Daughters of Liverpool

Daughters of Liverpool
Annie Groves

Evocative and heartrending saga of Liverpool during World War Two, from the author of AS TIME GOES BY – rising star Annie GrovesKatie’s full of trepidation as she arrives in Liverpool. It’s her first posting and her work will be so secret that she can’t even speak about it to the family she’s billeted with. She makes it clear that she’s here to do her bit for the war effort, not to flirt with the many servicemen based at the nearby barracks.Which is just fine with Luke, son of the household and battle-scarred veteran of Dunkirk. He’s had his heart broken already by a flighty nurse. His mother can’t help worry about him - but she’s got more than enough on her plate with her youngest children, the teenage twins, who don’t see why a war should stop them having fun and achieving their ambition to go on the stage. Then the bombs begin to rain in Liverpool in earnest and everyone, from oldest to youngest, must realise what matters most in life.

Daughters of Liverpool

ANNIE GROVES

Copyright (#u7c118bb9-cbea-5d60-9460-947a256bb209)

This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are he work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

Copyright © Annie Groves 2008

Annie Groves asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins eBooks.

Ebook Edition JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007287888

Version: 2017-09-12

Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at

harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green)

Dedication (#u7c118bb9-cbea-5d60-9460-947a256bb209)

To Barbara and Tony for their kindness and understanding

Epigraph (#u7c118bb9-cbea-5d60-9460-947a256bb209)

I would like to thank the following for their invaluable help:

Teresa Chris, my agent.

Susan Opie, my editor at HarperCollins.

Yvonne Holland, whose expertise enables me ‘not to have nightmares’ about getting things wrong.

Everyone at HarperCollins who contributed to the publication of this book.

My friends in the RNA, who as always have been so generous with their time and help on matters ‘writerly’.

My grateful thanks go to fellow author Bryan Perrett for his generosity in sharing with me his knowledge of World War Two Liverpool in general and the Postal Censorship Service in particular.

Contents

Title Page (#u51dff33d-5ad2-5ac3-9743-cc7098b06344)Copyright (#u4a30f66f-7f39-5b7d-9fe8-934dab5ece45)Dedication (#u3c6976e4-dd1a-50e6-bcbf-69cabebd2e3d)Epigraph (#u4689b79e-806d-550f-81e8-23f385901159)Chapter One: December (#u2056d8b8-544a-5608-a07d-79a556150533)Chapter Two (#u6a56fc2f-24b8-58f7-8c6c-55fe56db79c7)Chapter Three (#ua925685a-f599-52ae-9775-a25baedf3246)Chapter Four: Saturday Twenty One December (#ucd0cb2b9-8d2f-558a-af19-52ff0d2f24c4)Chapter Five (#u3a3ce6a2-0be9-52eb-9d3b-6d4e72636316)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight: March 1941 (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen: Easter Saturday, April 1941 (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen: Easter Sunday (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen: Thursday One May (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty: Friday Two May (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)Also by Annie Groves (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

ONE (#u7c118bb9-cbea-5d60-9460-947a256bb209)

December 1940 (#u7c118bb9-cbea-5d60-9460-947a256bb209)

‘I called in at the Salvage Depot to see Dad on my way over here, and he was telling me that you’re going to have some girl billeted on you.’

Jean Campion looked up from her annual task of anxiously working out if the Christmas turkey she had ordered that morning from St John’s Market was going to be too big for her gas oven, to look at her son, her hazel eyes warm with maternal love.

She loved all four of her children, but Luke was the eldest, tall and dark-haired, like his dad, Sam, and her only son – a man now, not a boy any longer, with the experience of Dunkirk behind him and a year in the army.

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Jean pushed her still brown hair back off her face, her cheeks flushed a soft pink from her exertions.

The kitchen was the heart of the Campion family’s home. Modestly sized but warmly furnished with all the love that Jean and Sam gave their family, it shone with the pride Jean took in her home.

Her kitchen was her pride and joy, newly refurbished the year before the war had started. A gas geyser on the wall next to the sink provided Jean with hot water for all her domestic tasks, and was ‘extra’ to the electric immersion heater upstairs in its own cupboard next to the bathroom. She and Sam had distempered the walls themselves, painting them a cheerful shade of yellow that made Jean feel as though the sun was shining even when it wasn’t.

Sam had got the well-polished linoleum cheap from a salvage job he’d been on, and had fitted it himself, in the bathroom as well as the kitchen, and Jean kept it as shiny and as spotless as her pots and pans.

Jean was a careful housewife and she’d been thrilled when she’d spotted the remnant of yellow fabric with its red strawberry pattern on it, which she’d bought for the kitchen curtains.

The big family oak table had come from a second-hand shop, and Jean and Sam had reupholstered the chairs themselves.

‘She’s supposed to be arriving this evening, but you know what the trains are like. Your dad wasn’t keen on us taking someone in but, like I said to him, it’s our duty really. We’ve got two spare rooms now, after all, with you in the army and based at Seacombe, and Grace training to be a nurse and living in at the hospital, and only me and your dad and the twins here. Mind you, your dad said straight out that it would have to be a woman, on account of Lou and Sasha.’

The mention of his fifteen-year-old twin sisters made Luke smile.

‘Well, I hope whoever she is that she likes jitterbug music,’ he told his mother.

‘I’m putting her in what was the twins’ room now that they’ve moved up into Grace’s old room in the attic,’ said Jean, ignoring his teasing comment about the twins’ devotion to their gramophone and the dance music they played on it. ‘It will be more fitting. I could have done wi’out her arriving the week before Christmas, mind, but there you are.’

‘In uniform, is she?’ Luke asked.

Jean shook her head. ‘No. She’s going to be working at the old Littlewoods Pools place off Edge Lane, where they censor the post. You know where I mean.’

Luke nodded. ‘They’ve got going on for two thousand working there now, so I’ve heard.’

‘Well, never mind about her,’ Jean said, ‘let’s have a proper look at you.’

They had the kitchen to themselves, otherwise Jean would not have risked embarrassing her tall handsome soldier son by subjecting him to the kind of maternal scrutiny that more properly belonged to his schooldays, minus a brisk demand as to whether or not he had washed behind his ears, but the truth was that she was concerned about him.