Battle for Possession by Charlotte Lamb

Author:Charlotte Lamb [Lamb, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, General, Romance, Adult, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780373115099
Publisher: Harlequin Books
Published: 1992-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The following day, the weather was so fine that Gina and Roz decided not to waste their lunch- break eating indoors. Instead, they bought sandwiches and fruit from the café-bar in the plaza, which sold a vast range of take-away food, from Indian samosas, triangles of deep-fried pastry which held meat or vegetables, to Arab couscous, and even soups in waxed cups with lids to keep the contents hot.

The Torelli family ran it; they had another bar close to London Bridge station, which Grandpa Torelli had opened just after the Second World War, and they had collectively decided to start empire- building when Barbary Wharf opened and offered them the opportunity to expand. It was still a family business, though, and today it was old Mrs Torelli behind the counter.

She was nearly seventy, but still spry and quickwitted. When one of the office messengers being served before Gina and Roz gave her too little money she told him crossly, 'I may have white hair, but I still have all my wits! Where's the rest?' and repeated the amount he owed her while the boy, red-faced, fumbled with a handful of change.

She gave Gina and Roz a friendly look; they had already become faces she recognised. 'What will it be today, darlings? Try my minestrone, I made it myself so I know it's good.' When they said they just wanted sandwiches, she threw up her hands and darted off to fill their order. 'No imagination!' she told them, handing over the food in brown paper bags saying, 'Recycled paper!'

'Oh,' they said, startled. 'Thank you.'

They walked across the open square of the plaza, through the exit to the riverbank, on Ratcliff Walk, and sat on a bench in the newly planted embankment gardens from where they could watch the Thames.

'Did you know,' Gina said, biting into her egg salad sandwich, 'that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was a street running parallel with the Thames, called the Ratcliff Highway? It was full of prostitutes and their pimps, waiting for sailors, and thieves who got sailors drunk and stole their money, or even killed them.'

'Where did you hear about that?' asked Roz, staring at the peaceful scene in front of them; the blue spring sky, yellow daffodils and bright orange tulips in the gardens, barges slowly chugging past, tarpaulin hiding whatever they carried, a police launch speeding along with a great wake behind it, a few battered old freighters bobbing at anchor.

'I read about it once,' said Gina, throwing the rest of her sandwiches to some gulls which came screaming down to take them.

Roz said, 'I suppose in those days, there were always dozens of ships docking in the port of London, and thousands of sailors coming ashore with pockets full of money!'

'And plenty of vultures waiting for them,' Gina said with a touch of bitterness. 'The Nick Caspians of this century had ancestors!'

Roz gave her an amused look. 'You know, you're becoming quite waspish. And you used to be such

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