Hettie of Hope Street. Annie Groves

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      Hettie of Hope Street

      Annie Groves

      

      To my father who we all loved and miss so much.

      Thank you for being you, Dad.

      Table of Contents

       Cover page

       Title page

       Dedication

PART ONE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

       ELEVEN

       TWELVE

       THIRTEEN

       FOURTEEN

       PART TWO

       FIFTEEN

       SIXTEEN

       SEVENTEEN

       EIGHTEEN

       NINETEEN

       TWENTY

       TWENTY-ONE

       TWENTY-TWO

       PART THREE

       TWENTY-THREE

       TWENTY-FOUR

       TWENTY-FIVE

       TWENTY-SIX

       TWENTY-SEVEN

       TWENTY-EIGHT

       TWENTY-NINE

       THIRTY

       THIRTY-ONE

       THIRTY-TWO

       Acknowledgements

       About the author

       Also by Annie Groves

       Copyright

       About the publisher

PART ONE

       ONE

      ‘Mam, Mam, just wait until you see this.’ Excitement sparkled in Hettie’s dark eyes as she thrust the open page of the Liverpool Post underneath her mother’s nose. ‘They’re advertising for a “young lady” to sing to people during afternoon tea at the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool. It says you have to write to this address here. Oh, Mam, I’m so excited. It would be the perfect job for me. Just imagine – I could sing every day and get paid for it!’

      Ellie Walker looked at the advertisement her step-daughter had shoved in front of her, her face clouding slightly. ‘Oh Hettie, love.’ Ellie said uncertainly. ‘I don’t think…’

      Immediately Hettie’s excitement gave way to anxiety. ‘But Mam, you know how much I love to sing and everyone said how good I was when I sang in The Mikado. Miss Brown said I had the best voice of any girl she had ever taught.’

      Ellie sighed. ‘Yes, Hettie I know that, but singing in a small private theatre to help raise money for charity is a very different thing to singing in public and,’ she hesitated, ‘and for money.’

      Ellie hated to see the excitement dying in Hettie’s eyes and being replaced by mutinous disappointment. But Ellie was very protective of all her children and even though Hettie was eighteen, she was still a child in so many ways. In so many ways, but not in all. Ellie glanced discreetly at her step-daughter’s body. Although slim and delicately boned, Hettie nevertheless had a very well-developed bosom. And then, of course, there was her unusual, sultry beauty – that mingling of the delicate bone structure Hettie had inherited from her Japanese mother together with some features from the Englishman who had been her father and Ellie’s first husband.

      Ellie had waited until she had felt Hettie was old enough to understand properly before explaining to her step-daughter the troubled circumstances surrounding her own birth and her parents’ deaths.

      Hettie had never known her father, having been