The Hills and the Valley Read Online Free Page B

secretary.
    â€˜There we are, Vi. You’ll see these catch the post, won’t you?’ Amy said.
    The girl looked up, keeping her place in the ledger she was marking up with her finger.
    â€˜Yes, I’ll make sure they’re there in good time, Mrs Porter.’
    â€˜And if Deacons ring tell them I’ve arranged things so that we can do the job for them tomorrow as they wanted.’
    â€˜Yes Mrs Porter.’
    â€˜If it’s Mr Deacon himself you’d better make my excuses – you know he always likes to speak to me personally.’ A small smile lifted one corner of her mouth – with some clients her femininity had been a positive advantage especially since she had become successful as well, but she had the way of dealing with them off to a fine art. ‘I’m off now, Vi. You’ll make sure everything is locked up properly when you leave, won’t you?’
    â€˜Yes Mrs Porter. Don’t worry. You get off home.’
    Amy nodded, satisfied. Letting the reins go a little, even where mundane chores were concerned, had not come easily. After running the business single-handed she had felt herself responsible for everything that happened at the yard. But with expansion she had had to learn to delegate – there was no way she could possibly do everything herself. And Vi was a good girl, steady and responsible with a pleasant manner which the customers liked. She had been well trained at a secretarial college in Bath and her shorthand and typewriting speeds were good – essential as far as Amy was concerned, for patience had never been her strong point. But Amy fancied that Vi’s telephone manner had been learned not in any college but at her mother’s knee, for Vi was the daughter of Edna Denning, who had operated Hills bridge telephone exchange from the front room of her cottage for many years until a purpose-built office had been erected.
    I wonder what Llew would say if he knew I had a secretary? Amy wondered as she paused in the doorway looking back at the girl who was once again busy with her work.
    It was a thought which occurred to her sometimes at odd moments and while she found his imagined surprise amusing it also struck a chord of sadness. Maybe she was married again, and very happily, but that did not mean she had forgotten Llew, who had been her first love, the father of her children – and the boy who had made the dream of starting a haulage company into reality. Sometimes it all seemed so long ago, like part of another life, sometimes it might have been just yesterday when they had sat side by side on one of the grassy slopes that surrounded the Hillsbridge valley, where dust-blackened buildings clustered around railway sidings and pits, a young couple in love and with all their lives before them – or so they had thought. ‘I don’t want to work for anybody else,’ Llew had said. ‘I want to be my own boss. I’m going to get a lorry. Motor transport is the thing of the future.’ She had almost laughed at him then. Back in 1922 there had been more horses and carts than motor vehicles on the roads in Hillsbridge. But he had been right and now it seemed to Amy very unjust that he should not have lived to see his vision realised.
    Yet with the sadness there was also a pride and a joy which made Amy’s heart swell when she thought of what she had done and she knew that if Llew had not died she would never have had this chance to discover herself. Whatever had happened to the business, whether it had been successful or not, she would have been simply Llew’s wife, mother of his children, and a glorified unpaid housekeeper. Although at the time she had wanted nothing else, now she was honest enough to admit it would never have satisfied her.
    She pulled the office door closed behind her and stood for a moment on the woodplank step looking around the yard that was her domain, a small, still-pretty woman in a smart