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Prologue

Just After Christmas 1936

‘Darling, oh, your face is so cold.’

Sally Johnson, eighteen years old and near the end of her first year as a probationer nurse at Liverpool’s Mill Street Hospital, laughed at her mother’s loving complaint as she reached up and kissed Sally’s face.

‘That could be because it’s trying to snow out there and my face is the only bit of me you can’t tell me to wrap up warmly,’ Sally teased her affectionately. Standing in the delicious beef-scented warmth of the family kitchen, she unwrapped herself from her gloves, scarf and hat, and then the good warm coat that her mother lovingly insisted on her wearing.

The kitchen table, with its blue-and-white-checked oilcloth, had already been set for their evening meal. Above it, the light from the blue and white glass ceiling light, burnished Sally’s dark red curls. She had inherited her hair colouring, so her father often said, from his own mother, whilst her oval-shaped face, with its high cheekbones and good skin, came from her petite fair-haired mother.

Sally knew how lucky she was to have grown up in such a close and loving family. Her parents – her tall, dark-haired, handsome father and her pretty mother, adored one another just as they did her, and she loved them both dearly in return. Life was pretty good in the Johnsons’ smart semidetached house in the middle-class Wavertree area of the city.

‘Morag said today how much she and Callum had enjoyed spending Christmas here with us,’ Sally told her mother as she went to hang up her outdoor clothes in the hallway, glad of the brief moment of privacy so as to conceal the soft blush that had burned her face just because she had spoken Callum’s name.

Callum. Sally would never forgot the kiss he had given her under the mistletoe on Boxing Day when they had been alone in her parents’ front room.

‘Morag’s always telling me how lucky I am to have you and dad as my parents,’ Sally added, as she returned to the kitchen. ‘Not that she needs to remind me.’

Morag and Sally had met when they were doing their initial three months’ training together at Mill Street Hospital. Morag and her brother, Callum, an assistant teacher, had lost their own parents in a boating accident on Loch Lomond two years before Callum’s work had brought them to Liverpool. The two girls had hit it off straight away, and once Sally had told her mother about Morag and Callum’s sad loss, Sally’s mother had made them both very welcome at number 28 Lilac Avenue.

Sally could still remember that dizzy breath-catching-in-her-throat feeling she had had when Morag had first introduced her to her brother. Callum had come to walk Morag home from the hospital after they had been on nights, and the minute she had seen her friend’s tall, good-looking brother, with his thick dark hair and his warm smile, Sally had been lost. Callum also was kind and considerate and, well, just everything Sally had ever imagined herself finding attractive in a man. She knew that her parents liked him, from the way her mother fussed over him, and her father took him off down to his garden shed to talk about whatever it was men did talk about in such male havens.

Callum, with his worn Harris tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, his tattersall shirts, and the warmth in his piercing blue eyes whenever he looked at her, had stolen Sally’s heart completely. And by kissing her as he had done on Boxing Day evening he had shown that he cared about her too, even if he had said afterwards that he hadn’t intended it to happen and that, as a poorly paid assistant teacher with a sister to support, ‘he was the worst kind of a cad for kissing her when he knew he had nothing to offer her.’ But then he had paused and looked at her and said huskily, ‘At least not at the moment.’ Sally had known then that those words, coming from Callum, were every bit as good as a request to go steady from another young man, and her heart had swelled with gratitude to whoever was responsible for her meeting him.

No one could possibly have a better friend than Morag. She and Sally were closer than sisters. They did everything together: worked; complained about their poor aching feet and their raw hands; went dancing together at Liverpool’s famous Grafton Ballroom, ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ over the newest pictures to be shown in the cinemas; and Morag even thought that Sally’s parents were every bit as special as Sally did herself.

One day they would be sisters, when she and Callum were . . . but no, Sally couldn’t even think the word ‘married’ because she knew if she did she would blush and then her mother would ask her why.

As Sally had discovered this Christmas, some things were too new to tell even the most loving of mothers and the closest of friends, some things were so special, so magical and so longed for that they could only be shared with one special person, and thought about in private.

‘That will be your father,’ her mother announced now, her face lighting up as she heard the sound of a key in the front door.

Sally’s father had a good job working as a senior clerk at the Town Hall. As always when he came home, he put an arm round his wife and his daughter, drawing them close, as he asked, ‘And how are my best girls?’

Oh yes, she was one of the luckiest girls in Liverpool, Sally acknowledged with so much to be thankful for.

And it had been the most wonderful Christmas, starting two days before Christmas Eve when she and Morag had decorated the Christmas tree her parents had brought home from St John’s Market, along with a large turkey and enough vegetables and treats, her father had teased her mother, to feed them all for a month. Whilst her mother had sat and watched, and her father had tested the pretty Christmas tree lights from the previous year, Sally had lovingly explained to Morag the family significance of each precious tree ornament. There had been the delicate tin candle holders that held the bright red wax candles, which were never lit in case they caused a fire. The candle holders had originally belonged to her grandparents, and it took a steady hand to clip them securely upright onto the tree’s branches. Then there had been the glass baubles, some of them predating Sally’s own birth, others bought new each year of her life, and with so many happy memories of previous Christmases that unpacking them was like rediscovering old friends.

As the afternoon light had faded into evening and her mother had switched on the lights in the comfortable sitting room – with its dark green damask-covered three-piece suite, its curtains and cushions made from paisley-patterned fabric, bought on special order from Lewis’s in Liverpool; the dark green and gold patterned fitted carpet that her father had insisted on, even though her mother protested that it was far too expensive – Sally had seen the tears in Morag’s eyes.

But it had been her mother who got up from her chair to come over to them and put her arm tenderly round Morag, telling Sally quietly, ‘Darling, go and put the kettle on, will you?’

When Sally had come back into the sitting room, Morag had been smiling, albeit somewhat tremulously, and later, when they were back at the hospital, Morag had told her emotionally, ‘You have the most wonderful parents, Sally, especially your mother.’

On Christmas Eve they had all gone together to the church where Sally had been christened and confirmed, and after Midnight Mass, with the crispness of frost in the air, neighbours and friends had been warmly welcomed back to number 28 Lilac Avenue for a glass of sherry and the mince pies that Sally and Morag had helped to bake. With Sally sharing her own room with Morag over Christmas, and Callum sleeping in the small box-room, the house had been full, but in the most wonderful way. Sally’s father and Callum insisting on cooking breakfast on Christmas Day after church, laughing and joking with one another, her mother keeping an eye on the turkey, before they had all settled down in the front room to open their presents.

Then there had been Christmas lunch itself. Her mother was a wonderful cook and, of course, Sally and Morag had been set to work helping with the veg, and decorating the table in the morning room, extended for the guests, and looking very bright and Christmassy with its white napery and the red and gold crackers purchased in Lewis’s Christmas department earlier in the month.

The house had been filled with the scents of Christmas, roasting turkey, the sharp smell of the sprouts grown in the Johnsons’ own garden, the scent of the pine needles from the tree, the hot smell of the multi-coloured tree lights, her mother’s lily of the valley perfume and the very grown-up Nights in Paris perfume both Sally and Morag were wearing in honour of the special occasion. The paper garlands her father and Callum had put up over the ceiling moved in the draught from the constant opening and closing of doors, and the sound of laughter and lively conversation filled the air.

Of course, Sally’s mother had been at the centre of all the activity, a commanding officer quietly managing her troops as they all worked to get the best lunch of the year onto the table.

Then on Boxing Day some of the neighbours had come over, and there had been a singsong round the piano, Sally listening with pride and love to Callum’s good strong baritone.

Oh, yes, it had been the very best of Christmases, though with even happier Christmases to come, Sally was sure of it.

December 1938

Sally couldn’t bear to look as she walked past the cemetery on her way home to Lilac Avenue, increasing her pace and turning her face from the place where her mother was buried. She could still hardly accept that her mother was dead.

It had been such a long hard road from those early days of hope that somehow the doctors were wrong, followed by the disbelief, despair and even anger that someone as special as her mother should be struck down by such a cruel illness, the long-drawn-out days, weeks and then months of her decline and the terrible pain she had suffered with that decline. Then – and Sally could still hardly bear to think about this – those last days when it had seemed impossible that the emaciated tiny human frame – tortured by pain and trying so bravely not to betray the extent of her suffering – lost in the bed that she and Morag kept immaculately hospital pristine and neat, could actually be her mother.

Her mother had tried so bravely not to distress those she loved by revealing how much pain she was in, but of course Sally had known. How could she, as a nurse, not know?

Morag had been so wonderful – the best of good friends, truly an angel – taking over the most intimate nursing of Sally’s mother as though she had been her own when Sally had needed to leave her mother’s bedside to give way to her tears. Sally’s heart lifted now with the knowledge that when she got home, having unexpectedly been told that she could finish her shift several hours early, she would probably find Morag already there.

‘You are so kind,’ Sally had told Morag.

‘It is a privilege to do this for your mother, Sally, after all she has done for me,’ Morag replied.

And Morag hadn’t just helped with the nursing. Whenever she was off duty, and Sally still working, she’d gone round to Lilac Avenue to cook a hot meal for Sally’s father, and take over some of the chores that Sally’s mother could no longer do. Just as though they had indeed been sisters they had worked together to nurse Sally’s mother and give her father what comfort they could. Callum had played his part too, sitting and talking with her father in the evenings.

Sally was past the cemetery now and could allow herself to breath normally again although that felt wrong when her beloved mother was no longer breathing. She and her father would never stop mourning her and missing her, Sally knew.

As she turned into Lilac Avenue through the windows of its houses she could see Christmas trees and Christmas decorations. Christmas was only a matter of days away but Sally couldn’t bear to think about it. She couldn’t imagine ever wanting to celebrate Christmas without her mother.

Rather than use her front door key Sally went round to the kitchen. As she put her hand on the door knob, what she saw through the frosted glass in the top half of the door froze her in shocked disbelief. The image of two people embracing might be fuzzy and distorted by the thick glass, their features obscured, but for Sally there was no mistaking what they were doing and who they were.

Morag and her father were in one another’s arms and Morag was kissing her father – not compassionately as the best friend of his daughter, but intimately on the mouth, in the manner of a lover.

Filled with revulsion, trembling with disbelief, Sally stepped into the kitchen as Morag and her father moved apart.

Sally looked at them both in silence. Morag’s face was white, her dark brown eyes shimmering with tears, her guilt plain for Sally to see. Behind her father’s sadness Sally realised that she could see a glint of another horrifying emotion in his eyes. He was happy. Happy that Morag had kissed him.

‘Sally, please don’t look like that. It isn’t what you—’ Morag was saying, trying to catch hold of her arm, but Sally moved back. She was trembling so much that she had to lean on the wall to support herself.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No don’t touch me . . . don’t come anywhere near me. How could you? How could you do this?’

‘Sally.’ Now it was her father trying to reach for her, his familiar face – the kind loving face she had known all her life – creased in distress. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out about Morag and me like this. We were going to tell you . . .’

Sally felt as though her heart were being wrenched out of her body when her father reached for Morag’s hand and held it tightly, giving her the most tender and protective of looks.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ he continued, ‘but Morag wanted to wait until after Christmas. She thought it would be easier for you then.’

‘Easier for me to be told that my father and my supposed best friend were betraying my mother’s memory in the most grotesque and horrible way?’ Sally demanded on a choking breath of disbelief that was getting close to hysteria. ‘Dad, how can you think that? How can you do this, when Mum . . . She’s not even been dead two months yet. Two months and yet already Morag has somehow managed to worm her way into . . . into the place that should only ever belong to my mother.’

‘Sally, that’s enough!’ The stern note in her father’s voice shocked Sally into fresh despair. ‘I will not have you blaming Morag – for anything.’ The loving look her father gave Morag made Sally feel as though someone were squeezing her heart painfully hard. ‘If you must blame anyone, then blame me. I love Morag and I know that the love I have for her would have had your mother’s blessing.’

‘No!’

The denial was torn from Sally’s throat as she pulled open the back door and ran out of the house, ignoring her father’s plea for her to stop.

It was dark now and Sally didn’t know how long she’d been crouching here beside her mother’s grave, anger and grief spilling from her with the tears she had shed.

In two days it would be Christmas, but there was no place in Sally’s heart now to celebrate that special season.

‘Sally.’

The sound of a much-loved voice saying her name had her crying out in relief. She turned to him as he crouched down next to her, the scarf her mother had knitted for him last Christmas twisting in the ice-cold wind blowing across the bleak graveyard.

‘Oh, Callum . . .’

She was in his arms and he was holding her tight, the warmth of his embrace thawing her emotions, so that fresh tears fell.

‘I suppose you know what’s happened?’ she asked him when the tears had finally stopped and she was drying her face with the handkerchief he had offered her.

‘Yes. I’ve just come from the house.’

‘Callum, how could they betray my mother like that? My father and your sister my best friend – I still can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to see Morag ever again. I don’t want her coming to the house or having anything to do with my father. I blame her more than I do him. I—’

‘Sally, I know you’ve had a shock, and I can understand that right now you feel a certain amount of betrayal, but I promise you that the only reason they didn’t tell you about their feelings for one another was because they didn’t think you were ready. When they discussed it with me—’

Whilst he had been speaking to her Callum had stood up drawing Sally to her feet as he did so, and now he was holding her cold hands in the warmth of his, but for once she was barely aware of his touch.

‘You knew? You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?’ she demanded angrily.

‘They asked me not to, although . . . Sally, we all know how much you loved your mother, and how much her death has upset you, but you are an intelligent girl and, to be honest, I’m surprised that you didn’t see the love growing between them for yourself. I know that your mother did, and that she welcomed it, knowing that two people she loved so much would find happiness together.’

‘No, that’s not true. My mother would never have wanted . . . She loved my father.’

‘Yes, she did, and in my view it was because of the great love she had for both him and for Morag that she welcomed the knowledge that your father would not be left alone after her own death.’

‘You’re on their side, aren’t you?’ Sally accused him.

‘It isn’t a matter of taking sides.’

‘It is for me.’ Sally pulled away from him, adding bitterly, ‘And I know now whose side you’re on, Callum. I wish I’d never met either of you. I trusted Morag. I thought she was my friend, but I realise now that I never knew her at all. No one who was a true friend to me would have done what she’s done, betraying my mother, stealing my father, and you taking her side. I never want to see either of you again.’

‘Sally, please don’t be like this.’

‘Don’t be like this? How do you expect me to be? Am I supposed to be glad? Am I supposed to welcome the fact that my best friend has been making up to my father behind my back whilst my mother has been dying?’

‘Sally . . .’

Callum was reaching for her, his dark hair, tangled by the cold wind, flopping over his forehead, as he held out his arms. The pain she was feeling was more than she could bear. She had loved him so much, and she had thought that he loved her, just as she also believed that Morag was her friend and that her father was devoted to her mother. But all of them had deceived her, and betrayed her mother, and she would never be able to forgive them. Never. She stepped back from him.

‘Don’t touch me. Don’t come anywhere near me.’ Her furious words were raw with bitterness and pain.