Free The Angels of Lovely Lane by Nadine Dorries

she had finally given up the struggle and surrendered to the new world, just as her New World cooker arrived. It was a treat to bake an apple pie without having to wedge the door on the range shut with the mop handle. Biddy loved her new oven, although she would never let on to anyone who asked. Not a great fan of change, she had tolerated her broken range for almost ten years and if truth be told she missed the warmth that filled the house whenever it was lit. But she was the only woman in the neighbourhood to own one of the new cookers and her nostalgic musing for her once hot range had been replaced by a sense of pride as her neighbours dropped in one by one, all curious to inspect Biddy’s New World.
    Biddy had enjoyed the attention, until she opened the tea caddy and discovered that she had used her weekly quarter-pound packet of Lipton’s in two days.
    ‘Bring yer own tea,’ she shouted to anyone who asked if they could come and take a look at her oven as she trudged up the hill on her way home from work at the end of each day. The pride and novelty of a new cooker took second place to the injustice of having to re-mash the tea leaves thrice.
    Taking her ciggies out of her apron pocket, Biddy sat down, slid the half-full ashtray towards her, lit up and awaited the arrival of her best friends, Elsie and Dessie.
    Biddy lived in a row of terrace houses off the dock road and worked as housekeeper at the school of nursing at St Angelus. She loved her job, but she was tired and she knew it. Tired of the repetitive daily struggle. Of being alone and having no one to moan to about her lot. Biddy sometimes wondered whether life would ever again bring her a surprise. An event she hadn’t planned, expected or paid for. She often felt as though the future pointed downhill. Her hair greying, her varicose veins aching and worst of all her bladder leaking.
    ‘It’s last, getting old,’ she said to the cat as she pulled in a deep tug of her ciggie. ‘Bloody last.’
    Elsie O’Brien lived in the adjacent row of terrace houses and also worked at St Angelus. Elsie was housekeeper in Matron’s private apartment on the first floor, and also looked after the rooms that had remained occupied in the accommodation block by the four oldest sisters, including Sister Antrobus from ward two. Some of the remaining rooms along the corridor had become offices as St Angelus expanded to cope with the post-war demands of Liverpool’s residents.
    Biddy and Elsie were both members of the domestic elite of St Angelus. The A team. Not for them the drudgery of mopping mile upon mile of ward corridors. Each of them had carved out a niche for herself at the hospital, bagging the top domestic jobs, and as a result Elsie had managed to get her Martha a job as maid in the consultants’ day sitting room. St Angelus was cleaned by an army of war widows, and in the pecking order Biddy and Elsie were at the top. Dessie, a widower who had been demobbed in ’46 and arrived home dripping in medals, worked as the head porter at St Angelus and lived in the corner house at the bottom of the street. A house that had stood empty from the day his wife died until his return.
    Every Sunday evening at seven o’clock, he and Elsie would arrive in Biddy’s kitchen to gossip about the week, eat, drink, talk about the war and listen to the Stargazers singing on the radio. Biddy and Elsie mothered Dessie from kindness. It was a kindness that had benefited them both over the years.
    ‘Not right that he should come home a war hero and his wife died while he was away,’ Biddy often said. That was when she was feeling generous. On her off days, her comments to Elsie were more cutting. ‘Shame Dessie’s wife was down the docks when the ship was hit. You have to ask, don’t you...’ she paused for effect as she exhaled a long plume of blue smoke, ‘what was she doing down there in the first place, eh?’ The comment was always followed by a questioning raised