Read Online Queen of the Mersey by Maureen Lee - Free Book Online Page A

locally as Freddy’s – one of the most exclusive department stores in Liverpool. The restaurant was like a ballroom, with soaring oak-panelled walls and an elaborately moulded ceiling from which hung three magnificent chandeliers. Stained-glass peacocks in the centre of the tall windows cast brilliant spots of colour over the room. It was like being in another world, Laura thought. There was something faintly thrilling about the subdued clink of cutlery, the murmur of voices, the sound of the white grand piano being played by a man in a velvet jacket and a bow tie.
    Ordinarily, they could never have afforded such an expensive place, but Colm Flaherty had given Roddy a two pound bonus when he’d left the day before. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without you, boyo,’ he’d said with tears in his eyes.
    ‘Let’s blow the lot,’ Roddy said impetuously as they studied the menu. ‘That’s not exactly extravagant,’ he added when Laura made a face. ‘When my brother, Thomas, got married, it cost over two hundred and fifty pounds. There were more than a hundred guests and an entire orchestra played at the ball that night. I bet no one had as good a time as we’re going to have with our measly two, and that pianist is better than an orchestra any day.’
    ‘A three-course meal is only half a crown. We’d have to eat four each if we’re going to blow the lot,’ Laura pointed out.
    ‘But we’ve got the rest of the day to go, haven’t we? After this, we’ll do some shopping, then go to the cinema.’ He smacked his lips. ‘I’m having vegetable soup, lamb chops, peas and roast potatoes, followed by trifle. Oh, Lord!’ He sniffed appreciatively. ‘I can already smell the mint sauce. I think that’s what I’ve missed more than anything over the last few years, lamb and mint sauce.’
    ‘I’ll have vegetable soup and coq au vin, only because it’s something I’ve never had before and it makes it more exciting.’
    He grinned boyishly. ‘It is exciting, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, but Roddy,’ she said in a small voice, ‘do you mind having missed lamb and mint sauce and so many other things all this time? If we’d never met, by now you’d be a fully-fledged architect. You might be married. There’d have been more than a hundred guests and an orchestra at your wedding and you’d be living in a lovely house, like the one in Primrose Hill where you saw Thomas.’
    ‘Laura,’ he said gravely and with a touch of impatience, ‘if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a single thing. I am married, to the most beautiful girl in the world and have an equally beautiful daughter. And I’ll have you know that, although I may not be an architect, I’m a fully-fledged builder’s mate. So there!’ He stuck out his tongue and she giggled. ‘How about you? Would you do things differently if it were possible?’
    ‘You know I wouldn’t. What are you doing?’ she exclaimed when he took the stub of a pencil out of his pocket and began to write on the menu.
    ‘Just making a note of something.’
    The waitress arrived to take their order. While they waited, Roddy said, ‘Remember the notes we used to write each other in that bookshop where we met?’
    ‘We used to leave them in Gibbons’s The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.’ The shopkeeper must have wondered how it became so well-thumbed, but had never been bought.
    ‘The first time I saw you through a gap in the shelves, I said to myself, “I’ve got to get to know that girl properly.” It was love at first sight.’
    ‘For me too,’ Laura said tenderly. ‘There was something familiar about you, as if I’d known you all my life.’ He was taller than her by a head, very attractive and debonair in his grey school uniform. It was Saturday and the fifth form of Burton College for Girls were on their weekly visit to Tunbridge Wells. Miss Lancing, the teacher, was keeping a sharp eye on her charges when the shop had been invaded by half a dozen boys from St Jude’s whom they’d been forbidden to speak to. Roddy had written