The Past and Other Lies by Maggie Joel

Author:Maggie Joel
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781937384708
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2013-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AUGUST 1925

THE FOLLOWING DAY SHE had carried an old navy handbag to work but no one had noticed.

Even apart from the handbag, she had felt rotten all day, stuffy-headed and lethargic, and she had sneezed so many times during lunch that no one had been in the least surprised when she had sent word the next day that she was ill with a violent head cold and could not come in to work.

That had been the day of the raven in the rafters and Mr Littlejohn with the pistol, an incident about which the whole switchroom still talked, five months later.

And now, finally, today was the day.

Bertha knew it with a certainty she couldn’t voice, and even had she been able to voice it she wouldn’t have, not to her family and certainly not to her co-workers. Bitter experience had taught her that if you talked about something it did not happen. And this was going happen.

Matthew had called it A Special Reason. He had arranged to meet her this evening after her shift. He had never met her straight from her shift before. It was unprecedented.

This was it.

‘Oi, Flaxy, you been at the gin or something?’

Bertha jerked her head up and met the inquiring eyes of Nellie Trenoweth, who was perched two seats away and was scrutinising her with a piercing gaze, a lipstick poised over her mouth ready to reapply. ‘You been a million miles away all day,’ she observed. ‘Wouldn’t be keeping something from us, would you?’

Nellie had a way of reading people that was quite unnerving. The slightest retort, denial or explanation could prove fatal, but Bertha found that her headset required immediate readjustment at precisely that moment.

‘Am I missing something interesting?’ said Fliss Cutler, looking up from her call with a sparkle of curiosity in her eye. ‘So sorry, caller. Do be a sweetie and hold the line, would you? Thanks so much.’

Thank you very much, Nellie, thought Bertha, jabbing a jack into a new call. ‘Operator. May I help you?’

‘S’obvious,’ Nellie was saying. ‘Read her like a book, that one. Something’s up, sure enough... Battersea nine-two-double-six, that line is engaged. Would you like to try again later, caller?’

‘Perhaps she’s anticipating a special delivery courtesy of the Royal Mail,’ replied Fliss with a wink. ‘Do please stay on the line, caller. Shan’t be too much longer... There we are, you have a connection.’

A special delivery from the Royal Mail, yes, most amusing. Well, she’d made no secret of her weekly excursions with Matthew, not since Elsie had seen them at the Lyons in High Street a few months back and made it her mission to broadcast the news as far and wide as possible. Anyway, there was no shame in it—Matthew was a very respectable man, no one could argue with that. And in these times, well, a girl had to look out for herself and take what she could. Elsie had recently been courting the awful Bernie Sampson from the Switch Adjustment team

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