tap and ballroom. It’s so unfair! She’s an only child and they let her do everything she wants. I wish I was her.’
James gave one of her plaits a little tug. ‘I bet she’s a spoilt brat. Not like you,’ he said.
Her sharp little face flushed with delight. ‘Do you like me?’ she breathed.
He was shocked by the longing in her eyes.
‘Of course,’ he said, feeling uncomfortable. ‘You’re a good sport. Now, show me again how that reverse turn goes.’
By the beginning of June he felt he knew enough to venture onto the floor at the Kursaal dance hall on the seafront. He spent an evening steering various girls around, managed not to step on anyone’s feet or bump into any other couples and even found he enjoyed himself.
‘It was fun,’ he admitted to Lillian afterwards. ‘I think I might get to like this dancing lark. Now, the question is, am I good enough at it to ask Wendy out?’
The dancing lessons had been the highlight of Lillian’s life. She could hardly believe her good fortune when James had actually taken her up on her offer. Here was her chance to be really useful to him, to do something for him that nobody else could. She was beside herself with excitement, imagining wafting round a ballroom with him like a film star. More than once she’d got into trouble at school for daydreaming, picturing herself in a wonderful gown, waltzing in James’s arms. Mostly she’d managed to banish from her mind the fact that James wanted to do this because Wendy had said she liked men who would take her dancing. When she did remember, it sent her into such a pit of despair and hatred for her sister that she could hardly bear to be in the same room as her.
For once she was pleased that her family took no notice of her, for nobody remarked on her volatile state and nobody questioned where she was off to. But the pressure of all these new emotions was too great to be contained. She’d confided it all to her best friend Janette as they’d sat eating sweets in her pretty pink bedroom in the flat above the newsagent’s.
‘He’s just the most wonderful person in the whole wide world,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Ooh—’ Janette teased. ‘Have you got a pash on him?’
‘No! It isn’t a pash—’ Pashes were what first formers got on prefects, or even the young PE teacher. This was far more serious, far more painful. It was taking over her life. But she didn’t know what to call it.
‘P’raps it’s love,’ suggested Janette. She reached up to stroke the picture of Frankie Laine that she had cut out of a magazine and pinned on her bedroom wall. ‘I’m in love with Frankie. I kiss him every night before I go to sleep.’
‘That’s only a picture,’ Lillian scoffed.
‘But he’s much more handsome than your precious James,’ Janette said, highly offended. ‘And he’s famous, and he’s got a wonderful voice. When he sings Answer Me I know he’s singing it just for me.’
She sighed dramatically and gazed at her hero.
‘It’s not the same,’ Lillian insisted. ‘The days when I don’t see James are like…like…a desert.’
She didn’t admit, even to Janette, that she cycled the long way back from school each day just so that she could go down the street where James worked. The garage seemed the most wonderful place in the world, while the smell of petrol was sweeter to her than roses. She never got to see him there, although once she had heard someone call his name. She had waited to see if he appeared, but in the end whoever had called must have gone to seek him out. After hanging about outside the garage, she would cycle down the street where he lived, even though she knew he wasn’t there.
‘Do you think he’s interested in you?’ Janette asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Lillian said miserably. ‘He can be so kind, but—’
Burnt into her memory was the time when he had said she was a ‘good sport’. Sometimes she managed to convince herself that this was a compliment, but mostly it brought her close to tears, for she knew in her heart that it was a brush-off.
She slid off the bed and went to study herself in the looking-glass above Janette’s dressing table, adjusting the triple mirrors so that she could see all round. She twisted this way and that, hoping in vain to find someone more exotic than a fourteen-year-old girl with long thin legs and white ankle socks. Her skinny body was beginning to fill out a little. She had small rounded breasts and a proper waist. She dug her hands in above her bony hips to emphasize the curves, but she knew she looked nothing like Wendy. Wendy’s vital statistics were a perfect 36-24-36, even before she wriggled into her elastic roll-on.
She undid the rubber bands at the ends of her plaits, shook her hair out and gathered it up on top of her head, trying to look more sophisticated.
‘D’you think I’m pretty?’ she asked.
‘’Course,’ Janette said loyally.
But Lillian turned away and flopped down on the bed, tears welling in her eyes.
‘It’s not fair,’ she wailed. ‘I’m never going to be as pretty as Wendy. You’re just so lucky, being an only child.’
That had been last week, and now here was James asking if he was a good enough dancer to ask Wendy out. Lillian couldn’t believe that something could hurt so much. It made her want to cry out loud.
‘You—you don’t really want to, do you?’ she managed to ask.
James laughed, as if it was some sort of joke.
‘But of course! That’s the whole point. I’ve got to do it before I have to go off to national service. Now, come on, what do you think? You’re her sister. Do you think I’ve got a chance?’
Lillian was torn. The last thing she wanted was for Wendy to get her claws into him, but neither did she want him to stop coming to their house.
‘I dunno,’ she muttered.
‘You must have some sort of an idea,’ James insisted.
Goaded, Lillian burst out with the truth. ‘If you must know, I think you’re much too nice for her. She only likes spivvy types with cars and patent leather shoes.’
‘A car!’ James was looking at her as if she had just handed him the Crown jewels. ‘If she likes blokes with cars, then I’m her man.’
‘You haven’t got a car,’ Lillian said.
‘No, but I can get hold of one.’
‘I didn’t know you had a driving licence.’
‘I don’t, but who’s going to ask? I can drive all right. Lillian, you’re a genius! I’ll come round your place and ask Wendy if she wants to go for a spin.’
Lillian wanted to cut her tongue out. Whatever had made her mention cars? That night she cried herself to sleep, convinced that all was lost.
Two days later, she happened to be in her grandmother’s room at just about the time Wendy was due home from work. Gran’s main occupation, apart from smoking and reading the newspaper, was making hooked rugs. Since wool was expensive, it was one of Lillian’s jobs to go to jumble sales and find handknitted garments in the colours that Gran wanted for her projects. Now she was busy unravelling last Saturday’s finds and winding them into hanks to be washed before use. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a vehicle stop outside their house and turned to look. Gran was immediately on the alert. Plenty of delivery vans pulled up in their road, but only one family owned a car.
‘What’s that car doing by our front door? It’s not that dreadful man that your sister wanted to go out with last week, is it? Go and look.’
Lillian did as she was told, pulling aside the net curtain so that she could see better. There at the kerbside was a smart black Morris, and inside