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  Despite himself, James was interested.

  ‘If someone’s sent it to the jumble, it must be pretty bad. How rusty is it?’

  ‘Quite a lot,’ Lillian admitted.

  ‘And do the pedals go round?’

  ‘No.’

  From the other side of the table, Frank joined in. ‘It’s a heap of junk. Best thing to do with it is to give it to the rag-and-bone man.’

  ‘It’s not a heap of junk,’ Lillian said.

  Frank gave that sneering grin of his. ‘Junk,’ he repeated.

  ‘Have you had a go at it for her? Given it an oiling or anything?’ James asked.

  ‘Got better things to do with my time, mate.’

  ‘Pig,’ Lillian muttered.

  James felt sorry for her. It must be pretty grim having Frank and Bob as big brothers, and that old hag ordering her around all the time.

  ‘I’ll have a look at it for you, if you like,’ he offered.

  Her sharp little face lit up. ‘Would you? Really?’

  ‘’Course. After tea, if you like.’

  ‘Oh—I got to do the washing-up.’

  ‘After that, then,’ James offered.

  So he found himself half an hour later in the back yard. Lillian disappeared into a rickety shed and wheeled out a rusty ladies’ bike. James was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t as ancient as he had thought it would be.

  ‘It’s a Raleigh, and that’s good for a start,’ he said, trying the brakes, examining the chain. ‘The parts will be easy to get. You know what I think? This has been dumped in someone’s back yard for years in all weathers. The tyres aren’t very worn—see, there’s plenty of tread on them—but they’re cracked from neglect. There’s even quite a bit of wear in the brake blocks, once I get the brakes going again.’

  ‘They will work, then?’ Lillian said.

  ‘Oh, yes, nothing that a good clean and a bit of oil won’t fix. That saddle has had it, but you could put an old beret over it for now, if you’ve got one. You’ll have to buy new tyres and inner tubes, though. Can you afford that?’

  ‘I’ll save up my paper round money.’

  ‘Good, well, if you get on with getting rid of all this rust—’ He explained what to do, while Lillian listened and nodded. ‘You don’t mind getting your hands dirty, then?’ he asked. It wasn’t a job that Susan would have considered tackling.

  ‘Oh, no. Not if it means I’ll have a bike to ride. But what about the brakes and the chain?’

  ‘I can’t do it now ’cos I’ve got my best stuff on and I haven’t any tools with me, but I’ll come back and do it next weekend, if you like,’ James offered.

  ‘Would you really?’ Lillian sounded amazed. She was looking at him with glowing eyes. ‘You’ll come back and do it for me?’

  James didn’t like to tell her that it was worth it to have the chance of running in to Wendy again.

  ‘’Course,’ he said.

  ‘Wow! That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.’

  For a moment he thought she was going to fling her arms round him, but instead she veered away and turned a perfect cartwheel, allowing a glimpse of her long slim legs and her navy knickers.

  James clapped and Lillian laughed with pleasure.

  ‘I was dreading this tea party, but now I’m really glad you came,’ she confided.

  ‘Me too,’ James agreed.

  He never thought he would admit it, but Boring Bob’s family had turned out to be much more interesting than he’d expected.

  Chapter Three

  ‘WHERE are you off to, squirt?’ Frank demanded, barring Lillian’s way downstairs.

  ‘None of your beeswax,’ Lillian told him, making to dodge under his arm.

  She wasn’t quite quick enough. Frank caught hold of her wrist.

  ‘Not so fast, squirt. You’re supposed to be helping.’

  It was the time of the dreaded spring clean. All the paintwork had to be washed, all the windows cleaned, inside and out, the curtains taken down and washed, the carpets and rugs taken outside and beaten, the floors scrubbed, the fireplaces scoured and the furniture polished. Everyone, even the men, was supposed to be helping. Gran, of course, was organising it all. She didn’t actually do any physical work.

  ‘I’ve done mine,’ Lillian said. Her hands were red and raw from the sugar soap solution she had been using to wash the paint in all the first floor rooms. It was now all clean and shining, but nothing could disguise the fact that it was chipped.

  ‘No, you ain’t, because the back room floor’s got to be done yet.’

  ‘That’s yours. You was on floors,’ Lillian protested.

  Frank’s grip tightened. He bent her arm up behind her back. ‘I got better things to do. You can finish it for me.’

  ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘You’ll be sorry if you don’t, that’s what.’

  He pushed her arm a bit further up. Lillian bit back a squeal of pain.

  ‘I’ll tell Gran you’ve bunked off,’ she threatened.

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Another hitch of her arm. Lillian gritted her teeth.

  ‘Sixpence,’ she managed to say.

  Despite the fact that he was by far the bigger and stronger, Frank was forced to bargain. He didn’t dare risk Gran knowing he had wriggled out of part of his task.

  ‘Thruppence.’

  ‘Fivepence ha’penny.’

  ‘Fivepence, and not a farthing more.’

  ‘Done.’

  Frank released her and she held her hand out for the money. Her back and arms and knees were all aching from the cleaning she had done already, but five pence was not to be sneezed at. She needed a lot more than that before she could buy the new tyres and inner tubes for her bike. With a sigh, Frank fished four pennies and two ha’pennies out of his pocket, slapped them into her palm and went clattering downstairs, whistling the latest Johnnie Ray number. Lillian knew just where he was off to; he was going to join his mates and hang about down at the amusement arcades on the seafront. She was doing him a favour, taking some of his cash off him. He would only go and lose it all on the machines.

  Half an hour later, Lillian emptied the now filthy cleaning water into the first floor toilet and lugged the bucket and scrubbing brush and block of green Fairy household soap downstairs. The whole house smelt of damp floorboards and polish and the vinegar that had been used to shine the windows. The windows and doors were all open to give the place a good airing. On her way through to the yard, she met her dad coming in from work in his lift attendant’s uniform.

  ‘You finished already?’ he asked.

  ‘Yup.’

  He looked at her suspiciously. ‘You done it all properly? Your gran’ll be up there to check.’

  Gran was sure to find some fault, but Lillian knew she had made a good job of it. She had been well trained.

  ‘Yup, every bit.’

  ‘Right, well, you can go down the newsagent’s and get me a packet of fags.’

  Lillian groaned inwardly. She wanted to go out in the yard and get her bike out. James was coming to see what she had done when he finished work today.

  ‘All right,’ she sighed, with as good grace as she could manage. After all, there was no getting out of it. She was the youngest, the runner of errands.

  Her father counted the exact amount into her hand, so there was no chance even of being given the change. Lillian went out of the back door—nobody ever used the front—wheeled her bike out of the shed and leaned it against the fence, then went through the rickety gate and along the alleyways, emerging into the street six houses up from her own. Outside, it was warm in the spring sunshine, even though it was now late afternoon. Freed from the day’s chores, Lillian felt light and happy. Today was the day that James had said he would come—lovely James who treated her as if she was somebody. She had to stop herself from putting a skip into her step. After all, she was fourteen now, not a little kid. Next
year she would be leaving school.

  At the newsagent’s, a woman was buying sweets. The paper bags were lined up along the top of the counter, half pounds of toffees and pear drops and humbugs. Now she was hesitating between mint creams and nut brittle.

  ‘Oh, I’ll have a half of each,’ she decided.

  Since sweet rationing had been taken off in February, people had been going mad for sweets. Lillian drew in the sugary smell, her stomach rumbling. In her pocket was the five pence that she had extracted from Frank. She gazed at her favourite, Fry’s Five Boys chocolate. But then there was nougat as well. She loved nougat, and it lasted longer. She jingled the money, sorely tempted. No, she mustn’t. Every penny brought those tyres nearer, and with them the day she could get on that bike and ride it.

  As she stepped out of the shop with her father’s Player’s Navy Cut, she saw James just rounding the corner into her road on his bike. She let out a shriek.

  ‘James! Wait for me!’

  He skidded to a halt as she raced towards him, amazed that he had actually stopped. No one in her family would wait for her like this. She pounded down the road, her plaits bobbing on her back as she ran.

  ‘Oh—’ she panted as she joined him. ‘You’ve really come. I didn’t know if you would.’

  James looked faintly puzzled. ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, but people don’t always do what they say they will,’ she pointed out.

  ‘I do,’ James told her.

  And she knew absolutely that this was the truth. He was not the sort of person who would let you down. It gave her a strange glow inside.

  ‘You’re not like my family,’ she told him as they started towards her house. ‘But never mind them. I’ve been working really hard on my bike. Just wait till you see it! It’s shiny as new.’

  He actually listened to her and asked her sensible questions. Lillian could hardly believe it. She led him in through the back way to where the curtains were still drying on the washing lines in the yard.

  ‘We’ve been spring cleaning,’ she explained.

  ‘Oh, yes. My mum goes mad on that each year for a bit, but she never gets very far. Susan and I usually finish it. But we’ve only got a little flat to clean. It must be a big job doing all this place,’ James said, looking at the back of the house as it reared up above them, the bare windows gleaming. ‘Do you all help? Wendy as well?’

  ‘Even Dad’ll have to tomorrow, when he’s off work,’ Lillian told him. ‘Oh—I got to go and give him these cigarettes. Would you like a cuppa?’

  James said that he would.

  ‘You can see what I’ve done to my bike while I’m making it,’ she suggested.

  When she came back out with a large cup of tea and the biscuit she’d dared to take, he was already busy with his tool kit and oil can. He admired what she had done and for a while they talked cogs and chains and brakes. Lillian soaked up all the information.

  ‘You’re very clever,’ she said.

  James shrugged. ‘I enjoy getting things working. Bikes are easy. Cars take a lot more skill. Some of the blokes where I work, they do the job but they don’t think about it. If something’s a bit tricky, they just adjust a few things and get it moving but they don’t make it sing. If a car’s going well, you can hear it, it speaks to you.’

  He gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I suppose that sounds daft.’

  But Lillian knew just what he meant. ‘No, no, it doesn’t. I know when a movement is just right. It’s the same thing. Look.’

  She stood up, took a pose, then executed a series of pirouettes across the concrete yard, finishing by the door. James grinned and clapped, but Lillian hadn’t finished.

  ‘No—that’s what I mean. Anyone could do that if they practised. Now watch.’

  She came back again the other way, this time making every part of her body as graceful and fluid as possible. Everything had to be right—the angle of her head, the way she held her arms, the expression on her face—as well as doing the steps perfectly.

  ‘See?’ she asked.

  James was looking at her in amazement. ‘Where did you learn to do that? Do you go to ballet classes?’

  Lillian sighed. If only. It was her dearest wish.

  ‘No, my best friend Janette does, and she shows me.’

  ‘Well, you’re very good at it. It was different again, the second time. You looked like a proper dancer.’

  Delight coursed through her. No one had ever said that to her before.

  ‘Really? Do you think so?’

  She gazed at him, desperate for approval.

  ‘Yes, but—well, I don’t know much about it—’

  Of course he didn’t. He was a boy and they weren’t interested in things like dancing. But he hadn’t laughed at her. That was the important thing.

  ‘At least you watch properly. None of my lot do.’

  Lillian sighed and squatted down beside the bike as it stood upside down between them. Her sense of the unfairness of life, never very far from the surface, welled up. Here was someone who might understand. ‘You’re the youngest of your family, aren’t you? Don’t you think it’s horrible being the youngest?’

  James appeared to consider this. He adjusted a nut on the rear wheel and gave it a turn, nodding as it ran smoothly.

  ‘I suppose it’s different for me. There’s only the three of us, and Mum—well, it’s hard for her, being a war widow. Susan and me, we’ve always sort of looked after her as much as she’s looked after us. She’s not strong, you know. When we were little, she used to go out and do cleaning jobs because what they give her for a pension doesn’t go very far. But she always found it very difficult to manage working and seeing to us. Now we’re both working she doesn’t have to any more. We made her give up the last job she had a year or so ago. If she could have carried on, we might have been able to move to a better flat, but it was making her ill. That’s why I left school at fifteen. I had to get out and get earning.’

  Lillian understood this. ‘Yeah, I’ve got to leave next year. My gran says education is wasted on girls because we’re only going to get married. It’s Bob who got to stay till he was sixteen. He’s the brains of the family, so they’re always saying. He passed his eleven plus, so he got to go to the grammar and get his school certificate and his wonderful job at the bank. You should see him in the morning, making a fuss about his clean collar and his tie and his shoes, like he’s the bank manager or something, instead of a clerk. I’m the one who has to do his blooming shoes, not him. He’s too important. And Gran looks at him and goes on about at least someone in this family is doing all right. It makes me sick.’

  ‘Boring Bob,’ James said.

  Their eyes met through the spokes of the bicycle wheel. They both smiled, knowing that the other one felt exactly the same.

  ‘You got it,’ Lillian agreed, revelling in the warm glow of understanding. The intimacy of the moment propelled her into further revelations.

  ‘Everything’d be different if my Aunty Eileen was still here. I suppose—like it’d be different for you if your dad hadn’t been killed. She used to be on my side. She was lovely.’

  ‘Eileen? Susan’s said nothing about an Aunty Eileen,’ James said.

  ‘Oh, they never talk about her. She’s our black sheep, or at least that’s what Gran says. A black sheep, or a viper in the bosom. Isn’t that a horrible thing to say about someone—a viper in the bosom?’

  ‘It’s from the Bible. But what did she do?’

  ‘She ran away from home when I was six. She went in the middle of the night.’

  Lillian sat back her heels, looking back down the years to that bitter night when her aunty had left her.

  ‘She told me she was going to follow her dream, and I didn’t know what she meant ’cos I was only a little kid, but later I thought she meant she was going to do something amazing, like being a film star. I was so sure she was going to be a film star that I looked at all the posters outside all the
cinemas to see if her picture was there.’

  She glanced at him, worried suddenly that he would laugh at her for being so stupid, but there was no hint of it on his face.

  ‘What had happened, then?’ he asked.

  Lillian hesitated. It was so lovely to talk like this, so seriously, like grown-ups. It was intoxicating just to have him listen to her without making fun. But, however much she was drawn to confide in him, still this was a family secret.

  ‘Promise you won’t tell?’ she begged.

  ‘’Course not.’

  ‘Not even Susan? Only I haven’t told anyone, not even my best friend Janette. And Gran’d kill me if she knew.’

  ‘Cross my heart,’ James said.

  She thought she did see a shadow of a smile then in his eyes, but it was soon gone, and the need to draw him in, to make him a confidant, was too strong for her to resist. She lowered her voice.

  ‘She ran away with one of our guests, one of the regulars, a travelling salesman. Only the thing is, he was a married man.’

  Which meant that her Aunty Eileen, her wonderful, funny, loving aunty was a wicked woman living in sin. It simply didn’t match up with her sunny memories. She felt sick suddenly. She had betrayed her aunty, and all for a moment’s attention. She wished with all her heart that she could take the words back, but it was too late now. They were out, and it was all her fault. She wanted to shrivel up into the ground.

  James gave a low whistle. ‘That was brave of her,’ he said.

  Lillian stared at him, hardly daring to believe it. It was all right. He understood. It was a miracle. Relief lit up her face.

  ‘It was. You see, she had to do it, ’cos Gran would never have allowed it.’

  ‘No, well, she wouldn’t, would she?’

  Lillian knew what he meant. To have a family member living in sin was a terrible disgrace ordinarily. But Aunty Eileen was different.

  ‘Like I said, she was following her dream. And I’m going to do the same. I’m going to be a dancer.’

  Once again, she wished she had not said it. She couldn’t understand what was getting into her, giving away all her closest secrets like this, baring her heart to this boy. This time he really was going to laugh at her. After all, lots of girls wanted to be dancers, but they ended up working in shops and getting married, just like everyone else. No one else could see that inside she knew she was different.