have a word with Maude, see what she thinks.’ She suddenly flew across the room and seized Josie in her slim arms. ‘I couldn’t live without you, Petal. I’d kill us both before I’d let them take you away.’

‘Yes, Mam,’ Josie answered. She had no idea what Mam was on about, though she knew what being happy meant. She sat on the big bed, watching the candle send flickering shadows on to the sloping wooden rafters and the bare brick walls. Mam took some clothes off the line strung between rafters and put them over the fireguard. They began to steam and give off a warm, familiar smell. Then her mother mixed the cocoa, cut and margarined the bread, spread the jam, and Josie thought it would be impossible to be happier than she was now. In a minute, Mam would bring the butties to bed with her, leaving the cocoa on the floor for now, and they would eat them sitting up, leaning against each other.

‘What is it we need, Petal?’ Mam said, coming over with the butties on a cracked plate.

‘A tray,’ Josie said promptly. Every night without fail Mam brought up their desperate need of a tray.

‘That’s right. We could prop it on our knees, like a little table. Tell you what, we’ll walk into town tomorrow, see if there’s any trays going cheap in Blackler’s bargain basement. We’ll make a day of it, wear our bezzie clothes. We’ll finish off with a cup of tea in Lyon’s.’

‘Yes, Mam,’ Josie said blissfully. Mam turned every day into an adventure. Depending on the weather, they would go to the swings in Princes Park, or for a ride on the ferry to Birkenhead or Seacome – sometimes they even went as far as New Brighton, and if Mam was flush they’d go on the waltzer and the bobby horses. If it were raining, they would wander around St John’s Market, or the big posh shops like George Henry Lee’s and Bon Marché.

As Mam climbed into bed beside her, she said, ‘We used to have a lovely black lacquered tray at home – you should have seen it, Petal.’

‘Tell us about home,’ Josie murmured.

‘Again? You’d think I’d lived in Buckingham Palace, not an ordinary house off Penny Lane.’

‘’S interesting.’

Mam laughed. ‘Interesting! That’s a big word for a little girl not long off four.’

‘Well, it is. What was the tray like?’ Josie took a butty and snuggled into the crook of Mam’s arm, careful not to disturb Teddy, who had gone fast asleep.

‘I told you, black lacquered. It sort of shone, and had flowers, like orchids, painted on it. Orange and pink they were, with long, green leaves. Me dad brought it back from Japan, I think it was. Our house in Machin Street was full of lovely things me dad brought from all over the world. The best tray was only brought out on Sundays. Weekdays, we used the horrible wooden one. Mind you, I won’t turn up me nose if wooden’s all they’ve got in Blackler’s basement tomorrow.’

‘What did your dad look like, Mam?’

‘You know as much about him as I know meself, and what’s more, you know you know.’ Mam tickled her tummy, and Josie collapsed, giggling. ‘He was an Irishman from County Kildare, a captain in the merchant navy, and he died in the last year of the Great War, though it was the weather, a terrible storm, that killed him, not the fighting. I was only a month old, so I never saw him, and he never saw me. Ne’er did the twain meet, as the saying goes.’

‘But you saw his photo,’ Josie prompted.

‘So I did, Petal.’ Mam grinned. ‘You remember this word for word, don’t you? Yes, his photo was on the mantelpiece in Machin Street.’

‘And he was very handsome?’

‘Very handsome indeed, my Petal. Tall, well built, with brown hair same as yours and mine and the same dark blue eyes. Not that I could tell the colours from the photo, like, but that’s what me poor mam told me.’

‘Poor Mam died of a broken heart,’ Josie said sadly.

‘More or less.’ Mam shrugged. ‘She was Irish, too, from the same village, and she’d known him all her life. Six years afterwards, she went to meet her maker. Our Ivy was eighteen by then, and it was her that brought me up. She was more like a mother than me real one. Until she married Vincent Adams, that is. I were twelve by then. Here’s your cocoa, luv. Mind you don’t spill it.’ Mam’s blue eyes glittered angrily. ‘Three years later, she chucked me out, though she’d no right. It was a bought house, and every bit as much mine as hers. It was the only bought house in Machin Street, and the first to have electricity,’ she went on grandly. ‘All the rest were rented.’

‘Why did she chuck you out, Mam?’ Josie asked curiously. The story always got rather vague at about this time.

‘She thought I’d done something wrong, but I hadn’t. Someone else had done the wrong, but I was the one who got the blame. I was the one who wandered the streets, looking for a place to live, getting chucked out over and over once they realised me condition.’

‘It was then you found Maude downstairs.’

‘No, luv, it was Maude downstairs who found me. I’d collapsed in a back entry not far from here, and was waiting for a miracle to happen. It was Maude who brought me to her room downstairs so the miracle could happen somewhere nice and warm.’

‘Me was the miracle,’ Josie said contentedly.

‘The miracle of miracles, that’s my Petal, and it’s “I”, not “me”. Now, if you’ve finished your cocoa, it’s time we lay down and went to sleep. That party downstairs sounds as if it’s going on all night. Do you want to use the po first?’

‘No, ta, Mam. I used it just before you came in.’

‘Well, I do.’ Mam got out of bed and pulled the po from underneath. ‘I hope Teddy’s got his eyes closed. It’s not done for a gentleman to see a lady using the chamber pot.’

‘He’s fast asleep, but I’ll put me hand over his face, like, just to make sure.’

‘Ta, Petal, but be careful not to smother him, mind.’

Mam snuffed out the candle and got into bed. ‘Turn over, luv. Sit on me knee, like. It’s the comfortablest way.’

They lay like that for quite a while, and Josie felt as if they’d become one person as Mam’s heart beat against her own, and she could feel the warm breath on her neck. She could tell that Mam was still awake.

‘Mam?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, luv?’

‘Another miracle’s going to happen one day, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ Mam murmured huskily. ‘Like I said, by the time you’re ready for school, Mam’ll be off the drink, I swear it. I’ll get a proper job, and we’ll get a proper little house between us. You and me will stay together nights, not like now. I’m glad it was Maude who found me in that entry, not some sanctimonious snob like our Ivy who would have had you taken away. But Maude wasn’t exactly a good influence on a girl of fifteen. She got me this room and set me on a road I would never have followed otherwise, the only road she knew. Still, I’m not sorry about the way things turned out.’ The voice got huskier, became a sob. Josie felt Mam’s arm tighten around her waist. ‘Well, not sorry much.’

Blackler’s basement was an Aladdin’s cave of dazzling and exceedingly tempting bargains. Mam was greatly taken with a flowered china teapot with a slightly misshapen lid and a hand-embroidered Irish linen tablecloth with nothing obviously wrong with it at all. The cheapest tray they found was brown Bakelite and rather ugly, but only elevenpence ha’penny. Mam said she’d cut a rose out of her flower book and glue it in the middle. ‘Then it’ll look dead pretty.’ She was fond of decorating things with flowers from her book.

‘You know, Petal,’ she said thoughtfully as she paused in front of the cutlery, ‘a new bread-knife wouldn’t come amiss. Our one’s so blunt it makes the bread all crumbly. They’re only a tanner, ’cos the handles have got a chip out the wood.’ She picked up several lethal-looking knives until she found the one with the least chipped handle. ‘You can hardly count this as an extravagance.’

The shop assistant put the goods in a paper bag, and they were quickly making their way towards the exit because Mam was worried she’d spend money she hadn’t got when a voice said, ‘Why, if it isn’t Mabel Flynn.’

Mam went very red and nearly dropped the tray. ‘Mrs Kavanagh. Hello,’ she said awkwardly.

‘You’re looking well, luv.’

‘Ta,’ Mam gulped.

Mrs Kavanagh seemed exceptionally nice, and Josie couldn’t understand why Mam was so embarrassed. She was small and plump, with a round, kind face, pink, cushiony cheeks and brown eyes that shone with good humour. Her blue coat was extremely smart. It had a fur collar and fur buttons, and she wore a little blue veiled hat made from the same material as the coat tipped precariously over her right eye. Her hair was brown and tightly waved. Josie waited to be introduced. It was the first thing Mam did when they met someone new. ‘This is Josie, me little girl,’ she would say proudly. Today, though, Mam said nothing.

‘How’s the job going, girl?’ Mrs Kavanagh asked kindly.

‘The job?’ Mam faltered. She was holding Josie’s hand so hard it hurt. ‘All right, I suppose.’

‘I was surprised to hear you’d given up Bailey’s Chemists – wasn’t Mrs Bailey teaching you to dispense the prescriptions? – to become a live-in nanny, but according to your Ivy you love it there. Where is it over the water, luv? I forget now.’

‘Er, Greasby.’

‘And I suppose this is one of your little charges.’ The woman beamed at Josie.

‘Yes. Oh, yes. This is Josie.’

‘You’re very pretty, Josie.’ She bent down and took Josie’s hand. ‘How old are you?’

‘I’ll be four in May.’

‘I’ve got a little girl who’ll be four next week. Her name is Lily, and she should be standing right beside me, except she’s wandered off, as usual. Lily,’ she called. ‘Lily, where are you?’

Mam seemed to have found her voice. ‘I didn’t know you’d had another baby, Mrs Kavanagh.’

‘Well, five’s an uneven number, luv. Me and Eddie decided to make it six, but that’s our lot. I’d’ve thought your Ivy would’ve told you on one of her visits. Oh, here she is, our Lily. Come on, luv, say hello to Josie here.’

A girl came bouncing up, a mite smaller than Josie. She was very like her mam, with bright pink cheeks and sparkling eyes. Her slightly darker hair fell to her waist in a mass of tiny waves. To Josie’s surprise, her coat was exactly the same as her mother’s – blue with fur buttons and collar. She wore a different sort of hat, a bonnet tied under her chin.

‘Hello, Josie,’ the girl said obediently. Her face was alive with mischief.

‘Hello.’ Josie twisted her body shyly. She wasn’t used to children, and had never had a friend. Mam had been the only friend she’d ever wanted, but she would have quite liked to get to know Lily Kavanagh.

However, that was not to be, because Mam said in a rush, ‘We’d better be getting back to Greasby. I only came over to do a bit of shopping, seeing as it was such a nice day, like. Come on, Josie.’

Mrs Kavanagh looked disappointed. ‘I thought we could have a little natter over a cup of tea and a scone. I’ve missed you in the street, Mabel. Everyone has.’

‘That would have been the gear, Mrs Kavanagh, but I really must get back.’

‘Oh, well, some other time, then. Tara, luv. Tara, Josie. Where’s your manners, our Lily? Say tara.’

Lily’s eyes gleamed impishly at Josie. ‘Tara.’

‘It’s not fair. Oh, it’s not fair a bit,’ Mam raged as they walked quickly out of Blackler’s into the bright spring sunshine. Her face was very red. Josie had to run to keep up, and kept bumping into people on the crowded pavements. A shopping basket nearly sent her flying. ‘As if I’d’ve given up me good job in Bailey’s to be a nanny, for God’s sake. But I suppose our poor Ivy had to come up with something to explain why I wasn’t there no more. After all, I was forced to think up all sorts of lies meself, else the truth might have killed the poor woman. Mind you, I never thought she’d turn against me the way she did. She’s me sister, after all. I thought she’d stick by me.’

‘Mam!’ Josie panted. She had a stitch in her side, and felt confused. What on earth was Mam on about? Which poor woman might the truth have killed?

‘I’m sorry, Petal. Am I going too fast for you? I’m the worst mam in the whole world.’ She slowed down considerably, but remained just as angry. ‘I’m glad we were all done up in our best gear and I had me beret on, not that horrible brown thing. Did you see the lovely coats they had on? Mollie will have made them, as well as them dead smart hats. She makes all the kids’ clothes, including the boys’. Mr Kavanagh – Eddie, that is – owns the haberdashers by Woolworths in Penny Lane, so she gets the material cheap, like. She was ever such a good friend when I was little. I used to have me tea in their house until our Ivy came home from work. Their Stanley’s only three years younger than me.’ She stopped dead in the middle of the street. ‘I would have liked a cup of tea and a natter, I really would, but I was scared she’d guess what’s what.’

‘What is what, Mam?’

‘Never mind.’ Mam sighed. ‘You should be wearing coats like Lily’s, not other kids’ cast-offs from Paddy’s market. There was money left, hundreds of pounds, and half of it were mine. Mollie Kavanagh made the frock for me first Holy Communion, something you’ll be needing yourself in the not too distant future, and where are we going to get that from, I’d like to know?’

Josie had no idea. Nor did she know why the day, which she had anticipated being so enjoyable, should have turned so sour, all because they’d met nice Mrs Kavanagh and her daughter, Lily.

Then the day became even worse. Mam noticed they were standing outside a pub. She said, ‘Hang on a minute, Petal. If I don’t down something quick to calm me nerves, I’m likely to bust a blood vessel. Sit on the step, luv. I’ll be out again in the twinkling of an eye.’

True to her word, Mam was only a short while in the pub, and when she came out she looked much calmer. But she had claimed that drinking was a curse, that she was determined to stop altogether so she could get a job and a little house. This was the first time Josie had known her to drink during the day.

Josie had been at Our Lady of Mount Carmel elementary school a year when Britain declared war on Germany, and everyone began to make a desperate fuss about things. But apart from food rationing and people having to wear gas masks over their shoulders, war made little difference to their lives as far as Josie could see. All the windows had crisscross tape to protect against bomb damage – not that anyone thought there was the remotest chance that bombs would fall. Tall Kate and fat Liz had ‘pulled themselves together’ and gone down south to work in a factory making parts for aeroplanes. But Josie and her mam remained in Huskisson Street, where these days there were always a few bottles of stout kept in the sideboard cupboard, and the little house hadn’t been mentioned in a long while.

Josie didn’t mind, not very much. They still went to Princes Park and for rides on the ferry. She liked school, and could read quite well. Night-times, when Mam was out – and she was out longer and longer these days – she looked through books with Teddy and taught him the words she knew.

After the war started, Mam’s visitors were mainly young men in uniform – some gave Josie a penny, or even a threepenny bit, as they were leaving. She put the money in a cocoa tin to save up for a house.

On the last day of the summer term, the children were allowed home early. They whooped out of the gates, blissfully excited at the thought of no more school for six long weeks. Josie ran all the way home, burst into the house and was halfway up the first flight of stairs when Irish Rose emerged from her ground-floor room. She was a tiny woman – ‘petite’ Mam called her – with lovely ginger hair, and would have been dead pretty if she hadn’t had such a dreadful squint.

‘Josie,’ she called urgently. ‘Come in with me a minute, luv. Your mam’s got someone with her. She wasn’t expecting you just yet.’

‘Why can’t I wait on the stairs, like always?’ Josie hadn’t realised Mam had visitors while she was at school.

‘I think your mam would prefer it if you waited with me. It might take a while. Come on, luv,’ Rose coaxed in her soft, lilting voice. ‘The kettle’s on, and I got half a pound of broken biscuits this morning – most of ’em are cream.’

At the mention of the biscuits, Josie returned downstairs. She loved Rose’s big room, with its fancy net curtains and red silk tasselled lampshade. Rose had spent several days sticking tape to the tall windows in a highly complicated pattern. The linoleum was purple with a pattern of trailing vines, and the red and blue striped wallpaper, with its sprinkling of embossed gold flowers, was a relic of the importer of rare spices – faded, torn in places, but still incredibly grand. During the summer, the marble fireplace was filled, as now, with tissue flowers that Rose had made herself. A patchwork quilt covered the single bed, and the sideboard was packed with statues, holy pictures and photos of Rose’s numerous sisters and brothers and other relatives back in Ireland, who would all ‘drop stone dead’ for some reason if they knew what their Rose was up to on the mainland.

The kettle was already simmering on the hob, the tea was quickly made and the broken biscuits emptied on to a plate.

‘You can dip your bicky in your tea if you want, luv,’ Rose said kindly, before proceeding daintily to dip her own. Rose was always dressed up to the nines from early morning. Today, she wore a lovely maroon crêpe dress with sequins on the bodice. Her cheeks and lips had been painted the same colour as the dress, and her lashes were two rows of stiff flies’ legs. She regarded Josie searchingly with her good eye. ‘And what did you get up to at school today?’

‘We did games this avvy, and Catechism this morning,’ Josie said importantly. ‘Did you know the Pope cannot err? What does err mean, Rose?’

Rose shrugged. ‘Dunno, luv. I’m a downright eejit, me. I can’t even read proper.’

‘Honest? Me mam reads books all the time, big thick ones,’ Josie bragged. ‘She gets ’em from the library.’

‘Oh, we all know how clever Lady Muck is.’ Rose sniffed and looked annoyed. She went on, a touch of spite in her voice, ‘But she weren’t clever enough to check if her chap was wearing a johnny, were she? I always do. The chaps hate using ’em, and only an eejit would take them at their word. Now look where it’s landed her.’

‘Where’s that, Rose?’

‘Up shit creek without a paddle, that’s where.’

Josie was about to ask if shit creek was anywhere near the Pier Head when an agonised scream came from upstairs.

‘Mam!’ Josie would have recognised the sound anywhere. In her panic, she dropped a custard cream in the half-drunk tea, and almost fell in her rush towards the door.

‘Wait a minute, luv,’ Rose leapt to her feet. ‘Oh, dear God. I should’ve locked the effin’ door,’ she groaned.

At first, Josie couldn’t make out what was happening when she burst into the attic room, half expecting to find Mam being murdered and ready to defend her with her life. The terrifying scene that met her was possibly worse. The bed had been covered with a black rubber sheet on which her mother lay, legs bent and wide apart. Between them was a pool of dark red blood. Mam, her teeth bared and the whites of her eyes glinting madly, was struggling to escape from Maude, who had her pinned down by the shoulders. A strange old woman was crouched at the foot of the bed. She got to her feet as Josie rushed in.

‘That should do it,’ the woman said, and at the same time Mam shrieked, ‘Get our Josie out of here.’

‘I’ll get her.’ Rose arrived, breathless. ‘Come on, luv.’

But a terrified Josie dodged the grasping arms. She slithered past Maude and threw herself on top of her mother who screamed again. Both began to sob loudly.

The old woman, oblivious to the commotion, said in a hoarse voice, ‘That’ll be a quid.’

‘You should’a been a butcher, Gertie,’ Maude said tersely, releasing Mam, who made no attempt to escape, but fell back on to the bed, still sobbing. ‘I hope that instrument o’ yours was sterilised.’

Gertie ignored her. ‘I’d like me rubber sheet back if you don’t mind. I’ll wash it meself at home. Oh, and you’d better get the girl some Aspro. She’s likely to hurt for a couple of days.’

Mam did more than hurt – she caught an infection. Her temperature soared, she tossed and turned, moaned in her sleep and said things that Josie couldn’t make sense of.

‘Don’t touch me, else I’ll tell our Ivy,’ she would wail hysterically. Or, ‘If me sister finds out, it’ll break her heart.’

It was like a nightmare, Josie thought during the night as she cuddled against the hot, damp body, made worse when the air-raid siren went several times. Its unearthly wail sent shivers up and down h