A Wartime Family: A gritty family saga from bestseller Lizzie Lane

By Lizzie Lane

Bristol 1941
Having left her abusive husband for very good reasons, Mary Anne Randall finds herself judged harshly by her friends and neighbours, after courageously risking everything for a second chance at happiness with Michael.
With Michael away fighting Mary Anne is less concerned by her tarnished reputation and focusses on keeping her beloved children safe. But with the bombs beginning to fall on Bristol, danger is all too close to home.
Will Mary Anne rise above her tarnished reputation and protect those she loves from the uncertainty of a world at war?

A sequel to A Wartime Wife.

Praise for Lizzie Lane:

'A gripping saga and a storyline that will keep you hooked' Rosie Goodwin

'The Tobacco Girls is another heartwarming tale of love and friendship and a must-read for all saga fans.' Jean Fullerton

'Lizzie Lane opens the door to a past of factory girls, redolent with life-affirming friendship, drama, and choices that are as relevant today as they were then.' Catrin Collier

'If you want an exciting, authentic historical saga then look no further than Lizzie Lane.' Fenella J Miller

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boldwood Books
• Release date: May 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781804159088

Lizzie Lane

Lizzie Lane is the author of over 50 books, including the bestselling Tobacco Girls series. She was born and bred in Bristol where many of her family worked in the cigarette and cigar factories.

Book preview

1

Curious eyes turned in the direction of the man in the gabardine trench coat. If anyone had been brave enough to look into his eyes, they would have seen they were the same colour as his coat, a sludgy hazel, not bright, not happy. If they’d had the guts to stop him and make conversation, they would have seen the hard line of his jaw and perhaps heard him grind his teeth.

No one did stop him. No one dared.

He walked straight and tall, his steps measured and his eyes missing nothing as he scanned the humble brick facades of houses built sometime in the nineteenth century. The workers who’d lived in them had worked at the cotton factory in Barton Hill, a working class area in the centre of the old seaport of Bristol. They were small and cramped. Damp too.

Some doors were open. The smell of cabbage and meagre rations filtered out into the street. He wrinkled his nose. Even though he hadn’t eaten for hours, the smells did nothing for his appetite.

The street was moderately busy. Women stood in gossipy groups on the pavements, small boys pedalled on makeshift bicycles and girls with dirty faces pushed doll’s prams made from orange boxes.

He felt their eyes on him. If he’d needed to he would have asked questions, but he didn’t. He knew the house number he wanted.

‘Looking for someone?’

Although surprised and indignant that someone was brave enough to speak to him, his footsteps did not falter. He glanced only briefly over his shoulder at the brave soul who’d dared.

The woman wore too much make-up and carried too much weight. And that despite rationing? Incredible. He was loath to reply, so didn’t. He’d reached the house he was looking for anyway.

Number seventeen had dirty windows. Lace curtains divided over an elegant statuette of a lithe woman and two equally elegant dogs; Borzois, he thought. Russian deerhounds. They were made of plaster and common. It was no more than he’d expected. No doubt the blackout curtains were folded behind the lace and prettiness, slumped against the wall.

The front door was brown. He eyed its dull surface. Couldn’t whoever lived here make the effort to paint it?

His thoughts were trivial and easily brushed aside. He was here on serious business. In years past it hadn’t seemed so serious, but recent events had changed all that. The world had changed and so had his take on it.

The sound of the door knocker echoed around the street. He sensed those that watched had fallen to silence, their interest transferred from local gossip to the stranger daring to walk down their street. And what was he doing at number seventeen? He resisted the urge to smile to himself. All would be revealed, but not to them. All secrets were for whoever lived here. The past was coming back to haunt them.

The door was old and swollen in its frame and creaked like old bones as it was tugged open.

Henry Randall looked him up and down. ‘What can I do for you?’

He hid his disappointment. He’d expected a woman. That woman.

‘George Ford, Attorney at Law.’

He preferred this description to solicitor or lawyer. It had more gravitas, struck more fear into guilty hearts.

He congratulated himself, pleased that his voice was level and self-assured. He sensed the man who had opened the door had been about to tell him to clear off until he’d told him who he was. Amazing what the legal profession could do to people. Henry Randall’s appearance was not so much a disappointment as a goad to the man’s seething anger. Although not exactly a tidy man, neither was Henry dirty, merely shabby. His shirt sleeves sprouted through the holes in the elbows of his woolly cardigan. There was a slight greasiness to the edge of his collar. A five o’clock shadow sullied his chin. Judging by what he knew of her background, he wondered how such a woman could have married such a man. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

Antagonism had flitted in Henry Randall’s eyes when he’d first opened the door. Now there was only puzzlement, perhaps even confusion. The man calling himself George Ford pretended not to notice but broke instantly into his well-rehearsed patter.

‘I’m looking for a Mrs Mary Anne Randall, formerly Sweet, daughter of Joseph and Lydia Sweet of Eastville. I am calling with regard to the matter of her Aunt Maude’s will. Certain provisions of the estate deemed that I conduct a face-to-face analysis of the legality and identity of said beneficiary. Have I been rightly informed that she lives here?’

He beamed broadly. He was good at gaining people’s trust. He had the knack of adopting a certain look, a certain tone that people always fell for – even surly sods like Henry Randall.

Henry’s lax cheeks lengthened with his chin as he thought this through. His visitor waited until sure that his convoluted language was sinking in. Henry frowned. Gone were his days of foul language and stinking breath. He’d turned almost tee-total thanks to Mary Anne. All he wanted now was for her to notice him again, but not with the fear she’d once held for him. He wanted her to love him, but she wasn’t having any of it. Since she’d left he’d tried all sorts of ways to get her back, but so far without success. Any excuse and he was round there. This lawyer was an excuse in a trench coat.

Henry glanced at the others who’d moved into this street since being bombed out in Bedminster. There were a few – about three families. Biddy Young was one of them. He glowered at her. Nosey old bat!

He didn’t so much smile at the man, but merely let his face loosen a little – the closest he ever got to a smile. ‘Well, you’d better come on in unless you want the whole street to know yer business.’

George Ford followed Henry up the stairs. ‘I’m up here,’ Henry explained. ‘Biddy Young, my neighbour, lives downstairs. We both got bombed out at the same time in the old street.’

George Ford made no comment. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and state of the downstairs hall. Nobody had polished the stair’s handrail in ages. Henry Randall’s living accommodation wasn’t quite as bad. The man made an effort, though everything was shabby and second hand, doubtless donations from the Red Cross and suchlike.

‘Speak your piece,’ said Henry without offering his visitor a chair.

George Ford wasn’t fooled. He saw the curiosity in the other man’s eyes.

‘Money. I’m talking money.’

‘So you say. I didn’t know my wife had an Aunt Maude.’

George smiled with his lips, but purposely adopted a questioning look in his eyes. ‘Do you know everything about your wife? Has she never kept secrets from you? People do, especially women. Not that I am attempting in any way to blacken your good wife’s name. Besides being easily tempted, women love secrets. Look at Eve and that snake. How well did they know each other before she told Adam of his beguiling ways?’

All manner of expressions flickered across Henry Randall’s face and eyes. George knew he’d unnerved him, knew he could manipulate him as easily as a wooden marionette if he chose to. And he did choose, and in time he would use him.

Henry Randall seethed with a jealousy George Ford could not possibly comprehend. He was finding it difficult to take in the glib words, so naturally fell back on his basic emotions. This was yet another young man in Mary Anne’s life. She already had one. He wouldn’t stand for another.

George sensed suddenly that he’d been wrong and that Henry would take a little more time to control. He smoothed the way for the future. ‘So you don’t know her address?’

‘I already told you, no. And besides, I don’t recall her ever having an Aunt Maude.’

Once the front door had closed, Biddy Young hurried over to where two of her neighbours were muttering together. Like Biddy they had seen the smartly dressed man go into number seventeen. Like her they were curious.

‘So what do you think that’s all about?’

One of the women was wearing metal curlers. They clinked together like stair rods as she shook her head.

‘Don’t know. P’raps he bin up to no good and that bloke’s a copper.’

‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ asked the woman with the spiky curlers.

‘Only if you bring it out ’ere,’ said Biddy. ‘I wouldn’t want to miss anything.’

‘Goes without saying,’ the woman replied.

The three of them stood there, slurping tea from saucers and passing a single Woodbine between them. Bits of tobacco stuck to their lips. Their eyes stuck on number seventeen.

It was ten minutes before the man reappeared. He shook hands with Henry before marching off up the street.

‘Right,’ said Biddy. ‘Let’s go and find out what’s going on.’

The other women watched as she made her way to number seventeen. Henry didn’t take too long in answering.

His face dropped when he saw it was her, as though he were hoping to see someone else. Too late for that, thought Biddy, but she plastered on a painted smile.

‘I’m out of sugar. A few teaspoonfuls will do if you got some?’ She kept beaming.

‘You’ll be lucky!’

‘Oh. Never mind. I expect you made a cuppa for your visitor. Not from round here, is he?’

She waited for Henry to tell her to shove off. Perhaps he wouldn’t. If so there could be only one reason. It was something to do with Mary Anne.

Just at that moment, Stanley Randall pushed his way past his father, wheeling his sister’s old bike. ‘I heard it all,’ he said, gleefully addressing Biddy, who he’d known since he was small. ‘It’s something to do with money left by her Aunt Maude.’

‘You little—’ Henry aimed a blow at his youngest son’s head. It missed. In the past he would have gone after him and laid down the law. But not now. Henry Randall wanted the world to believe he was a changed man.

Young Stanley grinned cheekily. He mostly visited his father every Friday, sometimes staying the night. Today was Sunday and an exception, and he wouldn’t be staying. Today he was off home.

Biddy frowned as she watched Stanley wobble away on his sister’s bicycle, given to him when Lizzie had joined the Royal Army Service Corps. Stanley didn’t care that the bike was designed for a girl. Having transport meant he could live with his mother at the pawn shop in Bedminster and visit his father on Fridays when fish and chips were on offer.

Biddy Young was a bit disturbed and not a little put out. She regarded herself as Mary Anne Randall’s best friend. They’d shared secrets, disappointments and joys over the years – but perhaps they had not shared everything.

‘I never knew she ’ad any auntie. Never mentioned one,’ Biddy muttered, not to anyone in particular.

Henry looked over her head to the end of the street, his eyes following his visitor until George Ford had disappeared around the corner. Even then he kept his eyes focused on that self-same spot.

‘She didn’t,’ he said. ‘That’s why I didn’t give him ’er address.’ He turned back to Biddy. ‘Will you tell ’er when you see ’er?’

‘Course I will, though I won’t go round there today. I ain’t ’ad a wash today. I’ll pop round tomorrow and tell ’er.’

‘Water ain’t that scarce,’ he said, and went back indoors.

Undeterred by his comment, Biddy hurried back across the road. Of course she’d tell Mary Anne. She’d tell her that her old man had refused to pass on her address because he wanted to hurt her, and what could be more hurtful than standing in the way of a family inheritance? If Mary Anne had a bit of money coming to her, she might be generous and pass a bit on to her good friends – especially those who’d helped her claim it.

Glancing back over her shoulder she saw that Henry had closed the door. Old skinflint. Leopards don’t change their spots, and in her opinion, Henry Randall was still the brute he’d always been despite having given up the beer. He’d never forgiven Mary Anne for leaving him for another, younger man. Biddy didn’t blame her. Michael was lovely and she was sure they’d be happy together once the war was over and he was back from all that secret stuff he was doing. In the meantime she decided to take it upon herself to protect Mary Anne’s interests and so, first things first, puffing and panting she ran to the end of the street. She almost collided with a boy riding a makeshift bicycle made from pram wheels and a rusty frame. ‘Oi! You!’ She grabbed his shoulder. ‘Go and fetch that bloke you just passed. Him wearing the khaki mac.’

‘Give me a penny,’ he said, stretching out his hand.

‘I’ll give you a clip round the ear!’

‘I ain’t doing it for peanuts, Missus!’

He was resolute. Biddy growled at him. How come kids were so sharp these days?

‘Here you are,’ she said, her hand diving into her generous bra cup. ‘A farthing.’

He grimaced, thought about it, then took it, spitting on it before shoving it into his ragged pocket.

A few minutes later, George Ford reappeared, skirting a table of buckets, bowls and sweeping brushes outside the corner shop.

Biddy struck a provocative pose and flashed him a lascivious smile. ‘You wanted Mrs Randall’s address? Well I’m the one that can give it to you.’

Once the deed was done and he’d thanked her and walked away, Biddy turned back into the street smiling to herself. Even though she hadn’t managed to get George Ford back to her place for a cup of tea and whatever else might take his fancy, she’d done her best friend a good turn and was pleased with herself. Now to take the news back to her neighbours.

‘Guess what,’ she said to the first neighbours she came across. ‘That dirty old sod made a pass at me. I told him to sod off, told ’im I was a married woman.’

There were mutters of ‘cheeky monkey’ and ‘who does he think he is?’. Biddy basked in their attention. She felt like Jean Harlow, blonde, curvaceous and irresistible.

Henry Randall watched her through the front window. He saw the women glance over and guessed they were curious. He scowled. Bloody women. They were all the same, fit for only one thing. He turned away, opened a bottle of beer and poured it down his throat.

2

The air-raid siren was wailing its warning, the baby was crying and Daw was yelling but Mary Anne Randall carried on pouring the cups of tea they’d been about to drink into the thermos flask.

‘I can’t believe Adolf Hitler is sending over a raid on a Sunday,’ she muttered. ‘It must be another false alarm.’

Stanley was hovering, hands in pockets, shirt cuffs flapping around his wrists.

‘Ma, who’s Aunt Maude?’

Mary Anne continued to concentrate on the thermos flasks and sandwiches she’d prepared for going into the shelter.

‘I don’t know,’ she said vaguely. ‘Who is she?’

‘A man called round at Dad’s and said she’d left you some money.’

His mother stopped what she was doing and frowned down at him. ‘I don’t have an Aunt Maude.’

‘So you won’t be getting any money?’ Stanley’s tone was as disappointed as his expression. Pedalling back from his dad’s he’d dreamed of a shiny new bike – a boy’s version, not this silly girl’s bike that Lizzie had left behind.

Mary Anne chuckled to herself. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

Disappointed, Stanley shrugged and packed up his toy soldiers to take to the shelter. Grown-ups had strange ways that he didn’t always understand. He thought of his eldest brother Harry and what he would advise if he told him how he felt about grown-ups. Grin and bear it, that’s what he’d say.

‘The shelter,’ Daw was shouting. ‘We’ve got to get to the shelter. Ma, will you leave that! Can’t you hear the sirens?’

Mary Anne’s voice was as calm as her exterior. ‘Daw, you’ve always been a bit on the hysterical side. How many false alarms have we had? We’re too far west for the Germans to bother us. Our Lizzie told me that.’

Daw’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘Ma, it’s a raid! There’s bombs dropping!’

Mary Anne tutted loudly as she screwed in the top. ‘And on a Sunday too. Have they no respect?’

‘There’s loads of them,’ shouted Stanley, her youngest, a lad of ten who was as much of an armchair general as his father. ‘Watch out! Yer squashing me,’ he added as Daw squeezed through the doorway, the baby still squalling in her arms.

Mary Anne was about to follow her, then stopped. ‘The presents! Stanley, give me a hand here!’

Stanley poked out his tongue at his sister before racing back to help his mother.

There were glass-fronted cupboards on either side of the fireplace. Mary Anne plunged into the lower cupboards. Unlike the upper ones they were wooden fronted. She pulled out two brown carrier bags bulging with Christmas presents. Most were home-made – scarves, handkerchiefs and things made from hand-me-downs. Stanley took one, carrying it tucked behind him so that it bumped against his legs. His mother followed.

‘Hitler can bomb all he likes, but he isn’t going to destroy these and ruin our Christmas.’

Daw was getting frantic. ‘Come on!’ The baby squalled even louder.

Mary Anne pushed the second carrier bag at her daughter. ‘Take this.’

‘Where are you going?’

Christmas wasn’t just about giving presents. There was food in the larder, precious bits and pieces, some on ration and some acquired through friends of friends. Mary Anne headed for the small lean-to kitchen.

‘You go on. I’ll be right behind you. I’m not leaving the tea and flour and the Christmas cake.’

Daw didn’t wait. Bundling baby Mathilda into her pushchair, the carrier bag bouncing between her knees and the pram, she broke into a run. It was her mother’s opinion that the back yard was too small for an air-raid shelter. She preferred the public ones in Dean Lane.

‘At least there you can have a jolly time before a bomb hits,’ she’d quipped, referring to the singsongs, sometimes accompanied by an accordion.

‘Mum, don’t say that!’ Being brave didn’t come easily to Daw, whereas young Stanley took everything in his stride.

Mary Anne pulled everything she could from the cupboard: flour, tea, sugar, sultanas and precious tins of pink Canadian salmon. Plus the Christmas cake, of course.

‘Take this,’ she said, thrusting a bundle into Stanley’s arms. ‘Now go on after our Daw. I’ll be right behind you.’

A sudden thought made Mary Anne stop in her tracks. She looked up, thinking that perhaps the scream of the siren had changed in some way. It hadn’t, and yet some instinct telling her the sirens were different today had made her hesitate. And why had she gathered all her precious Christmas things together? She’d never done that before. Why today?

She shook the thoughts from her head. No matter what, she would follow her instincts. In the past she’d lived purely for her family, burying her true self beneath whatever they had wanted her to be. A mother. A wife. Now, since knowing Michael, she had become a woman, a mature version of the carefree girl she’d once been.

Jolting herself back to reality, she wove in and out of the furniture and out of the back door, locking it behind her. The front of the shop was securely bolted against the looters that bombing raids inevitably brought. A pawn shop was a magnet to such people. She’d kept things going in Michael’s absence and wasn’t about to lose it to thieves now.

She dashed off into the alley and down to Dean Lane. She was just in time to see Stanley disappearing down the steps of the shelter entrance. The sound of the sirens set her teeth on edge. She was glad to reach the shelter entrance, as being underground muffled the sound of the siren.

The shelter was bursting at the seams, but still she managed to push her way across to where Daw was sitting with Mathilda in her lap. The pram had been left outside. There was only room for people in here. The man on the accordion was squeezing away and singing ‘I’ll be with you in apple blossom time’.

The air was hot and rank with the smell of people. Normally it might have been bearable, but these people had little to eat, little water to wash with and hardly enough time to keep body and soul together. Everyone was beginning to look a bit grey around the gills.

Stanley found a few of his pals. As if by magic they all pulled conkers from their pockets and immediately started a game.

Daw was crying, big tears streaking her dust-covered face, the dust stirred up from the floor by tightly packed people. Her selfish temper suddenly took hold. She glared at her mother.

‘I wish I hadn’t come. It’s all your fault!’

There had been many times when Mary Anne had hidden the hurt caused by Daw’s comments. This was just another one, so she put on a brave face and tried to sound calm and collected.

‘I had to get the Christmas presents, Daw,’ she said as she squeezed on to the rough bench beside her daughter. She sighed. ‘I was looking forward to a proper Christmas, Daw. That cake’ll go down a treat. So will that salmon.’

‘I don’t care,’ Daw blubbered.

Daw had always had a bit of a self-centred way about her. Even now, she pouted as though she were still nine years old. ‘That isn’t what I meant. It’s coming to the pawn shop. If you still lived at home with Dad…’

Mary Anne clamped her teeth tightly together. Harry, Lizzie and even young Stanley accepted that Henry’s violence and drinking had been too much for their mother to live with. They’d also accepted that she loved Michael, who had been left the pawn broking business by his uncle. They’d met at the beginning of the war when she’d been running her own little business from her washroom at the back of the house. He was younger than her, though she was still a looker for a woman of forty plus. At first they’d been in competition, but that had soon melted away. They’d both been escapees – her from Henry and he from Germany.

Mary Anne turned her face away until she had gained more control of her emotions. Her heart ached to see Michael again. Sometimes she screwed her eyes tightly shut and imagined his features, afraid that she might never see him again, afraid that she’d forget what he looked like. His letters were few and guarded and sometimes, when she was at her lowest ebb, she wondered if he would ever return; if he would ever want to return. To help keep the doubts at bay, she tried to fill her time with the pawn shop and helping out in the Red Cross shop around the corner in East Street. She’d donated some of the pre-war pledges that had never been claimed. Some of it was sheer tat, stuff that went straight into the bin. The clothes, crockery and cooking utensils went to the shop.

It took a while to control her feelings and by the time she could, the walls of the shelter were shaking. Someone shouted that a nearby shelter had been hit. The panic was palpable, rolling through the people like a tidal wave. Shouting and screaming, a host of humanity clawed their way to the entrance, terror in their eyes. Children cried, women screamed and so did some men. Others, ARP wardens mostly, tried to calm everyone down and prevent them from going outside. ‘It’s raining bombs out there. Stay where you are. Stay where you’re safe.’

The boys stopped playing conkers. Stanley crept back to his mother’s side, hiding his face beneath her arm. Turning her back towards the shelter entrance, Mary Anne hugged Daw and the baby tightly against herself with her free arm. If a bomb was going to hit them, it would hit her first. Daw shook and trembled, sobbing against her shoulder.

‘I can’t stand this,’ she mumbled into her mother’s coat. ‘I can’t stand it.’

‘We’ll be alright. I promise we will.’

Mary Anne turned frightened eyes over her shoulder. Carrying others with them, those panicking pressed against the shelter entrance. Heads disappeared in the crush. Mary Anne pressed her daughter’s face more tightly against her own body, hoping that somehow she could protect her.

Suddenly the concrete roof trembled. Dust floated down in a milky haze, covering heads, stinging eyes and sticking in throats. A horror-filled hush descended, spreading through the concrete cloud.

Mary Anne closed her eyes. She wasn’t one for church and praying, but war makes people dig deep. She offered up a silent prayer. Please keep my family safe. If you take anyone, take me. Please take me.

The sound of crashing buildings and the rumbling and shifting around them gradually ebbed away.

‘They’re going over,’ someone said.

Someone broke into loud sobs. Others murmured prayers of thanks. A hushed sigh seemed to drift like the dust across the huddled humanity. Because someone else had died, because the chance of a bomb falling on them had passed and fallen elsewhere, a sense of contemplative silence descended. Those that had rushed for the stairs now pressed themselves against walls, their eyes staring as though seeing what might have been. Medical people in an assortment of uniforms tended those who’d been injured in the crush.

Two hours later, when the all-clear sounded, Stanley brought his head out from beneath his mother’s arm. Daw lifted her gaze and looked around her with staring, scared eyes.

Fearing her daughter was on the verge of hysteria, Mary Anne gathered up all her courage and helped Daw to her feet. ‘Come on.’

Even though the air outside was thick with dust, it was easier to breathe than in the shelter. Daw looked for the baby’s pushchair.

‘Where’s my pram?’

Mary Anne looked beyond her to where rescue workers clambered over a pile of rubble. The neighbouring air-raid shelter had indeed taken a direct hit.

‘Those poor people,’ she muttered.

‘Are they blown to bits?’ Stanley asked, his eyes wide with ghoulish interest and just a hint of fear.

Mary Anne didn’t reply. ‘Don’t forget the bag.’

‘Got it,’ he said, raising it so she could see he wasn’t lying.

Ambulance bells clanged and people shouted. A hose was being unwound from a fire engine. She failed to see a fire, but smelled the smoke. Somewhere, amongst all this dust, were buildings, people and her road back to the pawn shop. Mary Anne suddenly thought of the thermos flasks of tea they’d taken into the shelter. They’d been scared too rigid to drink it.

‘We could have that tea now. It’ll still be warm.’

Daw shook her head as she strapped Mathilda into her dusty and slightly bent pushchair.

‘Not me, Mother. I’m off home.’

Home for Daw was above the corner shop owned by her husband’s uncle and aunt. It was at the end of the street Mary Anne had once lived in with her family. Their home at number ten Kent Street was gone now, destroyed in a previous raid. Henry had been moved out to Aiken Street in Barton Hill on the other side of the river. Stanley had moved in with her at the pawn shop, though he did visit his father every so often, especially on Friday nights – not so much out of love, but more because of the fish and chips bought from the shop at the bottom of Avonvale Road.

There was no arguing with Daw. Mary Anne had decided years ago not to try. It was Daw’s way. She was selfish, though she’d never admit to it. She was conservative and she refused to accept that Mary Anne’s living with Michael would be for ever. She wanted things to be as they once were. Through her eyes they had been a cosy, loving family. The truth had been so different, but Daw would never see that.

Leaning heavily into the pushchair, Daw scuttled off, the slightly wobbly wheels squeaking as she trundled the push-chair over the rubble.

A well of emotion tugged at Mary Anne’s heart as she watched the head of little Mathilda bob to one side, peering past her mother so she could see her grandmother.

‘When will I see you again?’ Mary Anne shouted after her. Daw gave her a cursory wave over her shoulder, but no response. Mary Anne brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. Just dust, she told herself, but she knew it wasn’t true. She loved little Mathilda, her first grandchild, and couldn’t bear the thought of her growing up without recognizing who she was. Curtailing access to Mathilda was Daw’s way of exacting punishment on her mother for splitting up with her father. It was never said in so many words, only hinted at, but Mary Anne knew.

Stanley tugged at the sleeve of her coat. ‘You alright, Ma?’

‘Just thinking,’ she said.

It wasn’t far to the pawn shop. Normally it would have taken only minutes, but today the world had turned upside down. There was rubble everywhere, and fire engines, ambulances and people in various uniforms were all rushing around.

Picking her way through the broken bricks and the twisted gas mains, she came to the alley that led out into East Street. The bag containing the Christmas things bumped against her legs. Stanley was carrying his in front, both arms wrapped around it. Despite the dust and rubble, a single tram had wound its way through East Street but had been stopped by the police. Mary Anne headed in the direction from which it had come, craning her neck in an effort to see through the devastation and down the side street to the pawn shop.

A great cloud of black smoke blanketed the street exactly where the pawn shop was situated. With her heart in her mouth, she quickened her pace. Flames were licking upwards through the smoke. No! Not the shop!

She ordered Stanley to stay put.

‘I’ll go and look,’ she said, piling her