Connie’s Courage. Annie Groves

       ONE

      1912

      Connie admired her reflection in the old spotted mirror she had propped up on the small chest by the window to get the best light. Not that very much light did come in through the small, filthy window of the room she and Kieron were renting in one of Liverpool’s poorest areas – a huddle of terraced houses in an airless court down a narrow back alley – but Connie preferred not to think about their surroundings.

      She had begged the landlord of the pub where she worked as a barmaid to let her take the mirror when his wife decided to throw it out. It was her sister Ellie who had always been considered the pretty one, and not her. She rubbed anxiously at her lips with a cloth, to try to give them a bit of colour, before applying a thin smear of Vaseline to them. She and Kieron might not have any money, but that did not mean she had to let herself go completely.

      They might be living in straitened circumstances now, but things would be different once they got to America, she assured herself, picking up her skirts and whirling round, the reality of her situation forgotten, as her natural optimism brought an excited glow to her face. America! Oh, but she just couldn’t wait to get there!

      ‘We’re going to America. We’re going to America!’ she sang at the top of her voice, dizzy with anticipation and happiness.

      But her happiness turned to a sharp stab of discomfort, as the light from the window glinted on the cheap wedding ring she was wearing. A wedding ring she had no legal right to, because she and Kieron were not married.

      In reality, she was not Mrs Kieron Connolly, but still Miss Constance Pride, daughter of Robert Pride of Preston. Not that her father cared anything for her now. No, he had a second wife to replace Connie’s dead mother, and a new family to displace both Connie and her siblings from his affections.

      Connie still hated to think about the unhappiness she had experienced after her mother’s death. The four Pride children had been split up amongst their mother’s sisters, without being allowed any say in their own futures. The Barclay sisters had been renowned for their beauty and grace when they had been young, and Connie knew that her aunts had never approved of her mother Lydia’s marriage to a mere butcher.

      When Lydia had died following the birth of her fourth child, Ellie, Connie’s elder sister, had been sent to live at Hoylake with their Aunt and Uncle Parkes.

      Mr Parkes was an extremely wealthy man – a lawyer – with a very grand house in the prestigious area of Hoylake where all the rich shipowners lived. Mr and Mrs Parkes had given a ball whilst Ellie had been living with them, and Connie had been invited to attend.

      She had tried not to show how overawed she felt by the unfamiliar elegance of her aunt and uncle’s home, or how upset and frightened she had been by the realisation that she and her sister Ellie were living such different lives. Her elder sister had seemed like a stranger to her, and she had felt so envious