A Woman’s Fortune - Josephine Cox

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don’t know and I don’t know, Pete, but we’re here tonight and the main thing is we’re all together. So far as I know no one on earth has ever heard of Church Sandleton, so we’re most likely safe from that Mr Hopkins.’

      As she spoke she led her grandchildren into the first of the downstairs rooms behind the shop. It was a large sitting room, empty of furniture, with a dirty wooden floor and a bare light bulb suspended from the centre of the ceiling. Evie tried the switch and the bulb glowed dimly. Through the unboarded window they could see into a small backyard, paved but with weeds peeping through between the slabs. There was a little brick building at the end, which they all guessed was a privy.

      ‘It’ll do,’ said Sue stoutly, looking round the room. ‘Your mum and I will know what to do with this, I reckon.’

      Evie smiled, feeling less dismal, and she saw Peter was bucking up, too.

      ‘The kitchen will be the other room,’ said Sue. ‘It’s make or break there, I reckon,’ she added, leading Evie and Peter back to the cramped hallway and into the room next to the sitting room.

      ‘It can be put right and your mum will come round to it – if we’re allowed to do as we like, that is. It’s not our place, don’t forget. I haven’t had a chance to work it out yet, but I think we’re renting it from Jack’s friend, and we don’t even know who he is yet … Oh, this is big. It must be twice the size of Shenty Street’s kitchen. Needs a lot of cleaning, though,’ she added, looking at a solidly built but very grubby cream-coloured electric cooker.

      Evie opened a door at the back and found a pantry with a cold slab and a vent to the outside to keep the air cool. It was empty except for a cardboard box on one of the shelves. It looked like a recent addition, being free of dust, and she opened it and gasped in astonishment.

      ‘Look, Grandma,’ she said, bringing it out and putting it on the built-in dresser. ‘There’s a note with Dad’s name on it and a loaf of bread and a packet of tea. Who can have left this?’

      ‘One way to find out,’ said Sue, unfolding the lined sheet of paper and holding it at arm’s length because she’d left her glasses in her handbag in the shop room. ‘It’s no good, Evie, you’ll have to read it to me. Never mind it’s addressed to your dad.’

      Evie saw that the letter was elegantly written with a fountain pen:

       Dear Mr Carter,

       I hope you have had a good journey. I am sorry about the state of the shop. Jack Fletcher says you are a friend of his and need a place to stay, so I hope it will do for now.

       The electricity is working. Please accept the bread and the tea.

       I look forward to meeting you shortly.

       Yours sincerely,

       Frederick Bailey

      ‘Well I never!’ exclaimed Sue. ‘Our first piece of good luck, and I’m hoping not the last. ’Course, we’ve never met Jack Fletcher, but let’s not fret about details. Obviously Brendan has some influence with folk, even down here. Maybe things aren’t as bad as we thought.’

      ‘I’ll go and show Mum,’ said Evie.

      ‘You do that, love. It might just pull her back from the brink. Peter and I will go and look upstairs and see if we can cope, eh? Whoever this Frederick Bailey is, at least he knows this place is a shambles. Mebbe he’ll be round in the morning to sort it all out.’ Though I wouldn’t bet on it, she thought.

      Upstairs was pretty grim, too, but there was an electric water heater over a wash basin, and even a working lavatory. The three bedrooms were bare of furniture, dusty and stuffy in the heat, but there would be room for all of them, as there had been in Shenty Street.

      ‘I think we’re staying, at least until we sort out summat better, don’t you?’ Sue asked her grandson.

      ‘I reckon you’re right, Grandma. Let’s go and tell Fergus we can start unloading the van. It’s going to be dark soon and I’m that hungry I can hear my tummy singing.’

      ‘Good thinking, young fella,’ said Sue. ‘I won’t put up with an unclean house, but just for tonight I think I may have to break that rule.’

      The van was unloaded far quicker than it had been packed up that morning. Fergus and Michael took the bedsteads and then the mattresses upstairs between them while Jeanie and Evie carried in the chairs and the boxes for the kitchen. The mangle went into a corner of the kitchen.

      Fergus was invited to stay the night, Peter agreeing to double up with Robert so as to leave his bed free for the helpful Irishman, but Fergus said he’d rather be getting home. He didn’t mind driving late at night if it meant his own bed at the end of it, and his wife, Kate, waiting for him, so Sue made him a cup of tea and gave him some of the cake left from earlier, and then the Carters waved him on his way with heartfelt thanks and love to be passed on to Brendan and the family.

      The sun was setting in a red sky as the forlorn family watched the rear lights of Fergus’s van disappear down the road and they waved until he was out of sight. Then they filed back into the shop through the boarded-up door and Sue, Michael and the boys went to make up the beds.

      ‘We won’t unpack more than necessary,’ said Jeanie to Evie, leading her into the kitchen. ‘I don’t know as we’re staying, despite that Frederick Bailey’s letter.’

      ‘But it will be better when we’ve cleaned it up and got our things where we want them, I’m sure, Mum. And at least we’ve got Dad away from Mr Hopkins.’

      ‘Thank the Lord.’ Jeanie looked around the big filthy kitchen and shook her head. ‘You know, Evie love, I’m really trying to see this as the start of a new life, a hope that things will be good for us from now on in a different place. That’s what your grandma would be saying to you.’

      ‘And she’d be right, Mum. We’ve got somewhere to stay, at least for now, and Mr Bailey must be a good sort, don’t you think, as he thought to write that note and leave the tea and bread?’

      ‘Yes, love, but we don’t know him, do we? We’ve never even met Fergus’s friend Jack, who arranged this with Mr Bailey. And if we do stay here we’ll have to pay rent. Your grandma and I have a bit of money saved from the washing but it won’t go far. We’ve lost our laundry business now, and your dad’ll need to find a job straight away.’

      ‘I know, Mum, but didn’t Brendan say Jack Fletcher has an ear to the ground and might come up with something? And Dad can start looking tomorrow. I know he’s been a bit … daft with the betting, and then this card game with Mr Hopkins, but mebbe he’s learned his lesson.’

      ‘I want to think so, love, I honestly do. But somehow I can’t see your dad changing, and that’s what’s worrying me. I’ve seen the road he’s been going down for a while. Mebbe it’s too late for him to be any different.’

      Evie wanted to argue that their lives would get better now they had a chance to start again, all of them together in a new place, but they’d lost so much by running away – all their friends, not least – and she couldn’t bring herself to lie to her mother. In her heart she knew that Mum was probably right: Dad would never change. She only hoped he wouldn’t drag them down further.

      She thought about Billy – how he had kissed her farewell and told her he’d wait for her to come back. Was it only this morning? It seemed like days ago.

      Quietly contemplating their new lives, she felt furious with her father. Stupid man! Stupid and selfish. His selfishness had caused his family to lose everyone they knew and cared for, everything Mum and Grandma Sue had worked for, and their little home in the town where they belonged. Now they had only each other.

      For a moment she stood breathing deeply until

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