The Forget-Me-Not Summer

Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Katie Flynn

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Note to the reader

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

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Copyright

Liverpool 1936

Miranda and her mother, Arabella, live comfortably in a nice area. But when her mother tells her she can no longer afford their present lifestyle, they have a blazing row, and Miranda goes to bed angry and upset. When she wakes the next morning, however, her mother has disappeared.

She raises the alarm but everyone is baffled, and when searches fail to discover Arabella's whereabouts, Miranda is forced to live with her Aunt Vi and cousin Beth, who resent her presence and treat her badly.

Miranda is miserable, but when she meets a neighbour, Steve, things begin to look up and Steve promises to help his new friend in her search, and does so until war intervenes…

Katie Flynn has lived for many years in the north-west of England. A compulsive writer, she started with short stories and articles and many of her early stories were broadcast on Radio Merseyside. She decided to write her Liverpool series after hearing the reminiscences of family members about life in the city in the early years of the twentieth century. For many years she has had to cope with ME, but has continued to write.

Now a regular
Sunday Times
bestseller, and the author of over thirty-three much-loved novels, she is now the UK's biggest selling saga author.

She also writes as Judith Saxton.

A Liverpool Lass

The Girl from Penny Lane

Liverpool Taffy

The Mersey Girls

Strawberry Fields

Rainbow's End

Rose of Tralee

No Silver Spoon

Polly's Angel

The Girl from Seaforth Sands

The Liverpool Rose

Poor Little Rich Girl

The Bad Penny

Down Daisy Street

A Kiss and a Promise

Two Penn'orth of Sky

A Long and Lonely Road

The Cuckoo Child

Darkest Before Dawn

Orphans of the Storm

Little Girl Lost

Beyond the Blue Hills

Forgotten Dreams

Sunshine and Shadows

Such Sweet Sorrow

A Mother's Hope

In Time for Christmas

Heading Home

A Mistletoe Kiss

The Lost Days of Summer

Christmas Wishes

The Runaway

A Sixpenny Christmas

 

Available by Katie Flynn writing as Judith Saxton

You Are My Sunshine

First Love, Last Love

Someone Special

For Barbara Turnbull who has been a good friend and has run the Clwyd Support for M.E. Group so enthusiastically for so long.

My thanks go to my niece, Heather Cross (nee Hague), for drawing my attention to Liverpool's connection to the slave trade. Thank you, Heather.

Dear Reader,

Long ago, when my niece, Heather Hague, was about twelve, she was taken by her school to an exhibition regarding the slave trade in Liverpool during the eighteenth century. After visiting the exhibition, their teacher took them to the Goree Piazza to see the bucket fountain, which intrigued Heather so much that she told me about both visits in great detail.

For some reason I had not, until then, heard of the Liverpool connection with the ‘black birders', as slave traders were called, but when I myself visited the Goree Piazza, I was tremendously impressed by the sculpture which was there then; a most dramatic and intriguing memorial to those men and women, stolen from their own lands, who were brought to this country, auctioned like animals, and worked out the rest of their lives in miserable slavery.

And when I began to think about the plot of
The Forget-Me-Not Summer
, I remembered what Heather had told me and found it the perfect solution for a problem which had haunted me. The mystery of Arabella is never quite solved, but that long ago connection between what goes on in any port and a missing woman began to take shape in my mind. In the thirties, white slave traders were feared in all the English ports and
The Forget-Me-Not Summer
takes place in the thirties and forties, so the story seemed credible and, whilst my heroine, Miranda, searched for her mother, I hoped devoutly that I should find out what had happened to her before the story ended, for, as is so often the case, my characters tell me what is going to happen rather than vice versa.

You cannot see the exhibition of slavery now, and neither can you see the magnificent sculpture of slaves in the Goree Piazza, bearing buckets which tilt as they fill so that the water runs constantly down, progressing from bucket to bucket, in a fascinating and indeed beautiful way, because some councillor or official decided that the splash of water into buckets reminded him of toilets flushing (how odd!!), so he had the sculpture removed, which is sad.

But I still remember the bucket sculpture and my niece's contribution to this particular story with gratitude. Have I got you hooked??

All best wishes,

Katie Flynn

MIRANDA LOVAGE WAS
dragged up from fathoms deep in sleep by some unexpected sound. Groggily she sat up on her elbow and peered about the room, suddenly aware that her heart was fluttering. An only child, she shared her room with no one, had it all to herself, but night noises had never previously worried her. Indeed, she seldom heard them, for she usually went to bed late, at the same time as her mother, and slept as soon as her head touched the pillow, continuing to do so until roused by her mother's call up the stairs, or even a hand on her shoulder.

But then Miranda remembered the row which had raged between herself and Arabella – she always called her mother Arabella – earlier that evening. Now that she thought about it, she realised that it had started because she had been telling Arabella that her teachers thought she stood a good chance of getting her School Certificate, perhaps even going to university. She had come home from the Rankin Academy both excited and delighted, and had been horrified when Arabella had said, flatly, that university was out of the question. ‘I've done my best to get you a decent education, living in a good neighbourhood and seeing that you were always nicely turned out, with everything the other girls have, even though I've been on my own ever since your father died,'
she had said. ‘Well, Miranda, I've been meaning to tell you that I've reached the end of my tether. I simply can't afford to go on paying your school fees indefinitely, so I'm afraid that next term you'll have to start at an ordinary council school.' She had wagged a reproving finger when Miranda began to protest. ‘Don't try to bully me, Miranda. Just remember you are still a child and have to do as I tell you. Next year you will be at the same school as your cousin Beth . . .'

She would have gone on to explain more fully but Miranda had not been listening. She had been too busy trying to shout her mother down, saying that she had no intention of changing schools, that Arabella must jolly well find the money for the fees from somewhere; she had even suggested that her mother might do ‘a real job' instead of hanging round the theatre taking every tuppenny-ha'penny part she was offered.

Arabella had waited until Miranda had run out of breath and had then replied, with a cold finality which had frightened her daughter. ‘Miranda, in case you have not noticed, we are in the middle of a depression. I admit my wages from the Madison Players are small, but I'm sure that one day I'll get the sort of parts I deserve and then money will not be so tight. As it is, the only means I have of continuing our present way of life is by what I think of as clipping both our wings. You will go to a council school until you are old enough to work on your own account, and we'll move into a house in one of the courts and take a lodger – two, if necessary – because the rent of this house is crippling me, honest to God, queen. The only alternative is to marry Mr Gervase, that fellow who haunts the stage door . . .'

‘A stage-door Johnny?' Miranda had been both scornful and incredulous. ‘But you laugh at them, say they've never got two pennies to rub together . . . isn't Mr Gervase that little weaselly one with a bush of grey hair? You scoffed at him, you know you did! You said he ought to be a monk because he had a built-in tonsure. You can't mean to marry him!'

‘He's rich,' Arabella had said simply. ‘During the week he lives in a service flat. Oh, Miranda, it's the height of luxury. He gets his breakfasts and the most wonderful dinners as part of his rent, and the flat is kept clean as well. And then he's got a mansion in the Lake District – I've always loved the Lakes – and he says that if I marry him, we'll live there whenever I haven't got an important part at the theatre.'

‘But you told me ages ago that if you got an important part at the theatre we'd be in clover . . .' Miranda had begun, only to be immediately interrupted.

‘Don't rub it in. It was sheer prejudice which got Maria the part of Lady Macbeth instead of me,' Arabella had said hotly. ‘So now you jolly well choose, Miranda Lovage: a pauper's existence on our own or a life of pampered luxury with Gervase. And since it would be me who had to put up with him day
and
night, I don't see why you should even be asked which you would prefer.' She had looked sideways at her daughter through her thick, curling, blonde lashes. ‘I've told him that
if
I agree to marry him it will be what you might call a marriage of convenience. I shall have my own room, and though we shall share a name I will be like a – a sister to him. Or a housekeeper. Do you understand, Miranda? He is offering me a way out of my difficulties and
expecting nothing in return, save for the duties a housekeeper would perform. Of course he hopes I will become truly fond of him as time goes by, but . . .'

But Miranda had heard enough. ‘Just because you aren't a good enough actress to earn a decent salary, that doesn't mean I have to suffer,' she had shouted, but even as she did so she realised her own helplessness. Until she was old enough to earn her own living, she really had no choice. Her father had died some years previously, and she knew of no living relative save for her Aunt Vi, her mother's half-sister, and Aunt Vi's daughter Beth, both of whom disliked Arabella and her offspring and would, Miranda knew, be more likely to gloat over the Lovages' misfortune than to offer help.

So when Arabella had said: ‘Oh, darling, if I'd got Lady Macbeth . . . or if you'd agreed to my joining that repertory company last year, when I was offered a place – only you didn't want to move up to Scarborough – then we would have managed somehow, but as it is . . .'

She had held out her arms as she spoke and Miranda had hesitated, then heaved a sigh and gone stiffly into her mother's embrace, saying: ‘But do try to think of a way out, Arabella. Surely there must be something you could do so I wouldn't have to change schools and houses and everything. I'll think as well, and perhaps between us . . .'

‘My dearest little Miranda, do you not realise that I've been racking my brains for a solution ever since the Madison Players gave Lady Macbeth to Maria? Things have got to change. The rent for this house has gone up again; your school fees are downright ridiculous – even the uniform . . . but it's no good talking. It's either marry
Mr Gervase or change our whole way of life, and I do think Mr G's offer is extremely generous. However, we'll both sleep on it and tomorrow we'll talk about it again.'