Shameful Secrets on Coronation Close

Lizzie Lane

Description

There are no secrets that time does not reveal…

Bristol 1937
The year is 1937 and the country is still reeling from the abdication of King Edward the Eighth the year before.
His brother, the Duke of York has become King George the Sixth and will be crowned in May.
The country is on a high. Union Jacks are being dusted off and bunting is being made. Thelma, Jenny and residents of Coronation Close are all a buzz with planning the street parties and celebrations for the great day.
But behind every door shameful secrets and sins linger on Coronation Close, just bubbling to expose themselves…

Sujets

• Mashups
• 20th Century
• Siblings
• Historical
• Women
• Coming of Age
• Inglaterra
• Friendship
• Historical romance
• Sibling
• General officer
• Historical fiction
• Woman
• The Women
• City Life
• General
• Sagas
• Family Life
• Romance
• England
• Somerset
• Saga
• Bristol

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 20 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781804834022
• Langue: English

Extrait

SHAMEFUL SECRETS ON CORONATION CLOSE


LIZZIE LANE
CONTENTS



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34


More From Lizzie Lane

About the Author

Also by Lizzie Lane

Sixpence Stories

About Boldwood Books
1
JANUARY 1937

Thelma Dawson dashed from room to room of the house she shared with her daughters at number twelve, Coronation Close, a cul-de-sac of red-brick council houses on the Knowle West estate to the south of the city of Bristol.
Her daughters Mary and Alice, trotted along behind her with indignant expressions and frequent exclamations.
‘Ma, you’re going to be late for work. We can make sure everything’s ready for our George.’
‘I can’t help it. I so want everything to be perfect. My boy is coming home. I can barely believe it.’
For the third, or maybe even the fourth time, she flicked a duster at the spotlessly clean top of the pine chest of drawers. The item of furniture was newly acquired, sourced for her by neighbour and friend Jenny Crawford. Jenny in turn had found it at Robin Hubert’s second-hand furniture shop in Filwood Broadway. Robin was sweet on Jenny so she’d got it for a bargain price.
Thelma had made new curtains, laundered the bedding and bought a brand-new eiderdown from a shop in East Street, Bedminster, where a variety of shops nestled close to the dominating presence of the W. D. & H. O. Wills tobacco factory. It wasn’t often she could afford new, but it was for her boy, her eldest child, and she deemed him worth it.
George was the only one of her children to be born in wedlock, his father having died during the Great War. The fathers of her two daughters had passed like ships in the night, though she had hoped for more at the time. In the past, she’d fallen for men who had excited her, made her feel alive. Her current man friend Cuthbert Throgmorton – Bert as she called him – wasn’t exciting. He was safe and almost predictable and in a way she loved him. Even so, she couldn’t see marriage ever being on the cards, certainly not whilst his mother was still around. Still, Thelma lived in hope.
She continued to fizz with excitement. ‘I want it all nice, comfortable and clean for when our George comes.’
Mary exchanged a long-suffering glance with Alice, who promptly snatched the duster from her mother’s hands and tucked it behind her back when she attempted to snatch it back.
‘Ma, you could eat a pork chop off the floor in yer,’ Mary piped up.
In the absence of the duster, Thelma flicked at things with her bare hand.
Finally she stood in the doorway and surveyed the small but neat box room that her son, coming home from the sea and his profession as a Merchant seaman, would presently occupy.
Excitement at the prospect made her anxious. ‘Does it really look good? I mean everything. The curtains, the wallpaper, the furniture…’
The two sisters, totally unlike each other in colouring on account of having different fathers, exchanged a long-suffering look, shrugging their narrow shoulders and shaking their heads.
Alice breathed an exasperated sigh. ‘Everything’s lovely, Mum. There ain’t any dust. Me and Alice checked and so did you – about a dozen times.’ The two of them were used to cleaning and cooking. Thelma worked full-time at Bertrams, an up-market ladies’ dress shop doing a job that she loved. Little girls they might be – Mary eleven, Alice ten – but they liked taking responsibility for domestic chores. Other girls only played at being a housewife; Mary and Alice did it for real.
Thelma resisted any more fussing, but it was hard. ‘I want everything perfect for my boy.’
Her eyes glistened at the thought of him coming home. Only a few days now. He’d been away for almost a year – one in which so many changes had occurred. The country had lost a king and gained another and her new friend, Jenny Crawford, had moved into number two, Coronation Close next door to Mrs Partridge at number one. Her other friend, Cath Lockhart, lived at the far end of the cul-de-sac at number eight. Her house was number twelve from where she could glare across with undisguised dislike at Dorothy Partridge immediately opposite at number one.
Overall, they were a diverse lot. Some of her neighbours kept chickens. One of them kept goats who were sustained by kitchen scraps donated by anyone who had some to give. It saved bothering to put it in the pig bin – the small receptacle the council provided.
The residents of the council houses of Coronation Close were a good bunch – apart from Mrs Partridge at number one, the house right opposite her own at number twelve. That’s the way the numbers were in a cul-de-sac.
She had to admit that Dorothy’s sister, Harriet, seemed all right, but Dorothy Partridge herself was a troublemaker, the sort who wrote to the council if any of her neighbours put a foot wrong. Thelma was a frequent subject of her letters. So far, Dorothy had failed to bring Thelma down, but she kept trying. She couldn’t seem to help herself.
If the mantel clock downstairs hadn’t struck the hour, Thelma might have found another duster or got the carpet sweeper back out and pursued perfection for a bit longer. ‘Oh my God. Look at the time. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘We did tell you.’
The three of them, mother and daughters, thudded off down the stairs.
Unlike most of her neighbours, Thelma made a point of looking smart no matter what time of day. Most of her clothes were handmade, cut down from decent-quality second-hand stuff she bought from Saturday-afternoon jumble sales. Never would she dream of leaving the house without lipstick, face powder or mascara. Never did she slop around in an old cardigan and slippers, hair in curlers like her friend Cath. The over-mantel mirror proclaimed that her hair was perfect, her lipstick unsmeared and her eyelashes were suitably slick with mascara, while the face powder gave her face a peachy glow.
She was bubbling with excitement. George was coming home. It had been almost a year since she’d last seen him and although she loved her daughters to distraction, George was her firstborn, her only son and the apple of her eye. In the meantime her job at Bertrams Modes awaited her.
‘Work,’ she murmured grabbing her handbag and checking its contents. ‘I must get to work.’
She shouted out to the kitchen, where her daughters were now preparing fried bread and tea for herself and for them.
‘Here you are, Ma,’ said Alice. She almost tripped over the hem of the adult-size apron she was wearing as she handed her mother a slice of fried bread and a cup of tea. ‘It’s cold out there. I reckon it’s going to snow, if not today, then very soon. You need something inside you,’ she pronounced in a manner belying her years. ‘Eat your fried bread.’
‘What would I do without you two,’ she said as she bit into the bread.
‘You’d be late for work all the time,’ said Mary in her matter-of-fact manner.
‘Get that down you and get going. You ain’t got all day,’ added Alice.
Thelma resisted rolling her eyes and laughing. Sometimes it seemed as though they were mothering her, not the other way round.
‘Right. I’m off.’
Goodbyes were said and then her heels were clattering up the garden path.
She bent her head into the bitter wind. The sky was grey and people standing at the bus stop were hunkered into their mufflers, slapping their gloved hands together to keep out the cold.
The bus was on time, but Thelma’s mind was so preoccupied imagining the homecoming that she almost forgot to get off at her stop.
‘Excuse me. Excuse me.’
After squeezing down the aisle between the seats, she made the rear platform of the bus and jumped off just as it began to move off. Her leap was slightly mistimed. She staggered between kerb and pavement; her fall was impeded by a steady pair of hands.
‘Steady on, love.’
She thanked whoever it was. The strong hands continued to grip as she mounted the pavement.
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘I can manage now.’
‘Do I get a kiss?’
She slapped him away. Cheeky bugger.
‘No you don’t. Let me go. I’ll be late for work.’
Once the grip was relinquished, she hurried off for Bertrams, the dress shop where she had risen from general sales assistant to leading sales assistant in a very short time. Right from the start, they’d recognised she had a flair for fashion, dressed well and flattered dithering customers into making a purchase. She had the gift of the gab and it went a long way to persuading people to buy what they didn’t think they needed.
Thelma tottered along on black suede court shoes. She’d never been late for work yet, but today she might be and Mr Bertram hated lateness. A shilling was docked from wages for each five minutes late. A shilling was a lot. She could buy a pair of stockings with that or two pounds of tea.
‘Serves me right for being distracted,’ she said to herself.
By the skin of her teeth, she made it outside the heavy mahogany doors of the shop, grabbed one of the pair of brass handles and pushed it open.
The smell of the interior of Bertrams Modes never failed to excite her. Silks, satins, wool, cotton and linen all had a smell of their own and she loved every one of them. She also loved the smell of kid gloves that Bertrams sold in several colours, though black, tan or cream were the bestsellers.
Women were Bertrams’ lifeblood and as such the place also smelled of them. Face powder and the lingering hint of expensive perfumes mixed with that of the sumptuous materials. Providing a firm and solid background to those smells was the beeswax pol