Liverpool Taffy by Katie Flynn

home and was willing to take her in? Or tell the truth and put up with the calumny of being ungrateful and selfish – or just walk out, leaving a note behind, and spend the rest of her life hiding from vengeful Kettles?
    She was still pondering when she reached the Scottie, still wondering what to do for the best. Because of something Kenny had let drop she had realised a couple of days earlier that before she moved in, Ma Kettle had not only employed Maisie, she had had another girl in on Sundays and Wednesdays to do the laundering and ironing, to mend anything that needed mending and to do any marketing which Maisie and she herself had not done.
    So when I moved in a couple of girls lost their jobs, not just Maisie, Biddy told herself. The money I’ve saved the old skinflint! But it’ll really go against the grain to have to pay out money for three girls.… Lord, whatever shall I do? Perhaps it really might be better to say nothing and wait my opportunity – something must turn up.
    Keeping her visit to Ellen entirely dark would not be possible, she realised, because Kenny had said he would meet her out of church after Mass. But she didn’t think he would split on her because he was still her friend, though less so with every time she repulsed his advances. She wished she did not have to do so, wished she found him attractive and wanted his kisses, but the truth was he was too much his mother’s son. Every time she saw his bunchy face near her own she was sharply reminded of Ma Kettle – and the last person whose kisses she would welcome would have been that lady’s.
    Still, she had enjoyed a day out and now she had hope. The spectre of being stuck as Ma Kettle’s slave until the day one of them died had actually receded … and it was a stupid fear anyway, Biddy toldherself. She would have got out sooner or later, now it seemed it was to be sooner.
    She reached the shop and went round the side as she always did when it was shut. There was a tiny yard which stank of cats and dustbins and was looped across and across with greenish washing lines, and facing her was the back door, a great block of tarry wood with a high latch. With a sigh, Biddy crossed the yard, ducking under the sagging lines as she did so and reflecting a trifle bitterly that since usually on a Sunday afternoon the lines were laden with sheets, Ma Kettle had obviously decided to save them for Biddy to do as a treat. She reached the door and lifted the latch, heaving at the weight of it. It swung outwards, creaking, and a huge bluebottle, which must have been lured in by the Saturday smell of boiling treacle, lurched drunkenly past Biddy’s right ear.
    ‘Damned old fly,’ Biddy muttered. ‘I hope someone covered everything last thing Saturday or I’ll be scooping fly-blow off every sweet in the place.’
    The back door gave onto the boiling kitchen, which one crossed to enter a tiny, dark passageway from which the linoleumed stairs ascended to the flat above. Outside, it was still a sunny afternoon but in here it was cool and quiet. Which was odd, Biddy reflected, tiptoeing up the stairs, because usually on a Sunday afternoon the house resounded with the noise of cleaning, laundering, ironing … only of course since she was responsible for most of those noises, it would be quiet without her.
    She reached the landing and opened the kitchen door. Someone had put the sheets to soak in the upstairs sink, which was unusual and would mean she would have to carry them downstairs wet, weighing half a ton, to wash them in the little back scullery as she always did. She sniffed the air; dinner had not been cooked today – mercy, don’t say the old devil had put off having dinner just because there was no Biddy to cook it for her!
    Biddy left the kitchen and stood looking thoughtfully at the two remaining doors which led off this landing. One was the living-room, the other the bedroom which she shared with Ma Kettle. The boys had the attic bedrooms