them from falling down. Every single item had once been Wendy’s. Some of them had been Eileen’s before. She couldn’t remember ever having had a new piece of clothing.
‘Hair,’ Wendy said.
It would never do to appear before Gran with untidy hair. Lillian looked on the washstand. The hairbrush that she and Wendy shared with Aunty Eileen was gone. She picked up the comb, dragged it through her straight hair and shoved a couple of hairgrips in to hold back the side-parted curtain. Lillian had similar colouring to most of the family, who had hair ranging from fair to mousy and eyes of greyish blue. Wendy was the lucky exception. She had inherited her mother’s wavy blonde hair and clear blue eyes. Wendy was pretty and she knew it. She was her daddy’s darling. Lillian was just Lillian, the smallest and the skinniest.
At last there was nothing more she could do to delay the moment.
‘Go on,’ Wendy ordered.
Lillian stepped out onto the cramped landing. All the family except Gran slept on the attic floor, the girls in one room, the two boys in another and Mum and Dad in the third. She went down the steep narrow stairs to the second floor landing. This was reserved for the PGs—the paying guests. At this time of year there were no PGs at all, nor likely to be any, since nobody came to Southend in the winter except a few commercial travellers, but still Gran insisted that the family stayed in their cramped quarters.
‘You never know when someone might knock at the door. We don’t want to have to turn money away just because we haven’t got a room ready,’ she stated.
And because the house belonged to her, they all had to agree, even Lillian’s dad. The PGs’ bathroom, however, was not out of bounds. Lillian dodged in, used the toilet and gave her hands and face what her mother called a lick and a promise. It was far too cold to wash properly, but she didn’t dare appear before Gran without washing at all. That done, she went down the main staircase with its gloomy brown paint and narrow runner of threadbare carpet held in place by brass rods. They were stairs that Lillian knew intimately from having to clean them every day with a dustpan and stiff brush. Down she went again to the ground floor, where she hesitated in the hall. At the end of the long corridor with the step halfway along it was the kitchen. Her mum would be in there, stirring the porridge, cutting the bread, boiling the kettle for tea. But first she had to face Gran.
Biting her lip, Lillian knocked on the door of the front room, the room that was the best parlour in most houses, used only for funerals and Sunday visitors.
‘Come in,’ came a gruff voice from inside the room.
Lillian took a deep breath and opened the heavy brown-painted door. It was gloomy inside the room, even though the rust-coloured curtains had been drawn back. Heavy furniture, a black marble-effect fireplace, green and brown leaf-patterned wallpaper and a brown patterned carpet square with a fawn lino surround made it look wintry on the brightest of summer days. Now, on a grey January morning, it was downright depressing. Lillian saw little of the detail. What took all her attention was the woman sitting up in the iron-framed single bed by the wall opposite the bay window.
Whenever the teacher read fairy tales to Lillian’s class, the princess in the story always had Wendy’s face in Lillian’s imagination, while the wicked witch or the evil stepmother always looked just like her gran. The same tight steel-grey curls held in place, as Gran’s were now, with a hairnet, the same hard hands, the same piercing grey eyes and grim mouth.
At least Gran had been given her early morning cup of tea, Lillian noted with relief. And she had had her first cigarette of the day. There was a smell of fresh smoke in the room and a mangled fag end in the ashtray by her bed. All this was good. It meant that Gran would be more approachable. But still Lillian’s stomach churned with fear.
‘Well?’ Gran said. ‘What is it? What are you bothering me with at this hour of the morning?’
Lillian came into the room and shut the door behind her as she had been taught. There was a dark red chenille curtain hanging behind it to keep out the draughts. She stepped forward and stood by Gran’s bed, the letter clutched to her chest. Reluctantly, she held it out.
‘It’s for you. I’m sorry it’s torn. It was Wendy, she tried to take it from me, but I said no, it was for you, not for her.’
‘Don’t blame others for your crimes,’ Gran told her, taking it. She stared at it. ‘There’s no stamp, no address. Where d’you get this? Give me my glasses, girl.’
Lillian did as she was told. Gran settled the steel-framed spectacles on her nose and peered again at the pencilled writing.
‘“Mum”,’ she read out loud. ‘Who’s this from?’
‘Aunty Eileen,’ Lillian mumbled, looking down at her feet.
‘Eileen? What’s Eileen doing writing me letters? What’s all this about?’
Lillian didn’t dare suggest that she open it and find out. Instead, she just muttered, ‘Dunno,’ and kept her eyes downcast. Through her lashes, she saw Gran rip the envelope and take out a single sheet of cheap lined paper. The only sound was Gran’s laboured breathing as she took in contents. Then came the eruption.
‘What? Gone? How dare she—? What do you know about this? Where’s she gone? What did she tell you?’
Lillian shrank back. ‘N-nuffing,’ she stuttered. ‘I don’t know nuffing. Honest.’
Gran glared at her. ‘You must know something. You and her are thick as thieves. What did she say? When did she go?’
‘Last night. But she didn’t say nuffing to me,’ Lillian lied desperately.
‘You saw her go?’
‘No!’
‘Then how do you know she went last night?’
‘She—she—she wasn’t here this morning. Just that letter. She left that letter.’
‘Didn’t you hear anything? You must have. You share a bed.’
Lillian shook her head emphatically. It seemed less bad than actually telling a lie.
‘What about Wendy?’
‘She didn’t neither.’ That at least was the truth.
Still Gran’s eyes bored into Lillian’s. She could feel herself going red.
‘You know what happens to liars, don’t you?’
Lillian nodded. Liars’ tongues shrivelled up and dropped out. But she had promised Aunty Eileen not to tell.
Gran made a disbelieving sound in her throat. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. Go and get your dad.’
Relieved to be let off the hook, if only for the moment, Lillian turned and trotted out of the room. Her father rarely had a kind word to say to her, but he wasn’t as frightening as her grandmother. She carefully closed the door behind her and went down the chilly passageway to the kitchen. There she found her mother at the sink and her father sitting at the table with a bowl of porridge in front of him, reading the Mirror.
‘Gran says you’re to come,’ she told him.
Her father sighed and turned slowly to look at her. ‘What?’ he said, as he always did, to gain time.
Lillian repeated her message. Her mother started drying her hands on her floral apron.
‘Oh, dear, what’s the matter? What does she want?’ she asked, nervous as a bird.
‘She wants you,’ Lillian told her father. She didn’t want to be accused of repeating the message incorrectly. She was in enough trouble already, covering for Aunty Eileen.
Doug Parker sighed again and stood up. He was a tall man, but already he had an apologetic stoop which made him look older than his years. His once handsome face was marred by lines of discontent and his right arm hung awkwardly, the result of a fight with his brother