A Liverpool Legacy by Anne Baker Page A

the science behind the making of perfumes. He lent her books and recommended others, and she went regularly to night school classes for years. Pete took her to Grasse to see the fields filled with flowers grown entirely for the production of perfume. Then he’d taken her to the French perfume houses where the flowers were distilled for their scent and from whom they bought it to use to manufacture their soaps and talcum powder.
    Maynards had made little profit during the Depression of the 1930s and even less during the war, though they’d kept the factory working using the employees who were too old to fight. Their products had been reduced to utility standard; much plainer with minimum packaging.
    Sadly, Arthur Knowles was killed early on in the war, and Millie had had to run the laboratory on her own after that. When at last peace came, the firm had used up its financial resources. The same could be said of Britain as a whole.
    The population was exhausted but factories had to change immediately from making munitions to earning a living again. With so many of the ingredients in short supply, it had taken superhuman effort on Pete’s part to recommence making the luxurious soaps and talcum powders they’d once found so profitable. But he had turned the company round, the profits were increasing.
    The first morning she was back home in Liverpool, Millie slept late and felt she was jerked violently back to the loss and grief of the present, and the dreadful prospect of telling Simon and Kenneth that they would never see their father again.
    The boys were weekly boarders at Heathfield, a preparatory school in Woolton. She couldn’t bear to tell them the news over the telephone, so she waited. On Friday, she tried to ring the headmaster because she thought he ought to know, but he was teaching. His secretary made an appointment for her to see him before she picked the boys up at the end of the school day. She drove over to collect them that afternoon as she usually did, and had a quiet word with the headmaster first.
    She took away two small boys with happy, innocent faces wearing their smart school uniforms. Simon was very like his father to look at, and the first thing he said was, ‘How did Dad’s birthday trip go?’ That threw her a little, but she was non-committal and soon the boys were telling her about a sports match at the school.
    Millie had spent days trying to think of the best way to tell them, but like Helen she’d come to the conclusion there was no best way. She’d made up her mind to say nothing in the car where her attention had to be on driving; instead she planned to get them home first and had set out an afternoon tea of sponge cake and scones on the dining-room table in readiness. Sylvie met them at the front door with a face ravaged by tears.
    Simon could see there was something wrong and said, ‘What’s happened? What’s the matter?’
    They sat on hard dining chairs, one on each side of her, and she put an arm across each of their shoulders to pull them close. They all wept for Pete, Sylvie too, though in truth she’d never stopped. Millie had never missed him more, he was so much better at explaining away their problems than she was.
    Later that evening when she’d quietened them down a little, the phone rang. She was glad to hear Valerie’s voice. ‘I’m arranging for Dad’s body to be brought to Liverpool,’ she said. ‘The police haven’t officially released it yet though they say there will be no trouble about that. I’m told there’ll have to be an inquest but it was described to me as routine. All the same, Millie, you’ll be called to give evidence because you were with Dad at the time.’
    Millie had been expecting it, but the prospect made her shudder all the same.
    ‘Don’t worry about it. The police tell me that the findings at the post-mortem mean Dad’s death will almost certainly be found to be an accident. There won’t be any difficulty.’
    ‘What about