‘I’ll have to, Eric,’ she had replied, with no hint of emotion, ‘I’ve got no choice. I’m not a virgin now, you’ve ruined me for anyone else, you have…’ She’d removed his hand with rather less grace than she had placed it there and, with the briskness he was more used to, brushed her skirt down and back into place. ‘Meet me at the town hall tomorrow at half past twelve and bring your call-up papers with you. We’ll both go in our breaks and then we can be married on special licence.’ And just before she turned in through the gate she said, ‘We’ll move into the dairy with your da after; I’ll pack tonight.’ In a flash she was gone and Eric stood scratching his head and wondering what on earth had just happened.

*

When Eric finally returned from the front, Maggie was a widow and even more beautiful than she had been all those years ago. Gladys, never a good-looking woman, had travelled in an entirely opposite direction. Her lips had become as thin and as mean as her nature. Objecting to sex was something she became accomplished at once the first few years were over and no baby arrived. The message was given loud and clear: ‘Get your hands off, enough of that messing about,’ and he had long since given up trying.

Nothing he ever did made Gladys happy. Some men managed it with their wives, but not he. If only that night in the entry long ago had never happened. He would have returned home a single man, the Widow Trott would have been available and, who knows, he might have stood a chance of happiness.

‘She landed on her feet that one,’ Gladys had once said to him referring to Maggie. ‘Married, widowed and she only goes and inherits from his mam and dad and she got the widow’s pension. Won’t ever have to work, can afford her rent without lifting a finger. No wonder she hasn’t remarried. She doesn’t need to. Didn’t get herself lumped for life like I did.’

Those words rang in Eric’s ears day and night. Gladys would rather he had not returned from the war, would have preferred a widow’s pension. And when he and Daisy Bell were making their way home to the dairy along the Dock Road one mid-morning, he suddenly heard those words as clear as the mare’s shoes beating out her rhythm on the cobbled road, she wanted you dead, she wanted you dead, she wanted you dead.

It was that day, those words, that made him realise for the very first time there was nothing worth fighting for…

Chapter Seventeen

Mary was lost for words as she stared in the mirror; she had chosen the boldest cut and an urchin stared back at her. Her eyes were wide, her cheekbones high and she was all but unrecognisable.