The Tailor's Wife

by Alexandra Connor

Genres: General Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

The path to happiness is rarely easy...

A young woman struggles against family loyalty and class prejudices in The Tailor's Wife, an engrossing saga from Alexandra Connor. Perfect for fans of Josephine Cox and Rosie Goodwin.

Widowed Jacob Clark has been training his daughter, Suzannah, to take over his tailoring business. Suzannah is the sensible one and she's happy with the unconventional role her father has found for her. Suzannah's also a beauty, and she's caught the eye of the most eligible of bachelors, Edward Lyle, the son of a powerful local politician who is horrified at the thought of being connected by marriage to such a lowly family.
When Suzannah's brother, Girton, is taken in by the charms of scheming Rina Taylor, Suzannah is right to fear that chaos and scandal will follow, giving Noel Lyle the ammunition he needs to prise his son away from Suzannah ... or so Noel thinks. But the two young people whose lives he is setting out to destroy are less malleable than he imagines...

What readers are saying about The Tailor's Wife:

'I've read all Alexandra Connor's books and they are all so compelling that I can't put them down once started. This one's set in Manchester and really captures the times, and the characters are all well drawn'

'Alexandra Connor is one of my favourite authors. Her stories are full of twists and turns, and are hard to put it down'

'This was a wonderful story from start to finish, I did not want it to end'

Release date: May 22, 2006

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 448

Sample

In summer you could smell Hanky Park before you saw it. A line of mean shops plied a poor trade, whilst behind them houses crouched, steaming, under the sun. It wasn’t the district for summer. Let the rich enjoy the heat up on Eccles Old Road, but not Hanky Park. Not when the flies walked all over the meat offcuts in the butcher’s window, and the back toilets flooded every July.

There were no young women. They might have entered Hanky Park young and hopeful, but within a few years, work and childbearing meant their looks had coarsened. Washing filthy work clothes in cold water, giving birth with the local nag in attendance - because no one could afford the shilling for the doctor - aged a woman fast. If she had a man - and many didn’t - she often ended up supporting him. Sometimes even going on the game to put food on the table.

And the most terrifying thing about the place wasn’t the poverty, the cramped, dirty conditions or the danger. Or even the frequent outbreaks of sickness. It was just one, irrefutable fact. If you were born in Hanky Park, you didn’t get out.

Jacob Clark knew that only too well. He was the only child of Sara and Elijah Clark, his father a local carter. Not that anyone needed to be told that fact: one look at Elijah was enough to mark out his trade. Years of humping coal had left his hands blackened, the back of his neck pitted, coal dust in his very pores. Out in all weathers, Elijah wore a leather-shouldered coat, but if it rained he got wet. And stayed wet. In summer, the clothes dried on him. In winter, they never got the chance. They would dry partially - from the heat his exertions were throwing off - but never completely. And then it would rain again, water dripping off the rim of his cap, the sacks hard to lift, slimy to the touch. Gradually, over the years, Elijah got used to feeling his skin chilled, his hands so numb that driving the coal horses was done by rote, not feeling. That was when a carter needed a good horse.

‘If I didn’t have Sam,’ he’d tell Jacob at the stables on Hardy Street, ‘I’d have my work cut out. Understands every word I say, that horse does. And a soft mouth, hardly have to twitch on the rein and he knows.’ He reached up lovingly to pet the great shire. ‘When your turn comes, lad, you make sure to get a good horse and treat it well. It’ll repay you for your kindness.’

Jacob watched his father but felt that he would rather throw himself under Sam’s hoofs than be a carter. His whole world had echoed to the sound of horses whinnying, and the monotonous, dead rumble of the coal carts going up and down the street, from seven in the morning until six at night. Another pungent memory was of the coal dust. Even on the hottest days in summer the doors and windows of the house were closed to keep out the filth from the siding. If you opened them - even briefly - the dust covered every surface.

Rain and coal dust. Cold and poverty. Those were the memories of Jacob’s childhood, and when he was sent to school, nothing really changed. The building faced another siding, the coal dust sneaking in through the windows and marking the few grimy school books. And outside - always, day after day, week after week - the sound of the wagons chugging and shunting. No place to make learning easy.

But then people didn’t expect kids from Hanky Park to do much with their lives. They were to be the future coal workers, dockers, mill hands: slum fodder to keep the great city of Manchester afloat. No one had ambition in Hanky Park. No one had anything much in Hanky Park. Other kids - wealthy kids up on Eccles Old Road - had presents bought for them. But the slum kids made their own. The streets were their toys, half a brick a make-believe gun, a ruined wall the hull of an ocean liner. And there were other diversions: the sight of the rent man coming for his money making them run home over the backs, in time to tip off their mothers.

‘Gerry Fitt’s coming, Mam!’

Sara Clark spun round, closed the back door and pulled her son behind the battered curtain of the lobby. Jacob could smell the bleach on her hands as they both peered through the hole in the door curtain.

Gerry Fitt was knocking loudly on the door. Once, twice, three times. Each time louder. Then he moved to the window and looked in. Both of them automatically held their breath.

‘Mrs Clark? Are you in there, Mrs Clark?’

Silence. Jacob could hear the tap dripping and noticed a fly hovering round the slop bucket under the sink.

‘Mrs Clark, I need the rent money. I’ll be back tomorrow; make sure you have it then. I’ll treat you fair because you’ve not been late before. But only this once.’

He paused, took off his bowler hat and wiped the coal soot off his forehead. Gerry Fitt had one leg and used a crutch; no money for an artificial limb. It slowed him down and people could always hear him coming, clack-clacking on the cobbles. Mothers used him as a warning to their kids: If yer cheeky, yer leg’ll drop off. Just like Gerry Fitt’s . . .

Suddenly Fitt pushed his face up to the window, his nose squashed to one side. Without thinking, Jacob sniggered, Sara pinching his ear to make him stop. Finally the disgruntled man moved away. For another minute they waited in the back lobby, both peering through the curtain. Often the rent man doubled back. You could get caught that way unless you were careful.

When she was sure the coast was clear, Sara moved back into the kitchen, her expression anxious, her narrow face drawn, her gnarled fingers folding and refolding the laundry on the kitchen table.

‘I should have had that money for him. But with your dad being ill last week . . .’ She paused, moved to the table and began to spread some bread with dripping. ‘Here now, get your tea. Your father will want a bath when he gets home and he won’t want you under his feet.’

She hadn’t the time to be kind. Not when the squalid kitchen walls were peeling with damp, water from a burst pipe trickling through a break in the windowledge. One armchair, rescued from a skip, Sara had covered with some cotton from the Flat Iron Market, but the curtain at the narrow window was already soiled at the bottom from the water leak, and everywhere smelt of mould. Thank God they had had no other children, she thought with relief. She had taken good care not to get pregnant again. One child was enough to support. God only knew how the big families managed.

‘Things will be easier when you’re working, Jacob,’ she said brusquely. ‘When we’ve got two wages coming in, we’ll be able to have a bit of luxury.’ Her son wasn’t sure what luxury was, but he was certain there wasn’t much of it in Hanky Park. ‘We might get you a proper bed.’

Jacob wasn’t too bothered about the cast-off cot he was using, even though the end had been removed and a chair put there to accommodate his growth. He was grateful that he didn’t have to share his bed - however hotchpotch - with brothers and sisters.

His closest friend, Bert Gallager, had five sisters and two brothers, and not enough clothes to go round. It was common knowledge that in the winter a couple of the children would be kept off school in bed to keep warm. The next day, they would go out and another pair would stay home.

‘You finished now?’

Nodding at his mother, Jacob gulped down his watery tea and made for the door with half a piece of bread in his fist.

‘Go and play,’ Sara said absent-mindedly. ‘Your father needs some space when he gets in. And be back before dark. You hear me?’

Jacob had just finished his bread and dripping when Bert Gallager came up to him on the corner. With a knowing look he leaned against the wall, his thin legs weedy in shorts.

‘That Gerry Fitt . . .’ He left the name hanging in the air. ‘That Gerry Fitt . . .’

‘We couldn’t pay him this week,’ Jacob confided, digging his hands into his pockets and leaning against the wall next to his friend. ‘Old Fitt wasn’t best pleased.’

Bert clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

‘It’s no one’s fault! My dad were ill last week,’ Jacob replied, jumping to his father’s defence. Besides, he wanted to add, at least he’s honest. Not like your father, who’d thieve the eyes out of a potato to sell to a blind man.

‘Hey, yer’ll not guess what I’eard?’

Jacob’s curiosity was immediately aroused. The Gallagers knew all the scandal.

‘What?

‘Yer an only child—’

Some news. ‘I know that!’

‘Yeah, but did yer know that yer’ll always be the only one?’

‘How d’you know?’

‘M’mam told me. Said yer mam told ’er that she couldn’t have any more babies.’

Jacob screwed up his face. ‘Why?’

‘Something wrong down there,’ Bert replied dramatically, pointing to his crotch. ‘All closed up, like that vault at the bank.’

‘You what?’

‘Yer mam, she’s shut up tight.’

‘She never!’

Bert nodded, sagely, rapidly thinking up another lurid embellishment to the story. ‘In fact, she told m’mam - and no one else knows - that she had ’erself sewed up.’

Jacob’s eyes were glassy. ‘Sewed up?’

‘Like a dress hem,’ Bert replied, adding darkly, ‘Even if she had a baby in ’er, it couldn’t get out.’

‘If it couldn’t get out,’ Jacob asked, not unreasonably, ‘how could it get in?’

Shrugging, Bert jumped off the wall. ‘M’ mam says that it’s a right shame about yer mam. Her having only one kid. But then she said yer’ll be having kids of yer own one day.’

This was an unwelcome thought. ‘I don’t want kids!’

‘Sure yer do! Lots of ’em, like us.’

‘I hate kids!’

‘Yer’ll have dozens,’ Bert went on, provoking him mercilessly. ‘Daddy Clark,’ he snorted. ‘Daddy Clark . . .’

Which was when Jacob belted him.

And Gloria’s mother was respectable. No part-time whore, just a stupid girl who had married young and been widowed a year later. An accident down at the docks, she would tell everyone, never mentioning that Derek had been almost gutted by a grappling hook. Instead she made a martyr out of him; a saint out of a brutish backward who had left her with a child to support.

No one would have raised an eyebrow if she had gone on the game. She was in the right area, after all. But that wasn’t going to be the way for Betty Siddons. She had no family, apart from Gloria, no money, no education and no prospects. But she was blessed with optimism. Optimism which came at a halfpenny a pint. Stout optimism.

In her cups, Betty believed the far-fetched stories in the penny dreadful romances and saved up to go and see the singers and dancers at the music hall. Afterwards she walked through Salford imagining a prince on every corner. Her late husband had been a great lifter: taught Betty how to drink. And quickly she’d developed a hard head. Better than a hard heart, she’d have said. So, with a bottle or two of beer inside her, Betty Siddons could be insane with optimism, crazy with hope; the sordid sleaze of her surroundings temporarily transformed into something bearable, even cosy.

Dreamy Betty they called her. Drunken cow, they added, whores calling out from the ginnels where they were being humped up against a wall for the price of a pint. Even drunk, couldn’t she see how bloody awful the place was? How it stank? How there were drunks sicking up outside the Black Horse on a Friday night? And what about the prossies with crusted sores around their mouths? The prison lags? The petty crooks? The pub landlords who gave the ‘long pull’ - five gills for the price of a pint? Didn’t she see the slime around the blocked drains? The rats running down the ginnels after dark? And the abortionist on the corner of Gorland Street, plying his trade for the working girls?

Christ, didn’t she see it?

Not when she was drunk. And that was how Betty Siddons kept going. She was never obviously drunk, never loud, never sick in public. The booze put a skin between her and life - but it never made a fool out of her. Betty could function and hold down a job as a cleaner at the timber works. She was a fair mother too. Times will get better, she told her daughter repeatedly. Things will change. And so Gloria grew up with the one advantage no amount of luck or money could buy. Hope.

Looking out of her front window, Betty’s attention was suddenly caught by the sound of brawling in the street outside. Wincing, she turned up the radio. Quite a luxury, one she had indirectly worked for long and hard, scrubbing for the likes of Denny Cathcart up at the timber works. He had taken a shine to her, had Denny, but not in a sexual way. More protective. He might slide his hand up all the other women’s skirts, but not Betty’s. She was too plain.

Plain, but not slow.

‘Mr Cathcart,’ she’d said that morning, ‘I wonder if you’d mind me asking you if you’re going to get rid of that radio?’

He’d bent down, all his six foot to her five foot two. ‘How’s that, Betty? You want it?’

‘I’d like it for Gloria,’ she’d replied, flushing. ‘I mean, only if you’re throwing it away . . .’

‘Bad reception.’

‘Pardon?’ Betty had replied, her head on one side.

‘It’s not that clear. You can get music sometimes. But then again, Betty, you could get music down at the end of your street any night, in the Brewer’s Arms.’

Flushing again, she had shifted her feet. ‘I don’t go in there. And not with Gloria.’

Denny Cathcart was feeling magnanimous, willing to give. Carefully he looked Betty Siddons up and down. He knew only too well that she finished off the beer slops he left behind - and why the hell not? She’d little enough, living on Rivaldi Street. He thought of her child suddenly. Raising a daughter decent in that rented hellhole would be almost impossible. Especially a pretty girl like Gloria. A pretty girl who was developing fast.

‘You take the radio, Betty. And you can have this too.’ He passed her a pack of cigarettes, Betty staring at him blankly.

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘You can sell them! Force yourself into the Brewer’s Arms or the Black Horse and you’ll get plenty of takers, believe me. Good tobacco in those, Betty, you should get more than a bit of change for them.’

He paused, unexpectedly moved by her. Denny Cathcart, touched by some plain-faced little runt? Giving away radios and fags for nothing? Jesus, he was getting soft in the head, he must be.

‘No mention of this to anyone, Betty, all right? We don’t want people getting ideas, do we?’

Smiling, she lifted the radio and looked up at Denny Cathcart. ‘You’re very kind to me. And Gloria,’ she said sincerely. ‘I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve such consideration from an important man like you.’

Flattered, Denny smiled back at her. ‘We’re friends, you and me, Betty. Friends don’t measure favours. Anyway, one day you might be able to help me.’

‘Anything!’ she said eagerly. ‘Just ask.’

Denny tapped her paternally on the shoulder, moved by his own kindness.

And people called him a bastard. There was no justice.

If he was honest, Jacob hadn’t been seeing too clearly for a while. Playing ball was getting hopeless, he missed every catch, and when he’d been trying to catapult tin cans off the wall with Bert, he’d missed the whole row of them and caught Mrs Arnold next door on the back of the head.

She - moving impressively fast for a fat woman - had grabbed him by the collar and marched him home.

‘What the hell d’you call this!’ she barked as Sara opened the back door.

‘Jacob?’

‘Damn near took my bleeding ear off, yer little bugger did. There I were, making for the privy, and he shoots me in the head.’ She felt through her thin hair. ‘If there’s blood—’

‘Jacob, is this true?’

He stared up at his mother, the collar digging deeper into his throat as Mrs Arnold twisted it.

‘It were a mistake—’

Sara winced. ‘It was a mistake—’

‘It were that all right!’ Mrs Arnold bellowed, letting go of Jacob’s collar and allowing him to fall heavily on to the stone floor. ‘Yer want to mind this lad, Mrs Clark. This is how it starts. A bloody hooligan today and up Strangeways tomorrow.’

‘Well, you would know all about that,’ Sara replied coolly. Three of the Arnold boys either had been or were at present in jail.

Mrs Arnold was red-faced with fury. ‘He hit me!’

‘Not on purpose.’

‘How would yer know? Mothers can never see the badness in their own brats. He took aim and fired at me—’

‘I never did! I never did! I never even saw you!’ Jacob said suddenly, his voice raised.

Surprised, both women looked at him, Sara’s voice questioning. ‘What d’you mean, Jacob, you never even saw her?’

‘I can’t see anything clear. Things are all blurred,’ he explained. ‘Close to, I can see fine, but things a bit away are all furry, like.’

A memory of her father came back to Sara in that instant. Hadn’t he been short-sighted? Worn glasses all his life? Broken several pairs too, when he was the worse for wear. Damn it! she thought. Why did Jacob have to take after him? And glasses were so expensive. Another cost to find, and not even the rent paid.

Foolishly, Mrs Arnold chose that moment to push her luck. ‘If yer lad can’t see, how come he managed to hit me?’

‘I don’t want to be cruel, Mrs Arnold,’ Sara replied caustically, ‘but let’s face it, he had a big enough target.’

‘Yer look like the bleeding rent man!’ Bert had said, collapsing with mirth and pointing to Jacob’s thick lenses. ‘Hey, Speccy! Yer must have bloody good eyes to see out of those.’

And even though Jacob knew how expensive they were, even though he knew they had cost a shilling, he hated them. Because they made him look soft. Jesus, he thought despairingly, taking off the spectacles. The street was immediately blurred. A clammy memory came back to him. Hadn’t the lad in the class above them refused to wear his glasses? And hadn’t he fallen off the canal bridge? And hadn’t the headmaster made a right spectacle out of him at assembly?

Grimacing, Jacob put his glasses back on.

At once, her mother’s warning sounded in her head like a clock chiming. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t talk to strangers. OK, Gloria thought, but if she didn’t ask someone for help, she might never get home.

Straightening the ivory ribbon in her hair, Gloria crossed over the street, ignoring a couple of lads wolf-whistling at her. Not that she wasn’t secretly delighted, of course. But she wouldn’t tell her mother about it. Not even when Betty was mellow after her second evening pint. Better to let her mother think she was still her little girl, still her baby.

After all, it was no hardship to be the focus of Betty’s world. Gloria liked being the only child, petted and adored by her mother. Their closeness suited them both - or had done, until lately. Now Gloria was growing up fast, developing and getting curious - if not a little apprehensive - of the world beyond the Rivaldi Street flat. So although she was patently lost, she was also a little excited. It was nice to be off the leash for once. After all, no one could stay a baby for ever, could they?

‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ Gloria said imperiously.

Flushing, Jacob stood up to her. She was only a girl, after all. And a rude one, at that. ‘It’s not your street.’

‘It’s not yours either,’ she replied, the ivory bow in her hair fluttering like a summer kite. ‘Anyway, I want to pass.’

‘Lady Muck, hey?’ Jacob replied, glad to have someone to mock himself. ‘Where you come from?’

‘Nearby,’ Gloria replied, not letting on that she was hopelessly lost and desperate to get back to Rivaldi Street.

‘Where nearby?’

‘Rivaldi Street.’

Jacob blew out his cheeks. He was glad that she came from the slums. No better than him, for all her washing and ribbons.

‘That’s a bit of a way away.’

‘I know!’ she snapped.

‘So what you doing here?’

‘Walking.’

‘You’ll be black from head to toe in another few minutes if you don’t move,’ Jacob told her, jerking his head towards a passing coal cart. ‘Wind’s coming up.’

Looking round her, Gloria could see a line of horses approaching, driven by the carters. Overhead the sky was darkening, the thick smog of coal smoke bringing in the rain.

‘Are you lost?’

Embarrassed, Gloria turned on him. ‘No, I’m not! I know exactly where I am.’

He laughed, infuriating her further. ‘Yeah, right. Well, you look lost to me.’

‘I’m not lost!’

‘There’s no shame in it.’

‘I’m not lost!’ she snapped again, as rain began to fall. ‘Anyway, what would you know, you four-eyed runt?’

Rocked by the insult, Jacob flushed scarlet and then, without thinking, picked up a handful of soot from the gutter. He had had enough. Enough of people laughing at him because he had to wear the bloody idiot glasses. As Gloria walked away from him, he threw the dirt at her. His aim was good, the dirt hitting her full on, marking her dress and smearing the ribbon in her hair.

She turned round, stunned, staring at him.

And because she seemed so staggered, Jacob was mortified by what he’d done.

‘God—’

‘You pig!’ she snapped. ‘You rotten pig!’ And then she began crying, her hands uselessly trying to rub off the soot.

‘I didn’t mean . . .’ Jacob began, running up to her and staring, shamefaced, at the shambles of her outfit.

‘You’ve spoilt it! Mum will be so angry with me . . .’

‘I can fix it . . .’

‘I don’t want you to fix it! I don’t want you to touch me!’ Her face was red with fury and outrage. ‘You’ve ruined my dress! Look at me!’

Jacob was almost pleading now. ‘Oh please, let me help. Come home with me and m’ mother’ll sort it out. She’ll sort it out good and proper.’

The rain was falling heavily on the two of them, Jacob’s glasses smeared with rain, Gloria’s hair ribbon wet and dangling down over her forehead. Behind them the grim terrace emptied of people, a woman scurrying indoors with a bucket, a man standing motionless in the sheltered doorway of the corner pub.

‘Come on!’ Jacob urged her, taking her hand and pulling her along. ‘Come on! We’ll clean you up and then take you home. Your mam’ll be none the wiser.’

The rain came down in sheets as Jacob almost dragged Gloria through the ginnel to the back door of his home on Ellor Street. Once there, he pushed her in first. Sara was in the middle of peeling a bag of potatoes.

‘Who’s this?’ she asked her son, startled by the sight of a dishevelled, bedraggled girl trying hopelessly to wipe the soot stains off her dress.

‘This is . . .’ Jacob paused, turning to his companion. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Gloria. Gloria Siddons,’ she said, glancing over to Sara and adding vehemently, ‘And I hate your son!’

The Gallager brothers, in their bloodied aprons and caps, would swagger home with a pig’s head and hold it up at their mother’s window to scare her. Which it never did. Dora Gallager had seen it all before: the pig’s trotters peeping out from under the door curtain, the pig’s ears in the sink. It was, she told her daughters, the sort of bloody daft stuff men thought funny.

Some men. But not Jacob. He’d changed. Having previously enjoyed a good fight, he had been quickly weaned off aggression by breaking his first pair of glasses. The look on Sara’s face had been enough. As for his father, Elijah didn’t have to tell his son how hard it was to buy one pair of glasses, let alone two. So Jacob had gone back to school with only one lens in his spectacles, reading the blackboard with his hand over the blank side.

By the time he got his new pair, his old pals had moved on and no one wanted some four-eyed cretin hanging around them. What good was Jacob in a fight any more? He’d tried taking off his glasses before a scrap, but then he couldn’t see who he was trying to hit, and so, gradually, his friends shunned him. Ironically, the studious look was all a sham. Jacob Clark might have street sense, but he wasn’t academically bright. He wasn’t anything much at all. Not especially tough, talented or driven. He was just Jacob - just one more Hanky Park brat.

Only one of his peers admired Jacob, and that was Gloria Siddons. It had taken her almost a month to forgive him for throwing the soot at her, and another month before she had let him walk her home. A week after that, Jacob had told her he thought she was pretty, and the following night he’d kissed her on the cheek.

In return, she had slapped him. Hard. But he had been smitten - and could tell she liked him more than a little. After all, didn’t she always laugh at his jokes? When he took off his glasses and put them on the back of his head so he could see who was coming up behind them? He worried about her too: like the time she fell off the gasworks wall and scraped her knee. He’d laughed at first - he was a boy, after all - but then he’d taken her back to Sara and got her knee bandaged up nicely, reassuring Gloria that the cut wouldn’t leave a scar. Nothing to spoil her pert perfection.

And so gradually Jacob had begun to spend more and more time occupied with Gloria. And grew more and more adrift when she wasn’t around. Regarded as a bespectacled runt by most, he felt oddly grown-up with her, and had even begun to daydream of a future with Gloria Siddons. He knew that his choice of wife would be limited to Hanky Park, but if he could land Gloria - the prettiest and pertest of the bunch - he would be triumphant. So much for wearing glasses; it hadn’t held him back where it really mattered.

‘I’ve got to go to the washhouse, lad,’ Sara said suddenly, breaking into Jacob’s thoughts. ‘Can you give me a lift down with the laundry?’

Picking up a loaded basket, he followed her out on to the street. It was mortifying, trailing behind his mother with a load of dirty washing and passing the end of Earl Street just as Bert Gallager was crossing over. Bert saw Jacob. Then his mother. Then the washing. Then he sniggered and moved off.

This was too much for Jacob. ‘I’ve had enough!’

Sara looked at her son in amazement. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘All this!’ he snapped, dropping the washing on to the cobbles. ‘Trailing round after you like a flaming kid—’

‘You are a kid.’

‘I’m not! I’m grown-up - nearly.’

‘That Gloria Siddons is turning your head,’ Sara replied, looking down at the washing. ‘Pick it up!’

‘Why should I?’

Her voice rose. ‘Because I say so!’

‘You’re always telling me what to do. Do this, do that. You treat me like a bloody girl. I shouldn’t be hanging around with my mam - all the lads think I’m soft.’ He snatched off his glasses, waving them at her. ‘These ruined everything! They make me look a right berk.’

Without saying another word, Sara bent down and picked up the washing herself. She was well aware that Jacob had been shunned by his old mates and was sorry for it, but there was nothing she could do. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would marry Gloria; they were obviously fond of each other. But then again, maybe not. After all, what did her son have to offer the pretty, lively Gloria Siddons?

Wearily, Sara tightened her grip on the washing and walked away, leaving Jacob standing. Amazed, he put his glasses back on, watching his mother. For the first time he realised how much she’d aged, slope-shouldered with work and disappointment, her skin dull as chammy leather. Struggling to carry the load of laundry, Sara moved forward relentlessly, her regretful son running after her. But before he had time to apologise, a small, dark-complexioned man accosted his mother on the corner.

‘Mrs Clark,’ he said, fussing around her, ‘let me help you with that.’

At once Jacob was at his mother’s side. He had never really taken to the tailor. As everyone in Hanky Park knew only too well, Stanley Tobarski was a foreigner.

‘Thank you,’ Jacob said sniffily, ‘but I’m helping my mother.’

Tobarski looked him up and down, then turned back to Sara. ‘It would be no trouble to help. No trouble at all.’

For over two years Sara had worked as a cleaner for the tailor; usually when Elijah was laid off, or sick. And for all of Stanley Tobarski’s eccentric ways, she had found him a fair employer. You did right by him, she told everyone, and he did right by you.

‘You look exhausted, Mr Tobarski.’

‘I have a problem, Mrs Clark.’ He paused, moving a fraction closer. She could smell his cologne; a luxury for Hanky Park. But then Mr Tobarski was a foreigner, and they did things differently. ‘My apprentice . . . I had to let him go.’

‘Where?’ Jacob chimed in suddenly, his eyes fixed beadily on the tailor.

Surprised, the two adults glanced at him, Stanley Tobarski taking a moment to recover. ‘I had to let him . . . leave.’

‘Why?’

Sara turned on her son. ‘Stop asking questions!’

‘I was just being curious.’

‘And you know what curiosity did,’ Sara replied darkly, turning back to Stanley Tobarski. ‘You mean you had to let him go because . . .’

Jacob was feeling guilty for the way he had spoken to his mother earlier and was now being ultra-protective.

‘Because of what?’

In one smooth gesture, Sara clipped her son on the left ear, Jacob yelping and falling back behind the two adults.

‘He was stealing,’ Stanley admitted finally, Jacob listenin