All the Days of Our Lives by Annie Murray Page B

the end I knew I’d fallen in love with him and he with me. It was as sudden and magical as that. Oh, I hope you have that feeling one day, Katie, that you meet a man who you can look up to, who just sweeps you away! My Michael, I used to call him . . .’
    She reached for her cup and saucer and took a few sips, holding it up close to her chest. Katie realized how much she loved hearing this story, only a little of which she’d heard before. It made her feel that she had been conceived in love, and that such a perfect marriage was possible.
    ‘Whatever obstacles my family put in the way, I would have done anything then to be with Michael. His mother had died when he was quite young, and his father had passed away just before we met. So he only had Patrick, who was away on the missions, and a sister, your Auntie Mary, who was already married – she was the eldest. We never heard a word out of her. I think she has a good many children. So our wedding was a very quiet affair – just Michael and me and a few friends. And then you came along. We had our lovely little house and life was a dream . . . We were devoted to one another. And then . . .’ She leaned round to put her cup down, face darkening. ‘Then he was taken from me, in the very cruellest way . . .’
    Her face started to crumple.
    Oh heavens, I should never have asked, Katie thought. Now Vera was going to go off into one of her weeping fits. The grief never seemed to be far away, waiting to jump out.
    Hoping to distract her back to the good memories, Katie asked childishly, ‘So where did you meet my daddy?’
    Vera was visibly trying to control herself, but barely succeeding.
    ‘It was at a party in Hall Green. Exactly twenty-one years ago. Nineteen twenty-one. By the time we parted that night – it was so hard to let him go, let him out of my sight – it was nineteen twenty-two.’ Her tears started coming then. ‘It was a New Year’s Eve party. The happiest day of my life.’

Ten
     
    1943
    Katie wished desperately that she’d never mentioned her father that night. It had set Vera off into a fit of tears, and in her distress she had taken to bed without ever seeing the New Year in, leaving Katie sitting up with only Rhett and Scarlett for company, trying to block out the sound of her mother’s inconsolable weeping through the floor. The next day Vera had reverted to the silent, stony manner that she had quite often adopted when Katie was young, as if nothing and no one could get through to her or make any difference. Katie knew there was nothing she could do or say that would help, and she spent the day tiptoeing round her mother.
    So going back to work at Collinge’s, amid the bustle of production schedules and letters to be typed, with the busy works humming away beneath them, felt like going back into life. She found herself looking forward to seeing the other typists, just to have a normal, friendly conversation with someone.
    I’ve got to get out of home, she thought, as she sat on the bus the first day back. I can’t just stay walled up there forever. For the first time she was furiously angry with her mother, without feeling guilty about it. Yes, Vera carried a terrible grief, but why should she, Katie, give up her whole life over something that wasn’t her fault, and all of which had happened before she could even remember?
    ‘Talk about a face as long as Livery Street,’ Maureen said when she walked into the works to clock in. ‘You all right, Katie?’
    ‘Oh, sorry, yes!’ Katie said, pushing her lips into a smile. She hadn’t realized she was walking around with a frown on her face.
    ‘That’s better,’ Maureen said. She was always rather motherly towards Katie. ‘By the way,’ she leaned closer, ‘today’s the day he starts, isn’t it?’
    Katie had forgotten about the arrival of Mr Collinge junior, but when she got upstairs to Mr Graham’s office, it was to find that things had already changed. Pushing open the door,