LITMIR.BIZ

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Mum. I’m meeting Bobby at tea time and we’ll have something at Joe Lyons.’

      Lou was too astonished and, yes, hurt as well, by Sasha’s unexpected and unjustified attack on her to say anything to defend herself. She’d only mentioned the incident because she’d wanted to take Sasha back to a time when they’d been close to one another. It had never occurred to her that Sasha would place the interpretation on her little story that she had.

      Without waiting for any response Sasha pulled open the door into the hall and walked out.

      Jean and Lou looked at one another in silence as they heard her feet going up the stairs.

      ‘It isn’t like Sasha thinks, Mum. I wasn’t telling her about Kieran for any reason. Sasha’s right, though,’ Lou continued soberly. ‘What happened to her was my fault. If we hadn’t quarrelled and she’d decided to go home without me, she’d never have gone across that bombed-out building and fallen into that bomb crater. I should have gone back with her the moment she said she didn’t want to go any further, instead of waiting like I did, thinking she’d change her mind and come running after me and Kieran.’

      Lou looked so guilty and upset that Jean’s heart ached for her.

      ‘It was an accident, with no one to blame, Lou love, and thankfully in the end neither of you came to any harm. I can’t tell you how many years it aged me and your dad when we saw the two of you in that bomb crater, you holding on to Sasha for dear life and her half under that bomb.’

      Jean exhaled and then said firmly, ‘I’m going to put the kettle on and make us all a nice cup of tea.’

      She turned away from Lou to fill the kettle. ‘And as for this Kieran Mallory…’ she continued, her back to Lou as she turned on the gas and then struck a match to light the burners.

      ‘He doesn’t mean anything to me now, Mum,’ Lou assured her. ‘Me and Sasha were well and truly taken in by him and that uncle of his who managed the Royal Court Theatre.’

      Jean was glad that she had her back to her daughter. Somehow, perhaps because at the time she had been so dreadfully anxious for Sasha and then so relieved when she was finally safe, she’d never made the connection between Kieran Mallory and Con Bryant, although Jean recognised that it must have been there for her to make. Now that she had, though, a fresh apprehension filled her. Con might be dead and buried – Jean had seen the announcement of his death in the local paper – but that did not alter the fact that he had been the cause of such dreadful misery and potential shame to the family when he seduced Francine, and left her pregnant, something which Lou and Sasha knew nothing about. And now here was his nephew, coming between her daughters, a nephew who sounded very much as though he was made in the same mould as his uncle; the kind of man no mother wanted going anywhere near her daughters.

      Lou had said that he didn’t mean anything to her, and Sasha was safely engaged to Bobby so there was no real reason for her to worry, Jean tried to comfort herself.

      

      Irritably Charlie Firth gunned the engine of the Racing Green MG and dropped it down a gear so that he could overtake the lumbering army lorries travelling in convoy ahead of him. He hadn’t been in the best of moods when he’d left his base in the South of England for the long drive home to Liverpool, and the slow crawl along roads filled with military traffic hadn’t done anything to improve that mood. Spending, or rather wasting, what could well be his last bit of decent leave before his battalion was posted overseas and into action on a visit to his mother was the last thing Charlie would have chosen to do – not when London and all it had to offer in terms of a good night out with a pretty and willing girl was so conveniently close to the base. Unfortunately, though, he’d had no choice. Thanks to his ruddy wife and her equally ruddy parents, and their insistence on Charlie doing the gentlemanly thing and giving his wife a divorce.

      Charlie swore viciously as he took a sharp corner at speed and almost knocked a pair of cyclists off their bikes. He could just imagine how his mother was going to react to the news that Daphne wanted a divorce. Not that Charlie really cared how his mother felt; it was the effect the news of his divorce was likely to have on her willingness to ‘help him out’ with those useful ‘loans’ he kept tapping her up for that worried him. His mother was a snob. She had boasted to anyone who would listen that he, Charlie, was marrying a girl with a double-barrelled surname and she wasn’t going to like what Charlie had to tell her. And he did have to tell her because if he didn’t there was no guarantee that if he didn’t get his side of the story in first, his in-laws, the Wrighton-Budes, just might give her theirs.

      They’d never considered him good enough for their daughter, although Charlie had only discovered that on his wedding day, when Daphne’s cousin had let slip that Daphne’s parents and, indeed, Daphne herself had been expecting a local land-owning neighbour’s son to propose to her, and when he had married someone else instead marriage to Charlie had been seen by them as a face-saving exercise.

      Now, though, this neighbour’s son was a widower, thanks to the war, and free to remarry, and it seemed that the woman he wanted to marry was Charlie’s wife.

      Naturally Charlie had expressed shock and anger when this news had been relayed to him by his father-in-law, but the old fart had outmanoeuvred him by announcing that he knew all about the girls Charlie saw when he was on leave in London, because he had apparently been having Charlie followed, so that evidence could be gathered to back up Daphne’s claim for a divorce. Charlie’s father-in-law had actually had the gall to add that in view of his taste for variety, Charlie might actually welcome the freedom of a divorce.

      Charlie, however, wanted no such thing. Announcing that he was married, as he had discovered, was a very effective way of sorting out the girls who wanted to play the game his way and have a good time, from those who were after something more permanent. Now his father-in-law was demanding that Charlie did the decent thing, so that Daphne, her name clear of any wrongdoing, could get her divorce and be free to remarry.

      No, he wasn’t looking forward to the coming weekend at all, Charlie admitted.

      There’d be no point in trying to tap up Bella, his sister, for a few quid; they’d never been what one might call close, but their relationship had really deteriorated after Bella had taken in that girl who reckoned that he’d fathered her brat.

      He had reached the outskirts of Liverpool now, the Mersey a grey gleam to his left, made even greyer by the hulls of the naval vessels and merchant convoys filling the docks.

      Liverpool was the port used by most of the convoys crossing the Atlantic, bringing in much-needed supplies of raw materials and food. Not that the vitally important role his home city was playing in the war effort interested Charlie.

      Wallasey was considered far more exclusive than Liverpool, the town holding itself apart from the city in the manner of a ‘lady’ keeping her distance from her servants, whilst being dependent on them.

      The last few miles of the drive increased Charlie’s ill humour. He’d have given anything to turn the car round and drive back to London, he acknowledged as he pulled up outside his mother’s house.

      In the front window a lace curtain twitched ever so slightly, but Charlie was too preoccupied with his own sense of injustice and ill-usage to notice.

      ‘Bella, it’s Charlie. He’s here,’ Vi Firth announced, letting the lace curtain drop and then hurrying into the hallway, patting the rigid waves of her new hairdo, before going to open the door.

      Lord, but his mother looked drab and dull; no wonder his father had left her for someone younger and livelier, Charlie thought unkindly as he submitted himself to Vi’s tearful embrace.

      ‘Such a shame that dearest Daphne couldn’t come with you. I can see that I’m going to have to travel down to see her,’ Vi informed Charlie, before turning towards the kitchen and calling out in a far sharper voice, ‘Bella, do hurry up with that tea. Your poor brother has been driving for hours.

      ‘Having Bella living here with me is so difficult at times, Charles. You wouldn’t believe how selfish

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