Not such a very good mother, thought Mavis, then her smile died. I’m not a good mother either. I want this new baby and Jimmy more than I want my girls. And even as she tried to push the dreadful thought from her mind, crush it before it could take root, she knew, in that instant, that it was true. However fiercely she pushed it away, it crowded back. She needed a man, she wanted the baby, and Rita and Rosie were standing in her way.
No, she shook her head hard as if to clear the thought away, no of course they weren’t. Of course Jimmy didn’t mean it. She could talk him round. As for the girls, they’d get used to the idea that they were going to have a stepdad and a little brother or sister.
She left the peace and quiet of the park and walked along the street to Baillies Grocery. Just as she reached it she met her mother coming out, carrying her shopping bag.
‘Hallo, Mum,’ she said.
‘Mavis.’ Lily looked at her daughter carefully. ‘You all right, love?’ she asked. ‘You look a bit peaky.’
‘I’m fine, Mum. Just a bit tired, you know how it takes me.’
Lily nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, used to take me in the same way. D’you want a cup of tea? You look as if you could do with one.’
Mavis was about to refuse, and then she thought, why not? ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That’d be nice.’
They turned away from the shop and walked the two streets to Hampton Road. Once inside Lily put the kettle on. Mavis dropped onto a chair in the kitchen, watching as her mother put away her shopping. She said nothing. Mavis felt safe in the kitchen of her childhood, in the silence that surrounded them. Lily didn’t chatter, or ask awkward questions. She simply put her food away, put cups out on the table and then made a pot of tea. She poured it and waited.
‘I told him, last night,’ Mavis said, at last breaking the silence. ‘About the baby.’
‘And?’
Mavis shrugged. ‘And he was fine about it.’ She sipped her tea. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her, and she went on, ‘A bit surprised, of course, but he likes the idea of being a dad.’ She raised her eyes to meet Lily’s. ‘We’re going to get married... so the baby’ll be OK, you know?’
‘D’you want to marry him?’ asked her mother. ‘Really want to marry him? Jimmy, who knocks you about?’
‘It’s only happened once,’ replied Mavis defensively, ‘and he was ever so sorry. It was only ’cos he’d had a bit to drink. Won’t happen again.’
‘Till he’s had a bit to drink again,’ said Lily wryly. ‘What about the girls? What about Rita and Rosie? What do they think?’
‘They don’t know yet, but they’ll be all right.’
‘You know they’re scared of Jimmy.’
‘So you keep saying,’ snapped Mavis, ‘but they’ll get used to him. They’ll have to.’ Her tone softened a little as she added, ‘They’ll like having a baby in the house, a little brother or sister.’
‘So when are you going to get married then?’ Lily knew it was no use tackling the question of the girls at this stage. Mavis had made up her mind. Maybe as the days passed...
That evening Jimmy arrived at the house carrying a suitcase. He dumped it at the bottom of the stairs and pushed open the kitchen door. The children were sitting at the table having their tea, and as he opened the door, they fell silent, watching him with wide eyes. He reached into his pocket and slapped his ration book onto the table.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Now perhaps I’ll get a decent tea. I’ll put my stuff upstairs.’ He turned back at the door and added, ‘And I want my name on the rent book. Right?’ Picking up his case, he marched upstairs to Mavis’s bedroom.
‘Is Uncle Jimmy coming to stay?’ Rosie asked.
‘Yes,’ Mavis replied. ‘He’s going to be your new daddy.’
‘I don’t want a new daddy,’ cried Rita, jumping up from her chair. ‘I don’t want him. I don’t like Uncle Jimmy. He’s horrid.’
‘That’s enough of that, young lady,’ snapped her mother. ‘He’s coming to live with us, and that’s that.’ Mavis reached over and shook Rita hard. ‘And I suggest you keep a civil tongue in your head.’
‘Why’s he coming to our house?’ asked Rosie.
‘Because we want to be a family,’ Mavis answered. ‘You’ll grow to love him, like I do.’
‘I shan’t,’ stated Rita. ‘I shan’t love him. He doesn’t love me.’
‘Well, he certainly won’t love you if you talk like that,’ said Mavis. ‘Now, finish your tea and go out to play.’
Rita crammed the last of her bread into her mouth and without another word went outside.
‘Can I play out, too?’ demanded Rosie, slipping down off her stool.
‘Just for a little while,’ agreed Mavis, and Rosie darted out to join her sister in the street.
Mavis was glad to see them go. She wanted them out of the way when Jimmy came back downstairs. She could hear him moving about in the bedroom and wondered what he was doing, but even as she got up to find out, she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
‘I’m going out,’ he said as he met her in the hallway.
‘What about your tea?’ she ventured as he opened the front door.
‘I’ll have it when I come in.’
When he had gone, she went upstairs to her room. The wardrobe door stood open and half her clothes had been pulled out and dumped on the bed. His were still in his case, but Mavis realized that she was expected to hang his up for him in the space he’d made, and she set about doing so, sorting and rehanging her own meagre wardrobe to accommodate his.
While she was busy upstairs, Rita came in from the street. She had seen Jimmy leave as she and Maggie had been trying to teach Rosie to skip.
‘Back in a min,’ she’d said and leaving Rosie with Maggie, she’d darted back into the house. She could hear Mum upstairs so she crept into the kitchen. Quickly she opened the drawer of the dresser, and there he was. Her daddy, smiling out through the cracked glass of his frame. She’d discovered the photo some days earlier, when looking in the drawer for a pencil. Quickly Rita pulled the frame open and slid Daddy out from under the glass. She looked round for somewhere to hide him. She could still hear Mum moving about upstairs, so she couldn’t risk taking him up there. There was nowhere in the hall to hide him, so she opened the door to the front room. They never used the front room, well, only at Christmas when Gran came, so he wouldn’t be found in there. She picked up the cushion from what had been her daddy’s armchair and slid the photo inside its cover. Then she put the cushion back and slipped out into the street again. Daddy was safe now. She didn’t want another dad; her daddy would always be her daddy. If Uncle Jimmy moved into the house, well, let him, but he would never, ever, be her dad.
A few weeks later there was a loud hammering on the front door and Mavis, opening it, was surprised to find her mother on the doorstep.
‘How did that child get that cut on her forehead?’ demanded Lily. ‘How come Reet’s got a black eye?’
‘She... she fell off her stool last night,’ faltered Mavis. ‘She hit her face on the gas stove.’
‘Hit her face on the gas stove,’ echoed Lily scornfully. ‘I don’t believe you. There’s much more to it than that.’
‘She fell off her stool...’ Mavis began again.
‘Knocked off it more like,’ asserted Lily. ‘By that Jimmy, I bet. You shouldn’t have him in the house, Mavis. I’ve told you before. He’s bad news. He knocks you about—’
‘No! No, Mum,’ Mavis burst out. ‘Who said that? Has that Rita—’
‘He knocks you about,’ repeated Lily, ignoring her interruption, ‘an’ he knocks the girls about, and whatever you say, he’s going to go on doing it. Men like him always go on doing it.’
‘Mum, it wasn’t like that. Reet fell off her stool. You know what she’s like. She was fidgeting... she’s always fidgeting, you know she is. An’ she fell off and hit her face, poor little kid.’ Mavis’s eyes challenged her mother to disbelieve her
and Lily looked a little less certain.
‘That’s what she said—’ began Lily.
‘Because that’s what happened, Mum. Did you see her on the way to school?’
‘Yes, they were just going in.’
‘Look, Mum, I was just leaving. I got to be at Mrs Robinson’s in twenty minutes. Walk with me to the bus, eh? I must go or I’ll be late.’ She edged her mother towards the front door, and Lily allowed herself to be eased out of the house and into the street. Mavis closed the door behind her and, taking her mother firmly by the arm, began walking towards the bus stop.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ she said, ‘but I mustn’t be late. The cleaning takes me a bit longer these days and I don’t want Mrs Robinson to turn me off. I was going to come and see you when I’d finished. Jimmy’s going to the registry office today to get the wedding sorted. You have to put your name on a list for three weeks or something... not sure quite what, but Jimmy knows and he’s going to do it in his dinnertime.’
‘You really want to marry him, Mavis?’ asked Lily, trying to walk more slowly. She wanted to talk to Mavis, to have things out with her, but knew that here in the street wasn’t the place.
‘Yes, I do,’ Mavis asserted. ‘He’ll make a great dad.’
‘Oh, Mavis, you know—’
‘Sorry, Mum, here’s my bus.’ Mavis stuck her hand out to hail the bus and scrambled aboard as soon as it stopped. She turned back, looking at her mother still standing on the pavement. ‘I’ll come in and see you tomorrow, Mum. Tell you the wedding date and that.’
The bus began to draw away, and Mavis moved inside, waving to her mother through the window.
Lily watched her go with distinct misgivings. She remained unconvinced that Rita had simply fallen off her stool. No, Jimmy Randall had something to do with it. Jimmy Randall was not good news, not good news at all.
Available now!
About The Girl With No Name
Lisa is thirteen when she arrives in England in August 1939, with just one precious letter from the mother she will never see again. Bullied at school for being German, worse is to come when the Blitz blows her new home apart and she wakes up in hospital, with no memory of who she is or where she came from. Only the letter in her pocket gives a clue as to her identity, so the authorities give Lisa a new name, make her a ward of court and despatch her to a children’s home.
But one person is sure that she is still alive – Harry, the trouble-prone boy who protected her at school is determined to find and rescue Lisa again if he can.
Reviews
THE THROWAWAY CHILDREN
‘Enlightening, compelling and emotional.’
Living North
‘A great success.’
The Weston, Worle and Somerset Mercury
THE NEW NEIGHBOURS
“Diney Costeloe writes with great style. A compelling storyteller, she draws you inexorably from page to page. [The New Neighbours] is an excellent read, I enjoyed the story enormously and escaping into it was a wonderful way to relax.”
Sally Alford, former HTV presenter
About Diney Costeloe
DINEY COSTELOE is the author of seventeen novels, several short stories, and many articles and poems. She has three children and seven grandchildren, so when she isn’t busy writing, she’s busy with family. She and her husband divide their time between Somerset and West Cork.
Visit her website: dineycosteloe.co.uk
Or follow her on Twitter: @Dineycost
Also by Diney Costeloe
The Throwaway Children
Gritty, heartrending and unputdownable – the story of two sisters sent first to an English, then an Australian orphanage in the aftermath of World War 2.
Rita and Rosie Stevens are only nine and five years old when their widowed mother marries a violent bully called Jimmy Randall and has a baby boy by him. Under pressure from her new husband, she is persuaded to send the girls to an orphanage – not knowing that the papers she has signed will entitle them to do what they like with the children.
And it is not long before the powers that be decide to send a consignment of orphans to their sister institution in Australia. Among them – without their family’s consent or knowledge – are Rita and Rosie, the throwaway children.
The Throwaway Children is available here.
The Girl With No Name
Lisa is thirteen when she arrives in England in August 1939, with just one precious letter from the mother she will never see again. Bullied at school for being German, worse is to come when the Blitz blows her new home apart and she wakes up in hospital, with no memory of who she is or where she came from. Only the letter in her pocket gives a clue as to her identity, so the authorities give Lisa a new name, make her a ward of court and despatch her to a children’s home.
But one person is sure that she is still alive – Harry, the trouble-prone boy who protected her at school is determined to find and rescue Lisa again if he can.
The Girl With No Name is available here.
The Lost Soldier
(previously published as The Ashgrove)
In 1921, eight ash trees were planted in the Dorset village of Charlton Ambrose as a timeless memorial to the men killed in World War One. Overnight a ninth appeared, marked only as for ‘the unknown soldier’.
But now the village’s ashgrove is under threat from developers. Rachel Elliot, a local reporter, sets out to save the memorial and solve the mystery of the ninth tree. In so doing, she uncovers the story of Tom Carter and Molly Day: two young people thrown together by the war, their love for each other, their fears for the present and their hopes for the future. Embroiled in events beyond their control, Tom and Molly have to face up to the harsh realities of the continuing war, the injustices it allows and the sacrifices it demands.
The Lost Soldier is available here.
The Sisters of St. Croix
(previously published as Death’s Dark Vale)
A gripping story of love, death and danger in Nazi Occupied France.
When Adelaide Anson-Gravetty finds out her father is not the man who raised her, she is both shocked and intrigued. Determined to find out more about her new family, she travels to the convent of Our Lady of Mercy in France to meet her aunt, the Reverend Mother.
But when France falls to the German army, Adelaide and the nuns are soon in the thick of a war that threatens both their beliefs and their lives. Collaborating with the resistance, sheltering Jewish orphans, defying the rulings of Vichy France: these are dangerous activities in dangerous times.
These courageous women must give all they’ve got in order to protect the innocent from the evil menace of the Nazi war machine.
The Sisters of St. Croix is available here.
The Runaway Family
(previously published as Evil on the Wind)
Germany 1937: Fear and betrayal stalk the streets. People disappear. Persecution of the Jews has become a national pastime.
When Ruth Friedman’s husband is arrested by the SS, she is left to fend for herself and her four children. She alone stands as their shield against the Nazis. But where can she go? Where will her family be safe?
Ruth must overcome the indifference, hatred and cruelty that surrounds her as she and her family race to escape the advancing Nazi army’s final solution...
The Runaway Family is available here.
The New Neighbours
(previously published as Dartmouth Circle)
Dartmouth Circle is a quiet cul-de-sac on the edge of a university town. Its residents take pride in their little community. All gates are painted and front gardens weeded, and nobody ever forgets bin collection day. So when the news breaks that a neighbour has sold his house to students, the residents are aghast. Students are loud, irresponsible and messy. They have all night parties, dabble with illegal substances and revel in questionable hygiene. When Madeleine Richmond and her friends move in, their greeting is less than warm. But a few ruffled feathers soon reveal there�
�s a lot more going on in the Circle that appearances suggest...
The New Neighbours is available here.
From the Editor of this Book
If you enjoyed this book, you may also enjoy reading these novels recommended by the editor.
Kate Kerrigan – THE PARTY DRESS
A brilliant new novel by the author of Recipes For A Happy Marriage and The Lost Garden, set in Ireland, New York and London.
Mary Gibson – CUSTARD TARTS AND BROKEN HEARTS
Heartwarming and gritty, the life and loves of a factory girl in Bermondsey through World War I.
Nadine Dorries – THE FOUR STREETS
A heartbreaking family saga set in 1950s Liverpool, the first novel from the stunningly talented Nadine Dorries MP.
An Invitation from the Publisher
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The story starts here.
First published in the UK in 2016 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © Diney Costeloe, 2016
The moral right of Diney Costeloe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
The Girl With No Name Page 54
