So now the joy of being with Jimmy, the music and gaiety, cushions and comfort and glorious indoor bathroom that Connie had grown up with at home in London’s exclusive Blackheath, were all mere memories. There was no softness or joy in Aunt Maud’s world. With an outside privy at the end of the long garden, which even in the summer months was grim and cold, making the chilblains on Connie’s toes itch and throb with pain. The inside of the cottage was no better either, with its hard stone floor and damp walls, and so it was as if all the colour had drained from Connie’s life. When she had first arrived in Tindledale, Aunt Maud had let Connie take a walk out into the village where she had met a couple of farm girls sitting on a bench in the village square sharing a bag of chips. Sisters Winnie and Edie were around the same age as Connie, and so she had enjoyed chitchatting with them and pretending, if only for a short while, that everything in her life was still the same. Happy and gay. But Aunt Maud had stopped the trips to the village as soon as Connie’s fecund belly had started to round, and so she hadn’t had the pleasure of Winnie and Edie’s company since. Aunt Maud had even instructed Connie to remove her jaunty but ‘sordid’ magazine cuttings from the bedroom wall, so they were now confined to an envelope inside her diary that she kept hidden in the groove behind the headboard of the bed.

At least it will all be over soon.

I’m going to be a respectable married lady.

Mr and Mrs J. Blake.

And a mother, to boot!

Connie held on to these thoughts as she felt around the headboard. Then, after slipping the diary from its hiding place, she propped it up on the mound of her swollen belly and took the fountain pen from its holder. She checked the date before drawing a line through another day. Only a few more weeks to go. She couldn’t be sure though. Her mother had said it would take nine months, or thereabouts, for the baby to be grown enough and ready to be born, but Connie didn’t know when to count from. Was it afterwards when she had lain in Jimmy’s arms feeling all dreamy and on top of the world, with her body still tingling from his touch? Or the first time her monthly didn’t appear? And she hadn’t dared to ask.

But Jimmy would be home soon, bringing with him an end to her feelings of fear and shame. She had to believe this. It was all she could do, because Connie had never felt so alone as she did right now …

Chapter 1

London, England, present day