The Seven Streets of Liverpool by Maureen Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

Perhaps they’d never met and the man merely didn’t like the look of him, had hated him on sight, in fact. Or maybe he just didn’t like people who only had one arm.
    Doria was dancing in another room. Dancing was something else that made Nick lose his balance; not waltzes, where you could hold each other up, but quicksteps and rumbas. The ‘Hokey Cokey’ was the worst. For that you definitely needed all four limbs.
    Doria didn’t mind if he refused to dance with her – quite frankly, Nick wouldn’t have cared if she did. He wasn’t in love with her and assumed she wasn’t with him. It was just that there was a war on and it was the sort of thing that happened. People behaved in a way that, ordinarily, in peacetime, they would have avoided like the plague.
    The pianist finished a tune and began to play ‘We’ll Meet Again’. Nick’s heart almost stopped beating. It was their song, his and Eileen’s. He closed his eyes, and there they were, back in that hotel in London, dancing together, Tony asleep upstairs.
    And oh, it was heaven , an utterly perfect moment. Except … except that was the night he’d had a word with some RAF bigwig, pleading with the chap to get him into the forces. Eileen hadn’t been pleased, understandably. Anyway, the man had obliged, Nick had been delighted, and as a consequence he was now standing here minus an arm and Eileen was pretty damn mad with him for having joined up.
    Someone came and stood beside him. ‘Are you all right?’ It was Doria. She really was a sweet little thing.
    Nick opened his eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ he said stoutly. ‘Absolutely fine. Do you mind if we go in a minute?’
    ‘Not at all, darling. I’ll just fetch my coat.’

    The fair-haired man who’d been watching Nick from across the room saw them leave. He was concerned that several hours had passed without Doria, his sister, noticing he was there. She must have entirely forgotten that it was he who’d invited her to the damn party in the first place. He had not been introduced to her new boyfriend. It was obvious she was so besotted with the chap that normal civilised behaviour was quite beyond her.
    Despite her young age, Doria had ‘been around’, to put it bluntly, though she’d never been serious about a chap until now. It was common knowledge that Nick Stephens had a wife and child back in Liverpool. The man might be a hero, but he was also a bit of a scoundrel it would seem.
    Pierce Mallory, known to everyone except his mother as Peter, had been turned down for active service due to having broken both legs in a riding accident when he was fourteen. He too worked in an office in London, and saw his sister frequently, or he had done until recently, when Nick Stephens had come into her life. Peter hoped he wasn’t being priggish by not liking the idea of Nick, a married man, and Doria becoming a ‘pair’. He knew that it was the sort of behaviour people indulged in in wartime, but now that one of these people was his baby sister, he decided that he’d had enough of it. It should be easy enough to acquire Stephens’s address in Liverpool and have a word with the wife, who was being made a fool of virtually every single day.

    Lena put her heart and soul into making the doll for Eileen Stephens’s garden party. Brenda Mahon had let her have her pick of the small oddments of material kept in a box in her sewing room. Lena had chosen nothing but white satin. It was going to be a bride doll!
    She made the doll itself out of old stockings stuffed with sawdust acquired from the landlord of the King’s Arms. She cut a little circle of white cloth and on it very carefully embroidered eyes, nose and a little red mouth, then attached lengths of brown wool over the scalp to make hair.
    The long dress had puffed sleeves and a frilly neck. Lena spent ages embroidering white flowers around the hem. She made white satin shoes tied with a white bow. There wasn’t a veil to be had, so she made a bonnet