Free Threads of Silk by Roberta Grieve

goods and packing them into boxes.
    ‘I’ve had enough as well,’ Sid said.
    ‘What say we go for a cuppa and a bite to eat at Bob’s Café,’ Maisie said, ‘then you can tell me all your troubles.’
    ‘I might do that.’ Sid laughed. But he’d never tell her what was on his mind. Maisie was a good sort, but she did love a gossip. Sid’s unrequited love would be all round the market by next morning.

     
    Ellie would have lingered over the shopping but her father had insisted she should go to see Mr Green about the receptionist’s job. Her feet started to drag as she neared Kendall Street and she felt that familiar churning in her stomach as she mounted the stairs.
    Although Bert had more or less left her alone since that terrible night, she was still wary of him. He’d never referred to it directly but on several occasions when he’d been drinking he had made a grab for her, gripping her shoulders or running his hands up and down her body. All the while, he would mutter under his breath – comments on her growing up to be a lovely young woman, phrases such as ‘what do you expect, I’m only human after all?’ Worst of all, he would tell her over and over that she was still his little angel and he couldn’t help loving her.
    With her mother near by, or if she was round at Gran’s, she could tell herself that she wasn’t to blame – and she almost believed it. But when her father talked like that and especially when he made insinuations about her feelings for Harry, she would begin to doubt herself.
    Upstairs, she would look in the mirror, hunching her shoulders to flatten her bosom, pulling her skirt down over her knees and scraping her hair back from her face. As her reflection looked back at her, she would flush with shame and throw herself on the bed to let the tears come.
    She was crying for the child she had been and the loss of that uncomplicated love she’d felt for the boy who had been her ‘big brother’. But she was crying for the future as well as the past. She could never let Harry know that the love she’d always felt for him had changed into a completely different emotion.
    No, he deserved someone better, a respectable girl. Not someone like her – the sort of girl who could tempt even her own father to such unspeakable acts.
    Locked in her misery, she forgot the way Bert had treated Sheila, not to mention the times as a very small child when she’d heard the sound of blows and his snarling voice demanding his rights, followed later by her mother’s stifled sobs.
    In the depths of her hurt and shame she managed to rationalize Bert’s behaviour. Sheila, as her mother had so often said, was no better than she should be, she’d been ‘asking for it’. And as for her mother’s sufferings, Ellie unconsciously mimicked Auntie Vi’s opinion: ‘
she knew what he was like. She should never have married him
.’

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    Ellie gazed around her, awestruck at the size of the wood-panelled room with its rich blue carpet, soft and thick underfoot, the desk of polished walnut behind which Tommy Green sat. In one corner was a small bar with soft lights glinting off the bottles ranged on the shelves behind.
    Her father caught her eye and, with a satisfied grin, leaned back in the deep leather chair, puffing contentedly on the cigar that Mr Green had offered him.
    ‘Well, Ellen – or can I call you Ellie, seeing as you’re gonna be my sister-in-law before too long?’ Mr Green said, his eyes almost disappearing in the flesh of his perspiring face as he smiled at her.
    Ellie nodded, wondering what her sister saw in him – apart from his wealth, of course.
    ‘I think you’re just the sort of girl I need as a receptionist.’ He leaned forward. ‘What do you say – would you like to work here?’
    Ellie glanced at her father but he was gazing up at the wreaths of blue smoke drifting in the air, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Emboldened by his apparent lack of interest