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  ‘Dad’s home,’ Dulcie said fearfully to her sister who hadn’t yet noticed his bike. ‘We’re in for it now.’

  May pulled a couldn’t-care-less face. ‘It’s not my fault. It was your idea to go.’

  Dulcie felt like slapping her. It was quite true it had been her idea, but then May always wriggled out of any blame. ‘Well, at least don’t go and say we went in the river,’ Dulcie said. ‘We’ll say we fell over on the muddy grass.’

  May stopped in her tracks. ‘But that’s a lie!’ she exclaimed, opening her blue eyes very wide. ‘You’d have to confess it!’

  Dulcie had taken her First Communion and perhaps unwisely had told May all the sins she was supposed to tell the priest in the confessional.

  ‘It’s only a very tiny lie,’ Dulcie said. ‘And it’s a kindly meant one because Dad will be very upset if he thought we were playing somewhere dangerous. I will confess it in church, but don’t you dare tell on me.’

  May gave her a sly look. ‘I won’t if you give me half your sweets.’

  Dulcie sighed at this blackmail. If she didn’t agree, May would go out of her way to get her into worse trouble. Dad always brought them home sweets on a Saturday, but they wouldn’t get them tonight anyway, they’d probably get sent to bed without any tea, so half of nothing wasn’t much to give up. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But don’t you ever ask me to help you when you’re in trouble!’

  They walked on then, Dulcie’s heart thumping loudly with fear. Dad had never given her a good hiding before for anything, but maybe he would for something as serious as this.

  Dulcie didn’t use the key to the door, Dad would think it even more sneaky if he knew they’d taken that. She rang the bell and a few seconds later heard his footsteps coming down the stairs.

  ‘Not today, thank you,’ he said as he opened the door and saw them standing on the step. He closed the door again.

  This was one of his little jokes, pretending he didn’t know them, it showed he was in a very good mood, and he probably thought they’d run ahead of their mother. Usually when he did this, Dulcie would say, ‘Let me in, little pig’ through the letter-box, and he’d reply, ‘Oh no, Mr Wolf, not by the hair of my chinny, chin chin, I won’t let you in.’ But Dulcie couldn’t bring herself to play out this game today.

  She took a deep breath and lifted the flap of the letterbox. ‘Let us in, Daddy, we’ve been naughty, we went to the park when Mummy told us to stay home.’

  The door opened immediately and there he was, looking down at them with a frighteningly stern expression on his face.

  Reg Taylor was a big man, six foot two with shoulders like a barn door. He had the kind of tough appearance that made other men nervous of getting on the wrong side of him, fair hair cut very short on top, cold, pale blue eyes, pitted skin and a strong jaw-line. As his neighbour Edna had observed, he did look like a thug, that was until he smiled and showed the warmth of his real character. But anyone, even his children, was inclined to back away when he looked as he did now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dulcie whispered. ‘But it was so nice outside and we just wanted to see the baby ducks.’

  Reg looked the pair of them up and down, noting the mud on their clothes and shoes. He realized immediately that they had been in the river. ‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘Take your shoes off and leave them there, I’ll sort them out later.’

  He walked on back up the passage towards the stairs while they took their shoes off, but stopped suddenly to look back. ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked.

  Dulcie gulped. Whenever her dad used the word mother instead of mummy it was a sure sign he was cross with her. ‘At the hairdresser’s,’ she said.

  He gave a sort of grunt and disappeared up the stairs. The girls took off their shoes, placed them neatly on the mat and holding hands, nervously crept up too.

  The flat consisted of three rooms, a bathroom and kitchen. When they’d moved here eighteen months earlier from just two rooms in New Cross, they’d all thought they were in heaven. Back in New Cross the stove and sink were on the landing, they had to share the outside lavatory with several other families and go to the public baths. It was so exciting watching as Dad painted and papered, turning a gloomy, dirty place into a real home, to go with him to choose furniture, to see Mum sewing curtains and cushion covers. It didn’t matter that the furniture was secondhand, or that there was no stair carpet. Dad kept saying that they were on the way up.

  Everything had seemed so perfect then. Dad had joined up in the army at the start of the war and had been away in the fighting for almost all of Dulcie’s early years, but now he was home for good, taking up building work again and coming home every night. Lee Manor School was right across the street from their flat, there were nice shops down the road by Hither Green station, the park and the library to go to. But best of all was that Mum had been so very happy, dancing around, singing, laughing and cuddling Dad. Dulcie had thought it was going to be that way for ever.

  But it didn’t stay like that for long. Soon Mum gave up laughing and singing and lay around in her dressing-gown, chain-smoking the way Dulcie remembered she had so often done during the war. She stopped cleaning the flat, the washing and ironing mounted up, she didn’t seem to care about anything other than how she looked when she went out.

  ‘Come on in here,’ Dad called out once they’d reached the landing outside the living-room.

  They slunk in to find their father sitting on the couch. It was a large room with a bay window overlooking the street. At night when the curtains were drawn, a tablelamp lit and the fire roaring away, the cream wallpaper with gold scrolls looked so very posh. It looked nice too in the mornings when the sun came in, but the sun was gone from the windows now, and in the gloomy light the room looked as sad as her father’s expression.

  Dulcie realized almost immediately that he had been home for some time. He had changed out of his work overalls into his grey trousers and a clean shirt, and he’d cleared the grate of last night’s ashes and laid it with kindling ready to relight later when it got cold.

  ‘I’m not going to ask why you disobeyed your mother,’ he said, looking at them with cold eyes. ‘I know why. But I want you to think what would have happened if you had been run over by a car, or fallen in the river.’

  Both girls just stood there, hanging their heads.

  ‘That’s why I make rules about you not going out alone,’ Reg went on. ‘You see, if either of those things happened I wouldn’t know where you were. Can you imagine what it would be like for me and your mother if you just didn’t turn up? How would I know where to look for you? Little girls sometimes get taken by bad men, that’s why it’s important we always know where you are.’

  He held out his arms to them, and the girls, realizing he wasn’t going to smack them after all, ran to them willingly. He pulled them on to his knees and cuddled them tightly.

  ‘You must never, ever do that again,’ he said with a strange kind of croak in his voice, his cheeks rough against their smooth ones. ‘You two are the most precious things in the world to me, and I’m only strict with you because I want to keep you from harm.’

  ‘Are you going to spank us and send us to bed without any tea?’ May asked, her voice trembling.

  ‘Not this time,’ he said, and Dulcie heard the faintest hint of amusement in his voice. ‘But if you do it again I will, make no mistake about that. As it happens I’ve been home for over an hour. If you’d been here I would have taken you to the park myself, and we might have had an ice-cream too. But there’ll be no ice-cream or sweets this weekend now.’

  He sent them to their bedroom then to change their clothes and put on dry socks. As they left the room Dulcie saw him going over to the table and picking up all the bottles of nail varnish and other cosmetics their mother had left on it this morning.

  A long narrow passage ran from the living-room past the stairwell, Anne and Reg’s bedroom, the kitchen and then the bathroom before reaching the girls’ bedro
om right at the back of the house. They loved their room, even though the double bed they shared took up most of the space. There was pretty paper with pink roses on the walls and a pink eiderdown on the bed. They could look out on the gardens that belonged to the ground-floor flats, and their bedroom’s distance from the living-room meant they could play noisy games without their parents complaining. Afternoon sun shone through the window and it was invariably warmer than the living-room as old Mrs Gardener who lived downstairs kept a fire going in the room below them.

  After changing their skirts, cardigans and socks, they stayed in their room to play, climbing up on the bed with their dolls. May seemed completely untroubled, chatting to her doll Belinda as she pretended to feed her with a toy bottle. But Dulcie still felt very anxious for she knew that once Mum came home a row between her parents was inevitable and she was ashamed that this time it would be all her fault.

  She didn’t have long to wait. Just after the clock chimed four-thirty along in the living-room, Mum came up the stairs, her high heels clicking on the painted boards.

  ‘I’m back, girls,’ she called out.

  May went to jump off the bed and go to her, but Dulcie stopped her. ‘Wait until Daddy’s spoken to her,’ she whispered.

  They heard Dad say something sarcastic about her hair, then they must have gone into the living-room together and closed the door because the girls couldn’t hear their voices any more.

  Dulcie gradually relaxed when the expected shouting didn’t begin. She picked up the Enid Blyton book she’d borrowed from the library, lay back on the bed beside May and began to read.

  ‘Why didn’t you arrange to have your hair done when the kids were at school?’ Reg asked Anne as he handed her a cup of tea and sat down opposite her in an armchair. He didn’t want to start yet another row with her, but when he’d told her what the girls had done she had merely laughed as if it didn’t matter. ‘It was hardly fair to expect them to be shut in here on a nice sunny day.’

  ‘It’s you who insists they can’t play outside,’ she said haughtily, lighting up yet another cigarette. ‘Besides, I needed my hair done today, I’m working tonight.’

  Reg bristled at this piece of news. Just the way she sat, so poised and elegant, her legs crossed, one shoe swinging loosely from her foot, irritated him intensely. Yet irritated as he was, as always he was struck by her classic oval face, features as perfect as a china doll’s, the big speedwell blue eyes and soft, sensual mouth.

  She had been merely pretty when he first met her at a dance at the Empire, Leicester Square in December of 1937. Just seventeen, all eyes and soft blonde hair. She had made him think of a baby deer, and he’d felt so big and ugly next to her. Even now that he knew how heartless, selfish and cruel she could be, he was still awed by her beauty.

  So many young mothers had lost their good looks during the war – the hardships, danger, anxiety and lack of nutritious food had turned them into drab, worn, prematurely middle-aged women. But not Anne. She was more curvy now, her soft floaty hair had been styled into Hollywood glamour, the pretty but bland features had matured into striking beauty, and there was a bold, challenging look in her eyes. Even though he bitterly resented her constantly buying new clothes, cosmetics and getting her hair done, he did feel proud that she kept herself looking so good.

  ‘Working tonight!’ he exclaimed. ‘I told you I was going to take you all to the pictures.’

  She merely shrugged and puffed on her cigarette. ‘We can do that another night. You didn’t tell the girls we were going.’

  ‘Would it have made any difference if I had?’ Reg said, his voice rising. ‘Since when did you care tuppence about letting them down? I agreed you could work at the pub lunchtimes. Not bloody Saturday nights.’

  ‘Tosh needs me there, and besides, I need the money,’ she said, her tone more defensive now.

  ‘Oh, Tosh needs you there, does he?’ Reg said sarcastically. ‘It doesn’t matter that your husband and children have to spend the evening alone. And it makes a lot of bloody sense to spend what you’d earn for one night on having your hair done. Dare I ask what we are having for tea tonight? Or are we to go hungry because you are swanning off to work behind a bar?’

  Reg knew by the way she looked shiftily away from him that this was in fact true, and the last of his good humour left him. ‘You’d better have bought some food, Anne!’

  ‘Oh, calm down, Reg,’ she said, getting up from the couch. ‘I just didn’t have time to get anything for tea. I’ll send Dulcie down for fish and chips.’

  It was the way she was making for her handbag which made Reg suspect she had something more to hide. He leaped up and reached it before she could, snatched out her purse and spilled the contents out on to the table. All there was were two half-crowns, a two-shilling piece, a sixpence and a couple of coppers.

  ‘I gave you eight quid last night,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘What have you spent it on?’

  When he got in from work he’d gone into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich, and all the kitchen cabinet contained was half a stale loaf, one egg, a tiny piece of cheese, milk and margarine.

  ‘I bought some beef for tomorrow,’ she said defiantly.

  Reg caught hold of her arm and dragged her out to the kitchen to prove this. There was a tiny piece of beef in the meat safe, but Reg knew by its grey appearance it came from the market and would be as tough as old boots. ‘So what are we supposed to have with it?’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘I’ll get vegetables tomorrow,’ she said, trying to get free of his hand. ‘The kids were playing up and I forgot about getting them.’

  ‘Show me what you bought for yourself,’ he commanded, hauling her by the arm along to the bedroom.

  ‘Oh Reg, don’t be like this,’ she pleaded, starting to cry. ‘I just had to have a dress. I’ll pay back the housekeeping out of my wages and I won’t buy anything again, I promise.’

  ‘Show me!’ he said, pushing her towards the wardrobe.

  She brought out a blue dress and even though Reg knew little about fashion he knew it was an expensive one by the embroidery which ran down the bodice and across the front of the skirt.

  It was too much for Reg. He knew the girls both needed new shoes, their underwear was threadbare too, and for the first time ever he slapped Anne hard across the face.

  ‘You vain, selfish bitch,’ he hissed. ‘You’d let your children wear shoes too small for them and go hungry just so you can show off in that pub.’

  She just looked up at him, big blue eyes full of shock that he’d struck her, and it made him feel like a maggot.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hit you,’ he said hurriedly. ‘But my God, you deserve it, Anne! Stay in here. Get yourself tarted up for bloody Tosh, he’s just about your level. I’ll feed the children and take them to the pictures on my own.’

  He turned on his heel and walked out, slamming the bedroom door behind him.

  Anne was severely shaken by the slap Reg had given her, so much so that she lay on the bed with the eiderdown wrapped around her, shaking like a leaf as she listened to him getting the girls’ coats and shoes on to go out. Part of her wanted to get up and go and apologize, say she wouldn’t go to work tonight and promise faithfully she’d never spend the housekeeping money on herself again. But the other part wouldn’t let her.

  It was always like this for her. Part of her was happy enough just to be a wife and mother, grateful she had a sober, hard-working husband, a nice home and the security of being loved. Yet the greater part resented the mundane chores, living on a tight budget, trapped in a life that never changed. This wasn’t what she’d expected when she fell in love with Reg, she thought he’d take her to a world completely different to the one she’d grown up in, and instead all he was doing was trying to make a replica of it.

  Anne’s parents were over forty when she was born. Their only other child had died of meningitis when he was two, and they had all but given up hope of ever having anoth
er. Throughout her childhood Anne had been all too aware that she was everything in the world to them, and she felt stifled by their over-protective ways. She never got to play with other children, instead her parents played with her, board-games every night, jigsaw puzzles and reading books. They took her to the circus and the seaside, on walks and for boat rides, but all she really wanted was to be allowed to run around with other children, to join the games of rounders in the street, to walk along the high street and look in the shops on her own.

  Their house was a semi-detached one in Eltham, in a quiet, tree-lined avenue, and all their neighbours were as genteel and restrained as her parents. Anne’s father left for his office in the City at exactly eight every morning, wearing his bowler hat and dark suit and carrying his furled umbrella. She and her mother kissed him goodbye at the door and greeted him again when he came in at six in the evening. He would ask over tea how their day had been, and as young as seven or eight Anne could remember wondering why he always asked because each day was almost identical. Taken to school and collected later, half an hour’s piano practice, laying the tea table, and that was all.

  On summer nights she would lie awake in bed hearing children’s voices in the distance. She knew they came from the nearby council estate, and from what her mother said they were all under-fed and neglected, but it seemed to her that they had much more exciting lives than she did.

  At sixteen she was sent to a private secretarial college in Catford, and all at once she was travelling alone on the train each day and not having to wear a school uniform. That was almost enough in itself, but to her delight it led to making new friends that for once her parents approved of. Most of the other girls had parents who were wealthier and further up the social scale than her own, and she was invited home to tea and even to stay overnight at these girls’ homes. Ironically, her parents’ trust in professional people was misplaced, for they couldn’t really care less what their daughters got up to as long as they kept out of their hair. So while Mr and Mrs Hobbs smugly imagined Anne was mixing with the elite and being carefully chaperoned, she was in fact learning to put on make-up, making eyes at boys, trying alcohol, and out exploring the West End.