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Some Sunny Day
ANNIE GROVES
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This paperback edition 2007
1
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006
Copyright © Annie Groves 2006
Annie Groves asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007279630
Version: 2017-09-12
To all those who lived through WW2
– and to all those who did not.
Contents
Title Page Copyright Dedication
Part One: June 1940 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chaprer Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Part Two: October 1940 Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Part Three: February 1941 Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Part Four: Summer 1941 Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Acknowledgements About the Author By the same Author About the Publisher
‘’Ere, Rosie, you live down in Little Italy with the Eyeties, don’t you? Only it’s just bin on the wireless that that Mussolini of theirs has only gone and sided with ruddy ’Itler, just like it’s bin saying in the papers ’e would. I heard about it when I took Mrs V.’s parcels to the post office for ’er.’ Nancy, rushing into the small sewing room at the back of Elegant Modes, announced the news with malicious relish. ‘Fascists, that’s what they all are, living over here, spying on us. If you ask me, the whole lot of them want locking up.’
‘That’s not fair, Nancy,’ Rosie Price objected, her brown eyes brilliant with emotion, and her cheeks flushing as she put down the dress she was holding and determinedly faced the other girl. ‘Most of the Italians in Liverpool have been here for years, and I know for a fact that a lot of the boys from the families near us were amongst the first to join up when war was announced.’
Nancy tossed her head and eyed Rosie resentfully. Until Rosie had started working at the dress shop on Bold Street just after Christmas, she had been the prettiest girl there and had grown used to the other girls both admiring and envying her. Mrs Verey, who owned Elegant Modes, had even asked Nancy to model the dresses now and then if a customer couldn’t quite make up her mind.
Mrs Verey bought her stock with her regular customers in mind. For daytime there were smart tweed suits for the winter with neat little fur collars, to be worn with pretty knitted twinsets, and blouses trimmed with lace; for the summer, short-sleeved cotton and silk dresses and good navy-blue lightweight coats. She also carried a range of truly beautiful evening frocks, in silks and satins, with full panelled skirts flaring out from tightly fitted bodices. Most of the frocks came with matching wraps and pretty little evening bags. These dresses, like the wedding dresses she also sold, were kept in special glass-fronted wardrobes in their own special ‘salon’. And since Rosie, with her tiny waist and her curves, her thick, naturally curly dark hair, and the dimples that softened her cheeks when her mouth curved into a smile, had come to work at the salon, it was she who Mrs Verey chose and whose inherent style the other girls were now trying to copy.
Rosie loved the expensive fabrics of the clothes Mrs Verey sold and searched the stalls in St John’s market for offcuts and bargains – pretty pieces of lace and unusual buttons with which to dress up her own clothes.