The Quality Street Girls. Penny Thorpe

looked like she was crying tears of blood. They were their own worst enemies, Diana had told them so often enough; Mary had a short fuse because she tied herself up in knots with worry, while Bess was as useless as a chocolate teapot in the factory because she was too happy-go-lucky. Diana wondered if Bess would ever realise her job was to make toffees, not gaze dreamily into the middle distance. Diana could see why they’d ended up the way they had; Mary had to do the worrying for both of them, and Bess didn’t need to worry with a sister like Mary. If they could trade places for a day, it might do them the power of good.

      ‘Have you fixed that shoe yet?’ Diana didn’t want to wait in the road much longer, her stepbrother liked to flash money around when he had it, and he’d be on to another pub before closing time if she didn’t catch up with him first.

      ‘It keeps moving around.’ Mary huffed with annoyance and crouched down to unlace her shoe and fix it properly, fumbling as though she were worried that she was taking up too much of Diana’s valuable time.

      Mary looked pitiful under the streetlamp. Her frizzy black hair was pulled tight back and twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. All the other girls at the factory had their hair curled like the girls in the magazines, but not Mary; there were dark circles around her eyes and in the winter of 1936, Mary didn’t even have a warm coat. Poor kid, Diana thought to herself, she needs someone to look after her for a change.

      ‘Alright, I’m ready.’ Mary stood up and shook her foot in her shoe one last time. ‘I still don’t think it’s him.’

      ‘My stepbrother could hardly be mistaken for anyone else. Apart from the fact that he’s the only person in Halifax to dress like some American mobster from the pictures, he also looks like a cross between a rat and a frog, so his face is hardly going to blend into a crowd, is it?’ Diana started walking again. The trouble with Mary Norcliffe, she thought to herself, was that she couldn’t just walk in silence.

      Mary followed Diana with her arms folded around herself and her shoulders hunched forward; her eyes were on the tram rails that stretched out down the road ahead of them, but then she looked up to Diana and said, ‘Thank you for calling on me though.’ There was an anxious pause as though Mary feared that every sentence was saying too much or too little. ‘I know she’s a nuisance, but she has promised she’ll change. Honestly she has.’

      Diana knew that Good Queen Bess would never be capable of seeing the consequences of her actions, and her sister Mary would always be looking after her. It was none of Diana’s business, and so she said nothing. She helped them in her own way, but she wasn’t going to try to change them. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’ Diana looked up see that Mary was already panicking. ‘I’ve arranged for you and your sister to work beside me on the new line. We move floors tomorrow.’

      ‘But, if we—’

      Diana didn’t let her finish, ‘Everyone knows that you’ve been helping your sister to get her work done, but we can’t let the other girls cover up for you anymore. You’ll have to move up beside me where I’ll be the only person covering for you, and then if you’re caught helping Bess, the only people that will be in any trouble will be the three of us. No more risking the other girls’ positions, do you understand?’

      Mary swallowed and nodded.

      ‘I know you’ll still have to help your sister for a while yet, but you do it in my section and no one else’s. If Mrs Roth catches you, it’s best I deal with her.’

      Diana was eventually rewarded with her longed-for silence, but she couldn’t enjoy it because she knew that Mary was wrestling with all kinds of questions that she wanted to ask, but didn’t dare voice.

      They turned the corner onto Market Street where the rainbow of shops had closed their shutters for the night, like spring blooms closing their petals each evening. The street was by no means sleeping, it was alive with factory workers who were out for a payday drink. It was hard to imagine what Diana had heard this morning about the men in Barnsley on their way down to Westminster on a hunger march. The people of Halifax had seen lean times, but on this Friday there was merriment.

      As they passed The Boar, the girls were met with catcalls from the drinkers who had spilled out into the street outside the various pubs that filled the centre of town. Diana supposed the catcalls were not unfriendly, but they irked her none the less. There had been a time when Diana had painted the town red; when she’d been bright-eyed and infamous in Halifax. Back then she’d been the queen of all she surveyed; and then six years ago all that had changed. Her carefree day in the sun had ended, and she would never go back to being that Diana.

      ‘Ignore them.’ Diana was saying it as much to herself as Mary, and they walked on. Six years was a long time, but no one could forget Diana. She might be wrapped up in her late father’s old black coat, her shoes might be down at heel, but she still looked like she’d stepped down from a Hollywood movie poster.

      ‘Look at the state of that!’ A buck-toothed drinker in the doorway of The Boar called out. Diana cast a glance in his direction and realised that he was pointing at Mary, who was taking the abuse quietly, as though she thought she deserved it.

      ‘What did you say?’ Diana mouthed the words at him almost inaudibly, barely a whisper. She didn’t need to raise her voice; when she spoke the scattering of flat-capped drinkers who had spilled out of the pub fell silent. The old light was back in her eyes, and her iron-ringed irises were locked on the insolent young man.

      He laughed awkwardly, looking around to his friends for them to join in. It was near closing time, and the lamp-lit street was busier with friends and acquaintances than it had been an hour ago. The young man had assumed that they would all make fun of the plain-faced girl that followed the beautiful one, but he was mistaken. His friends quietly shuffled backwards; some could sense what was coming, and others knew from experience that to cross Diana Moore was a mistake you only made once.

      ‘What,’ Diana remarked as she stalked toward the young man like a predator slowly closing in on its prey ‘did you say?’

      ‘Well …’ he laughed nervously, throwing his arm up to indicate Mary but with less conviction now. ‘Have you seen the state of her?’

      ‘What about her?’ Diana was close to him now, and without so much as a wrinkle of her celestial nose, she conveyed a menace more potent than this young man was ever likely to encounter again.

      He faltered and then said, ‘Well … she doesn’t have a coat, does she?’ He’d have said more; he’d have said that she was plain or ugly, or skinny, or that her skin was sallow and her hair unattractive, but he felt a cold fear at the beautiful and unmoving face that was so close to his.

      Diana leant forward slowly; with the elegance and poise of a dancer, her lips were so close to his that for a heart-stopping moment he thought that she was going to kiss him. He lifted his chin a little in hope, but her mouth moved past his without touching it, and then her mouth was at his ear, her breath warming his skin with a tingle, and in a whisper that was all at the same time tender as a lover, and unforgiving as death she said, ‘Then give her yours.’

      In the silence that had fallen over the drinkers, everyone heard her words.

      Diana gently stepped back and the young man looked around helplessly at his friends, his mouth falling open in hesitation, confusion, and fear. He didn’t know how to respond, so he laughed nervously again and waited for his friends to join in. All he wished was for the moment to pass so they could all continue with their Friday night drinking in peace. But his friends didn’t come to his rescue; they didn’t do any of the things that he expected them to do, they looked at him in silence and nodded in the direction of the girl he’d been mocking; they nodded as though to tell him to hand over his coat.

      When they arrived at The Old Cock and Oak Diana appeared to be in a slightly better mood as she had shocked Mary into another brief silence.

      ‘I can’t keep this.’ Mary was wearing the coat that Diana had thrown around her shoulders as she’d led her away from The Boar, and she looked worried;