The Fight for Lizzie Flowers (3 page)

‘Wait till she starts stopping out late, like you used to. Then we’ll see sparks fly.’

Ethel laughed. ‘I liked to enjoy myself when you weren’t watching.’ She paused, frowning at Lizzie. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? They grow up so quickly. Only a year or two
ago, she was playing with dolls like Polly.’

Lizzie smiled, staring wistfully at her six-year-old niece as she followed Tom around the yard. At nine years old Danny’s adopted son was the spit of Danny. All blond hair and big blue
eyes. While Polly was auburn with pretty blue eyes just like her mother, Babs.

At the thought of her absent sister, Lizzie felt a pang of sadness. Babs, a year younger than herself, had left the East End over a year ago, preferring a life on the streets to caring for
Polly. Would she ever come back to the East End, she wondered sadly?

‘Your ex is a cunning sod,’ Lil warned, taking a long puff. ‘He knows how much you think of Pol. He also knows he stands a good chance of being her father.’

‘Not that it’s ever been proved,’ Ethel said quickly. ‘Babs kept tight-lipped about that one.’

‘We all took it for granted when Babs was up the spout that Frank was responsible,’ Lil said with a shrug. ‘They was going at it like rabbits behind Lizzie’s back all the
time she was married.’

‘Mum!’

‘Well, it’s true, Ethel.’

‘Yes, but Lizzie doesn’t need to hear it again, does she?’

‘Doesn’t bother me,’ Lizzie said, although this wasn’t strictly true. It still hurt somewhere deep down when she let herself think about Frank cheating on her.
‘Babs wasn’t the only one, anyway. Frank had plenty of affairs. But if Polly is his, one day she’ll have to know it. I don’t want her to think the worst of her
father.’

‘So what you going to tell her?’ Lil said archly.

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

‘And if Frank comes to the shop?’ Lil asked. ‘Chucks his weight around like he used to? The kid ain’t daft. She’ll see him in his true light then.’

‘Let him try,’ Lizzie said firmly. ‘Bert wouldn’t have that.’

‘True, Mum. It’d be a brave man who’d argue with Bert,’ Ethel agreed and all three nodded.

Lil sniffed and cuffed her long nose with the back of her wrist. ‘Poor Pol. She don’t deserve a father like him, a two-bit crook with a knack for bashing women. Or a mother like Babs
on the game.’

‘I don’t want to think about all that, Lil.’

‘I only speak the truth, love. When Frank appears again, as he will, he’ll come out with all the soft soap. You’ll have to remember that he got Babs in the family way. And
Polly was just a couple of weeks old when she decided she’d had enough of motherhood. The silly cow couldn’t wait to go back to her life as one of Ferreter’s trollops. Aided and
abetted by Frank, needless to say. Christ, Lizzie, you’ve been to hell and back with that scoundrel!’

All three women were silent for a moment. Lizzie knew deep in her heart that Lil was right on all scores. But Polly meant more to Lizzie than the sins of the past. And even though Frank had been
and done all Lil said he had, and worse, it was Polly who counted now.

‘Look on the bright side,’ Lil continued, gulping down smoke, ‘at least Babs ain’t shacked up with Frank still. She don’t give a damn about Pol. Where is a
mother’s love in all that?’

Ethel crossed her legs, glancing at Lizzie. ‘Have you ever thought of adopting Polly?’

‘Yeah,’ interrupted Lil eagerly, unable to stay quiet. ‘Good idea. Tell them how your husband knocked off your sister, and how when Polly was born they abandoned her, leaving
you to do the honours. And how, six years on, you’re the closest to a mother that Polly has ever had.’ Lil pointed the cigarette and the ash spilled on the table. ‘Oh, yes, and
there’s the small matter of your old man trying to blow up your shop and you and your family with it. They’ll put up no argument then!’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘The welfare won’t help the likes of me. I’m married to Polly’s father, they’d say, and tell me to get on with it. And without Babs’s
consent there’s nothing more I can do.’

‘Your Babs was always flighty,’ Lil said bitterly as she ground her dog-end into the metal ashtray. ‘What with her and your brother Vinnie, who was always a sod, your mum had a
tough job on her hands. If she couldn’t keep them on the straight and narrow, what hope is there for you?’

But no matter what anyone said, Lizzie still felt she had failed to keep her older brother Vinnie out of prison and Babs from the streets. And though she looked on Polly as her own, Babs was
Polly’s birth-mother.

‘You look all in, gel.’ Lil placed a hand on Lizzie’s arm. ‘Why don’t you go next door? Have a chat with your sister. She’s got her drawers in a twist about
not being able to get the morning off work for your wedding. As it stands, she didn’t miss nothing.’

Lizzie had put off going in to see Flo, her younger sister. She knew she would be very upset. Flo hated Frank with a vengeance and had cause to.

‘Better get it over with,’ Lil urged. ‘Remember, your little sister has stuck by you through thick and thin, whereas Babs and Vinnie buggered off. Flo had Frank taped right
from when she was a kid and had the scarlet fever. He took you to visit her at the sanatorium and turned on the charm. But Flo wouldn’t have none of it.’

Lizzie recognized the truth, even though it was painful to hear. What a fool she had been to fall for that charm. And it had been Flo who had tried to warn her.

Ethel touched Lizzie’s shoulder. ‘Chin up, love. Flo’s bark is worse than her bite.’

Lizzie looked fondly at her good friend. They had grown close over the years; close enough to know what each other was thinking. And now the glance that passed between them spoke volumes.

Polly ran into Lizzie’s arms as she walked into the yard. The little girl was a picture of Babs at her age. All coppery hair and big smiles. Lizzie felt the familiar pang of guilt that
somehow along the way she had failed Babs. How could she not want to share in her daughter’s life? Was it something that Lizzie had done?

‘Did you marry Uncle Danny?’ Polly asked breathlessly. ‘Did they throw the confetti?’

‘Uncle Danny and me decided to wait a while.’

‘Are we still having a party?’

‘Course we are.’

‘What about Christmas? I thought we was all going to live over the shop and get a big Christmas tree and stay up late.’

‘We’ll still have a party.’ Lizzie touched Polly’s beautiful hair. ‘And lots of nice things to eat.’

Polly giggled. ‘That’s all right then. Can I tell Tom and Rosie and Timothy?’

‘Yes, but mind that ball on Auntie Lil’s window.’

Polly scampered off. Relieved that Polly didn’t seem too disappointed, Lizzie made her way over the broken fence to her sister’s house. Somehow she had to deliver the news to Flo
without more eruptions, then try to get through the rest of the day.

Danny Flowers sat in the decked-out front room of No. 84 Langley Street, his beer untouched beside him. The clock on the mantelpiece showed almost an hour to go before the
guests arrived. An hour in which to steady his nerves. He had a suspicion the news of Frank’s return would already have circulated. The sympathy, the handshakes, the winks and nods were all
coming his way. And he had no choice but to take them on the chin.

Danny lifted his glass and, for the first time that day, enjoyed the bite of the alcohol. Not that it would douse the fire in his chest that still raged. Anger and bitter disappointment fanned
the flames of his resentment towards Frank. Yet, he asked himself, where was his compassion for the brother who’d cheated death and returned to life? Even if Frank was the devil incarnate, he
hadn’t deserved to die by Ferreter’s hand. Frank was his brother, his only kith and kin other than Dad. They were family and blood-linked. But he didn’t trust Frank further than
he could throw him. And now, it seemed, history was about to repeat itself.

‘Cheer up, lad. It might never happen.’ Doug Sharpe, nursing his ale, glanced at Danny with a frown of concern.

‘I’m angry at myself, Doug. How could I have been so mistaken about Frank? I saw him on that marble slab – or what was left of him.’

‘Not your fault,’ his old friend insisted. ‘You were ninety-nine per cent certain it was Frank the coppers dragged out of the water.’

‘And the one per cent manages to turn up on our wedding day.’ Danny sat forward, gazing into Doug’s fatherly face with its calm expression. At sixty-seven, Doug had been a
white-collar worker at the docks, and had always provided for his family. But after the loss of his two sons in the war, he’d aged dramatically. Danny admired him for the way he’d
pulled through the nightmare and somehow got on with his life. He was wise and steady and had been in all their lives since forever, standing by Lizzie through the mess of her marriage to Frank.
For that, Danny would be eternally grateful. They were good people and Danny loved them for it.

Doug’s smooth forehead wrinkled under his thinning grey hair. ‘Stop beating yourself up, cocker. We all know you did your best.’

‘I saw a body wearing Frank’s clothes and shoes, and half a face. I didn’t hang around to find out I was wrong.’

‘Any one of us would have given the nod,’ Bert agreed in his deep, lumbering voice. A voice, Danny reflected, that could only have come from a man who weighed over nineteen stone and
stood almost with his head in the clouds. Bert sat squashed in an armchair, his tie removed and the buttons of his shirt undone. ‘You wasn’t going to get any help from Old
Bill.’

‘I’ve got a nasty feeling it don’t end here.’ Danny stretched his broad shoulders, uncomfortable under the restrictive tailoring of his wedding suit. He was more
accustomed to his overalls, the ones he wore at the garage. He wore them with pride, knowing the business was his own little kingdom. He’d thought he was on the way to a happy life now, with
the garage on its feet and Lizzie as his wife. How wrong could a man be?

He stared desolately at Doug. ‘The point being, who did I identify as Frank?’

A knock at the front door prevented anyone from venturing an opinion. Danny stood up. ‘That’ll be Cal. I asked him to go by the pub and see if there was word on the grapevine. If
there is, the landlord will know.’

‘Y’all right, Danny?’ Cal Bronga, Danny’s mechanic, best friend and only employee, stepped in. Black-bearded, with ebony shoulder-length hair, Cal was the agile bushman
Danny had first met in the gold mines of Australia. No one had been more pleased than Danny when Cal had eventually followed him to England last summer.

‘Find out anything?’ Danny kept his voice low.

‘No, boss. Not a breath.’ Cal shook his dark head. ‘Like you told me, I checked at the Quarry and the Ship, then drove past your old man’s drum. Quiet as a dingo’s
fart.’

‘I can’t see Frank visiting Dad.’ Danny felt the swell of anger again in his chest. Their father was entitled to some peace in his twilight years. Frank had never given Bill
Flowers the respect he was due. Despite all the effort Bill had put in to compensate for the early death of their mother, Frank had still turned out the bad apple.

Cal followed Danny in, grinning broadly at the two men seated in the chairs. Bert stood, dwarfing Cal momentarily as he clasped his hand.

Doug said after a while, ‘Frank don’t have any friends on the island. Without Ferreter’s muscle behind him, I can’t see him making waves.’

‘Well, he managed more than a ripple today.’ Irritably, Danny flicked undone the top button of his shirt and slid out his tie, stuffing it in his pocket. ‘Five minutes later me
and Lizzie would have been wed with an official signature to prove it.’

Cal moved closer to the window and nodded to the street. ‘Looks like we’ve got company.’

Danny joined him, to see their guests approaching. He knew without a shade of doubt that not one of the invited stepping into the house this day would welcome Frank’s return.

‘Calm down, Flo, don’t upset yourself.’ Sydney Miller reached out for his girlfriend.

‘Don’t tell me to calm down, Syd.’ Flo Allen pushed him away. ‘Frank has screwed up our lives again. Why couldn’t he stay dead, like most people do when they stop
breathing?’

Lizzie gazed at her sister. Flo had to get her annoyance off her chest. Flo, although five years younger than Lizzie, was protective, loyal to the last. More to the point, she could not forgive
Frank for the unhappiness he had brought to their lives.

‘You don’t believe his bullshit, do you?’ Flo thrust back her short, shiny brown hair and raised her black eyebrows challengingly.

‘No, course I don’t,’ Lizzie assured her. ‘The registrar had no choice but to call off the wedding.’

‘Lizzie ain’t at fault,’ Syd agreed. ‘But we know who is.’

Lizzie liked Sydney Miller a lot. He was officially Flo’s lodger, but Lizzie knew he had shared Flo’s bed since moving into Langley Street. Syd had been Flo’s first boyfriend
and Lizzie had disapproved of him. But somehow he had managed to distance himself from the influence of his notoriously troubled family.

Lizzie sighed deeply as she sat on the well-worn fireside chair. This was the house she and her brothers and sisters had been brought up in. Passed now to Flo, it still held the memories of
their childhood and she loved it.

‘Well, someone’s got to eat all the food,’ Flo said with half a smile as she stuck out her ample bust under the soft material of her damson chiffon blouse. The colour was
flattering but was currently at odds with the scarlet blush of anger flooding into her cheeks. ‘I’ll just get me bag and we’ll go next door.’

‘Where the hell has Frank been?’ Syd asked Lizzie when they were alone.

‘In hospital, so he says. A mental institution.’

‘In that case, why don’t you and Danny just move in together?’

‘What would it be like for Polly and Tom if we did? The gossip was bad enough after Frank bombed the shop. The kids at school wouldn’t go near Polly. They were afraid Frank would
come after them too. I can’t let that happen again.’

‘Yeah, I get your meaning.’ Syd pulled a white square of crumpled cloth from his trouser pocket and blew his nose. He was wearing a white shirt and armbands and a smart grey
waistcoat. Standing only five foot seven tall, he was a pocket Hercules. He made up for his lack of height with his strength and bulging biceps. With his close-cropped light brown hair, square jaw
and fresh-faced complexion, he looked every inch the Billingsgate porter. ‘How’s Danny taken it?’ he asked in concern.