The Wayward Wife by Jessica Stirling Read Free Book Online

landladies would have greeted the unannounced arrival of a bedraggled stranger with such composure. Mrs Pell had taken it all in her stride. Dumplings had been added to the stew, more potatoes to the pot and a hot bath drawn to thaw out the poor lass. By the time supper had been served in the living room Katarina Cottrell – Kate – had been relaxed enough to answer the Pells’ questions.
    The only child of an Austrian mother and an English father, she had been born in Linz, where her father had taught modern languages in the International Academy. She’d been educated at an English boarding school and had gone on to Oxford where she’d gained a First in Teutonic Studies, soon after which, on a tutor’s recommendation, she’d been invited to join the BBC’s monitoring unit.
    â€˜Are your parents still in Austria?’ Danny asked.
    â€˜No, they left Linz in 1935 . My father found a teaching post in a public school, St George’s, near Coventry. He’s still there, still teaching.’
    â€˜And we’ve got you?’ Griff said. ‘Only the best for old Hogsnorton. We pinched that name from one of Gillie Potter’s pre-war monologues, by the way.’
    He’d gone on to explain that work in the villa was not all sweat and tears and had mimed some of his colleagues’ more outrageous eccentricities until Mrs Pell had reluctantly called a halt to the proceedings and shooed them off to bed.
    It was late now, almost midnight, but Griff continued to wax lyrical on what joys the future might hold.
    â€˜It’s obviously escaped someone’s notice that two red-blooded males are already in residence chez Pell. We must be up with the lark tomorrow to see what strings we can pull to keep Miss Cottrell here,’ Griff said. ‘You wouldn’t mind that, Danny, would you?’
    â€˜Nope,’ said Danny, gathering up Susan’s letters. ‘I wouldn’t mind that at all.’

5
    Neither Breda nor her mother quite grasped the ins and outs of the war in Europe in spite of all the chat Stratton’s customers exchanged over the tea mugs and coffee cups. Nora, in particular, couldn’t understand what was going on between the Russians and the Finns up there in the frozen north, and, to the despair of her ‘lodger’, Matt, and her son-in-law, Ronnie, continued to refer to the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as Herr Stalin.
    The rationing of sugar, butter, bacon and ham worried Nora more than the rumours that Hitler had his sights on Belgium and Holland. Breda, however, was more able when it came to squaring up to possible shortages. She was fast out of the starting gate in currying favour with anyone who could help keep the larder filled and it wasn’t long before extra stocks of sugar and salted butter piled up in the cupboards in the terraced house in Pitt Street, paid for by her wages, not Ronnie’s.
    It also crossed Breda’s mind that if things got worse – and not everyone was sure they would – then she might call in her dues from her daddy who, she didn’t doubt, would know people who knew people who would soon have the keys to a vast emporium of goods, lost, stolen and strayed, that might make wartime life more tolerable.
    On nights when Ron was on duty she’d lie in bed and try to calculate just how many tins of peaches she might need to see the family through a war that had no end in sight.
    In the room next door Billy was curled up in an army sleeping bag that his grandpa had bought from a shady market trader. Breda was warm enough in the double bed, provided she didn’t roll too close to the outside wall, which was usually Ron’s place anyway. She was still struggling with the problem of dividing days of the year into tins of fruit when she heard the stealthy creak of the bedroom door and saw a shadow pass across the wall above her head.
    â€˜Ron?’ She sat up.