by Anna Jacobs
Contents
Also by Anna Jacobs
Title Page
Copyright
Dear readers …
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Also by Anna Jacobs
THE ELLINDALE SAGA
One Quiet Woman
One Kind Man
One Special Village
One Perfect Family
THE RIVENSHAW SAGA
A Time to Remember
A Time for Renewal
A Time to Rejoice
Gifts For Our Time
THE TRADERS
The Trader’s Wife
The Trader’s Sister
The Trader’s Dream
The Trader’s Gift
The Trader’s Reward
THE SWAN RIVER SAGA
Farewell to Lancashire
Beyond the Sunset
Destiny’s Path
THE GIBSON FAMILY
Salem Street
High Street
Ridge Hill
Hallam Square
Spinners Lake
THE IRISH SISTERS
A Pennyworth of Sunshine
Twopenny Rainbows
Threepenny Dreams
THE STALEYS
Down Weavers Lane
Calico Road
THE KERSHAW SISTERS
Our Lizzie
Our Polly
Our Eva
Our Mary Ann
THE SETTLERS
Lancashire Lass
Lancashire Legacy
THE PRESTON FAMILY
Pride of Lancashire
Star of the North
Bright Day Dawning
Heart of the Town
LADY BINGRAM’S AIDES
Tomorrow’s Promises
Yesterday’s Girl
STANDALONE NOVELS
Jessie
Like No Other
Freedom’s Land
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Anna Jacobs 2019
The right of Anna Jacobs to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
eBook ISBN 978 1 473 67784 5
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.hodder.co.uk
Dear readers,
Here is the first book in my new series. I do hope you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.
I’m still lingering in the Ellin Valley to give you the Birch End series, set in the middle village in my imaginary Pennine valley.
If you’d like a list of books in each series, please visit my website, where there is a complete list of my books and also a list of which books are in each series. Just go to: www.annajacobs.com/seriesList.aspx
This book introduces a heroine who’s come all the way from Australia to Lancashire, a voyage taking several weeks in the days before air travel. It took several days even in the early days of air travel. It’s a long way from England to Australia.
This is an imaginary valley, but it feels so real to me now, after several years of setting my stories there, that I even walk round it in my dreams!
I’ve again added a couple of old family photos to the end of the book, since readers seem to enjoy seeing them. Aren’t I lucky to have them? These are my two great-grandfathers. I’m guessing about the exact years and judging it all by clothing styles and family stories.
Charles Wild was on my mother’s paternal side. This photo was probably taken in the late 1860s, judging by that beard. He was the father of seven children. Not the most handsome of men!
Frank Gibson’s photo was, again guessing, taken in the early 1880s. He was the father of twelve children and was, I think, quite good looking. It’s the look – and the moustache – of the times. My great-grandmother married him against her family’s wishes, but they must have been happy together to produce twelve children!
I hope you enjoy my new series and the new characters who’ve turned up in my story. And of course, you’ll again meet characters from other series set in the valley.
Happy reading!
Anna
1
Lancashire: June 1934
J o Melling and her stepmother had to change trains at Manchester and only made their connection thanks to a kindly porter who whisked their luggage across the station on a big trolley, calling out to people to get out of the way, please.
As he stacked their trunks and suitcases in the luggage wagon at the rear of the slow, stopping train that would take them to Rivenshaw, Jo tugged the older woman towards the nearest compartment. Edna, who was too plump to run easily, panted and protested.
Thank goodness this would be the last stage in their long journey from Western Australia by sea and rail. Ten thousand miles of her stepmother’s fussing and the need for them to share a cabin on the ship had nearly driven Jo mad.
Nearby, the guard was holding his whistle to his lips ready to send the train on its way. He scowled and jerked his head at them to tell them to hurry up. It was lucky that a stranger who was already on the train saw their need and opened the door again. He helped Edna into the compartment then turned to offer Jo an unnecessary hand up.
She waved him back. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ She was about to make sure the door was closed properly, but the porter was there to slam it shut with a final bang. The guard’s whistle sounded immediately it was closed.
The train jerked into motion as she was reaching up to put her hand luggage in the overhead rack, and that sent her bumping into the stranger, who was about to move his newspaper out of her way. He steadied her with a smile, and she murmured her thanks.
He was taller than her and perhaps slightly older, about thirty or so, and had a lean, muscular look to him. He wasn’t good-looking exactly, but had a pleasant face and lovely dark auburn hair. He had good manners, too, and picked up her bag, ready to put it into the net for her.
She stretched out her hand to stop him. ‘Just a minute. Is it far to Rivenshaw? It’s not worth putting the bag up and pulling it down again if we’re only a few minutes away.’
‘It’s about an hour, I’m
afraid, because there are a few stops before we reach it, but I doubt anyone else will get on the train at this time of day.’
‘I’ll leave my bag on the seat then, if you don’t mind. It has all our travel papers in it and I like to keep it close by.’
‘There you are, then.’ He put it beside her, picked up his own bag and went to sit in the far corner of the compartment near the corridor, leaving the two ladies to settle into the window seats.
Jo stole another glance at the stranger. He was neatly if rather shabbily dressed and had been nothing but polite and helpful, but when she looked across at her stepmother, she saw that Edna was eyeing him suspiciously. Typical! The woman seemed to think any young man who spoke to Jo would be a threat to her stepdaughter’s virtue and they’d had several sharp quarrels about that on the ship.
As if Jo would behave in an immoral way. What’s more, she could look after herself, if a man got too frisky, and had proved it more than once in the past few years!
‘Don’t encourage him,’ Edna whispered.
Jo didn’t waste her breath responding. It would do no good. Her stepmother had what their stockman in Australia called ‘tin ears’.
Jo had been horrified when her father married this foolish woman a few years ago. She was pretty, yes, her hair only lightly sprinkled with grey, but she was rather stupid and Jo found her conversation focused mainly on clothes and food. The only reason she could think of was that Edna must be good at pleasing men in bed, or why else would he have married her? You couldn’t help knowing about things like that when you lived on a farm, whether you were married yourself or not.
After Edna took over the house, Jo soon moved away from the farm to work in the city, because no one was going to treat her like an unpaid drudge. Or constantly carp and criticise. Her father had understood, thank goodness.
Her stepmother, however, had complained to everyone in the neighbourhood about how ungrateful and badly behaved the girl was. As if friends and neighbours who’d known Jo for years would believe her.
Jobs were in short supply in such times, but since Jo had been doing the farm’s accounts and ordering groceries, goods and stock feed for years, she’d used her contacts to find a job working as a bookkeeper in an office in Perth, the capital city of Western Australia. She’d shared lodgings with a friend and life there had been very pleasant, even though she’d missed the farm and her father dreadfully at first.
When he fell ill and was given only a few months to live, Jo of course left her job and went back home to Beeniup. She loved her father dearly and wanted to be with him. As it turned out, she found herself doing nearly all the nursing, especially when he grew weaker, because Edna was useless about such things, not to mention bone idle.
Her father had been wonderful right until the end. He’d done everything to make their life easier ‘afterwards’, which included selling the farm to Harry, the neighbour who was his closest friend, and also making him the executor of his will.
He’d secured Jo’s promise to escort his widow back to England to live near her family ‘afterwards’, because Edna had come to Australia with her first husband and never really settled there. Some people didn’t. Of course Jo had given him her word. No need to tell her that Edna would be useless at organising anything.
She didn’t want to make the long journey, especially with Edna, but she’d do it for him.
Since Jo had no intention of living with the woman for one day longer than necessary, she’d set to work organising the journey immediately after the funeral, using the money he’d provided.
As soon as she’d seen Edna settled somewhere near her remaining family members in England, Jo intended to have a look at Buckingham Palace and a few other famous places, after which she’d return to Australia, where she had a few distant relatives and several good friends. She probably had relatives in England, too, and from the same part of the country as her stepmother’s family, because her father’s family had been from Lancashire as well, so she might see if she could find some of them.
She was jerked out of her reverie by a sob, and turned to see Edna dabbing at her eyes again. What now?
The stranger had hidden behind his newspaper. Jo wished she could hide away, too.
‘Why are you ignoring me?’ Edna asked, with another of her easily summoned sobs. ‘You know how sad this is making me.’
‘I was just … thinking.’
Edna lowered her voice. ‘You weren’t too deep in thought to be talking to that young man! You wouldn’t have behaved like that in Australia when your father was alive.’
Jo kept her voice even lower. ‘I was only being polite. And so was he.’
As her stepmother opened her mouth to argue, Jo said, ‘Not now! Shh!’
With a scowl, Edna subsided, but a minute later she found something else to complain about. ‘Look at that ugly scenery. Mills and smoke and dirty old canals. Why did you insist on bringing me here? We could have settled in Perth and had sunny weather.’
Jo wasn’t going to put up with these lies, whether the stranger overheard their latest quarrel or not. ‘ You were the one who wanted to come and live near your family. I only came with you because I promised Dad as he was dying that I’d see you safely settled here. This isn’t my country and I shan’t be staying here after we’ve found you somewhere to live.’
‘You’re heartless, absolutely heartless! It’s your duty as an unmarried daughter to live with me and look after me.’
‘I’m not your daughter! And you’re perfectly capable of looking after yourself.’
‘But I—’
‘Will you please keep your voice down!’
But Edna didn’t care who heard her when she was upset and continued to complain about her stepdaughter’s unkindness in her usual shrill tones.
The stranger had let the newspaper sink a little and was watching them with a shocked expression on his face. Jo felt her face flush with embarrassment.
She wondered if her father had realised how difficult the task of taking Edna ‘home’ would be, especially this last part of the journey. Jo didn’t know much about life in this country and felt rather nervous about the task of finding a home for her stepmother. Edna would be hard to please, she was sure, since the money she’d been left wasn’t unlimited.
To make the whole situation worse, this was the second time Edna had been widowed and that had thrown her into genuinely low spirits about the future, something Jo tried to make allowances for.
As the train continued to rattle along, stopping four times at places whose names meant nothing to her, Jo shivered, still not used to the cooler weather in Britain. She would have to buy some warmer clothes and if this was summer, she dreaded to think what the winter would be like. She hoped she’d be long gone by then.
A couple of times she caught the man watching her and didn’t know whether to say something or ignore him. When he winked and rolled his eyes at the older woman, she couldn’t help smiling at him.
Edna had subsided into a miserable heap, sniffling into her handkerchief occasionally or varying that by dabbing at eyes that were leaking no tears that Jo could see.
As they came out of a tunnel, the man leaned forward. ‘Excuse me, miss, but you’ve dropped one of your gloves.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’ She bent to pick it up. Stupid things! In Australia she had only worn gloves in cooler weather. Edna, however, had tried to impose what she called ‘ladylike standards’ on her stepdaughter but Jo had refused to be dictated to or to obey such silly social rules as ladies wearing gloves every time they went out of the house.
At twenty-six, she wasn’t a child and didn’t intend to behave like one.
A few minutes later, the man said, ‘You might like to get your things ready, ladies. Rivenshaw is the next stop.’
‘Thanks.’ Jo made sure Edna gathered everything together and waited impatiently to get out of the train. She was so very tired of being shut up in small spaces with people.
As so
on as she left the train Jo beckoned urgently to a porter, telling him about their luggage. Then she helped Edna get out while the porter hurried to unload their things from the rear luggage wagon, piling them haphazardly on the platform. As the train pulled away, he called out that he’d fetch a trolley to move them near the station entrance as soon as he’d seen the disembarking passengers away.
The two women showed the porter their tickets and walked across to the entrance, passing the man who’d shared their compartment, who was talking to another man.
There was no one there to meet them, which upset Edna. ‘Where’s my cousin? What shall I do if he’s died? I need help settling back into English life.’
‘He’ll be here soon, or if not him someone else from your family will. You sent him a telegram to give him our time of arrival as soon as we got off the ship.’
They waited a few minutes but there was still no sign of anyone. ‘Perhaps we should get a taxi to his house, Jo, and leave our luggage to follow.’
‘You can do that if you want, but I’m not going to turn up at your cousin’s house uninvited. He’s a stranger to me and even you haven’t seen him for a good many years.’
‘He was a close friend of my brother’s as well as being our favourite cousin. Why, I’ve known Clarence all my life. Of course he’ll want me to go to him, and you too, if only for my sake, until you’ve found me somewhere of my own to live.’
‘I’ve told you before: your cousin can do that for you. He’ll know the town far better than I do. I’m going back to Australia quite soon.’
‘Your father must be turning in his grave at the way you’re breaking your promise to him.’
Jo began pacing up and down to avoid going through the same old arguments.
A few minutes later, with still no sign of anyone coming to meet them, she decided to prepare for the worst and signalled to the taxi parked to one side of the station forecourt. When it drove across to them, she asked the driver if there was some small hotel where they could find rooms for a night or two.
He studied them and nodded as if satisfied by what he saw. ‘Mrs Tucker’s lodging house is very respectable and she only takes ladies. You’ll be quite comfortable there and I hear she keeps a good table, too.’