London Belles by Annie Groves Read Free Book Online Page B

and fresh-looking as the bedrooms, half tiled in white, blue curtains hanging at the windows and a blue-patterned lino on the floor.
    She liked it. She liked it very much, Sally acknowledged.
    ‘If you were to take the room you’d be expected to keep it neat and tidy, although of course I’d given it a good clean once a week,’ Olive told her.
    ‘And the rent?
    ‘Ten shillings a week. That includes an evening meal as well as breakfast, although I dare say, you being a nurse, you’ll be working shifts.’
    ‘Yes,’ Sally agreed as she followed Olive downstairs and into the kitchen, which she wasn’t surprised to see was as clean and tidy as the rest of the house.
    ‘There are no gentleman visitors to be taken up to your room, but I do not rule out the possibility of you inviting a male friend into the front room to wait for you,’ Olive continued.
    Sally didn’t have any problem with that.
    ‘And the kitchen?’ she asked. ‘As I work shifts I’d want to be able to make myself a hot drink and have something to eat when I get back from my shift.’
    Olive pursed her lips. She didn’t like the thought of anyone else making free with her kitchen but she could see that Sally, as Tilly had said, was the sort who could be trusted and who had the right kind of standards.
    ‘Yes, I’d be happy to allow that,’ she agreed.
    ‘Good, then in that case I’ll take the room.’ Sally informed her, specifying, ‘The front room, please. I like to see what’s going on.’ What she really meant was that she didn’t want to be surprised by any unexpected visitors from Liverpool coming in search of her.
    ‘It will be one week’s rent in advance,’ Olive told her. Although she was striving to sound business like, inwardly she was delighted to have found such an ideal lodger, and so quickly. If the little orphan turned out to be as good then Nancy was going to have to admit that she had been wrong complaining about the prospect of lodgers bringing down the neighbourhood.
    ‘I’m living in the nurses’ home at Barts at the moment. I’d like to move in as soon as possible, if that’s all right with you? Say, Tuesday? I’ll pay you then.’
    ‘That will suit me nicely,’ Olive confirmed.
    ‘I’ll aim to be with you at ten in the evening, if that suits you?’ Sally offered, as she extended her hand to shake on their agreement.
    ‘You mean she’s taken the room already? That means that if the orphan girl says she wants the other room when she comes then you’ll have let them both straight away,’ Tilly praised her mother, after Sally had gone.
    ‘Yes, and I must say that it’s a relief. I was anxious whether we’d actually get anyone interested, never mind exactly the right type of person. I like your nurse, Tilly.’
    ‘She’s not my nurse, but I liked her too.’
    Dulcie pushed off her forehead a stray curl that had escaped from her smooth Veronica Lake hair-style to curl damply against her skin. In her right hand she was holding her best handbag: white leather, bought off a market trader, probably, she imagined, having been ‘acquired’ by dubious means. Or at least that had been her interpretation of the way in which the stall holder had looked warily up and down the street before producing the bag from a sack tucked away out of sight, when she’d asked to see ‘something good quality’. Dulcie didn’t mind where it had come from. What mattered to her was that it looked exactly like the classy and expensive bags on sale in Selfridges, at prices way beyond her slender means. Dulcie didn’t consider what she had done to be dishonest. It was part and parcel of the way of life for many of those who had the same hand-to-mouth existence of her own family. The fact that her dad and her brother both worked as plumbers in the building trade meant that they both suffered periods when they weren’t working, and Dulcie had grown up knowing that one penny often had to do the work of two. Dulcie had ambitions