Free Hide Her Name by Nadine Dorries

steaming-hot Bovril, which burnt his insides as it went down.
    ‘I think Arthur is taking off tomorrow. Locking up the flat and visiting his sister in Cornwall. He will stay away until everything dies down. The PO Box is registered to him. They have nothing on me or on you. We will be all right, Stan.’
    Stanley took another sip and then, taking a deep breath, looked up at Austin. He almost cried with relief. He had been the one who had let the priest into the children’s ward at night, but only the three of them – the priest, Austin and himself – knew that and now one of them was dead.
    ‘Do you really think so?’
    ‘I do. They have nothing that can lead to us and we didn’t bloody kill the priest, so stop acting as though we did, soft lad.’
    Stanley felt much better as he opened the envelope and began to look at his pictures.
    ‘There’s a new little girl arrived on Ward Four this morning,’ said Stanley to Austin. ‘She’s really lovely.’
    Austin smiled. ‘Is there now? Well, me and me Kodak Brownie need to visit Ward Four today, to check the oxygen cylinders, eh, lad?’

6
    T OMMY WALKED BACK up the steps from the dock to Nelson Street with a lighter heart than he had for days. The men were often louder on the way up than they were on the way down.
    Whilst the others chatted about football, Tommy made plans in his head for the weekend.
    Since the dark night, he had been planning non-stop.
    ‘Got to keep busy,’ Tommy had said to Maura. He had to ensure his brain was occupied, holding at bay the images he would rather not see, suppressing them somewhere in the back of his mind.
    He had already taken the boys to the baths in Bootle. They were the only boys on the four streets ever to have tasted chlorine.
    Little Paddy was sad that his best friend Harry was deserting him. ‘Learn to swim?’ he said to Harry. ‘Why would I want to do that? I’m never going to need to swim. Are ye not playing footie on the green, then?’
    Harry would much have preferred playing footie on the green. Everyone at home had been behaving in a very strange way and this thing Tommy was doing, taking them to the swimming baths and then to the shore for a walk afterwards, was odd behaviour indeed.
    It was no different for the girls. Maura had taken them to the jumble sale at Maghull church, Maura’s own secret shopping haunt. She had cannily obtained, for nothing more than a shilling, the entire contents of a new brown-leather holdall, including the holdall itself, which the kindly stallholder threw in for free to pack the clothes in, so that they could carry them home on the pram.
    The jumble sale was at a Protestant church, but Maura didn’t care.
    ‘I like going to the Proddy church, the women in there don’t look down their noses at ye like the women in the pawnshop do. They can be very superior indeed and who knows what for? I have no need to work in a shop.’
    Maura had spent years hiding from the other women, and from Father James, the fact that she went to the Proddy church sale in Maghull.
    Now that the priest was dead, she no longer cared a jot.
    Besides, Maghull was a posh area and some of the clothes in the jumble sale were very decent. Maura was particularly pleased with the coat she had bought for Kitty, which was cream with large wooden buttons and a wide belt around the hips. It looked almost brand new. Maura thought it would do for Kitty later on, too, although she wouldn’t mention this to her just yet.
    Kitty also had two skirts, a pair of brown boots that were exactly her size and fitted well, which Maura had promised she wouldn’t have to share with anyone else, two jumpers and the coat. It was a couple of sizes too big, but Kitty didn’t care.
    ‘I will keep this all me life, Mammy,’ said Kitty, as she tried it on. ‘’Tis is the grandest coat I have ever seen, it is so gorgeous.’ Kitty stroked the coat across the front and up and down the arms.
    Maura laughed.
    Angela had a fresh pair