LITMIR.BIZ

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you?’

      Steve looked around him with exaggerated care. ‘Well,’ he said at last with a grin, ‘I can’t see any other bugger offering.’

      It was on the tip of Lizzie’s tongue just to say no and thank him. And then what? She could hardly go into the cinema with Steve now, after he’d apparently dumped one of the girls he was in the queue with to be with her. And yet…

      ‘Come on, Lizzie,’ Steve pleaded. ‘It will be as a friend. Straight up.’

      If she didn’t go, ahead of her was a lonely night spent in the bedroom of the hotel, and she loved dancing. But it was going out with Steve again. ‘As a friend only, nothing more,’ she said at last. ‘Promise me?’

      ‘As a friend only,’ Steve said, drawing her away from the crowds surging into the cinema. Then he lifted his finger and gave it a lick. ‘See this wet, see this dry,’ he said with a smile, ‘cut my throat if I tell a lie.’

      Lizzie gave him a push. ‘Fool!’

      Steve laughed and grasped Lizzie around the waist and felt his heart thudding against his chest.

      Steve behaved like a perfect gentleman that night, and the night he took her to the pictures and she saw Cavalcade in the end, and the time he took her to see the hilarious but saucy Max Wall at the Hippodrome. One night they spent a quiet evening at the pub, and though Lizzie allowed herself two port and lemons before switching to orange juice, Steve didn’t complain or urge her to drink something more exciting.

      Gradually, she began to relax in his company and remember the good times of their earlier courtship. It was a novel experience for Steve to try and please a lady knowing there would be nothing in it for him, and Lizzie didn’t know what it cost him to keep his hands by his sides when he longed to encircle her and to kiss those lovely lips he watched yearningly.

      Without his street women, he couldn’t have managed, though now he’d begun to feel guilty about going from Lizzie straight to the bed of another. He didn’t tell Stuart this, though, for he was aware that Stuart already thought him clean barmy. ‘Variety, man,’ he said, when they were both making their way home after such a night. ‘Spice of life. Nothing quite like it.’

      Tressa’s son was born on Wednesday, 7^th December, and Steve came that evening to tell Lizzie the news after it had been phoned through to The Bell public house and the landlady had come up with the message. ‘We could go up of the weekend,’ he said.

      Lizzie hesitated. She wouldn’t like Tressa and Mike to get any ideas about her and Steve, and yet she was off-duty all day Saturday until seven o’clock, and she had to go and see Tressa sometime and ooh and ah over the child. It would be silly for her to go on her own, and so she nodded. ‘All right.’

      In the end, she was more affected by the child, Phillip, than she ever thought she would be, and she didn’t have to pretend to be awed by the diminutive but perfect little person Tressa gave her to hold, with his tiny fingers and even smaller toes. His skin was flawless, his lashes making perfect crescents on the top of his cheeks as he slept, and Lizzie smelt that very special baby smell. Suddenly she was filled with a deep longing for a child of her own, a feeling that took her totally by surprise.

      ‘Are you and Steve…you know?’ Tressa asked when the men had gone off to wet the baby’s head.

      ‘No, but we are friends,’ Lizzie said. ‘Mind how I told you we had a talk about everything at your wedding?’

      ‘Aye, I remember all right,’ Tressa said. ‘And I hope you know what you’re doing. Steve doesn’t seem to be looking at you with the eyes of a friend, if you know what I mean?’

      Lizzie told herself Tressa must be mistaken. Steve never touched her besides holding her shoulders gently and giving her a kiss on the cheek. Surely if he thought of her any other way he’d have tried something else. She hoped he never went down that road, for then she’d have to put a stop to it straight away, and she had to admit that going out with him was far better than sitting alone in the bedroom of the hotel.

      Lizzie barely saw Steve once the Christmas festivities got underway, and she was surprised to receive a package on Christmas Eve. She took it to her room and opened it out. There was a velvet box inside, and in it, resting on a nest of navy silk, was a beautifully fine gold bracelet. When she lifted it out there were gasps from Betty and Pat and Marjorie, who now occupied Tressa’s bed.

      ‘Will you look at that?’ Pat breathed.

      ‘Who’s it from?’ Marjorie asked.

      Pat and Betty exchanged knowing glances. Lizzie had explained away the birthday roses, and apparently to her satisfaction, but this was something else entirely. Lizzie was naturally reticent and too worried about being teased to tell Pat or Betty about her meeting with Steve in November, and the fact she had been seeing him since. It wasn’t hard, for their times off rarely coincided and they were too preoccupied with their own love lives to worry overmuch about Lizzie’s, and Marjorie had no idea of any of it. So, as far as Pat and Betty were aware, this bracelet had arrived out of the blue.

      It was like a statement, Betty thought; like saying, To hell with being friends. I want something more. And so she said to Marjorie, ‘It’s from Lizzie’s feller.’

      ‘Steve’s not my feller,’ Lizzie protested.

      ‘Oh no,’ Pat said, with a hint of derision. ‘Let’s say I wish some non-feller of mine would send me something half so nice.’ And she pulled the card from the box ‘“All my love always, Steve”,’ she read out. ‘Like I said, some friend that Steve.’

      The card unnerved Lizzie and she knew she should have a talk with Steve as soon as possible. She withdrew the bracelet and played it though her fingers. It was gorgeous and she knew it would have been expensive. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t accept it.’

      ‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ Pat admonished.

      ‘I need to talk to him about this,’ Lizzie said. ‘Set the record straight.’ But she knew that was a vain wish. The guests were arriving any time after four o’clock that afternoon, and from when they stepped into the hotel until they checked out on 1^st January she knew she’d hardly stop running. The hours would be long, sleep a luxury she could only dream of, and time off virtually non-existent.

      In a way she was glad of it. She was able to push the problem of what to do about the bracelet to the back of her mind.

      On 3^rd January Steve took her dancing at the Locarno. She spent some of the tips she’d earned over the festive season to buy a dress from C&A Modes. It was of rose velvet with a scooped neckline and fell to the floor, the bottom section gathered in little pleats. She had her hair piled on her head with combs the same colour as the dress, and peeping from beneath it were dainty high-heeled shoes. On one of her slender wrists was Steve’s bracelet. He was so pleased. He hadn’t been sure she would accept it, especially after what he’d written on the card.

      Everything pleased him that night. Lizzie thanked him warmly for the bracelet and said truthfully it was the prettiest thing she’d ever owned, but she chided him for spending so much on it. ‘And who else would I spend it on?’ he asked. ‘Now, Lizzie, my money is my own and I must choose how to spend it.’

      Lizzie kissed him gently on the lips in gratitude and friendship and he felt his body grow hot with desire, but he told himself to go easy. Lizzie had noticed nothing untoward and she removed her jacket and said, ‘Do you like the dress? I treated myself.’

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, surveying it. He was bowled over by the strength of his feelings coursing through him and excited by the prospect of being able to legitimately hold Lizzie in his arms as they danced. He put his arms gently around her and said, ‘And you’re beautiful, Lizzie.’

      Lizzie, though embarrassed, was warmed by his genuine praise and realised she’d missed not seeing him over Christmas. Don’t depend on him, she’d warned herself, but the alternative

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