LITMIR.BIZ

      Dedication

      This book is dedicated to the memory of my father-in-law, Major Derek Allen, who in the short time I knew him managed to teach me the many benefits of self-confidence.

      Also to the doctors and staff at Harefield Hospital to whom my family are ever indebted for the five extra years of life they gave to my father.

      And my thanks to Susan Mott who so patiently and efficiently typed out the final draft copy of STELLA for me.

      G. M. 1986

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Dedication

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Epilogue

      Copyright

       About the Publisher

      Introduction

      It must have been about two days after my father’s untimely death that I ventured into his upstairs office.

      It had taken some courage to do this, because this book-laden room was his shrine, and almost every previous time that I had entered it I had discovered his hunched figure poised over his portable typewriter, the whole room engulfed with smoke from his meerschaum pipe.

      The acrid smell of stale tobacco still lingered, and would continue to for weeks to come. The silent typewriter was still sitting in the position it had been when my father had last sat in front of it. I would have paid no more attention, had it not been for the sheet of paper that caught my eye.

      Headed STELLA, P. 61, there were only about eight typed lines on the sheet. I cannot wholly recall what they said, but it was enough to remind me that my father had been deeply involved in what would have been his second novel.

      Intrigued, I began a search for notes, pages, anything that had been destined for the novel. It was remarkable just how much turned up considering that he had never before kept many notes. But then, as we discovered shortly after his death, it was as though he knew that something was going to happen to him, because he had tidied up most aspects of his life from taxation to photo albums.

      Anyway, by the end of that day spent searching, I had gathered nearly two thirds of the manuscript – some completed, some merely in note form.

      I asked my mother how she would feel about me taking on the project of finishing the novel. ‘It’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘He had spent much of his time on it. It would be nice to see it finished.’ And so my first draft of STELLA went into production.

      He had often talked to me about STELLA, quoting lines from it, showing me the latest passage he was working on, and explaining that the background would be very similar to his own. I would smile and listen attentively, glad to see the pleasure it was giving him, but totally unaware that day I would desperately be racking my brain for those little snippets of information he had casually given to me.

      Stella’s background is very similar to his own. She even plays in the streets he played in when he was a boy. In fact, the pattern of Stella’s career is not so different from his own, though I’m sure he won far more talent competitions than poor Stella is allowed to win in this story.

      While the characters are not based on particular individuals, there is a sense of recognition about them. They suit the story so well, one can’t help but assume that they closely resemble many of the people my father had to contend with on his way to the top.

      Perhaps it was because most of the work I did on this book was carried out at the same desk in the same favourite office of my father’s that I felt he was ever-present, and always there to give me a guiding hand. And during the more hilarious pieces I worked on I am convinced I could hear him chuckling over my shoulder at his own lines. So, in a strange way, I feel we worked at the book together and not independently.

      The office has altered very little during the last two years and I still often use it, convinced it is a source of great inspiration to me.

      My father’s notes on STELLA are now blended with mine in brown and blue cardboard folders that line a shelf of the study. They represent the months of pleasure I derived from putting the novel together. I hope you derive as much pleasure from reading it.

      Gary Morecambe

      1968

      Chapter One

      Stella stood in the wings. Her eyes were unblinking, her vision not focusing, her mind remembering the past and not caring too much about the future. Somehow she had managed to reach the theatre through her haze of confusion, to change into the right clothes and prepare to face an ecstatic audience.

      But she hadn’t felt it had been she who had done these things: it wasn’t she who was the star of the show and who was supposed to now be enthralling and entertaining some of her vast following who had paid to see her that night. She remembered the letter. She would always remember that letter until the day she died. She shuddered: death wasn’t a subject she wanted to think about.

      She gave an ironic laugh that more resembled a cough, and thought of her sister.

      Fifteen years ago she couldn’t have begun to guess at what life held for her – the tears, the joy, and the horror.

      It had started as a dream, and as if by magic had been transformed into reality.

      Like the letter, she would always remember the last fifteen years of her life most vividly . . .

      The change in what could only be described as a typical, unexceptional, northern upbringing of the early part of the twentieth century began in Lancaster in 1924. During that year, Stella Ravenscroft grew into a sprightly ten-year-old and her sister, Sadie, into a more subdued eight-year-old. They were inseparable chums, though Stella made sure her sister knew who was boss, and it was something Sadie would never be allowed to forget.

      It was a bleak January that had hailed the beginning to that year, the city being buried beneath an unmoving thin white carpet of crisp snow. Returning home from school one evening during that month, Sadie revealed that she had heard that Tommy Moran – Stella’s childhood sweetheart – had been kissed by Molly Chadwick.

      ‘Whereabouts did she kiss him?’ demanded Stella.

      ‘On the mouth,’ innocently replied her sister.

      ‘No. I mean where? You know – where?’

      ‘Oh. Outside the tobacconist’s on’t corner of Penny Street.’

      Stella

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