and even more so when baby Megan had arrived on the scene. Rita had treasured the dream of finding a place of their own, away from Charlie’s interfering, domineering mother, hoping that this would be the solution to the widening cracks in her marriage. She’d been foolish to think that, she now realised. Now she was wise to Charlie’s callous and vicious nature, but here she was, trapped with the poisonous Ma Kennedy, Charlie goodness knows where, and her children far away from Empire Street.
She sighed at the thought of her children; she ached at being apart from them. However, she knew Megan and Michael were safe, away from the air raids, living on a farm in Freshfield all the way out in Lancashire. Tommy Callaghan was with them, which would liven things up, and she tried to visit them when she could, always amazed at how they thrived away from the air raids. They looked so different from the pale children of the city who remained; those whose parents couldn’t bear to part with them and who now roamed the bombsites of Merseyside, exposed to many dangers. Thank God the farming couple had welcomed them with open arms, and Rita knew the children would have the love and security they needed – not to mention all those fresh vegetables and meat, and the cream of the milk and the rich golden butter they could never have hoped for in Empire Street.
She pushed open the inner door to the shop. Winnie was slumped behind the till, her eyes dead. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She could barely summon the interest to speak.
‘Of course it’s me. I’m late because the shift didn’t finish on time.’ Rita thought it best not to say she’d stopped off for a cup of tea next door. ‘Shall I put the kettle on? It’s freezing in here.’ No wonder there were no customers, she thought.
‘Certainly not. Tea’s rationed, as you should know.’ There was a trace of the old Winnie, snobbish and sharp. The fact that she had a case of tea stowed away in the cellar was not to be mentioned. Rita bit back the retort.
‘If you’re sure? Then I’ll go and get changed.’ Rita let herself out of the shop again and made her way upstairs.
Winnie’s situation was all of her own making. She’d kept a secret for twenty years or more and it had only come to light during a terrifying raid just before Christmas. Dolly, as fire warden, had had to make sure everyone left their houses and went to the bomb shelter at the end of the street, but Winnie had resisted, even though the roof of the shop was alight. She’d been desperate to rescue a box of papers from the loft. Dolly, at great risk to herself, had managed to persuade her difficult neighbour to get to safety and had looked after the box. In all the confusion of the raid it had finished up in the Feeny family home. Both Dolly and Rita were now aware of its contents.
Far from relying on the income from the shop, it transpired that Winnie had been the owner of three properties: the shop and its living quarters, a large house in Southport and a guesthouse in Crosby. All those years Rita had dreamed of moving out – and Winnie had said nothing, like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold. She’d been far more keen on keeping Charlie tied to her apron strings, where she wanted him.
Charlie had had other ideas, and while his mother had boasted to all and sundry about his job in insurance, he’d used it to pay calls on well-heeled women on their own in the afternoons. Winnie had either turned a blind eye or refused to believe it was possible – just as she’d managed not to notice the marks on Rita when Charlie’s rage turned against his wife. Charlie had finally taken off to the house in Southport, supposedly so the children would be safer, which was managed by a very accommodating woman called Elsie. He’d even put it about that she was his wife. Rita had eventually tracked them down and taken the children away – just in time, as a stray bomb had ripped the front off the once-grand house, and the children had been left standing in the road.
Rita’s parting shot had been to hand Charlie his call-up papers. He was a coward, all bluster and smarm; the only fighting he was capable of was to hit a woman behind closed doors. She had no idea where he was now and she didn’t care. That was Elsie’s problem.
There had been one more document in Winnie’s box that if anything had been even more startling. It was a birth certificate for a child called Ruby, born to Winnie Kennedy, but two years after her husband had died. The father’s name was left blank. This baby would now be coming up to twenty-one years of age. And when Rita had tracked down Charlie and Elsie, the neighbours had been keen to point out that the couple were often in the pub of an evening – but the children were looked after by a young woman called Ruby.
So things had come to an uneasy standoff. The people of Empire Street were mostly a good lot, but prone to suspicion and gossip. Charlie’s disappearance, and the fact that he’d never been seen in uniform, was a gift to the likes of Vera Delaney, who would love to wipe the smug smile off Ma Kennedy’s face and take her down a peg or two. Only a few Feenys knew the full truth. Winnie was slowly going to pieces waiting for her big secret to be blown.
Rita, meanwhile, harboured a secret of her own. When she’d gone to rescue her children, she hadn’t done it alone. Jack had taken her: Jack Callaghan, Kitty’s big brother, her childhood sweetheart and – as she’d finally confirmed to him – Michael’s real father. She’d tried to be a good wife to Charlie, to forget everything that had passed between Jack and her; they’d been too young, and fate in its many forms had made it impossible for them to be together. Now he was back doing his duty, escorting naval convoys across the vital supply routes of the North Atlantic. How she missed him. How she wished they’d somehow found a way all those years ago to overcome all the obstacles – but that hadn’t happened. Now she had to face the fact that her feelings for him had never died, but that she could not have him. The fact that Charlie had broken every bond of duty to her as a husband was neither here nor there. Divorce wasn’t a word you’d ever hear in Empire Street; no matter what a husband had done to his wife, she’d be expected to stand by him. The best she could do was to write. Rita had promised that to Jack and she wouldn’t break her word. The letters were hurting no one, and if they kept his spirits up through those dark nights on the Atlantic, then that’s what she’d do, and to hell with the holier-than-thou attitude of the rest of the world – couldn’t they have those precious words to share, if nothing else? But now Kitty had left, she would have to find another way of receiving his letters to her. Next to the children she adored, the letters were the one chink of light in this miserable life she was stuck with.
A noise at the top of the stairs startled her. A slight figure with huge pale-blue eyes and a frizz of pale- blonde hair emerged, smiling nervously, almost like a frightened child.
Rita took a long look at her, and noted again how much she looked like Winnie, her mother. Not so much her hair, but her nose and her eyes were very similar, though the young woman’s had a gentleness to them which Winnie’s certainly didn’t. Something else for the gossips to get their teeth into … Rita forced herself to get a grip and spoke steadily and comfortingly. ‘Hello, Ruby, come and have a cup of tea, love.’
As Ruby tip-toed down the stairs towards her, Rita looked around her at the shabby, care-worn kitchen – she saw the loose tea that Winnie had tipped into the sink, the chipped cups on the drainer and the cold grate that had been left for her to make up herself. She sighed deeply – if she didn’t have Jack’s letters as a lifeline, then she didn’t know how she would keep on going.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind me taking the top bunk?’
Kitty shook her head. ‘No, I don’t like heights at the best of times. I’m much better off down here.’ She thumped the hard pillow into something she thought might be a more comfortable shape. It was never going to be soft, but at least all the bedding was clean. She’d heard horror stories about some service
