Free Laceys of Liverpool by Maureen Lee Page A

there’d been a time when John would willingly have done it.
    There were other things she must do – buy new towels, for instance, mauve if you could get them. And she needed a clock, a little cheap one – how on earth had Myrtle managed without a clock for all those years? And she’d have price lists printed on little cards, like wedding invitations.
    She rubbed her hands together excitedly. She’d have to engage an assistant, someone to do the same things she’d been taken on for herself. A woman with school-aged kids would be ideal because Fionnuala was only too willing to come and help when she finished school, as well as on Saturdays.
    All the pictures of the beautiful, dead smart coiffures that Myrtle couldn’t have managed in a month of Sundays had been removed from the wall so it could be painted. Alice began to put them back with the drawing pins she’d saved, along with the adverts for various shampoos, setting lotions and hairdressings – she liked the one for Rowland’s Macassar Oil the best. Her arms were aching. But it wasn’t just the hard work she’d put in today, but that she’d been sleeping on the settee in the parlour since Thursday and it was extremely uncomfortable, much too short and much too hard.
    Things couldn’t continue at home the way they were, but once again Alice refused to think about them.Instead, she sat under the dryer and regarded Myrtle’s –
Lacey’s
– with satisfaction. Tomorrow it would look even nicer with the lino laid.
    Across the street, well away from the street lamp, a dark figure stood watching the woman at her various tasks. He saw her sit in the centre of the three dryers, saw the way her face glowed when she glanced around the salon, which he had to concede had improved out of all proportion for the better.
    John Lacey felt sick with love for the woman who was his wife, along with stirrings of anger and jealousy, never far away these days. The bloody salon had taken
his
place in Alice’s heart, but then he only had himself to blame for that.
    For the first time in his life he felt the urge to get drunk, to get totally inebriated, forget everything. He’d only been that drunk once before – at a mate’s wedding when he was eighteen. It hadn’t been a very pleasant experience, but right now the idea of forgetting everything was infinitely appealing.
    Where to go to achieve this agreeable state of mind? Not a pub where he was known, or a quiet, respectable place where they’d stare at his face. One of those rowdy ale houses on the Dock Road would be ideal. They were usually packed to the gills with foreign seamen and prostitutes. No one would take a blind bit of notice of him.
    John took a final look at Alice, turned up the collar of his coat, pulled his hat down over his scarred face and hurried in the direction of the Docky.
    Hours later Danny Mitchell, on his way to have a stern word with his son-in-law, was still seething over the conversation he’d had with Bernadette. If she wereolder, she’d probably have been one of them damned, stupid suffragettes, chaining herself to railings so women could have the vote.
    A little worm of reason penetrated his stubborn brain. It wasn’t exactly fair that women
shouldn’t
have the vote. After all, whatever those fools of politicians got up to affected them just as much as it did men. And they’d been worth their weight in gold during the war. And if a man knocked a woman about, was she supposed just to stand there and let him?
    Danny squirmed uncomfortably. It niggled him that the little girl who’d been his daughter’s best friend for as long as he could remember had caused him to have such disturbing thoughts. He felt like a traitor to his sex and tried to concentrate on his meeting later with Phyllis Henderson. Phyllis would butter him up no end, restore his equilibrium, as it were.
    To his surprise, when he entered his daughter’s house the light was on, but it appeared to be empty. ‘Is anyone