Читать книгу Daughters of Liverpool - Annie Groves, Annie Groves - Страница 12

‘Well, I must say, Mum, she does seem a decent sort,’ Grace Campion told her mother generously.

Grace had initially felt rather jealous when her mother had spoken so enthusiastically to her about this girl who was billeted with Grace’s parents, but now having met Katie Grace had to admit that she had liked her.

The three of them had gone for a cup of tea at Lyons Corner House, Jean having decided that it was best that Grace met Katie on neutral ground.

Tactfully Katie had now gone off to do some shopping, leaving mother and daughter to talk on their own.

‘She won’t be going home for Christmas so she’ll be having her Christmas dinner with us. I’m hoping that our Luke will get leave to be home. I’ll miss you, Grace love, but it’s only natural that Seb’s family want to meet you.’

‘We’ll be back to see in the New Year with you, Mum. Then I’m on nights again.’

‘You’ll have been busy today, love, with Hitler bombing us again last night. Your dad was out all night helping to put out the fires started down on the docks by the incendiaries. The Dock Board offices and Cunard’s were both hit, and then there was that awful thing down by the railway arches in Bentinck Street. Your dad says they still don’t know how many people who were sheltering under those arches got killed when they collapsed.’

‘Just when we were thinking that Hitler had finished with us,’ Grace agreed.

Jean patted her daughter’s hand. Grace had only just escaped being a casualty of one of Hitler’s bombs herself late in November when she and Seb had been caught in the Durning Technical School bomb blast.

‘I’d better get back, Mum,’ Grace told her mother, ‘otherwise I’ll be late going on duty, and you can imagine how busy we are.’

‘Well, you take care of yourself, remember?’ Jean gave her a fierce hug.

‘And you, Mum. Are you going home now?’

‘Not yet. Whilst I’ve got Katie with me we’re going to nip over to St John’s Market so that I can get me turkey and a few other things.’

Grace laughed. It was a standing joke in the family that Jean complained every year that the poulterer from whom she ordered her turkey always got the size wrong, resulting in Jean worrying about being able to get the bird into her oven.

To get to the market Jean and Katie had to cross Ranelagh Street, where Lewis’s was, and go down the upper part of Charlotte Street, before crossing Elliot Street. St John’s Market ran back from Elliot Street, the whole length of the lower section of Charlotte Street, which divided it into two: the fish market to one side, and the meat, fruit and veg market on the other.

Although it was nothing like the size of Covent Garden, St John’s Meat Market did remind Katie a little of the famous London market, as much, she suspected, for the cheery confidence of those working there as anything else.

With Christmas so close the market was especially busy, with the bustle of porters; horse-drawn deliveries arriving; errand boys ringing their bicycle bells and then pedalling furiously as they raced about, shoppers protesting when they had to dodge them. Stall holders were shouting their wares, whilst small children, bored with the quays, were trying to escape their mothers’ surveillance.

With so many people pressed into the market it was no wonder police officers were patrolling between the stalls, Katie acknowledged. Somewhere like this would be a paradise for thieves and pickpockets.

Jean, raising her voice so that Katie could hear her above the noise as she hurried her through the maze of stalls, pointed out that at the other end of the market were the Royal Court Theatre, then Roe Street and Queen Square.

‘The station hotels and Lime Street itself are only the other side of the fish market,’ Jean added. ‘But you’ll soon find your bearings. Just remember, if you’re walking uphill along Edge Road then you’re heading away from the city centre and the docks; if you’re walking downhill you’re heading for them.’

St John’s Market was especially thronged with people collecting their Christmas orders. Every other stall, or so it seemed to Katie, was filled with poultry. Those that weren’t selling ‘fattened geese and turkeys’ were selling all those things that went with them: strings of sausages, hams and tongues to cook for Boxing Day, special Christmas pâtés and stuffing, whilst in the fruit and vegetable section of the market, which they had come through earlier, Katie had seen stalls selling boxes of dates, even if there were signs up stating, ‘No oranges/lemons/bananas/tangerines or nuts – don’t blame me, there’s a war on.’

‘Sam’s got all the veg sorted out. He’s grown most of it on his allotment and bartered for what he hasn’t grown with some of the other allotment holders.

‘I’ve made a bit of a pudding but it won’t be up to my normal standard … There’s the stall over there,’ Jean told Katie, ‘that one with the poultry painted on the sign board. I don’t know why I come back to him every year because I’m sure he’s a bit of a rogue, even though he says his prices are the best in the market.’

There was a queue at the stall, and whilst they waited for their turn, Jean said to Katie, ‘You’ll be looking forward to going to the Grafton tonight with your friend.’

‘I’m not sure that I am really,’ Katie admitted. ‘It’s kind of her to ask me, but I’m not much of a dancer.’

‘You’ll enjoy it once you’re there,’ Jean assured her firmly, stepping up to the counter for her turn to be served.

‘I appreciate what you’ve bin telling the twins about it not being all that glamorous going on the stage, Katie,’ said Jean, once they had finished their shopping and they were on the way home, carrying the turkey between them.

‘Well, it’s the truth otherwise I wouldn’t say it, but I can understand that they can’t see that. It’s like I said to them, all the audience sees is the sparkle from the sequins, they don’t see all the darning and patching in the cheap fabric that’s underneath.’

They exchanged understanding looks.

Emily hadn’t seen the boy for the last two days. The last time he had had a nasty bruise on his face and he had looked thinner and dirtier than ever. She’d got more than enough to do as it was, without coming down here and hanging around a back alley with a packet of sandwiches and a flask of hot soup.

Hot water was what that boy wanted, and plenty of it, along with a generous lathering of soap. Not that it was up to her to fuss over him. The boy meant nothing to her. He wasn’t her responsibility, after all. But somehow she couldn’t stop worrying about him.

She wasn’t going to admit to herself that she was disappointed because he wasn’t there, and the sandwiches that she put out earlier were, or that she’d woken up in the night thinking about him, wondering where he slept and if he had a proper bed, or even a proper home. That was daft doing that, and no mistake. Why should she care about some dirty boy? She didn’t.

She was only coming down here because it gave her an excuse to keep an eye on Con, and that new piece he’d taken up with.

The boy wasn’t going to come now. The late December afternoon had turned into winter darkness and it was cold, with a thin mean wind whining up the alleyway and making her shiver, despite her padding of fat and her warm coat.

She bent down to pick up the sandwiches. She couldn’t leave them here. They’d have rats coming after them. A thin whisper of sound from the bins against the wall caught her attention. Emily frowned and listened, but she couldn’t hear anything. It must have been the wind. She picked up the sandwiches and turned away. There, she’d heard it again. She turned back, and reached into her bag for the torch she carried for the blackout, switching it on and pointing its beam towards the bins.

It was his legs she saw first, bare to the knee and mottled red and purple with cold, and so thin she could see his bones. She hurried towards the bins, her heart pounding so heavily she felt breathless.

He was curled up between the bins, looking more dead than alive, his face all bruised and his lip cut, with dried blood on it. What had happened to him? Had he been set on by some bigger, heavier boys? He looked as though he was too weak to move. Emily wanted to pick him up, take him home with her and look after him properly, but instead she sat down beside him in the alleyway and unscrewed the Thermos, pouring out some soup.

It was her own home-made nourishing broth, made from a chicken carcass and vegetables. He was so weak that she had to hold the Thermos cup to his mouth so that he could drink, and take it away from him as well when he tried to drink too much too quickly.

‘You’ll be sick if you take it too fast,’ she warned him. ‘And I’d like to know who’s been knocking you around as well, because I’d have a few words to say to them. Now you can have a bit more. Gently, there’s no need to drink it so fast, like you’ve got no manners. No one’s going to take it from you, not whilst I’m here, so you take your time and then you can start on these sandwiches, and this time you and me are going to have a bit of a talk, because you can’t go on like this. It will be the death of you, and me too with all the worrying about you I’ve been doing. I’ve got a good mind to take you home with me, where I can keep an eye on you, and see that you get looked after properly.’

The boy hadn’t said a word, but he was listening to her and taking in everything she was saying, Emily knew that.

‘Of course, if you’ve got folk of your own and a home of your own then it’s them that you should be with.’

Silence.

‘And if you’re one of those boys that’s got himself into trouble …’

Now there was a reaction. Not just his hands but his whole body was trembling, and Emily suspected that he would have got up and run from her if he’d been strong enough.

It was well after half-past five, the matinée was long over, and the queues would already be forming at the front of the theatre for the evening’s first house. It wasn’t unknown for the actors and members of the chorus to slip out through the stage door for a bit of fresh air between shows –and sometimes something rather less innocent than a breath of air, as she had good cause to know, since Con wasn’t above slipping out for a bit of a kiss and a cuddle with his latest girl if he thought he could get away with it. The last thing Emily wanted was to get caught sitting here on the ground with the boy. Con would laugh his head off at her and then no doubt tell her that she wasn’t to have anything more to do with the boy, citing as his reason for this veto a concern for her safety she knew perfectly well he did not feel. It would suit Con very well indeed, she suspected, if she were to suffer the kind of accident that would lead to him becoming a widower. Not that he would actively do anything to achieve that status for himself. Con was too lazy for that, and besides, Emily thought, sometimes he wasn’t above using her existence to get rid of a girl once he had grown bored with her. Wives had their uses in some ways.

At best, though, he’d probably chase the boy off and then she’d never see him again, and Emily knew that, daft though it was, she would miss him. Was that really what she was reduced to? Being afraid of missing a boy who hadn’t so much as said a word to her and only wanted her because of the food she gave him?

So what was new? After all, she already had a husband who only stayed married to her because of her money.

She ought to leave.

‘I’ll come in the morning tomorrow,’ she told the boy, ‘about ten o’clock – oh, and take this and go and buy yourself some warm socks and gloves and a scarf.’

The two half-crowns she pushed towards him gleamed briefly before he reached for them.

Emily never knew what it was that made her turn round once she had got to the end of the alleyway. It wasn’t any kind of sound – there hadn’t been one. Perhaps it had been some need within her to take a last look at the boy; whatever it was she was glad she had obeyed it when she saw the two heavily built youths who had crept out of the shadows behind her back.

One of them was pinning the boy against the wall whilst the other went through his pockets.

‘Come on, where are they? We saw the money she give you,’ she heard the heavier of the boys demanding.

When the boy made no response the youth holding him shook him roughly. ‘Need yer memory giving a bit of a shake, do yer? Well, Artie here don’t mind doing that, do yer, Artie?’

There was the soft but sickening sound of a bunched fist meeting vulnerable flesh and then a burst of cruel laughter.

‘Aaw, look at that, he’s crying. Hurt, did it? Well, that’ll learn you then, won’t it, ’cos there’s plenty more where that come from. Now give us them half-a-crowns.’

Emily had heard enough. She advanced on the bullies with a ferocity she’d never have used for her own protection, demanding, ‘Let go of him otherwise it will be the worse for the pair of you.’

They turned round to stare at her, one of them bunching his fists until Emily swiped him hard with the heavy weight of her old black shopping bag with the Thermos in it.

The bully yelped in pain, releasing the boy to lift his hands to protect himself as he dodged Emily’s second swing with her bag.

‘Here, Artie, let’s get out of here,’ he yelled to his friend. ‘She’s a ruddy madwoman. I ain’t having me head bashed in for no five bloody bob, that I ain’t.’

‘The next time it will be the police that will be waiting for you,’ Emily warned them, as they fled down the alleyway towards Roe Street.

She was out of breath and her heart was racing in a way she knew her doctor would have warned her was dangerous but she actually felt more elated than afraid.

She looked down at the boy. He was looking back at her.

‘You can’t stay here,’ she told him emphatically. ‘Not now. I’m taking you home with me.’

Where had those words come from? Wherever it was they had made Emily feel positively giddy with power and excitement.

‘Be much safer for you there. And warmer too. Lost your family in one of the bombings, I expect, haven’t you?’

At least she was giving him a chance to tell her if there was someone he should be with, Emily reassured herself. And it wasn’t as though, if there was someone, they were much good to him, was it? After all, it had been over a week now that she’d been feeding him.

Emily reached down and took hold of his hand. It was icy cold and the bones plain to feel through his skin. She was trembling a bit, half shocked by what she was doing and half thrilled, as she tugged him to his feet.

Once he was on them he looked even thinner and weaker than she had thought. It was a fair walk up to the top end of Wavertree Park but she didn’t want to risk taking him on a bus in case she saw someone she knew. She wanted to get him cleaned up and a bit more respectable-looking before that happened. But then there was no hurry. They could take their time. Con wouldn’t be in until gone midnight. They could stop off at one of the chippies on the way. Emily’s stomach growled eagerly at the thought.

The neighbours would want to know where he’d come from; she’d have to think of something. Perhaps she could tell them that he was related to her in some roundabout way; after all, any number of folk were having to take in the homeless so there was no reason why she shouldn’t have him to live with her, was there?

No reason except that Con would play holy hell about it.

Well, let him, she didn’t care. And it was her house, when all was said and done.

Katie knew the minute she saw the twins’ faces that her black dress was every bit as dull and unsuitable for Liverpool’s best ballroom’s big Christmas Dance as she had thought.

Even Jean was looking at her sympathetically. Katie’s heart sank even lower. She really wished that she had not agreed to go to this dance. As her father’s assistant it had been necessary for her to wear businesslike clothes that helped her to fade into the background, not pretty dance dresses.

‘Are you really going to the Grafton in that?’ Lou, always more forthright than her twin, asked.

‘Lou …’ Jean objected, shaking her head at her daughter.

‘It’s all right,’ Katie assured her. ‘I know that my dress is very dull, but I didn’t think to bring a dance frock with me.’ Her words were both the truth and a small face-saving exercise, since in reality she did not possess a ‘dance frock’, but no one need know that.

‘Nobody will ask you to dance if you wear that. It’s too dull, more like what me and Sasha will have to wear when we go to work in Lewis’s,’ Lou told her.

‘Lou, that’s enough.’ Jean sounded stern now and Katie felt obliged to defend the child.

‘Lou’s right, my frock isn’t suitable for a Christmas Dance, but unfortunately I’m going to have to wear it because it’s all I’ve got.’

‘You could have borrowed something from Grace if she’d been here,’ said Sasha, ‘couldn’t she, Mum?’

‘Yes, I’m sure she could. Wait a minute!’ Jean exclaimed. ‘I’ve just had a thought. There’s that trunk full of clothes our Fran left behind. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you borrowing something from her if we can find something suitable, Katie. That is, if you don’t mind borrowing?’

‘Of course she doesn’t, do you, Katie?’ Lou answered for her.

Without appearing rude Katie had no choice but to agree.

Ten minutes later the four of them were upstairs in Katie’s neat, tidy bedroom, but which now reminded her of an expensive dress salon. Clothes were lying on the bed – expensive, beautifully made, elegant clothes that Katie’s mother would have loved.

‘What about this, Katie?’ Lou demanded, pirouetting round the room on her toes, holding a pale grey silk taffeta evening dress in front of her. It had a white sash waist and a matching short-sleeved bolero jacket decorated with one white and one grey silk flower that nestled stylishly together.

It was, Katie knew without even inspecting it properly, a very expensive outfit. It was also perfect for her colouring, and some female instinct she hadn’t known she possessed until now yearned for her to wear it. Even so, she felt obliged to demur.

‘It is beautiful, but it looks very expensive.’

‘Oh, Fran won’t mind, will she, Mum?’

‘I’m sure that she won’t, Katie,’ Jean agreed. ‘Why don’t you try it on?’

By the time Katie had got the dress on and discovered that it fitted her as though it had been made for her, Jean had found a pair of grey satin shoes to match it, along with a small evening bag, and once the twins had seen her in her borrowed finery, Katie recognised that there was no way she was going to be allowed out of the Campion house wearing her own dull black frock.

‘If you’re sure that your sister won’t mind …?’ Katie asked Jean yet again.

‘She won’t mind at all,’ Jean assured her. ‘But you’ll need a coat. It’s a cold night and if I know anything about the Grafton at this time of the year you’ll be queuing outside for a while before you can get in.’

‘That’s all right; I’ll wear my own coat,’ Katie told her.

Her change of clothes made her later meeting Carole than they had planned, which meant that there was indeed rather a long queue for them to join, even though it was only just gone six o’clock.

‘That’s because it’s the big Saturday night Christmas Dance,’ Carole told her. ‘Everyone wants to get a good table. I’m glad we’ve got tickets. They’re making those in the queue who haven’t got them wait.’ She gave Katie a warning dig in the ribs and giggled. ‘Just look over there at those army lads eyeing us up.’

The young men in question had just climbed out of an army truck. One of them, with more cheek than was good for him, Katie thought, winked at them and called out, ‘Waiting for us, girls?’

‘Ooohh, cheek,’ Carole breathed, but it was plain to Katie that she was not at all averse to the attention.

The young men looked decent enough, although the tall one with thick dark hair and the kind of stern, almost brooding, expression that made him look a bit like a film star, didn’t seem too pleased about his friend’s flirting.

‘We could be all right tonight with that lot in,’ Carole told Katie, giggling again as she added, ‘Mine’s the one with the fair hair and the nice teeth.’

The dark-haired one had turned his head to look right at them, and Katie suspected that he didn’t approve of what he saw. He was wearing a corporal’s stripes on his jacket so perhaps he thought himself a cut above the other men and above the kind of girls who flirted with them. The dismissive look he was giving them irked Katie. He might look like a film star but looks weren’t everything.

‘You can have them all. I’m not interested,’ she told Carole in a cool voice, adding a smart toss of her head for good measure. She wasn’t having any chap thinking that she was the sort that would go chasing after him.

‘Just like I said before,’ Carole laughed, good-naturedly, ‘you’re after someone rich who isn’t in uniform.’

Katie didn’t say anything. She liked Carole but she suspected that the other girl wanted to egg her on so that she would join her in flirting with the army boys, and Katie didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t that flirting was beneath her, exactly – Katie hoped she wasn’t the sort that thought herself ‘above’ other girls in any kind of way – but at the same time she didn’t feel comfortable with the kind of giggly eyelash-fluttering behaviour to attract male interest that Carole plainly enjoyed.

The queue was moving forward and the army boys were slotting into it almost directly behind the girls. Katie could see that the tall good-looking corporal was giving her a contemptuous look. Well, let him. She didn’t care.

Luke’s mouth compressed as Katie turned away from him. So she was after a rich man, was she? Well, he might have guessed that just from the way she looked. She was outstandingly pretty, and she had that air about her when she stuck her nose up that somehow said she thought she was a cut above chaps like him. Not that Luke cared for one minute. Certainly not. If he was interested in getting himself a girl, which he wasn’t, it would be one who was more like her friend, with her ready smile and her bubbly personality.

Luke hadn’t wanted to come to the Grafton tonight; he’d much rather have gone down to Hatton Gardens and had a chat with his father, to find out just how much damage had been done last night by the Luftwaffe’s bombs. However, his men had begged him to come with them and seeing as some of them were still pretty wet behind the ears, in a strange city, and desperate for a bit of female company, Luke had decided that it was his duty to keep an eye on them. The Grafton was a respectable dance hall, Liverpool’s best – his own sister came here – but still he didn’t want to see his men getting themselves into any kind of trouble by drinking too much and flirting with the wrong girls. There had already been reports of fights breaking out between local men and lads in uniform when there’d been a bit of a misunderstanding over a girl.

Girls! Luke was glad that he’d decided not to get involved with one. Falling in love with Lillian and then discovering that she’d just been making a fool of him had done him a favour. He wasn’t the green fool now that he’d been when he had first met her. Take now, for instance; he’d seen straight off what that uppity-looking girl was like, and he wasn’t wrong either. She was another Lillian; the sort for whom a decent ordinary chap wasn’t good enough. The sort that wanted a chap with money and prospects, not one who was proud to put on a uniform and fight for his country.

‘The quiet one’s a smart piece,’ Andy Lawrence, the fair-haired private who had so cheekily called out to the girls, told Luke admiringly in a low voice, as they stood in the queue behind Katie and Carole.

‘Stuck-up piece, more like,’ Luke answered him. ‘You heard what she said: she’s after a chap with money.’

Unlike Andy, Luke had not made any attempt to keep his voice down, and Katie, overhearing Luke’s comment, could feel her ears burning.

Well, let him think what he liked, she decided defensively. She didn’t care, and she didn’t have to explain herself to him either.

It was a cold night, and those girls lucky enough to be queuing with a partner were snuggling up close, whilst several groups of girls were shivering and complaining that their feet would be so numb they wouldn’t be able to dance. Sensibly Katie was wearing her stout work shoes and carrying her borrowed dance shoes in a drawstring canvas bag. She was still conscious of feeling cold, though, and hoped that her nose had not gone too obviously pink.

‘I’m freezing,’ Carole complained.

‘You can have a borrow of my coat, love,’ the cheeky soldier behind them announced, overhearing Carole’s complaint, ‘but you’ll have to share it with me.’

‘Ooohhh.’ Carole pretended to complain, but Katie could see that her eyes were shining and she was smiling.

The army boys were, of course, trying to look as though the cold wasn’t affecting them and that they were far too tough and manly to be affected by a bit of winter weather. Actually, their corporal looked as though he wasn’t affected by it, Katie admitted, watching him hunch one shoulder and turn out of the wind as he lit himself a cigarette.

It had just gone twenty past six when Katie and Carole finally got inside, and handed over their coats to the cloakroom attendant.

‘Here, can you keep my ticket with yours?’ Carole asked her. ‘Only your bag is bigger than mine.’ Her eyes widened as she gazed at Katie’s frock. ‘Oh, you look ever so nice, Katie. Proper smart and stylish.’

‘It isn’t mine,’ Katie felt obliged to admit, sensing that Carole was just a little bit put out by the elegance of Katie’s outfit. ‘All I had was the black frock I wear when I go out with my dad, so my landlady very kindly let me borrow this. It belongs to her sister, but she’s with ENSA – you know, the Entertainments National Service Association, whereby entertainers join up and go out to entertain the troops – and she’s touring somewhere at the moment.’

To Katie’s relief her explanation had obviously mollified Carole because she told her generously, ‘Well, it looks ever so glamorous, it really does. It makes you look proper posh and no mistake.’

People were just starting to make their way into the ballroom, and out of habit Katie looked towards the band in their alcove next to the dance floor. She had already seen from the programme pinned up in the foyer that the band leader was a Mrs Wilf Hamer. Katie didn’t think she’d met her; for one thing she suspected that her father, who was inclined to be old-fashioned about such matters, would not have approved of a female band leader. She had forgotten all about the army boys in the queue now and the hostility of the tall dark handsome one, as she focused on the band, or so she told herself.

* * *

It was a pity the boy was so weak. Emily would have liked him to walk a bit faster so that they could get away from the theatre, just in case they were seen.

They’d almost reached the end of the alley when the boy stopped walking and went rigid.

Now what was wrong with him? Emily wondered what on earth she could do to get him to move and then looked back over her shoulder, keen to get away before anyone came out of the theatre and saw them.

Had those bullies hurt him worse than she had thought? Was he in some kind of pain?

‘What is it, what’s wrong?’ she began, only to stop when he suddenly looked up at the sky in terror.

Then Emily heard it: the low droning sound of approaching bombers, quickly followed by the shrill anxious scream of the air-raid warning.

A thrill of fear went through her, rooting her to the spot, followed by a sense of urgency as she cast a frantic look around herself for an air-raid shelter. The only one she could remember was two streets away on the far side of Roe Street.

‘Come on, we need to get ourselves into a shelter,’ she told the boy, her head down as she broke into a lumbering run towards Roe Street, dragging the boy with her.

Already the night sky was alight with the first crop of incendiary bombs, exploding into the darkness and, as they did so, illuminating the destruction they were causing. Emily froze in horror as one landed on the roof of a building in the next street, and then exploded, sending up a shower of bricks. Woven into the hellish noise of the devastation were the sounds of running feet, cries of warning, and screams of fear and pain as people fled the building and tried to escape the bombs.

Breaking free of the horror transfixing her, Emily started to run for the safety of the air-raid shelter, somehow managing to dodge the shards of flying glass from blown-out windows.

Overhead she could still hear the drone of engines, the bombs falling in a seemingly neverending hell of explosions, followed by the collapsing of buildings. It looked as though the whole of the city and the sky above it were on fire.

As she looked up, desperately trying to track the downward fall of a cluster of incendiaries, one she hadn’t seen fell into a neighbouring street, blowing out the windows of the buildings ahead of them. Instinctively Emily grabbed the boy, swinging him round in front of her and protecting him with her own body as she turned her back to the blast.

When she turned back again she was shaking so much she could hardly move. But they had to move. She had to, for the boy’s sake. She had to think about him and not give way to her own fear.

Picking her way through the broken glass and ignoring the cacophony of fearful sounds all around her, Emily hurried on.

They had almost reached Roe Street when suddenly the boy tried to pull out of her hold, digging in his heels.

‘What is it?’ Emily asked him, desperate to get them both to the safety of the air-raid shelter. The street they were in now was virtually empty, and Emily’s instincts were urging her to run for safety, but she couldn’t leave the boy. An air-raid warden standing at the crossroads ahead of them yelled out, warning her to get off the street, but his words were lost behind the noise from the exploding incendiaries raining down from the sky, as a fresh wave of bombers roared in overhead and attacked the docks and the waterfront. The clamour of bells from the fire engines racing to put out the fires made Emily’s heart pound dizzily.

‘Come on,’ Emily begged the boy, tugging him forward, only to stop and gasp in fear at the sound of a plane so low overhead, it hurt her ears. Instinctively Emily pushed the boy to the ground and then flung herself down on top of him. As she lay there, hardly daring to breathe, an enormous explosion shook the ground, followed by a flash of searing heat. Emily could hear buildings collapsing all around her. Dust and smoke were stinging her eyes, and clogging her throat and nose. Something, Emily didn’t know what, a brick perhaps, thumped down on top of her, followed by another. The sky was raining debris and death.

Katie and Carole were just sitting down at the table they had secured right on the edge of the dance floor when the air-raid siren went off. The two girls looked at one another in mutual consternation, whilst Luke, who had been watching his lads head for the bar, martialled them all together, ready for whatever action might need to be taken.

All in all Luke reckoned there were about two hundred people in the ballroom.

The shrill scream of falling bombs had everyone who could including Katie and Carole diving under the tables for cover.

Katie, who was hoping that her borrowed dress would survive such rough treatment, managed to resist the childish urge to clap her hands over her ears when the ballroom reverberated to the sound of a bomb exploding above their heads, followed by the terrifying sight of a hail of shrapnel coming through the plaster ceiling. The lights flickered and dipped but mercifully managed to stay on.

Katie could see the band leader, Mrs Hamer, diving for cover under the piano, as the shrapnel seemed to chase her, scoring deep marks in the dance floor and marking it right the way across, almost up to the bandstand itself. It all happened so quickly, the shrapnel travelling at such speed, that Katie could only shudder and marvel at the band leader’s lucky escape, whilst saying an automatic prayer for her own father and his safety far away in London, where he too would be working tonight.

‘It’s the theatre next door that’s been hit,’ a fire watcher, who had come running into the building from outside, yelled out. ‘But the explosion’s taken off half the Grafton’s roof.’

Some band members, emerging from cowering under their seats, briefly struck up a rousing tune, quickly applauded by the dancers huddled under the tables.

‘I’m scared,’ Carole wailed to Katie. ‘I want to go.’

‘It’s too late for us to go anywhere now, with bombs still dropping. We’ll all have to stay here until they sound the all clear,’ Katie told her.

They could hear bombs exploding close at hand, and then abruptly the lights went off. Katie held her breath but they didn’t come back on again.

‘We’ll be killed if we stay here.’

Katie could feel Carole trembling, and she could hear in her voice that she was close to tears.

‘No we won’t,’ Katie told her stoutly. ‘They’ll leave us alone now, just you wait and see.’ Behind her own back Katie had her fingers crossed. She was every bit as scared as Carole but there was no point in saying so. She was practised at reassuring her mother in air raids and slipped easily into the role of being the strong sensible comforter.

‘Listen, the band’s started playing,’ she encouraged Carole. ‘You stay here. I’m going to see if there’s any candles.’ Katie took from her handbag the torch such as they had all learned to carry since the blackout laws had come into force, and crawled out from beneath the table, trying not to damage her borrowed dress.

Luke, having used his own torch to ensure that his men were all unharmed, and knowing that they couldn’t leave the dance hall until the all clear had gone unless they wanted to risk being caught in the open whilst bombs were being dropped, caught sight of a very harassed-looking Mr Malcolm Munro, the Grafton’s manager. He went up and introduced himself, offering the services of himself and his men.

‘I’d be grateful to you for whatever you can do, Corporal,’ Mr Munro told him gratefully. ‘We’ve lost nearly half the roof, by the looks of it. Not that you can see much with the power gone.’

‘We’ve all got torches so we can go and take a look at the ceiling to make sure it’s safe. If you happen to have any tarpaulins around we could try and secure the roof for you until you can get summat proper sorted out.’ Luke had to raise his voice to make himself heard above a group of screaming girls who were having hysterics.

He looked round the ballroom. Already someone was moving about quietly, lighting candles and placing them on the tables. Luke frowned when he realised that it was the snooty girl from the queue. Somehow she hadn’t struck him as the sort who would get stuck in in such a quiet and efficient way.

It didn’t take long for Luke and his men to confirm that the ceiling wasn’t in any immediate danger of collapsing onto the dance floor, despite the shrapnel damage, but Mr Munro had been right about the roof. And they didn’t need their torches to show them how much damage had been done. The arc lights from the anti-aircraft batteries, combined with the light from the fires burning in bombed buildings, provided more than enough for them to see where a whole mess of timbers and slates had fallen inwards into the roof space, leaving a gaping hole where the roof itself had been blown right off.

Luckily the ballroom manager had taken the precaution of providing himself with a good set of extending ladders and some tarpaulins, ‘just in case, like the ARP lot told us we should do,’ as he explained to Luke.

‘Two of you hold on to them and the rest of you stay here,’ Luke told his men as he prepared to climb the ladders once they had been extended into the roof space as close to the damage as Luke deemed it safe to place them.

‘Why don’t you let one of us go up, Corp?’ one of the men suggested, but Luke shook his head.

If there were any risks then as their corporal it was only right that he should be the one to take them. Besides, when your dad was a member of the Salvage Corps you grew up knowing a thing or two about climbing ladders in unsafe buildings.

He went up slowly and carefully, testing his weight against the wall until he was level with what had been the roof and was now a gaping hole. He was just about to poke his head through the hole when suddenly the ladder started to slide sideways on the wall.

Down below him Luke could hear a warning shout as his men fought to steady the ladder. Remembering his father’s tales of his own work, Luke spread his arms wide onto the wall, his stomach lurching when, instead of wall, his right hand met cold night air.

‘You’re going to have to move the ladder over to the left, lads,’ he called down as calmly as he could. ‘The wall’s gone on the right-hand side up here. You’re going to have to lift the ladder, two of you to each leg – just ease it up off the ground.’

He had to swallow down the sick sour taste in his mouth as he felt the ladder jerk and sway.

‘That’s it.’ It was up to him to stay calm and keep the men steady. If he panicked then they would panic. ‘Now just ease it over – nice and gently.’

He was having to lean all his weight to the left of the ladder to keep it flat against the wall. His right hand caught the rough edges of a broken brick, dislodging it in a shower of brick dust. His heart was pounding, and so was his head. If he fell now or, even worse, if the ruddy wall gave way … The ladder jerked and swayed, and he heard a muttered curse from below. His right hand was on solid brick now, but he couldn’t risk putting any pressure on the wall yet. He counted four more bricks and then pressed his hand flat to the fifth, his breath easing from him as it held solidly.

‘That’s it, lads,’ he called down, adding laconically, ‘Thanks for the lift.’

It wouldn’t be good for their morale to let them think he’d been scared that they couldn’t do it.

Checking that the ladder was steady, he climbed the last few rungs and looked out into the cold night air. In the light of the fires and the searchlights from the batteries, Luke could see the damage that had been inflicted on the West Derby Road area of the city. Instinctively he looked towards Hatton Gardens, where the Salvage Corps, for which his father worked, was based, his heart thudding into his chest wall when he saw that the area had been hit and was on fire.

‘Here, can you smell that?’ Andy Lawrence called out from down below him. ‘Smells like me mum’s kitchen on Christmas morning.’

There was indeed a rich mouth-watering smell of roasting poultry.

‘They’ve got St John’s Market,’ Luke told his men after he had gone back down the ladder to rejoin them. Andy, typically, given his enjoyment of a bit of fun and a joke, groaned and announced, ‘Well, I reckon that’ll be our Christmas dinners gone.’

Luke smiled but his thoughts were with his father, anxiety creasing his forehead as he saw the fire engulfing the Hatton Gardens area. The salvage teams weren’t normally called out until the fires had been put out, which meant that with any luck his dad would be safe at home, in the air-raid shelter at the end of the road.

‘Ruddy hell, there ain’t going to be much of the city left if the Luftwaffe carries on like this,’ Graham Moores, one of the older men, announced bleakly whilst Jim Taylor, the newest recruit who was only just eighteen, had gone very quiet and looked a sickly green colour in the light of the other men’s torches.

‘Well,’ Luke told his men briskly, ‘the theatre next door’s taken a hit, but there’s a bit of a parapet running round the roof of this building and I reckon it should be safe enough for us to stand on whilst we fix things.’

As he finished speaking, Mr Munro and some of his staff came puffing up the stairs, carrying between them some heavy tarpaulins.

‘When I got these in,’ the Grafton’s manager told Luke ruefully, ‘I didn’t think I’d be needing them on the night of my Christmas Dance. The trams have stopped running, and the whole of the West Derby Road is a sea of broken glass, so I’ve just heard from one of the fire watchers who was on the building across from the theatre.’ The manager shook his head, obviously struggling to come to terms with what had happened, and what was still happening closer to the dock area of the city if the spasmodic bursts of explosives from the German bombs, interrupted by the fierce retaliatory booming of the anti-aircraft guns, was anything to go by.

‘We’ve got some more ladders down in the basement, if you think you can put these tarpaulins up,’ the Grafton’s manager told Luke hopefully, adding, ‘I’ll see that your lads are well rewarded for their trouble, by the way – free drinks tonight, and free entrance over Christmas and the New Year.’

Luke grinned as the men gave a loud cheer.

‘Now that you’ve said that I reckon they’d have those tarpaulins up, ladders or no ladders,’ he told Mr Munro.

As the men under Luke’s able direction set to clearing what they could of the mess by torchlight, preparatory to putting up the tarpaulins, Luke could hear the music from the dance band down below them. He had a mental image of the snooty girl with her shiny dark curls and her plain silver-grey dress, which had somehow looked so much more eye-catching than the fancier dresses of any of the other girls, going quietly from table to table lighting candles. It was an image at odds with his initial impression of her. She hadn’t struck him as the sort that would do anything as homely as light candles, never mind be quick-thinking enough to find some and put them to good use in the circumstances. She was probably only doing it because she wanted to see if there were any rich blokes about, Luke told himself cynically, unwilling to give her any real credit for thinking of others.

‘Are you all right, love? Can you stand up?’

Emily wasn’t sure. She ached all over, but at least her rescuer had removed the debris that had fallen on her. As she turned her head to look at him, Emily could see that he was extending his hand to help her. Emily blinked and focused on the ARP band on his arm. There was glass and debris everywhere, and the air smelled of smoke and fear and roasting poultry.

Watching her sniff the air, the warden told her, ‘They got St John’s Market, so that’s half the city’s Christmas dinner gone up in smoke, along with the rest.’

The warden was still waiting for her to make an effort to stand up. Reluctantly Emily did so, exhaling shakily in relief when the boy moved with her.

To her astonishment she actually seemed to be in one piece and unharmed, and the boy too, unlike some of the buildings nearby.

Taking the ARP warden’s outstretched hand, Emily struggled to her feet, dragging the boy with her. All around her Emily could see blown-out windows, the road a mass of broken glass and roof slates, a front door sticking up at an odd angle from amongst the rubble of what had been a wall. The whole northwest side of the city seemed to be on fire. The street was empty apart from themselves.

Apprehensively Emily turned round to look towards the theatre, her breath easing from her lungs in a creaking gust of relief when she saw that the building was still standing. She was just about to ask the ARP warden if he knew if anyone had been hurt, when there was a sudden whoosh of sound, followed by the loudest bang Emily had ever heard, which would have had her diving for the ground again if the warden hadn’t kept hold of her.

Another warden came racing up the street. ‘That was the chemical factory in Hanover Street,’ he told them breathlessly. ‘The Corporation’s had to send to Lancashire for reinforcements, we’ve got that many fires burning.’

Emily was properly on her feet now, and the boy with her, miraculously also unharmed.

‘You two are a lucky pair,’ the warden told her. ‘There’s a bomb dropped on Roe Street that’s left a crater the size of a house, and if you’d been a dozen or more yards down the road, you’d have had it and no mistake—’ He broke off and cursed under his breath as a fire engine came racing down Roe Street towards them, and the bomb crater.

‘No, stop!’ The warden ran towards it, waving his hands and yelling in warning, but it was too late. Right in front of her eyes Emily saw the fire engine, with its crew on board, plunge right into the crater, with a sickening sound of breaking glass and tearing metal.

‘Jeff! Pete!’ the warden was calling out, Emily and the boy forgotten as two other ARP men raced with him towards the crater, from which flames were already emerging.

Emily took the boy’s hand and turned away. There was nothing they could do, after all.

To the north, the whole of the city along the shoreline seemed to be on fire and the planes were still coming, attacking the dock area now, the night sky illuminated by the growing number of fires and the coloured arcs of the tracer bullets from the anti-aircraft batteries.

The ARP men by the crater were saying something about it looking like everyone in the fire engine had ‘bought it’.

Emily shivered and held the boy’s hand more tightly.

Later she found it hard to recall how long it had taken them to walk up Wavertree Road, scrunching over pavements strewn with broken glass, and past bombed-out burning buildings. There was no comforting stop at the chippie. Its windows were blown out and its owners in an air-raid shelter. Where they should be, Emily knew, but if she was going to die she’d prefer to die in her own bed in clean sheets, thank you very much, not some council shelter where you’d be mixing with all sorts. The people of Wavertree Village had certain standards, make no mistake about it.

Every time she heard a plane overhead Emily clung more tightly to the boy’s hand. He had saved her life once tonight, after all.

‘Katie, is it really you?’

Katie had just reached the table closest to the band, with her candles, as they were about to take a break, and a wide smile curved her mouth as she returned the warmly enthusiastic hug of the sax player, Eric, whose family had originally come from Hungary, and who had played for a while in one of the bands conducted by her father.

‘How is your father?’ Eric asked her eagerly. ‘He is well? Safe? There have been so many bombs in London.’

‘He is very well, thank you, Eric,’ Katie answered. ‘And you?’

‘I am well too, but I hadn’t expected this. We came away from London to escape from the bombings.’

Luke’s men had done all that they could do, and now that the tarpaulins were safely in place, Luke had agreed that they could accept Mr Munro’s offer of a free drink.

‘Not too much, mind,’ he warned the men as they re-entered the candlelit ballroom. ‘It isn’t Christmas yet, lads.’

The girl, the stuck-up one, was standing over by the alcove talking to a member of the band. They were laughing together and the man had his hand on her arm. Pretty nifty work on his part, Luke reckoned, and the girl didn’t look as if she objected to his familiarity. So, a bit free with her favours then, as well as wanting a rich husband. Not that he cared. She didn’t appeal to him one little bit.

Seeing Hatton Gardens in flames had left Luke feeling on edge and wishing that he could go across and find out what was going on. It irked him to be stuck here in a ballroom when he could be doing something far more useful, but rules were rules, and if he went off and left his men to their own devices anything could happen. Half of them would have too much to drink and the other half would be taking Dutch leave, and then there’d be hell to pay in the morning when they weren’t fit to report for duty.

No, he had to stay with them and keep an eye on them. The barman was offering him a beer, but Luke shook his head, and asked for lemonade instead.

‘Lemonade, Corp? That’s a girl’s drink,’ Andy grinned.

‘Well, one of us has got to keep a sober head on his shoulders and since I am your corporal it had better be me,’ he told them.

‘You know what,’ one of the other men announced, eyeing the dance floor, ‘I reckon this dancing by candelight could be a pretty good thing. You can get a girl close and do a bit of smooching.’

‘That’s enough of that,’ Luke warned him, but he could see that the men were looking hopefully towards those tables occupied solely by girls.

The band was ready to start playing again. Katie had been introduced to Mrs Hamer and the other members of the band now, all of whom had heard of her father.

‘What was all that about?’ Carole hissed when Katie returned to their table.

‘Eric knows my father and he was asking after him.’

‘Them army lads have come back from fixing the roof,’ Carole told her, ‘and that fair-haired one’s been looking over here ever such a lot. I reckon he’ll be asking me to dance before the night’s out.’

‘He certainly will if you keep on making sheep’s eyes at him,’ Katie agreed.

Carole pulled a face and protested mock innocently, ‘What a thing to say. I can’t think what you mean,’ and then started to giggle, nudging Katie as she said, ‘He’s got ever such a nice smile, though, hasn’t he?’

Katie’s expression softened. She could never behave like Carole, but she still couldn’t help feeling her own mood lightened by the other girl’s bubbly manner. Perhaps her mother had been right to tell her that she was too serious, but if that was how she was, she couldn’t change her nature, could she?

Mr Munro had gone over to Mrs Hamer and was saying something to her, and then he turned round and announced, ‘Let’s hear a cheer for our army lads, and if any single young lady here has anything about her I reckon she’ll be the first on her feet to ask one of them to dance when the band starts playing, because the next dance will be a ladies’ excuse me in their honour.’

There was a cheer from the occupants of the tables, and then a lot of laughter, as the men were herded onto the floor, looking bashful, and three or four daring girls got to their feet and went over to them to claim their partners.

Carole needed no further encouragement or excuse. She was on her feet, dragging Katie up with her.

‘Come on,’ she demanded, ignoring Katie’s objections. ‘I’m not letting some other girl walk off with that lad I’ve got me own eye on.’

It was only innocent fun, and sanctioned by the Grafton’s manager – a nice way for them all to show their appreciation for what the men had done, Katie knew – but still she felt very self-conscious about it all, even though they were far from the first or the fastest of the girls to approach the soldiers.

In fact, since Katie had hung back, by the time she actually reached the dance floor and the soldiers, to her relief all the men seemed to be partnered.

She was just about to turn round and go and sit down again when Mr Munro himself appeared at her side, announcing, ‘Here you are, Corporal. Here’s a partner for you. Now don’t say “no”. I’m well aware that you’re the one who ensured that your men did such a good job, and I’m sure this charming young lady here is as keen to show her appreciation as I am to show mine.’

It was her, the stuck-up one. Luke’s heart sank. He didn’t want to dance with anyone but least of all with her. The last time he had danced here it had been with Lillian, just before he had left with the BEF for France. Last Christmas, in fact.

He didn’t want to dance with her, Katie could tell. Well, she didn’t want to dance with him either, and she held herself stiffly away from him to let him know it.

She was dancing with him as though he was a bad smell under her nose, Luke thought angrily.

The band swung into a pacey swing number, designed to get things moving, and allow those who had the skills to show off their best steps.

Katie might not be able to sing but she was a very good dancer, something that had been an additional source of discord between her parents when she had been growing up, as her mother claimed that Katie’s ability to dance had been passed on to her daughter by her, whilst her father had retaliated by saying that he did not want a daughter who thought that prancing around on a stage meant that she had ‘talent’.

Whilst the other couples, taking advantage of Mr Munro’s invitation to the girls to choose their own partners, were eager to take advantage of the mood of the moment – a potent mix of male bravery and heroism, and female bravado, spiced with the kind of music that allowed the more adventurous men to take a firm hold of their partners and draw them closer – Luke and Katie were determinedly keeping one another at a rigid arm’s length, both making it plain that they were more than delighted when the music finally stopped.

Ten minutes later, having politely refused an invitation to dance from a smartly uniformed RAF officer, who in Katie’s opinion had thought rather too much of himself, Katie had the galling experience of sitting at their table and watching as the angry, good-looking corporal danced expertly past with another girl. Katie rarely got the chance to dance and when she did it was even rarer for her to have the kind of partner who danced well. Musicians did not in general have much spare time to learn to dance. And now here was this soldier who had danced with her as woodenly as though he were a puppet on strings, dancing with another girl so well that it was no wonder she looked as though she was in seventh heaven.

‘Phew,’ Carole announced breathlessly, sinking down into her chair as her partner returned her to their table, ‘that was fun. You’ll never guess what,’ she added after she had finished fanning herself energetically with her hand, ‘Andy’s only asked me if I’ll go to the pictures with him the next time he gets a pass out. The boys are based only down the road at Seacombe.’ She gave Katie an arch look. ‘I saw you dancing with that corporal; he’s ever so good-looking, isn’t he?’

‘Is he? I hadn’t noticed,’ Katie lied.

Carole laughed and shook her head in a way that implied that she didn’t believe Katie for one minute.

Whilst the band was playing it was relatively easy to forget what was happening outside, but whenever the music stopped the sound of German planes dropping bombs was a stark reminder of the reality of the situation.

Whilst Katie and Carole were in the ladies, two other girls were discussing the bombing, one of them complaining to the other, ‘I told you we shouldn’t have come out tonight after the bombing last night. If we’d done as I said then we’d be safe in a proper air-raid shelter now.’

Her friend tossed her brown curls and argued firmly, ‘Well, I’d rather be bombed here, whilst I’m enjoying meself, than stuck in some air-raid shelter, and besides, they aren’t always safe. There was that one at the Durning Road Technical School where all those poor folk were killed in November, and I’ve heard of others as well. If a bomb drops on a shelter, then you could end up being buried alive. At least if we bought it here, I’d have had some fun.’

‘Fun. That’s all you think about, Marianne Dunkin. I’m more interested in staying alive,’ her friend retorted tearfully, ‘and if you think I’m letting you persuade me to come dancing again whilst this war’s on then you’ve got another think coming.’

They were still arguing as they left the cloakroom, the door swinging closed after them.

Carole, who had gone unusually quiet and rather pale, shivered and asked Katie anxiously, ‘You don’t think we’ll get bombed again, do you?’

‘Of course not. No one ever gets bombed twice in the same night,’ Katie reassured her with a conviction she was far from feeling.

* * *

The toffee-nosed girl seemed to be enjoying herself dancing with the young Canadian airman who was partnering her now, Luke recognised as he watched Katie dance past. The Canadian looked pretty smitten with her. Well, more fool him, since he was only a lowly private.

Luke was itching to leave the Grafton and set to with the work he knew would be going on, to do what could be done to counter the effects of the bombing, but his first duty was to his men. He had sneaked outside a couple of times to look with despair at the destruction that the bombs had caused. The electric tram wires were down along the West Derby Road, outside the Grafton, and broken glass from blown-out windows covered the road. Instead of the Christmas skies being filled with Santa’s sledge piled high with the presents of children’s fairy tales, the skies over Liverpool were filled with the Luftwaffe, bringing death and destruction as Christmas ‘gifts’ to the people of the city.

They had made it. Emily leaned gratefully on the inside of the front door as she stood in the dark hallway of her home, the boy at her side.

There had been plenty of moments when she had feared that they wouldn’t make it, but they had.

Wave after wave of planes had come in over their heads, heading for the docks, where they dropped their deadly cargo. The north side of the city seemed to be ringed with fires lighting up the night sky.

The worst moment was when they had walked past a newly bombed house and Emily had seen the tears sliding down the faces of the children standing outside it, making oily tracks through the soot from what had once been their chimney. They had been inside when the bomb had hit, Emily had heard one of the children telling their rescuers, taking refuge under the table they had put under the stairs, just like the local ARP man had told them, and now their granddad was dead and their mam taken off to hospital.

As she and the boy had turned into Emily’s own road, she had heard a thin reedy elderly female voice calling out, ‘Tiddles, where are you?’

Emily’s father had had electricity installed in the house at the earliest opportunity, and its welcoming light banished the shadows from the hallway.

Gently pushing the boy in front of her, Emily headed for the kitchen where mercifully the Aga was still on and the kitchen warm.

She had expected the boy to be overawed by the house, but instead he seemed to take its comforts for granted.

‘You can sit on here whilst I stoke up the Aga and put the kettle on,’ Emily told him, pulling a chair out from the table but removing the cushion from it before letting him sit on it. ‘But no moving off it, mind,’ she warned him. ‘I’m not having you messing up my house, filthy like you are.’

He was trying to stifle a yawn, his face white with fatigue, and Emily had to harden her heart against the pathetic sight he made.

‘I know you’re tired,’ she told him, ‘but I’m not having you sleeping between my nice clean sheets until you’ve had a bath.’

He still hadn’t spoken, but he was listening to her and watching her.

Quickly Emily banked up the Aga. She was tired and hungry, but she couldn’t eat without feeding the boy as well and he certainly couldn’t eat using her clean china in the filthy state he was in, so she would have to wait until she had made sure he was bathed and clean.

‘Come on,’ she told him. ‘Come with me.’

In the airing cupboard she found some old towels that she kept for the theatre because of all the greasepaint that Con managed to get on them. It never washed out properly, no matter what instructions she gave them at the laundry.

‘Here’s the bathroom,’ she told the boy, opening the door to show him. ‘I’ll run you a bath and then you’ll take off your clothes and get in it and give yourself a good scrub.’

Normally Emily stuck rigidly to the letter of the law, but the boy was so dirty he was going to need two baths, not just one, and she certainly wasn’t going to let him put those filthy clothes back on. He’d have to sleep in one of Con’s old shirts tonight.

It was gone midnight before Emily finally climbed into her own bed. The boy, bathed, fed and wearing an old flannel shirt that trailed on the floor behind him, was tucked up in bed in the spare room with a hot-water bottle to keep him warm. There’d been a black rim round the bath like she’d kept coal in it, and when she’d washed his clothes, his vest had fallen apart in her hands, it was that full of holes. Poor little mite. She’d been surprised to see what a nice-looking lad he was once he was clean, but it was beginning to worry her that he wouldn’t speak. Could it be that he was deaf and dumb? There’d been a girl when she’d been at school whose sister had been like that, and her family had made signs to her when they wanted to tell her something, Emily remembered.

She yawned tiredly and reached out to switch off the bedside light, only realising as she did so that Con hadn’t come in. Well, his absence was no loss to her.