Megan of Merseyside by Rosie Harris

Mam!’
    ‘Perhaps you should bring him home, then, and let me meet him and judge for myself.’
    Lynn giggled. ‘He’d run a mile and probably never speak to me again if I suggested that to him. It’s not like in your day, Mam. Boys don’t expect to be taken home to meet a girl’s family until they’re going steady.’
    ‘Well, watch what you get up to with him, we don’t want any problems,’ warned her mother ominously.
    ‘You’re more likely to get those from Megan than from me,’ retorted Lynn with a mischievous grin. ‘She’s got two men on a string! Robert Field and someone called Mr Miles.’
    ‘Who?’ Kathy looked surprised. ‘She’s never mentioned him to me. Who is he?’
    ‘A chap she knows at work. I bet he’s old enough to be her dad, too!’
    Kathy frowned. If this chap worked at Walker’s then perhaps Watkin knew him. She would try to remember to ask him.
    She hated admitting it, even to herself, but in some ways coming back to Liverpool was proving to be a bit of a headache. It had been so much easier bringing up the girls when they’d lived in Beddgelert, she reflected. There, she had known where they were every minute of the day and the temptations they’d faced had been pretty limited.
    She’d dreamed about coming back to Liverpool for far too long, she supposed, but everywhere she looked there were changes going on. The new cathedral was still being built, but there was also talk about building another one for the Catholics on the site where the workhouse stood. Plans were underway, too, for a tunnel that would take motorcars and lorries right underneath the Mersey to Wallasey and Birkenhead on the other side.
    It was no longer the Liverpool that she had grown up in, she thought sadly.

Chapter Ten
    ‘I WONDER WHAT 1925 holds in store for
us
!’
    The words Miles had whispered in her ear at the Tower Ballroom haunted Megan and in the days that followed she put a hundred and one interpretations on what he might have meant.
    Seeing him had made it the most confused evening of her life. Being there at the same time as Miles, dancing to the same band, had made New Year’s Eve all the more memorable.
    There had been times since, though, when she wondered if it had all been a dream. In bed at night she went over every tiny detail: the way the lights had been lowered on the dot of midnight, the band playing
Auld Lang Syne
, and the wild pandemonium as complete strangers hugged and kissed each other. Being swept away from Robert and finding herself with people she had never seen before had been scary. And then to find herself in Miles’ arms, looking up into the handsome face that was always in her thoughts, had been unreal.
    Her heart had pounded wildly. She remembered closing her eyes as she felt the heat of his muscular body pressed against her. She’d felt convinced it must be a dream, and yet she’d desperately wanted to hold on to it a little longer.
    It hadn’t been a dream, though. She had felt his breath warm on her cheek and when she had opened her eyes he had been smiling down at her. The next thing she’d known was that his mouth was covering hers in a lingering kiss that sent her pulses racing.
    And it was then he had whispered those magic words.
    Before she could say a word he’d gone, swallowed up in the surging crowd. Robert was back at her side, struggling to hold on to her arm as people pumped his free hand and slapped his back, and others tried to kiss her on the cheek or pull her away from him.
    She hadn’t told Robert that she had seen Miles.
    She wasn’t quite sure why she didn’t mention it, except that there had been a sense of hostility between them when they had met earlier in the evening. Some inner caution warned her that to do so might spoil Robert’s enjoyment and, after all, if it hadn’t been for him she would not have been there at all.
    By the time the
Royal Daffodil
ferry boat sailed from New Brighton pier back to Liverpool, it had been packed