by Tara Hyland
But disappointingly, there was no magic cure inside: just a review for a new push-up bra, the Model 1300, which was far too expensive for Cara. However, at the bottom of the page there was something of more interest: a little break-out box telling readers how they could get the same look for a fraction of the cost.
After seeing Linda and Danny together the other night, Cara was determined to attract his attention. The next day, she’d taken a long, hard look at herself in the mirror. No wonder Danny never noticed her, when she was such a tomboy: her hair was dark and ragged, having never grown back properly since it had been hacked off by Sister Concepta; she only ever wore loose skirts and baggy jumpers, hand-me-downs from Annie which did nothing to flatter her skinny body and made her look like a child still; and she never used make-up. She needed to become more feminine, more like Linda. So she’d splashed out on hair dye, make-up, and a new outfit – a slimline skirt and a tight sweater – and was planning to spend the afternoon getting ready. After all, it was Danny’s nineteenth birthday today, and Annie had a special dinner planned for him. Cara was determined to look her best.
Four hours later, the transformation was complete. Cara stared at herself in the mirror, unsure of the result. Her hair wasn’t platinum blonde like she’d hoped – it was more orangey; the make-up made her look older, but was the foundation a little dark? Her neck was a different colour to her face now. She wished she had someone to give an opinion before unveiling the new look to everyone. Well, she looked different, that was for sure. She twisted and turned, trying to decide whether she liked the outfit. Something wasn’t quite right. The sweater looked, well, shapeless on her. She’d bought a bra – her first – but she had nothing to fill it with. Her eyes strayed back over to the magazine and its DIY solution.
It took her half an hour to arrange the balls of cotton wool, but by the time she’d finished she was pleased with the results. The stuffing filled out the conical shapes in her bra, and when she pulled the sweater down it looked good – like Linda did in hers. Maybe the left side was a little bigger than the right. She pulled the straps out and wriggled around, trying to make both sides look equal. But the cotton balls shifted, falling lower. Damn. She fidgeted a bit more, until it was as good as she could get. It wasn’t perfect, but she was sure no one would notice. Anyway, she had no more time to worry – Annie had already called up twice asking her to come down. Everyone else had arrived, and they were waiting for Danny’s birthday dinner to begin.
The Connollys were all in the kitchen, toasting Danny with some sparkling wine that Annie had picked up. No one saw Cara at first, as she hovered in the doorway, wanting to make a grand entrance. It was Annie who spotted her – and promptly dropped the tray of potatoes she’d been carrying.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ she gasped, her hand going up to cover her mouth.
Everyone looked round.
Bronagh, who’d come over with her family to celebrate Danny’s birthday, peered at the girl. ‘Cara?’ she said unsurely.
Aidan, Bronagh’s five-year-old son, was staring straight at her chest. ‘What’s wrong with your boobs?’
‘Aidan!’ Bronagh scolded him.
But he was a wilful little boy, a lot like his Uncle Danny, and without any thought he got up and walked over to Cara and slapped at the front of her sweater, where her breasts were supposed to be. The cotton balls caved in. There was a gasp of horror from around the room. Aidan looked up at her.
‘They’re not real,’ he observed solemnly.
There was a moment of shocked silence, and then – almost as one – the whole table started to laugh.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Annie managed eventually. She wiped tears from her eyes. ‘Out of the mouths of babes, hey?’
Tears of embarrassment stung Cara’s eyes. She looked over at Danny with his arm around Linda, who was smirking at her. How would she ever get him to take her seriously after this? With that thought, she fled from the room.
It was Danny who came to see how she was. He knocked on the door. ‘Can I come in?’ he called through.
‘No!’ Cara shouted back. She felt so humiliated right now that she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see him again.
But Danny wasn’t giving up that easily. He cracked open the door. ‘Please – let me in, will you?’
Cara was lying face down on the bed, and made no effort to look at him. ‘Do whatever you want.’
He walked over and sat beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder. At any other time, she would have been happy to get this level of attention from him. But not like this.
‘Are you all right, mate?’ he asked gently.
‘What do you think?’ she sniffed.
He laughed a little. ‘Not too good, right?’
‘Right.’
‘What’s with all the get-up, hey? The clothes, the hair, the make-up?’
Cara didn’t say anything at first. How could she explain that she’d just wanted him to notice her. ‘I just wanted to be different,’ she said at last. ‘But it all went wrong.’ Burying her head into the pillow, she started to cry again.
‘Hey, hey. No more of that.’ Danny eased her onto her side, offering her a big hanky. ‘Now stop crying. And come back downstairs and have some grub, will you? For me, as it’s my birthday?’
‘Oh, no, I can’t.’ She turned her tear-stained face up at him, mascara and foundation streaking down her cheeks. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I just can’t face them all.’
Danny looked like he wanted to argue back, but then he seemed to realise how serious she was about this. ‘Don’t worry about it. I understand.’ He ruffled Cara’s hair affectionately. ‘But cheer up. We all do stupid things at your age. It ain’t the end of the world.’
He went back down to join the others then. But if his words were meant to be reassuring, they had the opposite effect on Cara. She’d never felt smaller or more stupid. No wonder he didn’t fancy her.
Chapter Thirty-nine
London, November 1963
The incessant banging on the front door woke Cara. As the wood smashed, her eyes flew open. She heard the sound of heavy footsteps charging through the house, shouting as doors were thrown open and rooms searched, and realised what was going on. It was a dawn raid.
In the darkness of the early winter’s morning, Cara pulled on her dressing gown and hurried downstairs, but she was only just in time to see Danny being dragged out in handcuffs by two men in uniform. He’d obviously got dressed hastily: he had on old jeans, his T-shirt was inside out and he needed a shave.
Seeing the state of him, Cara’s hands automatically went to her mouth.
‘Danny!’ she gasped, her eyes filling with tears at the sight of the man she admired so much being humiliated like that.
But Danny answered cheerfully. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Just look after Mum, will you?’
She found Annie sitting in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette, her hand shaking a little. Cara went over and sat down beside her. It was almost two years since she’d turned up on the Connollys’ doorstep, and over that time Annie had been like a mother to her. Cara couldn’t stand to see her upset this way.
‘Are you all right?’ Cara knew it must have been horrible for any mother, seeing her son dragged out. But while Annie was still in shock, she was surprisingly matter-of-fact about the whole business. She’d been expecting this for a long time. Men like Danny could only get away with it for so long.
‘I’ll be fine. It’s Danny we must be worrying about.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I’d better let Finnbar know what’s happened.’
She made to get up, but Cara put a restraining hand on her.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll do that. Do you want me to stick the kettle on, too?’
Annie smiled weakly up at her. ‘Thanks, love. You’re a real life-saver.’
In the interview room of the local police station, DC Bailey sat down opposite Danny Connolly. The heavyset policeman sported a shaved head and a
squashed nose, courtesy of an altercation with some drunk during his early days on the beat. At forty, with the wrinkles layering on top of each other on his forehead, he looked a little like a bulldog, and had a reputation for being the meanest policeman in the station. The Chief Inspector always sent him in when he had someone he wanted to intimidate.
Danny knew all this, and wasn’t about to show any weakness. Bravado was all he had left, and he wasn’t going to give that up easily. They’d arrested him for an armed robbery that had taken place at a High Street bank in Enfield earlier that week. Allegedly, there was a witness who’d put him at the scene. It didn’t look good for him, but Danny wasn’t giving up yet.
Bailey stared across the table at the prisoner, and Danny stared defiantly back. They’d left the lad alone in the holding cell for several hours, without food, drink or information. The tactic had been designed to shake him up, but it obviously hadn’t worked.
‘So,’ Bailey began.
Danny cocked his head to one side. ‘So?’ he repeated, mockingly.
‘You know the score. We’ve got someone who puts you at the scene, and you’re looking at an eighteen-year stretch. By the time you get out, you’ll be pushing forty, and none of those pretty girls you hang out with are going to be interested.’
‘Yeah – that’s something you’d know all about.’
Bailey bristled at the disrespect, but decided to let it go. There were bigger issues at stake right now than his pride. He had a message to deliver. Ignoring the jibe, the detective tried another tack: ‘Look, I’ll give it to you straight. We’re not after you. You’re small fry, not even worth the time of day. But if you give us what we want, then you’ll be out of here before teatime.’
Danny feigned interest. ‘So what is it you want?’
‘The big guy: Finnbar. We know it’s him behind the robbery. You agree to stand up and say that in court, you’ll get no more than a ticking off.’
‘Oh yeah?’
Bailey leaned across the table; he was practically salivating. ‘Yeah. Just give us Finnbar. That’s all we want.’
Danny waited a beat, and then he grinned. ‘In that case, you’ll know what it’s like to want, then.’ He stretched lazily. ‘I don’t know no Finnbar – and even if I did, I’m no grass. So if you’ve got nothing else of interest to say, then why don’t you toddle off and get me a cuppa and my brief? I fancy a kip.’
With that, Danny put his head down on the cold table and closed his eyes. Bailey had no choice but to leave him to it. He’d never met anyone so cool on his first arrest, and despite himself, the detective was impressed. In fact, he wasn’t at all surprised when he got back half an hour later to find Danny snoring his head off.
Danny’s loyalty was rewarded. Finnbar provided one of the best silks that money could buy. Of course it helped that the witness conveniently disappeared, so all Danny could be charged with was handling stolen money. He was tried at Southwark Crown Court and went down for an eighteen-month stretch, which was a good result, considering. The worst part about it was where he was sent to serve his sentence. Instead of ending up close by in Wandsworth Prison, Bailey – aggrieved at not getting his man – had pulled some strings and seen that he’d serve his time up north in Durham nick instead. That meant family visits would be limited.
Annie tried to be stoical about the whole matter.
‘It could’ve been worse. And maybe this’ll be a lesson to him.’ But even she wasn’t naïve enough to believe that.
Cara wanted to know when she could see him, but Annie told her it was best that she didn’t.
‘He don’t want no one but me up there, darlin’. It’s a long way for an hour’s visit, and he don’t want people seeing him locked up. He’s getting on fine, and I think in a way it’s easier for him to do his time without having reminders of home.’
In fact, beneath her tough exterior, Annie was worried for her boy. Far from straightening him out, his time inside seemed to be making him more determined to pursue a life of crime. He was like a caged animal in there, pacing the floor, waiting for his chance to spring free. His hatred of the police had increased beyond anything she’d thought possible. It was ‘the pigs’ this, ‘the pigs’ that. Any hope Annie had entertained of her son eventually carving a better life for himself had now gone.
With Danny away, Annie and Cara had no choice but to get on with their lives. Cara wrote to him every week. He never wrote back, but Annie assured her that he loved receiving her letters, so she kept sending them anyway.
‘Oi! Wakey, wakey, love.’
The sound of someone snapping their fingers in front of her face startled Cara out of her daydream. She’d been leaning over the counter of Grafton’s grocery store, lost in thought. Now she looked up to see Melanie Dixon smiling quizzically at her. The buxom redhead lived a few streets away from the Connollys. She was a couple of years older than Cara, and the two girls knew each other well enough to say ‘hello’ to.
‘Sorry about that,’ Cara apologised, as she rang up the other girl’s bread and milk. ‘I was miles away.’
‘Somewhere good, I hope. Like a nice, sunny beach in Spain.’ Mel glanced out of the shop window at the grey drizzle. ‘It’s peeing it down again. And they call this bleeding summer!’
Cara gave a weak smile.
Seeing her lacklustre reaction, Mel peered more closely at her. ‘So what’s up with you, then? You look like you’ve found a shilling and lost a pound!’
‘You’re right on the nose there,’ Cara admitted.
It was June 1964, six months since Danny had been sent down. Cara was now seventeen, and she had been living with the Connollys for well over two years. She was still working at Mr Grafton’s grocers, and was thoroughly fed up with it. After her disastrous attempt to change her appearance, she’d started to take more of an interest in fashion, and longed to get a job at one of the funky boutiques that were springing up along the King’s Road. But without a National Insurance number, she had no chance. So she was stuck weighing out fruit and veg to the same faces every day.
It didn’t help that she’d heard from Annie today that Danny’s horrible ex, Linda, had got hitched. Danny had dumped her a few months before he’d got sent down, and she’d taken up with some other low-level thug. Now they were married and she’d moved out to a new semi in Essex, apparently. It wasn’t that Cara wanted any of that, but at least Linda was getting on with her life, while she was still stuck here, doing the same thing.
‘Well, go on then,’ Mel urged her. ‘Tell me what’s up. A problem shared and all that.’
Usually Cara wouldn’t have dreamed of unburdening to a virtual stranger. But there was no one in the shop, and Mel seemed so genuinely interested, that she found herself opening up about how fed up she was.
Once she’d finished, Mel studied her thoughtfully. ‘What about coming to work at Eclipse?’
‘What, doing the accounts or something?’ Last year, Cara had started helping Mr Grafton with the book-keeping, and she’d found that she was good at it. She’d helped a couple of other businesses out, and it had become a second source of income for her.
But Mel shook her head. ‘Nah. As one of the hostesses, like me.’
Cara looked at Mel as though she was mad. Eclipse was one of the exclusive hostess clubs situated on Old Compton Street in Soho. Finnbar had set it up a couple of years earlier. It had been an instant success, a place where celebrities got to rub shoulders with the criminal fraternity. A glitzy, high-quality place, Eclipse’s real draw was the beautiful girls who worked there. Cara couldn’t believe that Mel would even suggest that she could be one of them.
‘Me?’ She snorted with laughter, assuming the other girl was joking. ‘Yeah, I can see myself fitting right in. Probably scare half the customers off!’
‘Don’t be daft. You’d be perfect.’ Reaching into her handbag, Mel pulled out an elegant black matchbox, which she handed to Cara. It had Eclipse written on the front in white, with the silhou
ette of what appeared to be a naked woman by the side. The club’s address was on the back. ‘Anyway, if you fancy it, pop along tomorrow at six, and I’ll get the Manager to sort something out for you.’
Later that night, looking at herself in the mirror, Cara could see what Mel meant. After that stupid incident all those months earlier, she’d vowed never to be anything but herself ever again. But now she didn’t need to be. Almost without realising, she’d finally passed through the awkward adolescent stage that had plagued her for years, and she’d blossomed. She would never be classically beautiful like her mother had been, but with her black hair against alabaster skin, huge green eyes and cheekbones like knives, she was definitely striking. Instead of being too tall and too skinny, she was now long and lean, languid and rangy, and although she couldn’t hope to rival the likes of Linda in the chest department, she had enough to get by.
So the following evening Cara did as Mel had suggested and went to Eclipse. The redhead had been as good as her word, and had managed to arrange for Cara to see the club’s Manager, Ronan Carter. A short, stocky man, he had once been an enforcer, but since turning forty and getting hitched, he’d stepped into managing the more legitimate businesses. Wearing an expensive black suit, with a black shirt underneath, he was unrecognisable as the thug he’d once been.
He invited her into his office. Like the rest of the club, it was plush rather than functional, with a deep burgundy carpet and solid wood furniture. A two-way mirror ran the length of one side of the room, with a view down to the club below. Ronan discreetly pulled the blind closed, and then came to sit behind his desk, leaning comfortably back in his black leather chair.
He got straight down to business. ‘So Mel says you’re after a job?’
‘That’s right.’ Despite herself, Cara felt a little nervous in front of Ronan. Mel had lent her a black shift dress for the interview, saying it would make her look more sophisticated, but frankly she felt a little uncomfortable in it. The skirt had come just below the other girl’s knees, but Cara was so much taller that the hem sat midway down her thigh, and she felt out of place showing so much leg.