Little Girl Lost

A Liverpool Lass

The Girl From Penny Lane

Liverpool Taffy

The Mersey Girls

Strawberry Fields

Rainbow’s End

Rose of Tralee

No Silver Spoon

Polly’s Angel

The Girl from Seaforth Sands

The Liverpool Rose

Poor Little Rich Girl

The Bad Penny

Down Daisy Street

A Kiss and a Promise

Two Penn’orth of Sky

A Long and Lonely Road

The Cuckoo Child

Darkest Before Dawn

Orphans of the Storm

Beyond the Blue Hills

Katie Flynn has lived for many years in the Northwest. A compulsive writer, she started with short stories and articles and many of her early stories were broadcast on Radio Mersey. She decided to write her Liverpool series after hearing the reminiscences of family members about life in the city in the early years of the twentieth century. She also writes as Judith Saxton. For the past few years, she has had to cope with ME but has continued to write.

‘Arrow’s best and biggest saga author. She’s good.’
Bookseller

‘If you pick up a Katie Flynn book it’s going to be a wrench to put it down again’
Holyhead & Anglesey Mail

‘A heartwarming story of love and loss’
Woman’s Weekly

‘One of the best Liverpool writers’
Liverpool Echo

‘[Katie Flynn] has the gift that Catherine Cookson had of bringing the period and the characters to life’
Caernarfon & Denbigh Herald

This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form (including any digital form) other than this in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Epub ISBN: 9781446409510

Version 1.0

  

Published by Arrow Books in 2006

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright © Katie Flynn, 2006

Katie Flynn has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by
William Heinemann

Arrow Books

The Random House Group Limited, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London
SW1
V 2
SA

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

ISBN
9780099486992 (from Jan 2007)

ISBN
0 09 948699 7

Contents

Chapter One

December 1910

As Sylvie turned to walk along beside the river it was raining; soft fine rain which blew gently with the breeze, scarcely visible but nevertheless a force to be reckoned with. It blew against Sylvie’s cold cheeks, gave the surface of the river the aspect of frosted glass, and added a satiny gleam to the paving stones beneath her feet.

Sylvie turned up the collar of her dark coat and shivered a little; what the devil was she going to do? She had spent the evening with her sister, Annie, who lived not far from where she was now standing, and of course she had told her everything. Annie was older than she by a full dozen years, and ever since her awful problem had become clear Sylvie had been certain, in the back of her mind, that Annie would have the answer to her predicament, as she had solved so many of Sylvie’s problems in the past.

But this problem, it appeared, was one which even Annie could not solve. ‘Wharrever made you
do
it, queen?’ she had kept repeating with increasing querulousness. ‘You know your Len’s temper, none better, and Robbie’s years older’n you! What’s more, if he were anyone’s pal, he were our Bertie’s. So why did you do it?’

After four or five repetitions of this question, Sylvie could have screamed aloud. Surely it was obvious? She had been tremendously flattered when Robbie, her big brother’s pal, had come home on leave from his ship and had taken notice of the little girl who had suddenly become a woman. He had been sweet to her, bought her presents, taken her to the picture house, even let her ramble on about her marriage to Len, because with Len in prison she had needed someone to talk to, someone who would not simply moralise and remind her that Len had already served over half his sentence and would soon be free once more. Robbie had even been good with little Becky, buying her sweets and chocolate bars, a pencil box, a colouring book. Then, on his last evening at home, he had taken Sylvie to see a pal . . . only the pal had been out, and the house had been empty. Robbie had pretended to be surprised, had apologised humbly for putting her in a difficult position, and had begun kissing and cuddling her . . . and then the kissing and the cuddling had turned into something else, something a deal more dangerous, and before she knew it . . .

I was a wicked girl, Sylvie told herself miserably now, wiping the misty rain from her face. I married Len because I was expecting his child, but at least he wanted to marry me and was pleased as punch when Becky was born, even though he had hoped for a boy.

Of course she had not actually wanted to marry Len, or anyone else for that matter. But her mother had insisted that Sylvie let Len make an honest woman of her. ‘You’ll have to marry him, queen,’ she had said lugubriously. ‘Them Dugdales is a big fambly, and they’ve a deal o’ money and influence round here. Times ain’t easy, and if I were to say you was goin’ to keep the baby but you wouldn’t marry their Len . . . well, I’d lose me job for a start, and so would your brother, and the chances are the Dugdales would go to Father O’Reilly and he’d say we had no choice – you had to marry the kid’s father or be excommunicated or wharrever. And you’ll be well looked after by that Len. He’s a good worker, never short of a bob or two, and he’s crazy about you, no kiddin’. Then there’s the child. Mrs Dugdale’s for ever on about havin’ a grandchild . . . oh aye, they’d make a great fuss of a baby, believe me. You’d both be in clover for the rest of your lives.’

But it wasn’t fair, Sylvie told herself now, walking drearily through the rain and looking down at the murky waters of the Mersey as she passed. They talked me into marrying Len when I knew very well it were a mistake – I were only sixteen – and once the knot were tied I realised he were jealous of every feller who looked at me twice and wouldn’t listen to reason . . . and he sulked whenever something went wrong and expected me to live in the pub with his parents and scarce poke me nose outside it except when he or his ma and pa were with me . . .

And then he went too far when he was breaking up a fight in the pub and a feller ended up in hospital badly injured. Len didn’t know his victim were sufferin’ from a weak chest and the scuffers came runnin’ and Len ended up in Walton Gaol, and has been there for the last two and a half years, and I’m stuck with Ma and Pa Dugdale and I’ve been a fool and oh, oh, how I wish Len was in the nick for good, because when he finds out . . .

Her mind somersaulted at the thought of what would happen if – or rather when – Len discovered her secret. He hadn’t been due out of stir for another six months and she had trusted to luck – and her sister Annie – to think of a solution before then. Only his awkward old grandfather had been and gone and died, and the authorities had agreed to let Len out of the nick for the funeral, and Sylvie was sure that the moment he set eyes on her . . . oh, God, no one else bar Annie knows, but Len will know, and he’ll bleedin’ kill me and chuck me body in the bleedin’ river, sure as my name’s Sylvie Dugdale, and it’ll serve me right.

The rain was beginning to fall faster and in her despair Sylvie had been keeping her eyes on the ground, so she did not see the man approaching until he was almost upon her. For one awful moment she thought it was Len, and even when she realised her mistake she jumped sideways clumsily, anxious that they should not collide. Unfortunately, she did not see one of the bollards which lined the bank at this point until she had bumped into it. She stumbled, tried to right herself, and the next thing she knew she was struggling in the ice-cold water of the Mersey. Terrified, hampered by her winter clothing and unable to swim, she opened her mouth to scream and felt the water rush down her throat, the currents drag her down.

Why does it always perishin’ well rain when I’m comin’ off duty? Brendan O’Hara asked himself as he strode along the embankment, gazing morosely ahead and screwing up his eyes against the drops blowing into his face. His helmet gave him some protection, but he knew that when he got back to his lodgings he would have to wring as much water as he could out of his heavy cape before he hung it on the back of his bedroom door. There was one good thing about being on a late shift, though: Mrs Taggart, his landlady, would be in bed, and with a bit of luck the kitchen would still be warmed by the fire in the big old-fashioned stove. That meant he would be able to make himself a cup of tea and maybe even fill a hot-water bottle to take to bed with him. If neither of Mrs Taggart’s other lodgers had got soaked, he would let down the drying rack from its position up against the ceiling and hang his cape over that. Cheered by this thought, Brendan rubbed his cold hands together and increased his pace; the sooner he got home – except that he still found it difficult to call No. 48 Hunter Street home – the sooner he could be curled up in bed.

Despite the fact that he had now lived in the city for almost two years, Brendan still missed the leprechaun-haunted bogs of Connemara, where he had been born and bred. His father had scraped a living on a tiny farm, breeding sheep, growing potatoes and cutting turfs of peat to sell to town dwellers. It had been a hard life but the O’Haras had been luckier than most and had managed to feed themselves and have enough money over to educate their two sons at a local school. But the sad truth was that the farm could not support both boys; it was a matter of necessity that Brendan, the younger by five years, should get employment away from the farm, and if possible send back money to help towards his parents’ keep as they grew older.