The Orphan Daughter Read online

  The Orphan Daughter

  Sheila Riley

  This book is dedicated to that stoic generation who survived the dark days of war and its immediate aftermath. Heroes one and all.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgments

  More from Sheila Riley

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  1

  Summer 1946

  Nineteen-year-old Evie Kilgaren gathered her mane of honey-coloured hair into a loop of knicker elastic before taking a vase of heavy-scented lilies and freesias into the kitchen. The flowers were barely faded when she rescued them from the churchyard bin that morning.

  Placing them in the centre of the table, she hoped their heady scent would mask the smell of damp that riddled every dwelling in the row of terraced houses opposite the canal and add a bit of joy to the place.

  ‘Who’s dead?’ her mother, Rene, asked. Her scornful retort was proof she had already been at the gin and Evie’s heart sank. She had wanted today to be special. Surely her dead father’s birthday warranted a few flowers. Even if they were knock-offs from the church – at least she had made an effort, which was more than her mother had.

  ‘I got them for Dad’s…’ Evie was silenced by the warning flash in her mother’s dark eyes. A warning she had seen many times before. Rene gave a hefty sniff, her eyes squinting to focus, her brow wrinkled, and her olive skin flushed. Evie knew that when her mother had drunk enough ‘mother’s ruin’, she could be the life and soul of any party or, by contrast, one over could make her contrary and argumentative.

  ‘I thought they’d look nice on the table,’ Evie answered lightly, quickly changing her answer to try and keep the peace. She should have known better than to mention her father in front of Leo Darnel, who’d moved in as their lodger six months ago and taken no time at all getting his feet under her mother’s eiderdown. ‘I found a vase in…’ Her voice trailed off. Her mother wasn’t listening. As usual, she’d disappeared into the parlour to darken her finely shaped eyebrows with soot from the unlit grate – make-up was still on ration – dolling herself up for her shift behind the bar of the Tram Tavern. The tavern was barely a stone’s throw away on the other side of the narrow alleyway running alongside their house, so why her mother felt the need to dress to the nines was anybody’s guess.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Evie noticed a sudden movement from their lodger, who was standing near the range, which she had black-leaded that morning. Leo Darnel didn’t like her and that was fine, because she didn’t like him either.

  He was a jumped-up spiv who tried to pass himself off as a respectable businessman. Respectable? He didn’t know the meaning of the word, she thought, her eyes taking in the polished leather Chesterfield suite that cluttered the room and seemed out of place in a small backstreet terraced house.

  ‘None of your utility stuff,’ he’d said, pushing out his blubbery chest like a strutting pigeon. All the time he had a wonky eye on the bedroom door. He would do anything to keep her mother sweet and made it obvious every chance he got to show Evie she was in the way.

  He’d been very quiet for the last few minutes, Evie realised. That wasn’t like Darnel. He was up to something, she could tell. He hadn’t interrupted with a sarcastic comment as he usually did when she and her mother were having a tit-for-tat. His self-satisfied smirk stretched mean across thin lips as he hunched inside a crisp white shirt and peered at her.

  His beady eyes looked her up and down as he chewed a spent matchstick at the corner of his mouth before turning back to the grate. His piggy eyes were engrossed in the rising flames of something he had thrown onto the fire. Her attention darted to the blaze casting dancing flares of light across the room.

  ‘No!’ Evie heard the gasp of horror and disbelief coming from her own lips. How could he be so callous? How could he? As he stepped back with arms outstretched like he was showing off a new sofa, Evie could see exactly what he had done.

  ‘You burned them!’ Evie cried, hurrying over to the range, pushing Darnel out of her way and grabbing the brass fire tongs from the companion set on the hearth, desperate to save at least some of the valuable night-school work.

  Two years of concentrated learning to prove she was just as good as all the rest – reduced to ashes in moments. Thrusting the tongs into the flames again and again was hopeless Her valuable notes disintegrated.

  ‘Mam, look! Look what he’s done!’ Her blue eyes blazed as hotly as the flames licking up the chimney.

  ‘You are not the only one who can crawl out of the gutter? Mr High-and-mighty!’ Evie was breathless when her burst of anger erupted, watching the flames envelope her books, turning the curling pages to ash. She balled her work-worn hands, roughly red through cleaning up after other people and pummelled his chest. Why? She caught his mocking eyes turn to flint before being dealt a quick backhander that made her head spin.

  Her nostrils, which only moments before had been filled with the sweet fragrance of summer freesias and Mansion polish, were now congested with blood as traitorous tears rolled down her cheek. Evie dashed them away with the pad of her hand, ashamed and angry because he was privy to her vulnerability. Her pale blue eyes dashed from the range to her mother, who was now standing in the doorway shaking painted nails.

  ‘That evil bastard burned my exercise books. They had all my notes in them – two years’ work gone up in smoke!’ She had scrimped and saved every penny for the books from her measly wages, earned from skivvying in the offices of Beamers Electricals.

  ‘Who’re you calling a bastard?’ Darnel was not the biggest or strongest man she had come across, but was no less intimidating. Leaning into her face, his carefully enunciated words through nicotine-stained teeth dared her to retaliate. ‘You had better watch your mouth, my girl.’

  ‘I am not your girl.’ Evie spat the words. ‘My father would’ve made ten of you!’ If his ship hadn’t impeded a German torpedo back in 1943, she thought. ‘If he was here now there’d be no need for a jumped-up racketeering lodger.’

  ‘I pay the rent in this house,’ Darnel’s voice was low and menacing. ‘An’ if you don’t watch that attitude, you’ll be out on your ear!’

  ‘And you reckon you’ll be the one to do it?’ Evie knew she was skating on thin ice challenging Darnel. He had no compunction about hitting her, although never when her mother was around and always with the threat that if she opened her mouth, he would make life very difficult for them. But he had slipped up this time. Her mother could see what a snake he really was and would throw him out for sure.

  ‘Don’t backchat Leo,’ her mother said. ‘He’s been very generous to us.’

  Surely her mother wasn’t going to side with this so-called businessman, who was as slippery as a wet fish and operate
d his crooked empire under the radar of the local constabulary from their front parlour. ‘Oh, well, in that case,’ Evie answered with a withering sarcasm that could match her mother’s. Rarely stooping to the lowest level of communication, she felt this occasion called for it.

  Her mother coveted the money he brought in, blinded by the gifts he plied her with, no questions asked. It became apparent to Evie her mother would not allow anybody to spoil their cosy set-up. Not even her own daughter.

  ‘He’s good to you. That’s all that counts, isn’t it, Ma?’ Evie detected a flinch in her mother’s posture. Rene liked to think she was still vibrant and desirable, there was no room in her life for words like Ma. ‘I’ve studied hard to get qualifications that could get me out of this bombed-out dump – I’m doing my final exam tomorrow.’

  ‘Surely your friends will lend you their notes if you ask. What about Susie?’ her mother said, blowing her nails dry while Darnel hovered in the background. Evie let out a snort of derision, recalling the taunts of her lifelong nemesis, Susie Blackthorn. Evie trusted her own sound knowledge, before she would ask that scatterbrain.

  ‘I don’t have friends.’ Evie shot her mother a meaningful glance. She had been discouraged from making friends to look after her young brother and sister before they were evacuated to Ireland seven years ago. Then the war came, along with the Yanks, her mam’s favourite servicemen… Evie had locked herself in her room to avoid them while the good people of Reckoner’s Row tut-tutted their disapproval. ‘You wouldn’t even let me go to Ireland with Jack and Lucy – I was a twelve- year old child who had to stay home because her mother couldn’t face being alone.’

  ‘That’s not the reason and you know it,’ Her mam glared at her, silently warning her not to say another word. Rene suddenly changed the tone of her voice when Evie remained silent.

  ‘Surely there’s someone you can ask. Honestly, you make a mountain out of an ant hill!’

  ‘I’m not like you, Ma, I don’t ask people – I prepare, I study, I get the job done under my own steam!’ Evie knew her mother had no hesitation in asking for anything. Splash the cash, make things better for poor Rene!

  ‘You’re too bloody independent, that’s your trouble,’ Rene said, gingerly pulling out a straight-backed chair so she didn’t smudge her nails.

  ‘I shouldn’t need to ask anybody, Mam. I’ve worked hard on those notes, and he knows it.’ Evie knew Darnel wanted her out. ‘Will someone sit the exam for me if I ask nicely, too?’

  ‘Don’t be sarky,’ Rene said applying another coat of Cutex nail polish in Young Red to her bullet-shaped talons while Darnel poked the ashes of two years’ work through the glowing coals. ‘You’ve got a job. Why can’t you be satisfied?’

  ‘I don’t want to clean up other people’s mess for the rest of my life, Mam.’ Evie had skivvied all her life and yearned for something better. She wanted to be like the girls who dressed smartly in twinset and pearls. ‘I don’t want to be the dogsbody doing everybody’s bidding.’ Evie’s eyes blazed. ‘I am more than a skivvy.’

  ‘You’ve got a very high opinion of yourself,’ Darnel sneered. Evie refused to respond to his arrogant put-down. A reply would provoke him into the row he wanted. She continued as if he hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Can’t you see not every girl wants to depend on a man, Mam? I don’t want the same kind of life you’ve had.’ She would not fall prey to the first man who showed any interest. ‘What thanks do the women ’round here get for cooking, cleaning and popping out babies until they have nothing left to give?’ She wanted to be independent, successful. ‘I want to be someone.’

  ‘You’ll be someone in Ford cemetery if you give me any more lip.’ The threat rolled off Darnel’s tongue like spit off a hot iron and Evie knew he could put fear into most people, but he didn’t scare her anymore.

  ‘I know your little secrets,’ she said with a nod of her head to strengthen the hidden threat of betrayal, satisfied her words hit home when she noted a flicker of alarm. ‘I know you hide your contraband in our cellar, and as God is my judge,’ she continued, strong in the knowledge she had found his Achilles heel, ‘I will see my day of you, Leo Darnel. But I won’t have to sink to your level to do it.’

  ‘You arrogant bitch.’ He raised his hand to strike her again, but Evie was quick to get out of his path causing his hand to flounder in mid-air. Even though his earlier heavy-handed slap had caused her nose to pop, Evie would not back down to this contemptable man any longer.

  She looked to her mam to see if she would intervene and when Rene did nothing, Evie shook her head in disbelief. It had come to something when even her own mother wouldn’t defend her.

  ‘Is there a chance you will bring Jack and Lucy home, soon?’ Evie turned her impotent fury onto her mother. ‘Or have you forgotten you’ve got a fourteen-year-old son and a ten-year old daughter? Maybe, they don’t count – until they’re earning – is that it, Mam?’ She wanted to hurt her mother in the same way she was hurt.

  ‘Tell her to mind her own bloody business, Rene.’ His belligerent tone told Evie she had the upper hand and it gave her courage to speak her mind.

  ‘You’re nothing but a coward who refused to fight for his country, not like my brave father – a real hero.’

  ‘Hardly, from what I’ve heard,’ Darnel answered scathingly. But Evie ignored his remark. His words were worthless to her.

  ‘You’re nothing but a conniving conchie who spent the war years hiding in attics and cellars.’ He’d built up his crooked empire when good men went to fight and, as a regular in the local tavern where her mother worked, she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d had Rene wrapped around his little finger even then. ‘You wouldn’t be so quick to take the high ground if our Jack was here.’

  ‘A fourteen-year-old kid?’ Darnel sneered, ‘I’m shaking in me boots.’

  Jack might be fourteen, but he was as strong as an ox. Working on a farm in Ireland, he and Lucy ate good fresh food. Evacuation had done her siblings the world of good. They were the picture of glowing health, the last time she managed to visit. But this was their home, where they belonged, and she missed them so much it hurt.

  ‘We were doing fine until you showed up.’ Her angry eyes were transfixed on the crimson spray of blood on Darnel’s singlet and Evie realised she had gone too far, when he lowered his head. All the while his eyes were fixed on hers. Circling her. Never letting her near the door. Flinty-eyed, he was like a bull ready to charge. The only question was – when? She could just make out her mother hovering to the side…would she come to her aid if need be?

  The tight grip of his hand around her throat was swift and forced her lips into an O of humiliation. In the process the back of his hand clipped her lip and another spray of blood splashed his white shirt. Evie heard a small gasp coming from her mother, sitting near the open sash window.

  ‘Leave her alone, Leo!’ Rene’s tone sounded calm to the untrained ear, but Evie knew better. Her heart pounded fiercely. Mam would throw him out this time, surely? But it soon became apparent that Rene would do no such thing when her tone suggested she would only contain the situation. ‘She didn’t mean anything by it. Did you, Evie, love…? Tell him.’

  For those few moments after she admitted knowing where he kept his contraband, Evie thought she had won the battle, but it was quite clear victory had slipped from her grasp.

  ‘I mean it, Rene – if she doesn’t belt up…’ He didn’t paint a picture, elaboration wasn’t his style, but his vice-like grip said enough. Evie sensed her mother’s agitation but doubted she would intervene. Darnel got away with murder where Mam was concerned. Loosening his grip, Evie slumped, rubbing her throat, fighting back the tears.

  ‘Go see if our dinner’s ready, love.’ Rene relaxed visibly, screwing the top back on the bottle of nail varnish. ‘My mouth’s watering, thinking about that lovely piece of silverside Leo brought in.’ Why did her mam always have to chivvy him out of a bad mood?

  ‘This lot r
ound here would give their eyes for a decent joint of beef.’ Darnel said pushing out his pigeon chest and stretching to his full five feet nine inches. Rene was glad she didn’t have to intervene. He had the means to deliver expensive, albeit knocked-off, meat when some of the neighbours couldn’t even afford spam

  ‘We’ve had steak twice this week, aren’t we the lucky ones?’ she said, humouring him.

  ‘Black-market meat isn’t something to brag about,’ Evie said under her breath, feeling her stomach tighten in disgust when her mother gave him a look that held a promise.

  ‘I’m too good to you.’ Darnel’s cocky reply gave him a swagger. ‘You had nothing when I came here, and now look…’ His stubby, ring-covered fingers spread to encompass the ox-blood leather suite, the dining table with four ladder-backed chairs that matched the mahogany sideboard – her mam’s pride and joy.

  ‘I would have the whole street in to show off my posh new furniture,’ Rene said. ‘There’s not many who can afford silk drapes.’

  Not just curtains? Evie thought with venom. Her mother loved the idea she was ‘on the up’ as she called it. There had always been an element of them and us where her mam and the neighbours were concerned.

  ‘I’m not allowing the great unwashed over my threshold,’ Darnel growled, checking himself out in the mirror over the fireplace.

  Since when did it become your threshold? Evie thought, but didn’t voice her question, knowing he would only kick off on her again. Great unwashed indeed!