The Annie Carter Series Books 1–4. Jessie Keane

the imperious old woman now. She’d croaked back in the spring, heart attack or something.

      There had been a lavish funeral on a rainy April day, a huge fleet of black Daimlers gliding through the East End behind the hearse. The pink carnations on either side of Queenie’s coffin had spelt out MUM. The streets had been lined with silent, respectful watchers.

      All the men had removed their hats.

      Some of the women had cried.

      The Carter family were held in high regard around this manor, and that day was the proof.

      ‘I stopped at Kath’s,’ said Annie, closing the door behind her.

      ‘You’re a bloody liar,’ said Connie flatly, snorting smoke from her pinched little nose. ‘I spoke to Maureen two hours ago and she said that Kath was home by eleven and she didn’t have you with her. You’ve been up to no good.’

      Annie let out an angry breath. ‘I’m twenty, Mum, not ten. What I do is my business.’

      ‘Not while you live under my roof,’ snapped Connie. ‘You’ve been out mucking around with some bloke or other.’

      Annie stared at her mother. She ached to wipe that smug look off Connie’s face by telling her that the bloke was Max Carter, who was marrying good-as-gold Ruthie today.

      It would be quite a laugh, standing behind them both at the altar in her role as bridesmaid, looking at Max’s broad, expensively suited shoulders and knowing that her scratch marks were still on them.

      ‘What’s going on?’

      They both looked up. Ruthie was standing at the top of the stairs yawning as she shrugged into her red dressing gown. Her mousy hair was rumpled around her plain, placid face.

      Ruthie wasn’t bad-looking, really.

      There was a serenity about her.

      But she didn’t have Annie’s incendiary beauty, and she didn’t have that flirtatious spark that made men lose their heads and sometimes their hearts. Connie always said that Ruthie was her good little girl. She also said that Annie was trouble just like her father, always had been, always would be.

      Annie had been hurt by that when she was little. For a while she had tried to be good like Ruthie, to prove her mother wrong, but then Dad had left so it was clear that the good-behaviour policy had got her nowhere. Bad behaviour won her a lot more attention. All right, it was a clout around the ear or bed without supper, but it was attention nevertheless, and she had to claw a little back from perfect Ruthie now and again, or go mad.

      ‘Nothing’s going on, sweetheart,’ said Connie, and Annie’s lip curled because even Connie’s voice was different when she spoke to Ruthie. It was soft and gentle and soothing. When Connie spoke to Annie, her voice was harsh with dislike. ‘Just Annie out on the tiles, hooking her pearly about for any lad that wants it.’

      Now that was unfair. Sure, she went down the pub with her mates and up West sometimes when she was flush, and she flirted and danced and teased, but she’d never come across for a man until last night, and she wanted to tell her mother that but she couldn’t. Pride wouldn’t let her.

      ‘Oh Annie,’ said Ruthie. ‘I don’t want you looking all washed-out for the big day.’

      ‘I won’t,’ said Annie tightly, pushing past Connie and running up the stairs. She paused in front of Ruthie. ‘What time did you say we had to be at the hairdresser’s?’

      Ruthie rolled her eyes. ‘Nine o’clock. I told you.’

      ‘I forgot. I’ll get washed up,’ said Annie, and hurried into the bathroom.

      She leaned on the sink and looked at her reflection. Her face was flushed, her dark eyes flashing with suppressed anger. She heard Ruthie go downstairs, heard their murmuring voices and knew what they were saying.

      Poor Annie, Ruthie would say, she seems so lost.

      Little tart, Connie would retort, if she isn’t knocked up before Christmas I’ll eat my hat.

      Annie touched her belly thoughtfully. No, Max had been careful. An unplanned pregnancy would really put the cat among the pigeons. She thought back to how tender he had been at first, how sweet … and then how dismissive. Had and then forgotten, she thought. Her first time, a special time with a special man. That’s what it had been to her. To him, it had been nothing.

      Nothing at all.

      She felt tears prick her eyes again and blinked them back, hating the momentary weakness. Dig deep and stand alone, she told herself. She never cried. Even when her dad had left, she hadn’t cried, even though she had missed him like mad. She had idolized her dad and he had called her his little princess, but he had left her all the same, left them all, without so much as a kiss-your-ass.

      Annie had withdrawn into herself with the shock of his leaving, but Ruthie had cried for days and got lots of cuddles off Connie as a consequence. Annie was made of tougher stuff, and she knew it. You could only ever rely on yourself in this world, she knew that too. Hard lessons, but she had learned them well.

      So what if Connie had cuffed her more often than cuddled her? She had learned to cope with that.

      She would cope with this.

       4

      Billy Black was excited. He stood among the gathering crowds outside the Bailey house and stared with awe at the pristine white Rolls-Royce parked at the kerb. Peach-coloured ribbons fluttered from the flying-lady mascot on the bonnet and flowers were draped over the parcel shelf behind the rear seats. Small, wide-eyed boys in short trousers ran their grubby hands over the paintwork.

      The chauffeur stood there in his peaked cap and glared.

      Aproned mothers with curlers in their hair and fags in their mouths snatched the boys back, but not too roughly. Everyone was in a good mood. The sun was shining, that was good too. Ruthie was a sweet girl and she deserved the sun shining upon her on this special day.

      Then the front door opened.

      The onlookers surged forward with smiles and cheers.

      ‘Look out, here she comes!’ rippled through the crowd, but it was the bridesmaids. It was Annie, Ruthie’s sister, and Kath her cousin, done up in empire-line peach silk and awkwardly clutching bouquets.

      Billy held his breath.

      ‘Don’t they look a picture?’ cooed a woman beside him, but he was deaf to all that, his attention focused one hundred per cent on his beautiful Annie.

      That was how he always thought of her: his beautiful Annie. He had adored her since she was eleven years old and he was sixteen, but not in a pervy way. In a pure and noble way. Her sister was all right, but Annie’s beauty glowed like a beacon, eclipsing all around it. He’d never been in love until he clapped eyes on Annie Bailey across the school playground. Once he’d seen her, he’d been lost.

      Not that she would ever show the slightest interest in him, he knew that. He knew he was odd-looking. He had a long, thin face and a vacant look to his eyes. He’d had rickets when he was little and so he had a limp, and a bit of a humped back. Sometimes he stammered.

      Billy had always been the outsider, watching everyone else having a good time and wanting to be included in that charmed circle. He had desperately wanted to be in Max’s gang when they were at school. All the others were part of Max’s gang, and they had grown up still in a gang and become Teddy boys together and gained a reputation for being tough nuts to deal with.

      Billy remembered Max back then, how elegant he’d been in his royal-blue, black-trimmed Teddy jacket, black drainpipes and blue brothel-creepers, while his brother Jonjo had gone for red with black trim.

      Billy didn’t like Jonjo.

      Jonjo