Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [0]
Faith
Hope
A Lesser Evil
Secrets
Remember Me
Till We Meet Again
Father Unknown
Trust Me
Never Look Back
Charlie
Rosie
Camellia
Ellie
Charity
Tara
Georgia
Gypsy
LESLEY PEARSE
MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
MICHAEL JOSEPH
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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First published 2008
1
Copyright © Lesley Pearse, 2008
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book
978-0-14-191033-8
To my grandson Brandon.
My greatest treasure and delight.
Chapter One
1893, Liverpool
‘Stop playing that Devil’s music and come and help me,’ Alice Bolton yelled angrily from the kitchen.
Fifteen-year-old Beth smirked at her mother’s description of her fiddle playing and was tempted to continue louder and wilder. But Alice had been very irritable recently and was likely to come in and snatch the fiddle, so Beth put it back into its battered case and left the parlour to do as she was asked.
She had only just reached the kitchen when a thud, quickly followed by the sound of heavy objects falling, came from the shop below their flat.
‘What on earth was that?’ Alice exclaimed, turning round from the stove with the teapot in her hand.
‘I expect Papa knocked something over,’ Beth replied.
‘Well, don’t just stand there, go and see,’ her mother snapped.
Beth paused on the landing, looking down over the banisters on to the staircase which led to the shop. She could hear something rolling around down there, but there was no sound of the cursing that usually accompanied any accidents.
‘Are you all right, Papa?’ she called out.
It was dusk, and although they hadn’t yet lit the gas lights upstairs, Beth was surprised to see no glow at the bottom of the stairs from the lights in the shop. Her father was a shoemaker, and as he needed good light for close work he always lit the lamps well before daylight began to fade.
‘What’s the clumsy oaf done now?’ her mother bellowed. ‘Tell him to leave his work for tonight. Supper’s nearly ready anyway.’
Church Street, one of Liverpool’s main shopping streets, had few carts or carriages upon it at seven in the evening, so her father should have heard his wife’s insulting remark clearly. When he didn’t respond to it, Beth thought he must be out in the privy in the backyard, and maybe a stray cat had got into the shop and knocked something over. The last time this had happened the contents of a glue pot ran all over the floor and it had taken hours to clean up the mess, so she ran down quickly to check.
Her father wasn’t in the privy as the door out to the yard was bolted on the inside, and when she went into the shop she found it in semi-darkness as the blinds had been pulled down.
‘Where are you, Papa?’ she called out. ‘What was all the noise about?’
There