Free Liverpool Taffy by Katie Flynn

home. Breakfast in bed, his favourite grub always on tap, friends home for tea, money for the cinema or the theatre slipped into his hand as he scans the pages of the Echo for entertainment. Even Kenny gets what he wants … which is why he can ask for time off for me and get it without an argument.
    A tramp with his greatcoat over one arm passed her, grinning to himself in the sunshine. He had no teeth and he was filthy but he did look happy, Biddy reflected. Perhaps teeth and cleanliness weren’t everything, then. She turned to watch him for a moment; he was free in a way she could never imagine herself being. He went where he fancied, begged for food or stole it, slept under hedges in good weather and in barns in bad. She supposed, vaguely, that he must sleep in workhouses in the city since barns and hedges were both rare … and saw that the road had changed. She was now on Paradise Street and must start keeping her eyes peeled for Sparling Street.
    ‘Well, Ellen, you’re very comfortably settled here. It’s a lovely flat, it must cost you quite a bit, so you’ve done well for yourself.’
    The two girls were seated on a comfortable blue plush sofa in Ellen’s living-room. She had already shown Biddy round the flat, which was on the first floor and consisted of the living-room in which they sat, a very fancy bedroom, all pink rugs and cream curtaining, with a very large crucifix on one wall and a rather improper picture on the other, and a tiny kitchen.
    Ellen, in a pink silk dress with a dropped waist and with pink plush slippers on her small feet, was sitting on the sofa beside Biddy. She was smoking a cigarette rather inexpertly, and at her friend’s words she nodded and looked pleased.
    ‘Yes, it’s awright, this. It’s a pity there’s only the one bedroom, but I get by.’
    ‘I don’t see why anyone should want more than one bedroom,’ Biddy said frankly. ‘Ellen, what is your job? It must be an awfully good one for you to live here – you don’t even share!’
    Ellen blushed. Biddy watched the pink creep up her friend’s neck and flood across her small, fair face.
    ‘I do share in a way, from time to time. And as for me job, I’m a saleslady in Gowns in a big department store. The feller that’s got all the power, my floor manager, is a Mr Bowker. He’s trainin’ me to do the buyin’ for Gowns so sometimes I go up to London with ’im. In fact ’e’s promised to take me to Paris next spring. Yes, it’s norra bad job.’
    ‘I wish I could get a job like that,’ Biddy said wistfully. ‘You are so lucky, Ellen! If I could just get a little job, perhaps even a live-in job, then I might be able to save up for a room somewhere. But I’d never run to anything like this.’
    Ellen got up off the sofa and went over to the window. Without looking at Biddy she spoke slowly. ‘Biddy … what about if we shared this place, you an’ me? Only you’d ’ave to – to pay in other ways, per’aps.’
    ‘What ways?’ Biddy asked, immediately suspicious. ‘I’d do the housework and the cooking willingly, if that’s what you mean.’
    ‘No, though you’d ’ave to do your share. No … it’s – it’s me voice, me accent, like. They say you won’t get no further in Gowns unless you learn to talk proper, and you … you can do it awready, like. So would you teach me? Show me ’ow it’s done, like?’
    ‘And if I do, you’ll let me live here with you? What rent would you want as well? And where can I find a job, Ellen? Because you’d want rent, and anyhow, I’d have to eat.’
    ‘I don’t want no rent. To tell you the truth, Biddy, it ain’t me what pays the rent, norrin the way you mean. Me – me friend pays it.’
    ‘Your boyfriend? Does he live here with you, then? What’ll he think if I move in? You’d have to ask him first, Ellen.’
    ‘Well, that’s the other side to it, chuck. If you’d just clear off out when ’e comes over, ’e need never know. ’E don’t come over