Put Out the Fires by Maureen Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

grounds of her adultery, or she would divorce him for cruelty, leaving Francis with no choice, his reputation to consider, but to go for the first option.
    Adultery! Francis felt physically sick as rage engulfed his body. How dared she? She belonged to him! She was his wife. He’d married her, which meant he owned her, just as he owned his son. A man was nothing if he couldn’t keep his wife and child in line.
    But, thought Francis, fighting down the rage, from now on, he’d have to be more than clever with Eileen. He’d need to be dead smart. There’d not been the time for divorce proceedings to have got under way, so, no matter how much she riled him, he must keep his temper well under control. If he so much as raised his little finger she’d be off bleating to her dad. He’d buy her little presents the way he’d done when they were courting, make her see a divorce made no sense because she already had the perfect husband.

Chapter 3
    Monday was a day of intermittent sunshine and showers with a hint of autumn already in the air. The watery sun had passed its peak in a pale cloudy sky as the Dunnings bus carrying workers for the afternoon shift passed through the heavily built-up areas of Bootle and Wilton Vale. When it reached the countryside, it was like entering a completely different world, Eileen thought. The grass on Aintree Racecourse looked particularly green and fresh; it felt ages since she’d seen it, yet it had only been a few days!
    They bumped across the little hump-backed bridge over the stream that ran by Dunnings and she looked eagerly through the window, just in case, you never know, Nick might be waiting at the side door where they always met, if only to wave, but there was no sign of him.
    Dunnings had produced turbo engines for many years, and the original main building was solid and brick built. Since 1938, when it turned to making parts for aeroplanes, extensions had been haphazardly added, flimsy, rather ramshackle affairs.
    Eileen clocked in, then hung her coat in her locker, changed into a pair of navy-blue drill overalls and tied the regulation triangle of material turban-wise around her head, making sure every single hair was tucked inside, even her fringe. The women were frequently warned of the dangers of leaving their hair exposed and the horrific consequences which could ensue if it got caught when bending over the lathe.
    She made her way towards the workshop where twenty centre lathes stood in rows of five. The building was one of the newer ones and the high corrugated iron roof turned the place into an oven in the summer. During the cold months, everybody shivered. Most of the women were already standing behind their machines, some having a quick smoke before the hooter sounded, the rest already hard at work. As far as they were concerned, they were working for the Government and therefore against Hitler, and were more than happy to begin work before the official time.
    Instead of going to her own lathe, Eileen turned right and walked along a narrow corridor, past a row of glasswalled offices. She paused at the end office, where a woman was sitting at a desk, her head bent intently over her work. In answer to her knock, the woman looked up and smiled, and Eileen went in.
    “Hallo, there,” said Miss Thomas. “I suppose there’s no need to ask what sort of weekend you had. I expect it was perfect.”
    Miss Thomas was the Women’s Overseer, a diminutive, birdlike woman in her early forties. When Eileen had first started, she’d resented her obvious upper-class demeanour, the plummy accent and the way she referred to the women as “her girls”, but as she grew to know her better, she realised Miss Thomas genuinely cared for the women in her charge. Having left her solicitor husband, a man even more violent than Francis, and reverted to her maiden name, she’d been advising Eileen how to go about the divorce.
    “I’m afraid the weekend didn’t turn out as