Trust Me

Synopsis

Two young sisters sent far, far from home ... When tragedy deprives little Dulcie Taylor and her sister May of their parents, they are sent first to an orphanage and then shipped off to begin a new life in Australia. But the 'better life' the sisters are promised in this new and exciting country turns out to be a lie. It seems everyone who ever stood up for them, who ever said 'trust me', somehow betrays that trust: their parents, teachers and the sisters at the convent. But then Dulcie meets Ross, another orphanage survivor, and finds a kindred spirit. Can Dulcie ever get over the pain of the past and learn to trust again? And does she have the strength to fight for her own happiness as well as that of her sister?

LESLEY PEARSE

Trust Me

PENGUIN BOOKS

Table of Contents

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Part Two

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

To all those children everywhere who suffered the indignity and brutality of orphanages. My heart goes out to you, and I hope that in some small way this story will acknowledge the sadness of your past and help you to put it aside.

PART ONE

1947–1955

Chapter One

May 1947

Hither Green, South London

Edna Groomes and Iris Brown paused in their gossiping as Anne Taylor came tripping along Leahurst Road. Her high heels tapped out a staccato message,
Look at me, look at me,
and so they stared, hating her for her beauty, blonde hair, trim figure and youth.

Edna and Iris were both only in their early thirties, no more than six years older than Anne, but their crossover pinnies, headscarves knotted like turbans and sagging, overweight bodies made them look much older.

‘She’ll be off to the ‘airdresser’s again,’ Edna said accusingly, shaking her tin of Brasso and bending over to finish polishing the letter-box she’d started before Iris came out of her flat next door. ‘She’s always in there. All she thinks of is ‘ow she looks.’

Iris put her hands on her hips and smirked as Anne came closer. ‘’Ow’s the little ‘uns?’ she asked with some malice. ‘Stuck indoors as usual?’

‘The children are fine, thank you,’ Anne replied without even breaking her step, her nose firmly in the air. ‘And yes, they are indoors. I don’t allow them to play in the street disturbing the neighbours.’

It was the crisp, cultured voice and the snipe at Edna and Iris’s children who were playing a noisy game of cricket further down the street which momentarily stunned the two older women. By the time Iris had managed to open her mouth again, Anne had already disappeared around the corner into Manor Lane.

‘Stuck-up bitch,’ Iris spat out.

Edna laughed. ‘You asked for that one, Iris. If she weren’t so bloody posh she might ‘ave whacked you.’

‘She might be posh but she’s no better than she should be,’ Iris retorted, sitting down on the low wall which gave a mere three feet of front garden to the two-storey flats. ‘She’s bin carrying on with Tosh down at the pub for months now. I’ve two minds to slip Reg the wink.’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ Edna said, abandoning her polishing to sit on the wall beside her friend and drawing a packet of Turf out of her pinny pocket. ‘I reckon ‘e’d knock you out.’

The two women lit up their cigarettes, enjoying the warm spring sunshine on their faces. It was the first warm day of the year. Nineteen forty-seven had been the worst winter on record, snow lying on the ground from January right through to early April, and it was only now, the first week in May, that they’d been able to come outside without a coat.

But apart from the sunshine, there was no real evidence of spring in Leahurst Road, for there were no trees, and the tiny front gardens were used to house dustbins and bicycles, not flowers. Even further down the street nearer to Hither Green station where the long terrace of Victorian houses was broken by a bomb-site, the weeds and grass hadn’t yet begun to grow. Across the street was Lee Manor School, but as it was Saturday the gates in the eight-foot fence were closed, shutting out the sight of pots of daffodils on the window-sills.

Edna drew hard on her cigarette before speaking again. ‘You sure she’s carrying on with Tosh at the pub? I can’t see someone like ‘er messing with a creep like ‘im. I wouldn’t touch ‘im with a flaming barge-pole!’

‘Well, ‘e’s loaded, ain’t ‘e,’ Iris said with a sniff. ‘She thinks she’s too grand to live around ‘ere, ‘spect she thinks he’ll set her up somewhere more to ‘er liking. He won’t, though, he’s as tight as a monkey’s balls.’

Edna laughed. Tosh, the landlord of the Station Hotel, was famous for his meanness. They joked that moths flew out when he opened his wallet. He was also nearly fifty, balding and paunchy, an ex-boxer with a broken nose. It was surprising enough that Anne Taylor, with her stunning looks and hoity-toity manner, should even work for him as a barmaid, but although Edna would like to believe what her friend was saying she thought it extremely unlikely that Anne would stoop to having an affair with him too. ‘Why would she want a man to take her away from ‘ere anyway? Reg ain’t a boozer, and he’s always in work,’ she said.

Iris rolled her eyes with impatience. ‘Are you blind and deaf?’ she exclaimed. ‘Everyone knows they fight all the time. Mrs Gardener downstairs to them says they are at it hammer and tongs most every night.’

‘Me and Sid fight all the time an’ all,’ Edna retorted. ‘Specially when he stays in the pub and his dinner’s ruined. That don’t mean I go looking for someone else.’

Iris moved closer to her friend. ‘She neglects those kids,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Back in the winter when the snow was on the ground sometimes they was waiting on the doorstep with their teeth chattering for hours for their mum to get back. If it weren’t for Reg I don’t reckon they’d ever get a decent meal or clean clothes. She spends all the money on clothes and hair-dos, and why would she do that if it weren’t to catch a new man?’

Edna knew it was true about the two little girls waiting on the doorstep in the cold after school, she’d taken them in a few times herself, but she thought Iris was being a bit malicious about the rest so she made no comment. She liked Reg Taylor. He looked like a thug with his big shoulders and hair cut as close as a convict’s, but he’d been the first to come round to offer help when her pipes burst in the winter and Sid was working away. Just the way Reg talked about his little girls showed how much he loved them, and she didn’t believe he would stand for his wife neglecting them.

‘Oh, I know Reg is a good sort,’ Iris said as if she’d read Edna’s thoughts. ‘But she’s a bad ‘un. Fancy ‘er leaving those little kiddies cooped up in that flat all day while she gets ‘er ‘air done. It ain’t never right.’

The Taylor girls didn’t think it was right either. As their mother was walking up the street they were watching her from the window. They saw her pass Mrs Groomes and Mrs Brown, and once she’d gone round the corner, they grabbed the spare key from the mantelpiece and skipped out, knowing she wouldn’t be back for at least two hours. They were making for Manor House Gardens, the pretty park with a lake only ten minutes away. Within an hour they had joined some other children down in the mud on the banks of the River Quaggy, which ran through it, until the park-keeper spotted them.

All six children involved in building a dam across the river jerked up their heads in alarm at the sound of his outraged shout from the bridge some twenty yards away. Dulcie Taylor didn’t stop to see what her companions would do, just grabbed her younger sister May’s hand, hauled her up the river bank and squeezed first May, then herself, through the same bent railing they had entered through.

‘Quick, hide under there,’ Dulcie gasped, shoving May beneath a dense shrub on the other side of the pathway, then, with only the briefest glance around, crawling in too.

Seconds later, the park-keeper in his brown uniform came riding past on his bicycle. Dulcie put her hand over May’s mouth and whispered that she wasn’t to move until he was out of sight. As they could hear him yelling at the others, no more than thirty or forty feet away from their hiding-place, they stayed crouched under the bush, both panting with fright.

Dulcie was eight and a half, May had had her fifth birthday only two days ago, and they were very alike, with blonde hair which they wore in plaits, pale skin and wide blue eyes. Yet May was always referred to by neighbours as ‘the pretty little one’. It wasn’t that Dulcie was plain, though she was rather thin and gawky, with new front teeth which looked a little large for her small face, merely that May endeared herself to people by smiling readily and chatting, and she didn’t look permanently anxious as her older sister did.