A New Dream, Maggie Ford [books to read romance txt] 📗

‘But it’s your shop. I thought you might be able to incorporate it into your business.’

‘You mean take it off your hands and sell it for you? That’s not a good proposition. Any shop owner would expect to get storage charges or else buy in at a low wholesale price so as to make a profit. That’s how business is done – exactly as your own father did.’

Suddenly Julia felt like a silly little woman daring to face the harsh world of business with no experience of it. She felt like her mother, who’d always hovered in the shadows, meek and apologetic, letting her husband make all the decisions for her.

Annoyed with herself, she spoke sharply. ‘I’m quite aware of that!’ she said. ‘But I am desperate and so are you. I just thought our combined efforts might help keep this place going, if only for a while. I’m not a fool, Mr Layzell. All on my own I have so far managed to keep my family going when they might have ended up Lord knows where, and I’ve…’ She broke off, reluctant to go into more detail about her family’s downfall.

‘We could have become destitute after my father died, but we didn’t,’ she continued. ‘My brother and two sisters, who’ve never had to work before, have found work. We can now hold our heads up and one day I mean to start a business of my own. I know little about business but what I don’t know I’ll learn!’

‘Learning costs money,’ he remarked sceptically, but just as she thought he was about to turn her down, he straightened up and thumped the flat of his hand lightly on the cluttered counter. ‘What the hell! Why not? I couldn’t lose any more than I’m losing now. I’ll give it a try, for the next couple of weeks at least.’

Julia could have hugged him. She’d had so many wild ideas for the material: making the stuff into dresses but she’d never been clever with a needle; selling it off bit by bit in Petticoat Lane but she hadn’t the money for a stall licence; selling it to a stall-holder but he’d expect it for almost nothing. She had thought of advertising it but buyers too would expect it for a song and the proceeds would hardly cover the cost of the advertisement. Even the cheapest storage was more than she could afford but the fabric couldn’t stay in the flat much longer. This offer was a godsend.

‘Do you mean it?’ she gasped.

His lips stretched into a wide grin. ‘Of course I mean it.’

‘But I never expected…’ She broke off, lost for words.

He moved round the end of the counter and came to stand in front of her. ‘I’ll be honest with you, I’m thinking of myself as much as you. I could dress up the window with some of it once I’ve given the window…’

‘… a good clean.’ She laughed, suddenly at ease with him.

‘You can do that,’ he said flippantly. ‘I’m no good at it. Cleaning is women’s work.’

She made a face at that but let it pass. ‘Women’s work then,’ she capitulated, now filled with excitement. ‘And when they’re bright and shiny—’

‘I’ll let you dress the window. You’ll make a better job of it than I.’

‘When?’ she asked eagerly, still unable to believe this was happening.

‘Right now, if you want.’

It was like a dream. ‘I’ll get my shopping first. My mother will worry if I’m late home. Then I’ll come back here and we can start.’

He’d taken her breath away and as she hurried off her mind was racing, her thoughts very far from the shopping. In the baker’s she dropped coins all over the floor, in Home and Colonial she bought the wrong amount of margarine, nearly forgot to buy tea and almost left the milk on the counter and had to be called back for it. In the greengrocer’s she forgot to pick up her purse and again had to be called back, and in the butcher’s she couldn’t think what she wanted, dithering for so long that the butcher cleared his throat loudly to alert her that there were others waiting to be served.

Ten

‘My dear, where have you been?’ Her mother’s words were panic-stricken as Julia came into the living room. ‘You’ve been gone so long I thought something terrible must have happened to you.’

A stab of irritation tightened Julia’s stomach as she took off her broad-brimmed straw hat and laid it on the dining table with studied care.

‘What on earth could have happened?’ she said, trying to keep her tone even. ‘I’ve only been shopping.’

‘But you might have been knocked down and I wouldn’t have known.’

‘If I’d been knocked down the police would have been here straightaway and you’d have known soon enough.’

The sarcasm was lost on her mother. ‘I’ve been here all on my own not knowing where you were. I didn’t know what to do. Why were you so long?’

Julia’s eyes strayed to the tiny oval clock on the mantelshelf, one she had picked up from a second-hand stall in Petticoat Lane market. ‘I’m only twenty-five minutes later than I usually am.’

Twenty-five minutes! She hadn’t realized she’d been talking with Simon Layzell all that time.

‘But I wasn’t to know, was I, dear? I was becoming so frightened. Where have you been all this time?’

Julia only just avoided an impatient tut and went to the pock-marked mirror above the clock to run her fingers through her short wavy hair. She’d have liked to retort that she did have a life of her own but that would only prompt an instant bout of weeping from her mother and she was tired of this dissolving into tears at the slightest provocation; of hearing the same old lament: ‘If only your poor father were here. No one cares how I miss him, how lonely life is for me without him.’

To keep the peace, she said instead, ‘I’ve been talking to