filled her mouth and she could feel the rough stubble on his chin rasping against her face. She tried to respond to him – he got so angry if she didn’t – but she couldn’t. Her only thought was the letter.
The door latch was digging into her side and it took all her willpower not to push him away. Another thought came into her mind. He wasn’t going to make her do it here, was he? Not here by the back door, out in the open, where anyone could come around the side of the house and see them? What if Ann Pearce looked out of her bedroom window? She’d never be able to look her in the face again.
‘Come on,’ he said hoarsely, pinning her to the door with one hand and fumbling with the buttons on his trousers with the other. ‘Come on.’
‘Reg …’ she pleaded softly. ‘Let’s go inside.’
He pushed her again, banging her head painfully against the door as he lifted his knee to prise her legs apart. All at once, he stopped fumbling with his flies and slid his hands over her buttocks. Her skirt went up at the back.
‘No,’ she pleaded. ‘Not here, not under Aunt Bessie’s window.’
He froze. She looked up and he was staring at her coldly. His lip curled and he punched her arm.
‘Oh bugger you then,’ he snarled as he walked into the house.
Dottie grabbed the window ledge to steady herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. She stayed where she was for a couple of seconds, her knees trembling and her hair dishevelled. Lifting the hem of her skirt, she pulled at her suspender to secure her stocking again. The back of her head was tender but thankfully there was no sign of blood. She glanced into her apron pocket. The letter was completely crumpled. She couldn’t give it to him now. He’d go loopy.
Taking a deep breath, Dottie tugged at the front of her dress to pull it straight and held her head high as she walked back inside. She knew what was expected. Business as usual. They never discussed it when it happened. He didn’t like talking. Five minutes later, her apron and the letter hanging on the nail on the back of the door, she placed his plate on the table.
He put down his paper. ‘Got plenty of gravy on that?’
‘Yes, Reg.’
He got up from his chair and sat at the table.
‘I’ve got to go back to the house,’ she said, aware that she was treading on eggshells.
‘Oh?’
‘She sent Billy Prior up with a message.’
‘Won’t it keep until morning?’
‘I doubt it,’ Dottie said, risking a little laugh. ‘You know what she’s like. She’ll be in a right state. Josephine’s wedding is the wedding of the year.’
‘I can’t imagine there’s anything left to do,’ said Reg, pulling up his chair to the table. ‘Not with you in charge.’
She wasn’t sure what to make of that remark. Was there a note of pride in his voice, or was it sarcasm? She decided not to ask and went to fetch her own plate.
‘Well, you’d better get over there right away then, hadn’t you?’
‘We’ll eat our dinner first,’ she said, adding her own note of defiance. ‘She’ll send the doctor with the car before long.’
‘How do you know that?’
She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘You’ll see.’
‘I dare say I’ll look for any sign of mildew in the strawberry beds,’ he said, mashing his potato into the gravy and spilling it onto the tablecloth, ‘and then maybe I’ll take myself off to the Jolly Farmer for a pint.’
‘So it’s all right for me to go then?’ she said.
He looked up sharply. ‘Got any brown sauce?’
Just as she’d predicted, Dr Fitzgerald, a small man with a shock of frizzy light brown hair, walked up the path about twenty minutes later. Pushing his thick-rimmed glasses further up his nose, he curled his top lip at the same time, something he always did when he was slightly embarrassed.
Dr Fitzgerald had always admired the simplicity of Dottie’s little cottage. Reg kept the garden looking immaculate. The neat rows of carrots, cabbages, beans and peas kept the two of them well fed and healthy. He knew from the various occasions when he’d been called out when Reg was ill that the inside of the cottage was neat and tidy too.
Some would say he was nosy but the doctor made it his business to know all about his patients. Taking umpteen cups of tea by the fireside had enabled him to discover that, born and raised a gentlewoman in the last century, Elizabeth Thornton, known to everyone as Aunt Bessie and the original owner of Myrtle Cottage, had incurred the wrath of her father by marrying beneath her station. Cut off from the rest of the family, she and her beloved Samuel had amassed a tidy fortune in the twenties and thirties by running a string of small hotels, but sadly they remained childless. The frequency of the doctor’s visits had increased slightly in 1940, when her only living relative, orphaned by the Blitz, had come to live in the village. A terrible thing to happen to a young girl, but he couldn’t be sorry: Dottie had brought a very welcome ray of sunshine back into Bessie’s life.
He found the back door open. In the small scullery, Dottie’s pots and pans gleamed and glinted. He wondered vaguely where she found the time. He was well aware that she was in great demand in the village. On Mondays and Tuesdays, she worked for Janet Cooper, owner and proprietor of the general store in the village, and on Thursdays and Fridays she was at his own house. Dottie wasn’t the usual sort of daily help, all frumpy and with wrinkled stockings – she was attractive too. Damned attractive. Her figure was trim and her breasts soft and round. If she had one fault, it was that she wore her copper-coloured hair too tightly pulled back in a rather severe-looking bun, but now and then a tendril of hair would work itself loose and fall over her small forehead. He wasn’t supposed to, but he noticed things like that. And when she laughed, her clear blue eyes shone and she lit up the whole world. He sighed. Oh to have an un complicated life like hers … to have an uncomplicated wife like her … Mariah’s agitated face swam before his eyes.
Dr Fitzgerald cleared his throat. ‘We sent the Prior boy up, but we weren’t sure if you’d got the message,’ he began apologetically.
Dottie gave no hint one way or another. Oh dear, oh dear. He dared not return without her. ‘Um,’ he went on, ‘my wife … that is … we wondered if you could spare an hour or two tonight, Dottie?’
‘I told Billy to tell you I would be there directly,’ she said in her usual unhurried manner.
‘I see …’
‘I had to take care of my husband first.’ Although her tone was mildly reproachful, the doctor envied Reg Cox – not for the first time. When was the last time Mariah put him first in anything?
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he said hastily. ‘Um … I was just wondering …. um … if you are able to come straight away, I could give you a lift.’
‘Well, that’s most kind of you,’ she said in a surprised tone. ‘I’ll just do this and then I’ll get my coat.’ She picked up the bowl and wandered past him to throw the washing-up water onto
