Rock a Bye Baby
Authors: Mia Dolan
About the Book
Growing up in a small seaside town, Marcie Brooks dreams of owning a Mary Quant mini-skirt, the Beatles, and escape. Instead she’s stuck in a dead-end job selling candy floss to tourists and with a crazy family. Her grandmother sees ghosts, her step-mother is unable to control her growing family and Marcie’s father is usually in and out of prison or away ‘working’ for East End gangsters.
Despite it all, Marcie adores her father, but Tony’s light fingers and hard man reputation mean most people give the Brooks family a wide birth. Sometimes Marcie wishes she had a respectable dad like her friend Rita; well-groomed, wealthy by local standards and surprisingly attentive to a teenage girl. But when she discovers Tony may have had something to do with her real mother’s death, Marcie finds her friend’s father is more than just a shoulder to cry on ...
Mia Dolan’s debut novel is a gripping family saga that combines true to life characters with realistic drama and a ’60s setting.
Mia Dolan is the star of ITV’s
Haunted Homes
and the bestselling author of
The Gift, Mia’s World
, and
Haunted Homes.
Her work spans from live shows in front of hundreds of people to helping the police. She also runs a psychic school which helps others develop their own gifts. In 2007, Mia also won the paranormal celebrity edition of
The Weakest Link.
Rock a Bye Baby
is her first novel and is set largely on the Isle of Sheppey where Mia grew up and still lives.
Mia Dolan
For my mum, Pat Dolan.
My hero, my rock, my best friend.
1965
The woman in the cockle booth sniffed a pinch of snuff from the back of her hand. Once the small tin was tucked away, she turned back to face the promenade. ‘Get yer cockles ’ere,’ she bellowed. Pulling up a corner of the sack she wore as an apron, she swiped dismissively at a few stray specks beneath her nostril.
Marcie sat with her legs bunched beneath her, her back against the warmth of the old stone wall. She was staring at the cockle woman and wondering, but not about buying cockles – that was the last thing she’d want to do. She was wondering about how the woman had got to being what she was – fat, old, not caring too much about standards. So how had she come to be like that? A deeper thought hovered behind that one: would she herself end up like this woman? She shivered at the harrowing vision. No one wanted to end up like that.
The pungent aroma of malt vinegar and hot food wafted up Marcie’s nostrils.
‘Chips!’ Rita was back. ‘Yum, yum.’
Marcie made her self comfortable against the stone wall separating the beach from the promenade and opened up her packet of sandwiches.
Rita slumped down beside her.
Rita licked the Rimmel Pan Stick from her lips and popped a chip in her mouth. She pulled a face. ‘Hmm. Needs a little something extra. Think I’ll get myself some cockles.’ She got to her feet. ‘Coming?’
Marcie made a face. ‘I can’t stand cockles. They look like fishes’ eyes.’
‘Aw, come on. Keep me company. You don’t have to buy any yourself.’
Rita didn’t like doing anything by herself. Bloody nuisance at times. But they were best mates, so Marcie did as requested. Holding on to the hem of her skirt, she got up as elegantly as she could. Her mini skirt was mid thigh and if she wasn’t careful everyone would be treated to a glimpse of white knickers. As it was, she only flashed her stocking tops and a glimpse of suspenders. Just as well. One of her suspenders was missing a button and a farthing was doing the honours.
Rita was trying to cadge a few more cockles.
‘Come on, Gran. Be generous.’
The woman screwed up her eyes and placed hands as speckled as hens’ eggs on the counter.
‘Cheeky bugger. You’ll ’ave what you get. An’ don’t call me Gran. I’m not your bloody Gran.’
‘Don’t be like that,’ said Rita with a cheeky grin.
‘You’re Rita Taylor,’ said the old girl.
‘Yeah, that’s me.’ Rita giggled, giving Marcie a nudge. ‘I’m famous. What do you think of that then?’
‘I knew your mother. Used to go up town a lot during the war. Famous for doing war work she was.’
Rita ignored the toothless grin and didn’t catch on to what the old girl was saying – really saying.
‘What about me? Know my name as well?’ said Marcie, determined not to be outdone and nudging Rita as hard as she’d been nudged.
The woman’s toothless smile faltered. ‘Oh, aye. That I do. I know yer grandmother. Who don’t know Rosa Brooks? Famous she is. Knew your mother too, though she’s famous for a different reason.’
Marcie swallowed. The woman’s comment made her feel uncomfortable. Her mother had disappeared somewhere around Marcie’s fifth birthday. She hadn’t heard from her since, and her grandmother had made it clear that her mother’s name was never to be mentioned. Not questioning why and not saying had become a habit. Her grandmother’s words, still flavoured with her Maltese origins, echoed in her brain.
‘Gone away with a man. Left me and your father to look after you. Not a good mother to go away and leave her child. Wrong! Very wrong!’
Oh yes, her grandmother was famous alright.
Thank God for friends, Marcie thought to herself.
Rita bubbled like a hot stew on a gas ring. At this moment in time her best and oldest friend had got the old girl to pour the cockles over her chips and added generous splashes of vinegar.
Marcie pretended to vomit. ‘Christ, Rita. Don’t know how you could.’
‘Cockles are lovely.’
‘Well, I don’t like them. I think they’re disgusting!’
‘Fab,’ said Rita between salty mouthfuls. ‘Here,’ she said, lowering her voice while her eyes slid sidelong to the cockle seller. ‘What was that she was on about? Her reckoning she knew your mother. Must have been a while ago. Your mother’s been gone for a long time, ain’t she?’
‘Yeah. A long time.’
‘So you don’t remember what she was like?’
Marcie shook her head and turned her face to the breeze sweeping in from the Thames Estuary. She didn’t want Rita to see her face just in case she guessed she was lying. Anyway, it wasn’t exactly a lie. She’d never heard from her mother in ten years or more. She might be dead. On the other hand she might be alive and living the life of Riley.
Rita glanced at her watch.
‘Bloody hell! Late again.’
Marcie finished her sandwich, screwed up the brown paper bag her lunch had been wrapped in and
tossed it into a bin. Determined to eat every chip and every cockle, Rita re-wrapped hers. ‘I’ll eat it this afternoon. Not wasting good food for nobody.’
Not long out of school, both girls had been taken on selling rock and candy floss in adjoining booths on the edge of the beach at Leysdown. Out of sight in their clapperboard booths, they chatted all afternoon or sang snatches of the latest pop songs.
Marcie had acquired a transistor radio – a present from her father sent via a friend of a friend. At first she’d tuned into Radio Luxembourg, but that didn’t come on air until after six. It was only since the arrival last year of the pirate radio station Radio Caroline that they’d had daytime pop songs.
Since the advent of a radio channel that understood the tastes of the younger generation, Marcie had got into the habit of bringing the transistor into work. All in all work wasn’t turning out so bad. On a warm day it was pleasant. On a bad day – depending on wind direction – she got soaked through.
They finished at six.
Rita burst into song. ‘Hi ho, hi ho …’ She always sang the tune from
Snow White
at this time of the day.
Marcie interrupted her. ‘Coming for a coffee later?’
The off-key singing came to a halt. Rita winked. ‘Now which café would we be going to?’
Marcie was good at hiding a guilty expression –
she’d had years of practice living with her grandmother.
‘I fancy the Lucky Seven.’
Rita chortled. ‘I know what you fancy, and coffee and a bottle of coke got nothing to do with it! Leather jacket and tight denim jeans that shows all a bloke’s got – that’s what you got in mind. Your gran going to let you out?’
Marcie grinned in a meaningful fashion that Rita knew well. ‘If she says no, I’m going to bed early.’
‘Out the window and down the drainpipe, you mean.’ They both laughed.
A girl they knew from school waved to them from the pavement. She was pushing a pram.
Marcie waved back. ‘Hello, Nancy.’
Rita mutely waved. ‘Crikey. Look at her. Dropped a kid the minute she got out of school.’
‘She’s married now, though,’ said Marcie who liked Nancy and felt sorry for her. ‘She married Gary Champion. Her dad gave him a hiding to make sure he did the right thing. Couldn’t have a bastard in the family, he said.’
‘Gary Champion? I don’t know him,’ said Rita. She frowned as she said it. Rita liked to think that she knew everybody.
‘You wouldn’t want to know him. I saw Nancy close up the other day. She had a massive bruise on her arm, all purple in the middle and yellow around
the edges. According to Nancy he drinks a lot more since they got married. He works on the docks. Mind you, she reckoned she was used to it. Her dad used to hit her about anyway. Half the time he mistook her for her mother. Swine!’
‘Glad he’s not my dad,’ said Rita.
‘Glad he’s not mine,’ Marcie echoed.
Hearing what Nancy’s dad was like made her feel grateful that hers was away in London. Every once in a while he sent her a present. Therefore he must care about her, though he’d never actually gone out of his way to show affection. Things would have been really great if he hadn’t married Barbara.
If it hadn’t been for Barbara with her peroxide hair and her Bridget Bardot lips, she would have been an only child. Barbara had presented Tony Brooks with two sons, two brothers that Marcie would have preferred not to have, and a baby daughter, Annie. All the same, her dad was still a gent compared with Fred Tucker, Nancy’s old man.
‘My dad’s not like that,’ said Rita with a tinge of pride in her voice. ‘He’s a diamond, my dad.’
It was nothing but the truth. Alan Taylor was well off, let her do anything she liked and bought her anything she wanted. Rita probably didn’t need to work but for some reason her dad had thought it would be good for her. Though he would have liked her to have a better job than she did and to have
done better at school, but as long as she was happy that was alright by him. Rita’s dad owned businesses, and they lived in a nice bungalow with a garage and a gravel drive. He was also a mate of Marcie’s dad. But Marcie couldn’t let her dad be outdone.