Coronation Wives Read Online Free Page A

hands clasped before him. He eyed her up and down as though wearing red and being attractive was a far bigger crime than the one she was reporting.
    ‘Girls like you ruin a lot of blokes’ lives, so before you go making accusations I suggest you consider your own actions very carefully indeed. You were walking home in the dark all alone. What were you hoping for?’
    She couldn’t believe what he was insinuating. ‘I’m not a tart!’Angry tears filled her eyes. If she didn’t get out of here they’d soon be running down her cheeks. She mustn’t let it happen.
    A pin could have dropped and sounded like an atomic bomb in that dingy room. Ears were straining, eyes watching with avid interest. The Bristol Old Vic would be hard pushed to present something as dramatic as this.
    The sergeant smiled, as much in response to the avid attention of his audience as for her benefit. ‘Perhaps not, but no respectable woman should be out alone after ten o’clock at night. Now go home, forget what happened and be a good girl in future.’
    Her patience snapped and she stamped her foot. ‘How dare you! I’ll have you know that my parents have influence in very high places.’
    The sergeant, his features leaden, slammed his ledger shut. ‘I don’t care who they are or where you’re from. High class you may be, but there’s an old saying … the colonel’s lady and Rosie O’Grady are sisters under the skin …’
    Janet was speechless. She turned and fled.
    Outside, fresh wet air slapped against her hot face. An overcast sky had burst with rain and water dripped from her hair, down her face, from her nose and trickled down her neck. Pavements empty of pedestrians shone with water. Such was her anger that she never thought to question where everyone was. She simply ran through the downpour, oblivious to the headscarves and umbrellas barricading shop doorways.
    Her headlong flight might have continued except that a small figure bounced out of the entrance to the Arcade, an enclosed avenue of semi-derelict shops that connected one street with another. It provided a little shelter even though most of its roof was missing.
    The figure bumped into her and blocked her path. ‘Boo!’
    She spun, holding the small shoulders of the interceptor untilthey both came to a standstill. Rain and tears blurred her vision, but the smiling face was familiar.
    ‘Janet! Janet! We’ve been to see the Coronation Clock. It’s got lots of colours and wooden people walking around when it strikes the time.’
    Susan, one of Edna’s children, beamed up at her. ‘Come on. We’ve saved a place for you.’
    Janet allowed herself to be dragged towards the crowd of sheltering shoppers. She saw Edna waving. ‘Over here,’ she shouted.
    Edna’s face was shiny with rain, her cheeks were pink, and her eyes sparkled. There was not a trace of make-up. ‘What a downpour!’
    She wore a silk headscarf which Janet recognized as being a present from her mother many Christmases ago. Goodness, but Edna really knew how to make things do: Typical of that generation; the war had made people more careful.
    ‘I’m pretty wet already,’ Janet said almost apologetically.
    ‘Pretty wet? Is that what you call it? Yer own mother wouldn’t recognize you.’ Polly had been hard to spot, sandwiched as she was between the pushchair in which reposed Edna’s youngest and a lady with large bosoms wearing a man’s raincoat and a checked cap. As usual Polly was dressed in black and white. It was an odd thought at an odd time, but Janet found herself presuming her underwear to be white. Black wasn’t so much decadent as almost unavailable and Polly never wore any other colours than black and white.
    ‘Stand in a bit. You’re still getting wet,’ said Edna pulling her close just as if she were one of her children. ‘Goodness, I can feel you shivering. How about a coffee or a cup of tea in Carwardines once it’s dried up?’
    Under the circumstances, Janet wasn’t sure