The Four Streets
Page 27
‘Are you joking?’ said Simon. ‘Look, mate, we both know we are on to something here. That man is playing us like a fiddle. He hasn’t said one flaming word since we handcuffed him. We have to keep going until he cracks first.’
‘We are running out of time,’ said Howard. ‘We will have to let him…’
His words trailed off as, from the window, they saw Tommy, Sean and Paddy march in through the station doors.
Brigie had just got the youngest off to sleep when Howard knocked on her front door. She looked surprised to see him and with a warm and welcoming smile, invited him straight in. He made no small talk and looked as though he was in a foul temper.
He opened his notebook and took out his pencil. ‘Would ye like some tea?’ said Brigie sweetly. Howard appeared not to hear and got straight to the point. ‘Did you, on the sixteenth of this month, receive a bottle of whiskey as a gift from the wedding family?’
‘Aye, we did,’ replied Brigie. ‘And so did everyone else.’
‘Can I see your whiskey, madam?’ said Howard, feeling more officious than usual.
Neither he nor Simon believed the card-school story. Now they needed to check whether or not the whiskey bottle had been opened. If it hadn’t, it would be their only lead. And a big one too. They would be able to prove that Jerry’s neighbours had been lying and that was a serious offence indeed.
Brigie looked at Howard questioningly and slowly moved to the sideboard in the front room. Howard followed her.
Brigie bent down to open the cupboard door, looking sideways at Howard and, as she lifted the bottle of whiskey out, she let out a high-pitched squeal and gasped, ‘Oh Jaysus, someone has drunk the bleedin’ whiskey, there’s nothing here.’ She turned and faced Howard with the empty bottle in her hand. A look of pure amazement sat on her face and took a bow.
Howard snapped his book shut and stormed out of the kitchen.
At exactly the same time in Kathleen’s kitchen, Simon was asking the same question.
‘Sure,’ said Kathleen as she went to the kitchen cupboard, ‘we are saving it for Christmas mind, here ye are,’ and she took out a full and unopened bottle of whiskey.
Within an hour, Jerry walked in through his own back door. Everyone had gathered in his kitchen, even Brigie, as once again Kathleen poured out whiskey for all. ‘Bugger Christmas,’ she laughed as she cracked open the seal. ‘Easy come, easy go,’ said Sean.
He and Paddy had both told the police that there was a card school, playing for money, in Sean’s house that night, well after the women had gone to bed.
They had embellished the story with the admission that they had drunk almost the whole bottle of whiskey between them. They were both prepared to sign a witness statement to that effect. When Paddy said firmly, ‘Aye, and my lad wants to withdraw his, so he does. Now he thinks it was me he saw leaving the entry, not Jerry,’ Howard’s heart sank.
Gone was his promotion.
Simon and Howard knew they were back to square one. With no evidence they had to let Jerry go. He had an alibi with two witnesses. He was safe.
Nellie and Kitty were back together on the comfy chair. Nellie had refused to move from Jerry’s arms until Kitty came back in through the door.
Everyone lifted their glass to drink in relief, when Kathleen tapped her glass with a spoon and spoke.
‘Before we drink,’ she said, ‘we need to say thank you to someone. To Alice.’ Everyone turned and smiled at Alice.
Alice beamed, feeling swamped by a sense of pride. Her face flushed red and tears pricked at her eyes when everyone lifted their glass and said loudly, ‘To Alice.’
It was the happiest moment of her life.
Nellie and Kitty hugged each other, grinning. They had no idea what they were grinning at, or what had just occurred, but everyone was happy and so were they.
Suddenly, without warning, Kitty leapt from the chair and raced through the back door to the outhouse.
As Kitty leant over the pan to throw up the first time, she felt someone holding back her hair from the vomit and stroking the back of her neck. She could hear the voices wafting down the yard from the kitchen, laughing and chattering away. Celebrating. Everyone joyous and happy.
Another shot of whiskey, she thought, and they will be singing next and pushing the chairs back to dance around the kitchen. They wouldn’t miss her. She was shaking with cold and felt clammy as she knelt on the floor and clung onto the wooden seat, a long, polished plank that stretched across the top of the toilet. Next to the seat stood a large pile of cut-up pages of the Echo, to use as toilet paper. The smell from the printer’s ink made her heave again.
The soothing, ethereal whispers calmed her panic. She knew everyone was in the kitchen, and there could be no one with her in the outhouse, but the nausea made her feel so deathly that she was beyond thinking or caring.
Just as she leant over to vomit for the second time and felt her own hair being lifted clear, she saw a long strand of red hair sweep past the side of her face.
Kathleen looked at Maura to see if she had noticed Kitty dashing out of the back door to the outhouse. She had.
Maura went white. She put her hand to her mouth and held onto the back of the chair to steady herself as the realization hit her with the force of a truck.
Kathleen moved over to her side and put an arm round her waist.
‘Oh my God, Kathleen, ’twas before me very eyes and I never knew. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what next? What will we do?’
‘Sh,’ Kathleen replied. ‘Let’s enjoy tonight, Maura. That problem is ours to share, tomorrow.’
We hope you enjoyed this book.
To find out about Nadine Dorries, click here.
For an invitation from the publisher, click here.
About this Book
Heartbreaking, gripping, life-affirming, this story, based on Nadine’s own childhood background, is set in the Catholic community in 1950s Liverpool, where young men and women, fleeing the poverty of rural Ireland, have come to look for a better life.
1950s Liverpool. In the tight-knit Irish Catholic community of the Four Streets, two girls are growing up.
One is motherless – and hated by the cold woman who is determined to take her dead mother’s place. Will her adored father wake up to what is happening before it is too late?
The other is hiding a dreadful secret which she dare not let slip to anyone, lest it rips the heart out of the community. And yet, how long can she possibly live with it?
In the Four Streets there is almost nothing that a cup of tea and a good chat won’t sort out. Laughing, grieving, hoping for better things – all this the people of the Four Streets can do together. But what can they do when a betrayal at the very heart of their world comes to light?
About the Author
NADINE DORRIES grew up in a working-class family in Liverpool. She trained as a nurse, then followed with a successful career in which she established and sold her own business. She has been the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire since 2005 and has three daughters.
A Letter from the Publisher
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HeadofZeusBooks
The story starts here.
First published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Nadine Dorries, 2014
The moral right of Nadine Dorries to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication m
ay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781781857588
ISBN (XTPB) 9781781858240
ISBN (E) 9781781857571
Head of Zeus Ltd
Clerkenwell House
45-47 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.headofzeus.com
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Display Options Notice
Dedication
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
About this Book
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright