Across the Mersey by Annie Groves Page A

was expecting Alan to ‘have something special to ask me very soon’.
    ‘Your mother won’t mind if we change our minds,’ Alan told her carelessly, adding, ‘Trixie would have jumped at the chance to come with me.’
    ‘Trixie?’ Bella questioned sharply. ‘When did you see her?’
    ‘She’d called round to see my mother. Something about her own mother and the WVS.’
    Bella thought she had successfully seen off the other girl weeks ago, so Alan’s casual comment about seeing her was not something she wanted to hear, especially not when the place where he had seen her was his own home. It was unthinkable that Alan’s parents could possibly prefer Trixie asa daughter-in-law to her. And certainly impossible that Alan should think of her as his wife!
    ‘Yes, you’re right, I’m sure that Mummy will understand,’ Bella allowed graciously, before adding in a mock-little-girl voice, ‘Of course, I shall expect to be properly rewarded for sharing you with your new car when I thought I was going to have you all to myself.’
    The words might be little-girl lisped and sugar sweet but the look she was giving him was pure Salome and she could see from his smile that he recognised that.
    ‘I’m so glad that you won’t have to go and be part of this horrid war – if it does happen,’ she told him, changing the subject.
    ‘My father’s made sure that there’s no way I’ll be called up if it does,’ Alan boasted. ‘With him being a Master Builder and me working for him, we’re both in reserved occupations, and besides, Dad has plenty of contacts, thanks to him being on the council, and plenty of work coming in as well, what with people wanting shelters put up and walls and that reinforced just in case. I can’t for the life of me understand chaps like Seb who go and volunteer when they don’t need to.’
    Bella nodded her head and tried not to look as bored as she felt. The means by which the money was earned to pay for her new dresses and everything else her family enjoyed was not something that interested her, and once she and Alan were married she intended to make sure that he understood that.
    A couple of hours later they were deep in the Cheshire countryside, and Bella was beginning to feel increasingly bored with Alan’s monologue about the attributes of his new car.
    ‘I want to talk about us, not your car,’ she protested, pouting. ‘You haven’t told me how nice I look or said you love me, not once since you picked me up.’
    ‘Of course I love you,’ Alan told her carelessly, suddenly braking and pulling the car off the main road and on to a rutted cart track that had plainly not been used in a long time. Several yards down it, he stopped the car beneath the branches of a full-leafed oak tree.
    ‘Alan,’ Bella protested as she realised that they were enveloped in dense greenery and hidden from sight.
    ‘Come on,’ he told her, as he reached over and put his arm around her. ‘Don’t act all coy on me now, Bella, not when you’ve been throwing out such tempting hints. You’re far too pretty for a chap to be able to resist, and you know it,’ he added, bending his head to kiss her.
    ‘Say you love me first,’ Bella pouted, holding him off.
    ‘Of course I love you.’
    Satisfied, Bella allowed him to kiss her, mentally imagining how she would show off her ring at work.
    But when Alan started to fondle her breasts and then to unbutton the front of her dress, she tensed and tried to push him away. He was breathinghard, a glazed expression in his eyes, his face flushed. She had never realised before quite how much he looked like his father.
    ‘No,’ she told him, but he ignored her, pushing down her brassiere to squeeze and press her naked breast whilst he kissed her so roughly that her mouth hurt.
    This, though, was the price she must pay to be Alan’s wife; the price every woman paid to get the husband she wanted, Bella told herself. Men who were as popular as Alan was needed a bit