Free Coronation Wives by Lizzie Lane Page B

thought Geoffrey as the train pulled into Temple Meads Station. He scowled contemptuously at the stupid little triangular flags fluttering above the platform. If he’d had his way he would not have come home to join in the celebrations for something he didn’t believe in. But he could hardly tell his parents that university had caused his views on things to change. Their world – both past and present – was very different to the world he lived in.
    As he turned the handle on the carriage door, he saw his father waving to him from where he stood at the side of the newspaper stand. Just before pushing the door open he remembered the badge gleaming a dull red in the lapel of his coat. In all probability his parents would not have a clue what it actually represented. But he couldn’t take that chance. He unpinned it from the front of the lapel and re-pinned it on thereverse, then patted it flat. No one would know he was wearing it.
    He adopted a happy smile and stepped out onto the platform. Hopefully these few weeks would pass with as little unpleasantness as possible. After that he would rejoin his friends, people with enquiring minds who did not accept that the old ways were still the best.
    Dusk in Camborne Road found Polly and her neighbours full of food and slightly tipsy.
    A beaming policeman stood on the corner against a privet hedge that someone had tried to clip into the shape of a crown, but which actually resembled a doughnut. The policeman swayed from the knees up and looked as though he might tip over. He was tall and thin but his heavy boots anchored him to the spot.
    Music blared out from a wind-up record player that sat on a fold-up card table next to a lamppost. Rows of trestle tables groaned with Spam sandwiches, cheese rolls, jellies, blancmanges and thick slices of homemade fruitcake that stuck to the teeth and lay heavy in the belly.
    ‘You’d think ’e’ed join the party,’ said Aunty Meg, eyeing the young policeman. There again, ’e don’t look old enough to be out.’
    Polly was unconvinced. ‘He’s a copper. He’s always on duty.’
    Being married to Billy had taught Polly a lot. Many’s the time he’d been out selling nylons, chocolate or clockwork toys from Hong Kong on the wooden cart he pulled along behind his bicycle. Just as he was getting an interested little crowd around him, the local bobby would appear.
    ‘Round the corner,’ the copper would say. And Billy would go round the corner, knowing what the next question would be.
    ‘Got a licence?’
    Of course he didn’t. So a ten shilling note would change hands – more if he wasn’t selling anything but doing a book on Ascot or the Gold Cup. Street bookies were becoming an endangered species.
    Aunty Meg slipped a crochet needle out from the pocket of her manly jacket and used it to scratch at her hair, which she wore in ‘earphones’ – plaits coiled around her ears, dated now but Meg reckoned she was too old to change. ‘Where’s Billy?’ she asked Polly.
    ‘As far away from ’ere as possible.’ She grimaced. ‘I hope.’
    Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. At that very moment Billy entered the opposite end of the street in the borrowed black van.
    Polly swallowed hard. Pound to a penny there would still be boxes in the back that hadn’t so much fallen off the back of a lorry as flown swiftly from one vehicle to the other.
    Polly glanced at the young constable hoping to God he’d seen nothing. Luckily he was eyeing up a threesome of giggling girls so hadn’t noticed Billy’s arrival. The girls were all around seventeen years old, giddy with the minimum of ruby wine and dry cider and showing a good six inches of bare thigh above steel-clasped stocking tops as they kicked their legs into the air.
    Reasoning the copper was a soft touch and easily distracted, the Pearly King cap was flung to one side, the tie was loosened and shirt buttons were undone enough to show her cleavage. She checked the effect.
Not