by June Francis
‘No one is going to break in here,’ said Emma. ‘I’ve nothing worth stealing.’
‘Even so, it’s no fun discovering someone has been in your house and rifled through your things,’ he warned.
‘OK. I get your message,’ said Emma, opening the door. ‘You’ll come in, of course, and have a cup of tea,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ve been baking, so I can offer you fresh scones with home-made jam.’
He grinned. ‘Sounds good to me, and you can call me Dougie. Why stand on ceremony? I don’t know when last I tasted a home-made scone. Mam goes out to work and she doesn’t have time for baking.’ He wiped his feet on the mat and followed her inside.
Emma didn’t doubt for a moment that some of her neighbours would have spotted this new arrival and could imagine that, before nightfall, the news would be spread all over the village that Emma Booth had entertained a strange man in her cottage. The thought made her chuckle.
She led him through into the kitchen and offered him a chair before putting on the kettle. Then she sat down and stared at him expectantly. ‘So what news have you for me?’ she asked.
He had been gazing about the room, but now he gave her his full attention. ‘The bad news is that Mrs Lizzie Booth was killed in a road accident a couple of years ago. The good news is that your half-sister was not involved.’
Emma was thankful about her half-sister being safe but felt sad that she would never get to meet her father’s second wife. ‘What happened to my half-sister after her mother’s death? Was she put in an orphanage?’
‘No. Mrs Booth had a sister. At the time of her death she and your half-sister were living with Mrs Gregory and her children.’
‘So Betty is living with her aunt and cousins?’
He nodded and took out a notebook. ‘Her aunt is a Mrs Elsie Gregory. She was widowed six months or so before her sister’s death but has since remarried her husband’s brother. She has a son who’s away doing his national service and there are two daughters, one’s working and the other is still at school.’
Emma was relieved that Betty hadn’t been left all alone in the world. ‘Do you think her aunt will allow me to see Betty?’
‘I didn’t get to meet the family,’ said Dougie. ‘I received the information from a police station in Bootle. I can’t see any reason why she shouldn’t.’
‘So where are they living?’
‘Out past Bootle, which is north of Liverpool. In an area called Litherland, near Seaforth. You might have heard of Seaforth …’ said Dougie, his blue eyes meeting Emma’s.
‘No,’ she said.
He looked surprised. ‘But you’ve heard of Gladstone?’
‘Aye. He was a prime minister in Victorian times.’
‘Well, his family had a big house in Seaforth. In fact, there’s a big dock there called Gladstone Dock, named after his brother.’
‘I see.’ Emma frowned. ‘So the Gregorys live near the docks?’
Dougie shook his fair head. ‘No. I just thought you might find it interesting about the dock and the Gladstone family. It’s history, isn’t it?’
She smiled. ‘Aye, it is. Where do the Gregory family live exactly?’
‘A mile or more from the docks, the other side of the Leeds-Liverpool canal, in a large Victorian house with a garden,’ said Dougie, leaning towards her. ‘I went and had a look for curiosity’s sake. If I were you, I’d write to the aunt, introducing yourself, and say that you’d like to meet your half-sister.’
‘You think writing is better than going there?’ she asked, getting up and removing the kettle from the heat.
‘Think, Emma, what happened last time you went in search of your half-sister. It’s not a good idea to spring surprises on people you don’t know. I’ve heard of cases where the last thing people want is the past being dragged into the present. It can ruin some people’s lives.’
Emma wondered how many times people were going to tell her to leave the past alone. ‘How can I ruin Betty’s life? I only want to meet her, not take her away from her family.’
‘I’m just giving you my opinion, you don’t have to take notice of it,’ he said stiffly.
She flushed, realising she had offended him. That was the last thing she wanted to do after he had been so helpful to her. ‘Of course, thank you. I really do appreciate what you’ve done for me in coming all this way to tell me,’ she said awkwardly. ‘If you give me her address, I will write to Mrs Gregory.’
He smiled. ‘Sensible girl. That way you’re less likely to get hurt.’
Emma was not so sure about that, because she knew that if Mrs Gregory wouldn’t allow her to see her half-sister, then she would be hurt. She spread blackberry jam on scones and then made tea.
‘These scones are good,’ said Dougie, after taking a bite out of one. He looked surprised.
She flushed with pleasure and offered him another and sat opposite him to drink her own tea. ‘I should have given you a napkin,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t mind crumbs on the floor,’ he said. ‘What are you planning on doing if Mrs Gregory allows you to meet her niece and you’d like to see more of her? Will you stay here or consider moving to Liverpool?’
Emma did not know what to say as the last thing she had in mind was to leave the cottage that had always been her home. ‘I don’t know yet; so much depends on my getting enough work to support myself. I’m a freelance bookkeeper and have just a couple of small-time clients. That was all right when Granddad was alive and we had his pension and savings, but without them …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘You haven’t thought of making money from baking scones?’
‘You are joking!’ said Emma, smiling.
‘No. These scones are good. May I have another one?’
She offered him the plate, flattered by his comments. ‘There’s already a perfectly good bakery in the village,’ she murmured, ‘and there’s also the Co-op.’
‘Never mind them,’ said Dougie, leaning forward. ‘I was thinking more of you doing what you are doing now. Providing tea and scones for visitors in your own home.’
‘What visitors?’ she asked, taken aback.
‘Tourists who come to the area to visit the ruins of the abbey and walk the fells,’ he replied. ‘I bet there’ll be quite a number of motorists visiting the countryside from Easter onwards. You’re nicely situated here.’
She found it difficult to take his idea seriously. ‘I’d have to sell an awful lot of teas and scones to make a living from it.’
‘Part-living. You’d have your bookkeeping, as well, don’t forget.’
‘Even so …’ Suddenly she remembered what was written in the deeds of the cottage about the house having being used as a shop and tea room. ‘What if I decided to move to Liverpool?’
‘Finding somewhere to live in Liverpool would be difficult. Lots of homes were damaged or destroyed in the Blitz.’ Dougie swallowed the last of his scone. ‘Anyway, this is a lovely place and surely you have friends here? Still, you have to make your own decision. Do you bake anything other than scones? Are you any good at cakes, and in particular, Lancashire specialities?’
Emma was touched that he should be so keen on helping her with suggestions to support herself, but a bit hurt that he wasn’t encouraging her to move to Liverpool closer to his home. ‘I can make Chorley and Eccles cakes, but I’d have to save enough coupons to buy the dried fruit needed. That’s one of the difficulties with your idea – so many commodities are still on ration. Sugar is just one of them.’ She sighed. ‘Before the war my grandmother used to make the best coffee-and-walnut cake I’ve ever tasted. It didn’t taste the same once she ran out of coffee and had to use Camp coffee with chicory.’
‘What about Lancashire hotpot?’
Emma did a double take. ‘It’s a big step from providing visitors with tea and scones to a hot meal.’
‘I’m thinking of the walkers who, after tramping the fells in the rain, are cold and wet, a
s well as being as hungry as a hunter,’ he said, his hand hovering over the last scone. ‘They’d be made up with a bowl of steaming hotpot.’
She passed the scone over to him. ‘I don’t know if it’s feasible. I have a roof that leaks and need money to repair that before I could spend out on tables and chairs and the like.’
He nodded. ‘I understand that, but if you really want to have a go, then you have to make it happen. Life doesn’t hand things to us on a plate. We have to work for them.’
‘I don’t mind hard work, Dougie,’ she said earnestly, ‘but I do need capital to finance this venture and I don’t have any money to spare.’
He frowned. ‘It’s a blinking shame. But I wouldn’t forget my idea, because you never know what’s round the corner. Now, how about showing me your village?’
‘It would be a pleasure, Constable Marshall!’ She knew that all eyes would be upon them but did not care. She would be proud to be seen with him. She collected the crockery and carried it over to the sink, thinking she would wash up later.
Once outside Emma hesitated, wondering which way to take him first. ‘When you walked from the station, you’ll have seen how small my village is compared to Liverpool,’ she said.
‘Yes, but I haven’t seen all of it. Do you have a cinema?’
She nodded. ‘And an assembly room for dancing and concerts. During the war the wounded soldiers used to be brought over from Calderstones hospital. The villagers would put on entertainment for them. I remember thinking how it really brought the war home to me. Up ’til then it didn’t seem real because we weren’t a target for the bombers and we seemed so far from the action going on elsewhere. You must have seen so much in Liverpool.’
‘The port lost a lot of men in the Battle of the Atlantic.’
‘But your father wasn’t one of them.’
‘No, I remember him telling me that he hated the sea.’
‘I love the river here, especially when it freezes over and there’s skating,’ she said dreamily.
‘So you can skate.’
Emma nodded. ‘My grandparents loved to skate. Have you ever been on the ice?’
He grinned. ‘Not wearing skates. Went through the ice on Stanley Park lake for a dare when I was a kid. I fell through it and thought I was a goner.’
‘That must have been scary,’ said Emma.
‘It was, but fortunately I was rescued by a copper.’
She stopped in her tracks. ‘Is that why you became a policeman?’
‘Yes. I decided I wanted to be there to help people when they were in trouble.’
Emma thought that was rather noble of him. ‘You’ve never wanted to be anything else?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Now, why don’t you show me the ruins?’
Emma was happy to do so, because she would be away from prying eyes in the abbey grounds. Once there, she had the feeling that he wasn’t overly impressed with the ruins and was disappointed by his reaction.
‘When next you come to Liverpool, you should see St Luke’s, it’s a bombed-out church at the top of Bold Street,’ he said. ‘Its walls have been left standing as a memorial to the people of Liverpool who were killed during the Blitz.’
‘I’d like to see it,’ she said, finding it hard to believe it could possibly compare to her local ruined abbey.
‘Then perhaps we can make a date sometime and I can show you round Liverpool?’ said Dougie.
Emma flushed with pleasure. ‘I’d really like that. I’ll need your address, so as to let you know when I’m coming.’
‘Okey-doke!’ He took out pencil and notebook and wrote on a leaf of paper and handed it to her. ‘Is there anything else?’
Emma realised that they were back at the cottage and it was time for him to go. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Can you tell me where the registry office is in Liverpool?’
He nodded. ‘There are two. I’ll show you when you come.’
Emma looked forward to keeping that date with him, but first she needed to write a letter to Mrs Gregory and post it as soon as possible.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Oh, hell!’ exclaimed Elsie Gregory, chewing on her lip.
Her hand shook as she reread the letter from Emma Booth and then her knees gave way and she had to sit down. How she wished her husband, Owen, was still alive, but he had died just over two and a half years ago of a muscular wasting disease. She had married his brother, Teddy, last year and she had never spoken to him about the troublesome times with her sister and the fact that Lizzie had a stepdaughter. Marrying Teddy had been a mistake, but when her son, Jared, had left to do his national service, something he had deferred until he finished his apprenticeship, she had missed having a man about the place.
‘What’s up?’ asked Teddy, glancing up from an old American comic he had taken from a pile that he had found in a cupboard in Jared’s bedroom.
Elsie darted him a look. Lizzie had never liked Teddy but, after she had been killed in that terrible road accident here outside the house, her sister’s opinion of him had not seemed to matter when he had started visiting regularly to console her in her second bereavement. She had been glad of his company because she’d been in a bit of a state.
‘I’ve just received this letter,’ she said, then stopped, not knowing how to go on. Should she tell him or shouldn’t she? She remembered Owen saying that the rickets Teddy had suffered from as a child had not only stunted his growth but had affected him in other ways, too. He was certainly nothing like his brother: he had never had a long-term job, but a series of odd jobs, and she remembered Owen slipping him money, even when he could ill afford it when the children were younger and times hard. Before she had married Teddy she had felt sorry for him, reasoning that he could be forgiven in the circumstances for having a chip on his shoulder, but she hadn’t realised just how aggressive and bossy he could be at times. Owen had been the man for her and Teddy wasn’t a patch on him.
‘Well, spit it out, woman,’ he commanded.
Elsie took a deep breath. ‘Y-you remember our Lizzie’s husband, William Booth?’
Teddy’s eyes darkened. ‘Of course I bloody remember him. She would have married me if it weren’t for him getting in there first. I could never work out why she should want to marry a nancy boy artist.’
‘Well, I thought like you at first,’ said Elsie, fiddling with a corner of the letter, thinking he was kidding himself if he believed Lizzie would have ever married him. ‘I remember saying to her, “Who wants to buy pictures during a depression?” but actually he’d sold several pictures before she married him. We both knew his first wife, Mary. She used to lodge a few doors away from us when she was appearing in the theatre.’
‘I didn’t know he’d been married before!’
‘Yes, well, there were things our Lizzie wanted kept quiet. Anyway, as it turned out, not only did his pictures sell but his family had money. You’ll remember how nicely spoken he was. Not the least bit like some of those arty types our Lizzie used to mingle with.’ Elsie’s face softened with the reminiscence. ‘She loved the music hall – she once sang on a cruise ship with a girl who went and caught polio later.’
‘Will you get on with it, woman,’ snapped Teddy. ‘What’s all this got to do with the here and now?’
Elsie hesitated and there was a long silence before she managed to say, ‘This letter is from William’s daughter from his first marriage. She wants to meet Betty and would like to get to know her. Apparently she only recently discovered that her father remarried. Her granddad died suddenly and she found a letter from our Lizzie, sent during the war, telling the girl’s grandmother about Betty and that William had been killed at Dunkirk.’
‘So what’s the problem?’ Teddy rustled the pages of the comic. ‘Is she asking to take Betty off your hands?’
‘I couldn’t just give our Lizzie’s daughter to a stranger,’ said Elsie, shocked.
‘You make it sound as if Betty’s only a little girl, but she�
�s fifteen, older than your Maggie.’
‘She doesn’t say anything about having her live with her,’ said Elsie. ‘Besides, Betty is settled in school here. It would be wrong to send her off somewhere else when she’ll be doing her school certificate next year and then she can get a job.’
‘I see.’ He smirked. ‘You’re thinking of her earning some money at last.’
Elsie flushed angrily. ‘That has nothing to do with it.’
‘No?’ He looked disbelieving. ‘Where does this girl live?’
‘In a village up Lancashire.’
He held out his hand. ‘Let’s see the letter.’
She hesitated before handing it over to him and watched his lips move and his forefinger follow the first line of writing. Then he gave up and handed it back to her. ‘I can’t understand the girl’s writing. So what’s your problem?’
Elsie took a deep breath. ‘Money.’
Teddy stared at her. ‘What do you mean by money?’
‘William entrusted money to our Lizzie,’ she said in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder towards the door. ‘No lawyers involved. He wrote it in a letter and trusted her to do what was right for Emma. He wouldn’t have any truck with banks and kept his money in a safe in the house. After he was killed, she opened a bank account and in it went.’
His jaw dropped. ‘Bloody hell! What kind of sum are we talking about here?’
‘A lot.’ She paused and swallowed. ‘You know how ill Owen was and how he couldn’t work in the end. Well, our Lizzie was very fond of Owen. He was the brother she had never had, and she grieved to see him suffering and me so dragged down by it all, and with the kids to support.’
‘You don’t have to give me the whole sob story,’ growled Teddy, putting down the comic. ‘Get to the point!’
Elsie cleared her throat. ‘Lizzie suggested that we bought a big house and we all lived together. She would loan the money that was Emma’s to Owen and she would provide the other half of the asking price out of her share of his money as his widow. She had actually managed to sell a couple more of his paintings after the war and that brought money in, too.’
