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Welcome to St Darlstone!
It’s the summer of 1935 and holidaymakers are flocking to St Darlstone’s magnificent lido on the British coast!
With little hope of finding a husband, no-nonsense Natalie lives for teaching, until she finds herself out of a job courtesy of her best friend Delphi. But if she can bring her rigorous physical fitness programme to the people of St Darlstone, maybe there’s a chance she can start again?
So Natalie takes on the Lido Girls. With Delphi’s handsome brother, Jack, on the scene, and Delphi’s desperate struggle to defy her overbearing parents and follow her dreams, Natalie must find the courage to face up to her own fears, and realise what she truly wants in life…
The Lido Girls
Allie Burns
ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Contents
ALLIE BURNS
grew up by the seaside and now lives in Kent with her husband and two children. The Lido Girls is her first novel.
For photos and research that inspired the story go to Pinterest @Allie_Burns1. To find out about upcoming projects visit www.allie-burns.com or follow her on Twitter @Allie_Burns1.
To Alan Ashwell
The naughty boy
After gambolling to the edge of the board, the diver bounces from it in a seated position, using her behind to propel her into the air.
Natalie turned the key in her bedroom door, once for the latch, twice for the deadbolt. She tugged at the depressed handle, and only when the door was clearly locked tight did she drop to her knees and pull out a package from beneath her narrow bed.
Inside the cardboard box, cradled in crinkly tissue paper, was a white V-necked blouse adorned with the black silhouette of a lady mid leap, and beneath it a pair of black satin shorts. The uniform of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty. This morning’s special delivery.
She held the shorts in front of her. Gosh, there’s nothing of them, but… She smoothed her fingertips across the fabric and in one swift movement she was standing and unfastening the buttons on the shoulder of her gymslip. Her navy pleated one-piece, a uniform she wore every day, made her who she was and had done for more than ten years as both student, teacher and now Vice Principal. She couldn’t help but see her gymslip as a relic of the past compared to these glossy upstarts, harbingers of a new era, masquerading as a pair of shorts.
Is that what she was becoming herself: a relic?
The curtains! Before undressing any further, she reached across her bed to pull them shut and as she did she saw Margaret Wilkins cutting through the fir trees at the edge of the empty playing field. She had a book under her arm. Now there was a young lady who wasn’t living in the past.
In Natalie’s many years of physical training she’d not yet come across a young lady so dedicated to following her own fancies, wherever
