Copyright

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

The ‘Quality Street’ name and image is reproduced with the kind permission of Société des Produits Nestlé S.A.

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Cover Photographs © Stephen Mulcahey/Trevillion Images (figures), © Robert Lambert/Arcangel Images (terraced houses), Borthwick Institute/Heritage Images/Getty Images (factory), Shutterstock.com (all other images)

Penny Thorpe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008307806

Ebook Edition © March 2020 ISBN: 9780008307813

Version: 2021-02-04

Dedication

In loving memory of my cousin and fellow writer,

James José Martin Walker

1981 – 2019

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Historical Note

Acknowledgements

If you haven’t read The Quality Street Girls

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Penny Thorpe

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The toffees for the window display had been carefully painted with strong poison. Mr Kirkby, the shop owner, didn’t like to spoil good food like this because it was such a shameful waste, but in the early summer heat of that coronation year of 1937 it had been the only way to keep the ants at bay. Besides, the salesman from Mackintosh’s had been very clear when he gave that particular box of toffees to Mr Kirkby, that they were inedible anyway. It was a relief to finally be throwing the casket away because the worry of having poisoned goods on the premises had weighed on his mind. He had warned his staff about them, and he was confident that none of them would forget and help themselves, but it had preyed on his thoughts as often as his wife had nagged him to throw them out.

As Mr Kirkby stood in the hot shop window, dismantling his display, mopping perspiration from his brow and his hands, he took another look at the casket of sweets and thought again how proud he was of his work. He was not as much of an artist as the confectioner at the Mackintosh’s factory who had made the pretty sweets inside the silk-covered box with its golden trim, but he had painted the toffee fingers so delicately with a gloss of liquid cyanide syrup that, in the strong summer light, the difference was barely noticeable.

Mr Kirkby had, in fact, used rat poison. There was no sense going out and buying weak ant poison when he had enough Victorian rat poison in the cellar to kill an army. His wife was always telling him to get rid of the nasty stuff – it worried her having it lying about the place – but Mr Kirkby pointed out in return that you couldn’t get rat poison like that any more; his mother used to put it down in the shop, and once they got rid of it they’d never be able to buy any more. Only the other day there had been a story in the newspapers about how the government were making a new law to restrict the use of it after an accidental poisoning down south somewhere; it was only a matter of time, Mr Kirby told his staff, before they outlawed fly paper and made you surrender your mousetraps.

Kirkby’s Fancy Goods was very close to the Halifax Borough Market and they had always attracted more than their fair share of mice; despite being a very clean, high-class establishment. The laying down of poison was a routine he had inherited from his mother, and her father before her, just as he had inherited the shop. And although it was commonplace, on that occasion Mr Kirkby had been more cautious than usual, gathering all his staff and explaining to them personally that they were not to touch the new window display because he had added poison to the centrepiece to keep off the ants, and that when it was dismantled the casket was to go straight into the rubbish bin.

Mr Kirkby and his wife had invested a lot of money in this window display, but it had been worth it. The coronation of the new king and queen had brought brisk business, with all the neighbourhood coming in to buy bright bunting and party goods for their street parties. Yes, the spring of 1937 had been a boon for Kirkby’s Fancy Goods. The window display had been done up in red crêpe paper and golden curtain cord to look like an enormous royal crown, and lengths of blue satin ribbon with ‘God Save the King’ on them criss-crossed a screen behind it.

Mrs Kirkby had overcrowded the window with examples of every line they stocked that could possibly be connected with street parties, patriotism, or His Majesty the King. Coloured card hats in the shape of coronets; pop-up theatres for kiddies illustrating the inside of the abbey; special coronation editions of magazines; knitting and sewing patterns for items of patriotic apparel; even a bouquet of carnations, artificially coloured to a burst of red, white and blue. Finally, nestled in the bottom right-hand corner on a velvet cushion, was the presentation casket of Mackintosh’s ‘Fancy Bonbons’. They were not one of the shop’s usual lines, but oh, how wonderfully royal they made the window look. They were like a treasure chest or a jewellery box, sparkling in the late May sun.

Mr Kirkby often left open tins of toffees in his window and had never had cause to poison them before, but the sweets in the opened tins were usually safely wrapped in snugly twisted cellophane, or made from artfully painted plaster of Paris. These confections were naked, intricately decorated, and so very, very tempting.

‘We wouldn’t usually allow spoiled confectionery to leave the factory, but these were a special case. I mean, look at them,’ the Mackintosh salesman had said, ‘they couldn’t just go straight into the bin. I said to my sales manager, I said, “Can’t I let them go to a good home, just this once?” and I told them about the idea I had for making them part of your window display, and he let me bring them round.’ The Mackintosh’s salesman had sighed at the craftsmanship of the handmade bonbons. These were not the regular mass-produced toffees that he was used to dealing with – these were sweets of a premier class.

‘They don’t look spoiled to me, Mr Carstaff,’ Mr Kirkby had said. ‘I’ll certainly take them off your hands – people aren’t as fussy as you think. If I just mark the price down—’

‘Oh no, not this box. People might not be fussy but at Mackintosh’s we’re fussy for them. This one is just for your window. I saved it for you, Mr Kirkby, as you’ve always been so good as to offer me such a lot of window space over the years. It’s a sort of parting gift – my last window for you before I sail for Canada and my promotion – to celebrate the coronation. I’ve got a plan to make you a giant crown from crepe paper, with a ball and sceptre decorated with Quality Street cellophane. This casket will be the centrepiece, but it’s only leaving the factory on the condition that it’s absolutely not for consumption.’

Mr Kirkby admired the casket. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, why aren’t the toffees good enough for sale? I’m not complaining as they’d look lovely in my window, but I just can’t see what’s wrong with them.’

‘Ah, well, our Head Confectioner, Mr Birchwood – that is to say, he was our head confectioner, they’ve let him go since this – he wore cologne on his hands while he was working on this batch. It’s expressly against company regulations and he’s tainted the product with it. Our director said he could taste it in the sweets and he wouldn’t let them go out.’

‘But what about the casket? It’s very fine. Surely you must want to use that and refill it.’

‘Can’t be done, Mr Kirkby. Do you see that emblem?’

‘Why yes, it’s the lion and the unicorn.’

‘It is indeed. I’ll let you in on a secret, Mr Kirkby: we’re expecting a royal visit to Halifax, and these sweets were a sample of what the head confectioner thought to make for the King, that’s why the casket is emblazoned with the royal coat of arms. We couldn’t possibly use it for anyone else so it will appear in your window for the coronation display, but that will be all. Our new confectioner will make another casket for the King.’

‘King George? Here in Halifax? What an honour! And such an honour to have a casket with his coat of arms in my window. It will be a proud day for the town.’

‘That it will, Mr Kirkby. That it will.’

As Mr Kirkby dismantled the coronation window display he was already planning its replacement. Halifax was still gripped by royal fever, and now the secret was out and the town knew they were getting a royal visit Mr Kirkby thought it would be prudent to plan a display which would honour the King and also tell the story of his family business; ‘Kirkby’s Fancy Goods Welcomes His Majesty’ the display would say, and it would be resplendent in royal blue and emerald green. Oh, it would be a delight to construct.

Mr Kirkby had agreed that when he took down all of his coronation decorations he would give them to the local Brown Owl so the Brownies could put them to good use for the King’s visit in July. The shop, however, would have a completely new look. Mr Kirkby had expected Brown Owl to call by that afternoon, but he had not expected half the Brownies to come with her, proffering thank you cards which they had made, and waving pocket money which they wanted to spend in the shop.

‘Archibald!’ Mrs Kirkby put her head of tightly wrapped curlers around the parlour door which opened into the shop and called out to her husband who, truth be told, would have known that she was there by the smell of setting lotion alone. ‘Archibald, the Brownies are on their way!’

‘Yes, dear. I’ve seen them.’ Mr Kirkby sometimes wished his wife would watch their shop with the same enthusiasm she watched the road from their parlour window so that he wouldn’t have to serve eight customers all at once.

‘Have you got rid of that casket from the window yet?’

‘I’m just doing it, dear.’

‘Well, you make sure you put it well out of the way. I don’t know why you insisted on poisoning them anyway. Nasty stuff to have about the place!’ Mrs Kirkby’s thoughts on the subject of her husband’s vigilance against many-legged intruders was cut short when she saw the Brown Owl almost at the door and she ducked away back into the parlour, leaving behind only traces of hair ointment and disapproval.

Mr Kirkby quickly scooped up the casket of poisoned sweets from their velvet cushion, snipped off the attractive gold tassel on the top – he had a use for that – and put it on top of the rubbish bag beside the staff door, ready to take out to the bins in the alleyway when he had finished. Now that the casket was safely tucked into the refuse sack the incident was forgotten for him, and that was his first mistake.

Kirkby’s Fancy Goods was suddenly very busy; along with the Brownies and their leader several other customers vied for the attention of the staff. Three old matrons had come in with their list of weekly orders; a harassed-looking mother was searching for a birthday gift for her daughter; and Steven Hunter, the handsome teenaged son of the wealthy Hunter family, had ostensibly come in to supervise his much younger sisters, Gracie and Lara, while they spent their pocket money, but in reality he was just there to make eyes at pretty Marilyn Parkin across the counter when she was supposed to be serving customers.

Mr Kirkby didn’t mind letting Marilyn enjoy the attentions of the Hunter lad; he remembered only too well what it had been like to be young and in love, and rather than call her away to help serve customers, he himself climbed out of the window to deal with the flood of Brownies. They had brought pocket money to buy sweets, which they all wanted to pay for at the same time, and some of them wanted to take the children’s toys down off the shelves to take them apart and investigate them while they waited for their leader to walk them all back to the church hall for their meeting.

In amongst the busy, noisy, happy throng, six-year-old Lara Hunter and her newly adopted sister, Gracie, both a year too young as yet to be Brownies, had seen the gold embossed lid of a casket of sweets glinting in the summer sunlight. The box had slipped from the top of the rubbish sack onto the floor and the little girls hoped they could buy it with their pocket money. They lifted it carefully into the shopping basket they were carrying together, and held out their pocket money, ready to offer it to the harassed shopkeeper behind the counter.

Most of the little girls didn’t know enough maths to work out whether or not they could afford the items they wanted to buy and were calling out ‘Do I have enough for this?’ or ‘Do I have enough for a quarter of Strawberry Creams?’ The shopkeeper was attempting to carry on a conversation with the Brownie leader while also operating the till hurriedly, and he accepted that he might have given away a few free sweets by attempting to run the pocket money through the till without really checking who had paid for what and whether in fact they did have the right money.

‘My wife is that excited about the visit,’ Mr Kirkby told the Brownie Leader. ‘I said we could just leave up the old decorations, but no, she won’t have it. She says if the King passes by our window she wants him to see something fresh – she doesn’t want him thinking that we’ve just kept up our coronation decorations.’

The Brownie Leader, delighted to be getting so much material for her own banners, thought it was too good to be true. ‘But surely she’ll want red, white and blue, the same as before?’

The little Hunter girls squeezed their way through the Brownies, held up their handful of pocket money, and asked, ‘Do we have enough for a pretty box of toffees?’

‘Yes, yes, just a moment, you two, I’ll come and help you choose one.’ Then he returned to his conversation with the Brownie Leader. ‘Not Mrs Kirkby, she’s dressing the shop in emerald green for the Empire, and we’re going to have a window display telling the story of the family business and the town.’

The little Hunter girls, having already chosen their box of confections and not needing any help choosing another, left their pocket money on the side of the counter near the till and wriggled through the throng back to their brother. They were very pleased with the pretty casket because they had been saving up to buy a thank you gift for someone who had been very kind to them both.

Steven Hunter noticed his sisters by his side and did his best to tear his eyes away from the lovely Marylin. ‘Have you two got what you wanted?’ he asked them.

The little girls nodded and followed him out of the shop with their purchase neatly tucked away in their basket. They called out a farewell to Mr Kirkby and he, assuming that they were coming back later when the shop was less busy, waved the little girls away, unaware that in their basket they carried the casket of deadly sweets.

Chapter Two

It was late, and the illuminated windows of Reenie’s boarding house acted as a beacon to her young man, her cheerfully drunken father, and his long-suffering, peculiarly ugly horse.

‘Reenie!’ Her father called in a whisper loud enough to wake half the street. ‘Reenie! Ruffian’s thrown a shoe, Reenie.’ Mr Calder hiccupped loudly and then sneezed. He was a little man and the force of both actions seemed enough to knock him off balance, but his nag, who waited with a martyr’s expression, righted him with a light, well-timed head-butt. Ruffian was the master of the light, well-timed head-butt. ‘Reenie! Can you come and take Ruffian?’

There was a rattling of locks, bolts, and chains before the front door of Mrs Garner’s boarding house opened onto the balmy June night, heavy with the scent of lime tree blossom. It was Mrs Garner herself who opened the door; bleary-eyed, and tightly wrapped in as many layers of coats and dressing gowns as she thought appropriate for a respectable Yorkshire widow of advancing years when opening her front door at midnight. ‘Peter McKenzie, whatever are you doing out of doors without a coat after dark? You’ll catch your death of cold.’ Mrs Garner knew Peter, of course, but she was used to seeing him call for Reenie in his smartest clothes, with his hair neatly combed. This sorry specimen was not in keeping with the Peter McKenzie she knew.

Peter looked at his sleeves in confusion, the knowledge that he had no coat only just dawning on him. ‘I don’t feel very well.’ His lost expression made him look much younger than his nineteen years.

‘You my Reenie’s landlady?’ Mr Calder was taking his cloth cap off his balding head and smiling politely in the general direction of the stone-fronted boarding house while leaning slowly away from it.

‘Yes, but she’s not home yet, Mr Calder. She’s working a night shift down at the factory.’ Jane Garner tried to keep her voice to a genuine whisper in consideration of the neighbours, who thought her far too lax with her boarders as it was.

‘Oh.’ Reenie’s father’s expression of disappointment was almost comical ‘But I’ve got an ’orse, see.’ He jerked up the hand which was holding Ruffian’s makeshift bridle, in the manner of a marionette whose string had been pulled suddenly. Then he let it drop with a glum sigh.

Mrs Garner was a respectable woman, but she was no stranger to tipsiness. She could see that Mr Calder and young Peter wouldn’t get much further that night and Mrs Garner had never in her life hardened her heart. ‘You give that to me, Mr Calder.’ She shuffled down the steps from her front door to the pavement in her flapping slippers, gently prised the rope from his hand and tied it around the railing above the cellar steps. ‘Ruffian can bide here while you wait in the parlour.’

‘No, I got a friend, see?’ Mr Calder was telling his daughter’s landlady as she pushed him awkwardly up the steps. ‘I got a friend I know’ll stand us a drink. Good old boy.’ Mrs Garner didn’t know if he was talking to the horse or about the friend. ‘I just wanted Reenie to mind the ’orse.’

‘Very wise, Mr Calder, very wise. Up the stairs now; you too, Peter.’

When Reenie arrived home an hour later she was confused to see a coat she recognized draped neatly over a hedge at the top of the hill, her father’s horse in the street and the parlour lights lit down below the level of the street. Something was afoot.

‘Don’t wake them.’ Mrs Garner intercepted Reenie as she came through the front door. ‘You’ll never guess who’s sleeping on the parlour table.’

‘Is it Peter and me dad?’

‘How did you know?’ Mrs Garner was helping Reenie out of her coat and hanging it up along with the coat Reenie had rescued from the hedge as she passed.

‘Well, I’ve just found Peter’s ulster in the bushes, which I thought might indicate he’d been passin’ this way, and as for me dad, I can’t help but feel the presence of his massive great workhorse in the middle of the street was a bit of a giveaway.’

‘They said he’d thrown a shoe.’ Mrs Garner was all concern and Reenie couldn’t help but feel she was very lucky to have such a caring landlady.

‘Thrown a strop more like – Ruffian kicks his front shoes off if he doesn’t fancy a job; he thinks he’s too good for farm life.’ Rennie saw her father sitting at a chair in her landlady’s kitchen parlour with his mouth hanging open and his cheek pressed against the tabletop. ‘Come on, you.’ She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Time to go home to Mother. You can’t sleep like that, you’ll do your neck in.’

Reenie’s father snorted awake for a moment, fixed his eyes on his daughter, squinted, rubbed his face, and then smiled. ‘They made my daughter a manager.’ He wobbled upright and proudly jabbed his finger into his own chest. ‘My daughter. Junior Manager.’

‘Yes, Dad, I’m well aware of it. Now it’s time to go home.’ Reenie could see why girls whose fathers were in this state every night tired of it, but as it was only once or twice a year in her own father’s case she couldn’t help but find it comical. ‘What have you done to my young man?’ She waved an arm at Peter, who was snoring gently with his head on his folded arms and his straw-coloured, floppy hair a disorderly mop. ‘I told you to bring him back in one piece.’

Mr Calder beamed with pride and told his daughter in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘He’s a cracking lad, he is. Cracking lad.’ Then sighed contentedly back to sleep.

‘Did I do the right thing?’ Reenie’s landlady asked with concern. ‘Bringing them in to the parlour, I mean. I didn’t like to let your Peter catch cold without a coat. And Mr Calder was ever so wobbly.’

‘No, you did right. They’re in no fit state to go home.’

At this, Peter’s shoulders moved and he lifted his head very, very slowly. ‘Please don’t make me drink again. Reenie, I don’t want to drink again.’ He looked sad and lost and put his head back on the cool, comfortingly stable kitchen tabletop.

‘You were meant to be a good influence on m’dad! “I’ll go with him”, you said. “He’ll only have a couple this year,” you said. Now look at the pair of you. And what am I meant to do with the ’orse?’ Reenie’s questions were in vain as Peter had already begun to snore and Mrs Garner’s cat was looking daggers at him from her place by the stove for making a noise while her kittens were trying to sleep.

‘I didn’t know your Peter drank,’ Mrs Garner said.

‘He doesn’t, really; I think that’s the trouble. Me dad asked if he could take him to the Ale Tasters’ summer do. After their big do last October I thought it couldn’t be any worse.’ Reenie looked at her father and her young man, put her hands on her hips and huffed. ‘There’s me dad encouraging me to board in town so’s I’m not riding back to the farm late after a night shift at the factory; there’s him sayin’, “Oh no, Reenie, you’re a manager now, lass. We can’t have you run ragged helpin’ on the farm when you’ve got a chance at Mackintosh’s. You stay in town, don’t mind us.” And I come home from a night shift, ready to crawl into me bed, and what do I find? Merry hell.’

‘Should I fetch them a blanket each, do you think?’ Mrs Garner’s maternal instincts were strong. ‘And maybe a little cushion for their heads?’

Reenie ruminated. ‘All right, let’s throw a blanket on each of them because I don’t want the nuisance of nursing them through pneumonia, but I draw the line at a cushion.’

‘What about a pitcher of water and some glasses? They might wake up thirsty and be glad of them.’ Mrs Garner shuffled busily round her kitchen-parlour in her flapping slippers, opening cupboards and humming cheerily as she looked for the tin of Carr’s water biscuits, ‘And just one or two little dry crackers.’

Reenie rolled her eyes ‘You’re soft on them, that’s what you are.’ But she smiled because she liked knowing that her father and her young man were in good hands. ‘I’ll walk the ’orse round to the factory stables and bed him down there for the night. If I’m not back in an hour you know I’ve fallen asleep on an ’ay bale.’ Reenie checked for her latchkey in her pocket and then crept up the stairs to her own room to leave Peter’s ulster on a hanger out of the way. Reenie almost missed the figure who was waiting in the open doorway at the other end of the landing. The young woman had evidently been woken by the noise downstairs and was now leaning against the door frame in her nightgown with her arms folded.

It was the factory colleague who boarded in the next room to Reenie, and she did not like to be disturbed. ‘Are we quite finished for the night?’ It was a sarcastically nonchalant question.

‘Yes, Diana. Sorry. M’dad and Peter were just …’ Reenie’s voice trailed off; she was not known for holding back if there was an opportunity to give someone a bit of cheek, but Diana was not someone to whom anyone would dare give lip. ‘I’ll just go and take away the ’orse.’

As Diana turned back into her own room Reenie caught a glimpse of her orderly quarters. Diana was something of a mystery to Reenie; she was ten years older but never had gentleman callers, which always puzzled Reenie because Diana at, twenty-six, was of an age to be getting serious, and she was the most beautiful girl that Reenie had ever seen. It was a mystery, too, that they were not better friends because though Diana might be older than Reenie, they had been thrown together in innumerable ways. From the moment of Reenie’s arrival at the toffee factory nine months previously, they had worked together on the line; they had collaborated to help save the Norcliffe sisters from dismissal; they had been tried together at the same unjust disciplinary hearing that had nearly lost them their jobs – and they had fought to save the factory after they had watched it burn almost to the ground.

Now they were living under the same roof, but still not really friends. Reenie couldn’t understand it; she seemed to make friends with everyone she met, but Diana was as distant as ever. Reenie might have put it down to Diana’s forced separation from her family after the factory fire – the separation which had led her to seek lodgings – but Diana had been withdrawn even before those changes.

Diana was quiet, but never shy – she simply appeared to have little interest in anything except the gramophone records she had inherited from her father, or spending time with her young half-sister Gracie, who she visited at the home of Gracie’s adoptive family every Sunday. Diana sometimes brought Gracie round to their boarding house for tea after they had been on an outing together and Reenie was hoping the little girl would be back again soon because when she was with Diana it was the only time she ever saw her fellow boarder smile.

Chapter Three

To see the Mackintosh’s toffee factory from the outside it would be difficult for a stranger to notice that anything unusual had happened to the old Albion Mills building in the last six months. Tens of thousands of people regularly rattled past the factory by rail, and apart from the telltale scar in a brighter brick where the gash in the factory wall had been repaired, there was almost no reminder of the terrifying fire which had nearly destroyed the business. And if a busy traveller looked up from their railway timetable at Halifax station and looked across at the enormous toffee factory in the canal basin below the platform, they would see a flash of fashionable Art Deco offices, a steeple of a chimney in gleaming, glazed white brick piercing the sky, a sea of white-capped workers flooding into the gates, and rows of gritstone Victorian mills reclaimed for the town’s new industry, disgorging scores of liveried lorryloads of Mackintosh’s Quality Street to be shipped to all four corners of the globe. To the outsider, Mackintosh’s Toffee Town appeared stronger than ever, unassailable by either competition or calamity. However, on the inside it was at breaking point; some thought they could not possibly survive the year.

Before the fire at Christmas Mackintosh’s had come tantalizingly close to running the fastest confectionery production line in the world, but all that work – and, more crucially, all those machines – had been destroyed overnight. The floors which had survived were caked with thick soot, and water from the firemen’s hoses had poured through their storerooms like a river. There had been no choice but to reopen their old factory on the Queen’s Road. A relic of another age, the Queen’s Road factory had been a partially mothballed warehouse for years, and without their machines they were forced to set up scratch lines, making their sweets by hand. The factory had called back retired married women to take up their old jobs on the hand-making lines and save the day, but they had all known that in time the factory planned to restore the old machines, line by line, and reopen the damaged factory as soon as they could.

Now the gabled production hall, where Gooseberry Cream was starch pressed and chocolate enrobed, had heard a rumble of gossip that their situation was about to change.

Emily Everard took it upon herself to spread the word during their morning tea break, striding up and down the rows of women sitting beside shut-down conveyor belts gasping down their well-earned, steaming hot cups of Assam. Mrs Everard was only a factory line worker herself, but she assumed an air of authority. ‘They want to see all the married women at the end of the shift. We’re to go to the canteen where there’ll be an announcement.’

Young Siobhan Grimshaw looked up from her Mackintosh’s monogrammed teacup with a worried expression. ‘But I can’t stop on at the end of the shift; I’ll miss the Stump Cross tram. I’ve got to be home for the kids. Don’t they realize what we have to do to be here? We’ve got lives outside of work, if they didn’t know.’

Emily Everard pulled her white cotton wraparound overalls a little tighter across her capacious bosom. Emily had retired from factory life twenty years earlier, when she had left to be married, and was very proud of the fact that she could still fit into her old overalls. Her colleagues were too kind to point out that the overalls didn’t fit if she had to keep pulling at them all the time. ‘I wouldn’t complain too loudly if I were you; rumour has it they’re about to announce the first list of married women to be let go, and you don’t want to sound like you’re volunteering.’

‘They can’t be letting us go already! We’ve not been here five minutes.’

Old Mrs Grimshaw, mother-in-law to Siobhan, was philosophical, ‘Some of us have been here five months – and they always warned us it would only be temporary. We knew this day would come.’

‘Yes, but I never thought it would be so soon; I thought it would take them years to rebuild; I thought they’d need us at least until after the summer.’

‘Until after you’d saved up to buy your lass a uniform for the grammar school?’ Emily Everard asked.

‘You heard about that?’

Emily nodded to Siobhan’s mother-in-law who was packing Gooseberry Creams into cartons beside her on the production line. ‘I’ve not heard anything else from this quarter! No one from Back Ripon Street has ever won a scholarship that I can remember – you must be very proud of her.’

‘If I can’t get the money for the uniform, she can’t go, they’ve said as much.’ Siobhan was keeping her eyes on Mrs Everard as she spoke, but her hands were moving with dizzying speed to pull pink, flattened card cartons from the rolling cage behind her, flick them open and fold them into shape before tucking them under her mother-in-law’s elbow to be filled with sweets. ‘When I sounded as though I wasn’t going to be able to buy it they started to talk about withdrawing the scholarship offer.’

Emily Everard was appalled. ‘They can’t do that!’

‘They can. Then I heard they’d lifted the marriage bar at Mack’s and that they needed married women who’d worked here before to come back while they pulled together after the fire and I knew we were saved. I paid for a taxi cab, of all things, and went straight round to the school without wasting a minute and I told the headmistress in person that I was one of the Mackintosh girls she’d heard about in the paper, and that I’d be working for Mack’s again, and my daughter would wear the best uniform in the whole school.’

‘What did she say to that?’ Emily Everard did not like the sound of any child being excluded from a scholarship for want of a few clothes, and was already mentally composing a letter of complaint on Siobhan’s behalf.

‘Well, she said she’d be pleased if my daughter was as determined and resourceful as I am, and they’d be glad to see her in full winter uniform at the start of the term.’

‘Well then, it’ll be reyt,’ Old Mrs Grimshaw said, exchanging two filled card cartons of Gooseberry Creams for empty ones.

‘Only if I can get her the uniform, Mam! They have a summer uniform, a winter uniform, a gym kit uniform, and a speech day uniform! I’m on my way to the winter one, but I need another six months to save up, at least! Don’t get me wrong, the money’s good here and I’m not knocking it, but one month’s pay packet isn’t going to buy a gym kit, let alone a full uniform.’

‘You’re telling me.’ Doreen Fairclough, a lady of Siobhan’s own generation piped up from further down the conveyor. She had been almost in tears that morning as she had tried to get to work on time after her daughter had delayed her by announcing that her younger brother, Fred, had stuck a piece of bath sponge up her nose and now neither of them could get it out. The sympathy the other women had shown to her plight had given her the courage to join their conversation. ‘It’s almost impossible to put anything by. I’m feeding my two kids and the three next door who haven’t seen a proper dinner since their dad lost his leg falling off a scaffold. I’d be feeding half the street if our Frank would let me, but he says we’ve got to save something to feed our two after this lot of work dries up.’

Old Mrs Grimshaw was glad of the money she could earn by being back at the factory, but for her it was about something more than the wages: for three decades she had watched with longing as other women walked through the gates of her factory to do the jobs that she had once done, and to live the life she missed so much. ‘I’ve always known it wasn’t going to last,’ she said, ‘and honestly, I always said I’d give my eye teeth to be back at Mack’s, even if it were just one shift. I have loved every bloody minute of it, because I knew that any minute it could be taken away – but my God it hurts to know they’d let us go so easy! They don’t know what it means to us to be back.’

Emily Everard leant over the conveyor belt to say confidentially to the other women, ‘You know they sent Sir Harold Mackintosh hisself round to my mother’s house to beg her personally to come in and work?’

Mrs Grimshaw laughed. ‘Isn’t she about ninety? They can’t have been that desperate for staff.’

‘She’s seventy-six and she worked with Violet Mackintosh back in the day. She knows how to make toffee with nothing but a tea kettle and a Swiss Army Knife.’

‘Did she say yes?’ Siobhan was only thirty-two but even she was feeling too old to be back at work on the production line. Working a full week of packing shifts and then going home to feed and bath the kids before she staggered bone weary into bed, was tough enough on her but a woman of seventy-six?

‘Of course she said yes. She nearly bit his hand off. They put her in charge of Queen’s Road factory for the first two weeks of hand production and she taught forty girls how to make fudge in a barrel.’

The women smiled at the thought of someone whose love of the factory and the job went back even further than their own, getting her wish and returning to such a glorious welcome.

‘I just can’t bear to go.’ Siobhan was shaking her head at the injustice of the idea that they could lose their jobs so easily. There were tears in the young woman’s eyes and she tried to brush them away with discretion. ‘I love my kids, and I’m not saying that I don’t want to be at home while they’re growing, but …’

‘You don’t have to explain yourself to us,’ Emily Everard said, ‘we know. We might be the only people who know.’

‘I’d do anything for my kids – and I’m doing this for them, to put food on the table and save up for a uniform, to put something away for Christmas and pay off the doctor’s bill from when my last one was born. But it’s not just that …’ Siobhan was exhausted, and the production line work was a heavy burden on top of all she had to do at home, but there was something that made her want to hang on and she knew it wasn’t just the money for her daughter’s school uniform.

The other young mother on the line knew what she meant: Doreen had re-joined the factory to put food on the table, but that wasn’t her only reason. ‘It feels like everyone’s taking from us – and God knows Mackintosh’s are taking just as much from us as everyone else – but when I’m on the line with you lot I don’t think about that. When I’m on the line I’m more myself than I am anywhere else. There’s something I’m good at; I’ve got a skill and it’s like—’

‘You know what my mother said it was like?’ Emily Everard pulled her overalls tighter as she stuck her chin out with dignity. ‘She said it was like witchcraft, turning sugar powder into toffee gold.’

‘She’s right, though,’ Doreen said. ‘It’s like being able to do magic.’

‘I hope to God they don’t send us in the first round.’ Mrs Grimshaw kept her eyes fixed on the line that she didn’t need to see with her eyes to work quickly. ‘I just want one more day.’

Chapter Four

Laurence Johns was nervous. He had been a Head of Department at Mackintosh’s for some time and meetings like this one in the Mackintosh’s boardroom were a common occurrence for him, but his department was International Affairs and he knew that he had been interfering in domestic matters which were not within his jurisdiction. This meeting was not a routine one, and he baulked at the thought that he was about to be forced to admit to his colleagues that he had made a rash decision which was putting their employees into immediate danger.

Departmental managers filed into the oak-panelled boardroom, some with their private secretaries, some with junior managers who were eager to take notes and prove themselves to the very people who might advance their careers. When the director was quite sure that everyone was present, he thanked them for attending at short notice and proceeded to business.

‘We have run,’ said Mr Hitchens, making a careful steeple of his fingers as he rested his elbows on the shining surface of the mahogany board table, ‘into some difficulties which we need to address.’

Amy Wilkes looked over her delicately rimmed spectacles at him and asked, ‘What kind of difficulties?’

The director gestured to Laurence to answer, which threw Laurence into renewed panic before he said, ‘Difficulties of supply.’

There was a strained silence as the senior Mackintosh’s managers looked around at each other’s faces to see who looked the most like they already knew what was happening. There were a lot of puzzled expressions and that prompted more muttered concern.

Laurence continued, ‘We have to cut supply from our main Irish factory.’

A young man in an over-starched collar who was taking notes for the factory’s Chief Accountant, piped up, ‘But what does that have to do with us? That’s the Irish factory manager’s problem, not ours.’

‘It is our problem; they were making almost a third of our Quality Street.’ Mr Hitchens’ words silenced the room.

Major Fergusson looked very grave indeed and smoothed down his moustache with thumb and forefinger, before saying, not unkindly, ‘I’m sure it can’t have escaped your notice that Great Britain is in the midst of a trade war with the Irish Free state and has been for nearly five years. It has been mentioned in the newspapers. After the Easter Rising in 1916 and the Great War, there was so much anti-English feeling in Ireland that any English produce, including Mackintosh’s toffee, would be seized by the general public, taken out into the street, and burned with the aid of paraffin. How could they possibly have made our Quality Street without drawing attention to themselves?’

Laurence Johns explained. ‘Mr Sinclair, a Mackintosh cousin from America, is managing the exports of the toffees made at the Irish factory and masking the fact that the factory is under the ownership of English proprietors. Mr Sinclair has been very good at maintaining supply without revealing where the produce is going. The reason we asked you all to this extraordinary meeting is because we have been sent photographs this morning by the Irish factory manager by special courier.’

Laurence took the file of photographs from the secretary sitting beside him and tossed them carelessly across the table. The photographs had been enlarged to give as much detail as possible and showed the exterior of Mackintosh’s principle factory in Ireland. On the walls, painted in huge letters, were the words ‘Burn everything English except their coal’.

Amy Wilkes was a shrewd bird and could see the direction their problem was taking. ‘So local people know the factory is secretly owned by Englishmen and the American manager is just a front?’

Johns took a sip of water and wished that he could have explained this in a written memo without having to face his colleagues. ‘After the accident here at the plant we had to take desperate measures to ensure supply which is why we chose to have a Quality Street line set up in Ireland. We did the same in Ireland as in Halifax: we lifted the marriage bar and brought back skilled married women to work on a temporary line. They’ve made enormous sacrifices to save Quality Street – and we’ve put them in danger.’

The starched collar was not following as quickly as Amy Wilkes. ‘Why would this risk the safety of the workers in Dublin? What’s so dangerous about toffee making?’

‘Because if Mackintosh’s toffees can be seized from shops and burned in protest, what’s to stop a raid on the factory itself?’ Major Fergusson waved the picture of the Inchicore factory. ‘Look at the photograph, man. It’s a direct threat!’

Johns nodded. ‘We had to stop production yesterday. Word got out that the product they were making was by appointment to the royal household and we couldn’t allow the risk any longer, so we need additional girls to work at toffee making here in Halifax now that the Inchicore factory has had to return to normal production levels.’

Amy Wilkes narrowed her eyes. ‘Just how many extra girls do you need us to find?’

‘Five hundred and ninety.’

Amy could not respond at first – the number was too great to comprehend. If he’d said twenty she’d have told him he was expecting too much, but this many was impossible. They were already employing married women who they’d taken out of retirement as an emergency measure, and although there were plenty of unemployed labouring men in Jarrow and Clydeside, they weren’t trained confectioners, and they weren’t moving to Halifax in the morning to work for something as paltry as a woman’s wage. Amy Wilkes shook her head. ‘That’s impossible, I’m afraid. We’ll need time to recruit and train them up and even then we’ve taken on every girl we can get in Halifax.’

‘What about the married women? I heard that they were being let go—’

‘I don’t know where you heard that.’

‘News travels fast in the factory. You’re making an announcement to them after the late shift tonight.’

‘That’s not what we’re announcing. We have a bigger problem than you thought.’

‘I don’t mind that you got blotto with m’ dad, that’s not the problem – it’s what you said when you were blotto.’ Reenie was brushing down her horse in the factory stable and looking over his withers at Peter McKenzie who was sitting on a hay bale in a shady corner.

Peter was looking uncharacteristically sorry for himself and somewhat confused. ‘But I’d never say anything bad to you—’

‘You hardly said two words to me at all, but you said an awful lot to m’ dad.’

‘I don’t really remember what I said to your dad. I know I only said good things about you, Reenie, I definitely sang your praises.’

‘And?’ Reenie folded her arms and raised her eyebrows to indicate that there was another matter which he really ought to remember.

‘And I think I drank your health?’ Peter looked worried; he rarely drank, and although he vaguely remembered spending a happy evening with Reenie’s father, he was worried about what kind of a fool he might have made of himself, if only because he hoped he hadn’t brought embarrassment to Reenie.

‘And you asked m’ dad for permission to take my hand in matrimony. Not only did you ask my dad’s permission, but you asked everyone else in the pub what they thought. I’m getting a lot of comments on the factory floor and I am not best pleased.’

Peter’s face blushed red. ‘Oh, I … I didn’t—’

Reenie interrupted his surprised and embarrassed stammering ‘Do I need to remind you, Peter McKenzie, that I’m not seventeen until October, you’re not twenty until August, we’ve not been walking out five months – and I’m not leaving my job at Mack’s willy-nilly for a goose’s bridle!’

‘But we could have a long engagement?’

Reenie pursed her lips in disapproval. ‘Why are you in such a hurry? Is this because you think I’ll go to Blackpool with you if we’re engaged? Because I’ve told you that I’m not having any hanky-panky until we’re married!’

‘No, no, I never thought that. When I said we should go to Blackpool I was never thinking of suggesting that – I just thought you’d like Blackpool. You could bring a friend as a chaperone, I wasn’t suggesting—’

‘Then why are you in such a hurry to be engaged if you’re willing to have a long engagement?’

Peter was earnest. ‘I just want everyone to know that I think you’re wonderful.’

Reenie’s shoulders relaxed a little and she felt a wave of affection for her young man. She softened her tone and said, ‘Peter, that’s not what you’ve made everyone in the Old Cock and Oak think; you’ve made them all think I’m in the family way, and now I’ve got to explain to everyone I see that I don’t have a bun in the oven, I’ve just got a very healthy appetite.’

Peter’s face went from pink to white as the blood drained from it in embarrassment when he realized what he’d done. ‘I’m sorry, Reenie. I didn’t mean to—’

Reenie waved her hand to indicate it was forgiven and forgotten so long as he realized what he’d done. ‘How’s your head?’

‘Awful. I only meant to have one, but they wanted me to try a bit of all of them.’

‘That’s the Ale Tasters’ do, all right. You get down to the canteen and get a good rasher of bacon down you.’

‘I don’t think I could ever eat again.’

‘Nonsense, you’re just not used to the drink, that’s all. Trust me and go and ask if they’ve got any bacon left and a bit of fried bread; it’ll see you right.’

Peter raised bleary eyes to Reenie and looked even greener around the gills. ‘I’ve got to go onto the line in ten minutes. I don’t think my head can take the noise.’

‘Which line, and what do you need to do? If it’s observing and taking notes, you could always wait until this afternoon?’

‘No, I’m meant to be teaching this week’s new starters. I’ve got a dummy line set up and Women’s Employment are bringing me twenty giggly fourteen-year-olds to learn how to deliver cellophane rolls to a wrapper.’

Reenie felt even more sorry for her young man. He was such an amiable, well-spoken, responsible gentleman; turning up to work with a hangover was as unlike him as she could imagine. ‘You’re in luck because I happen to know that it’s Diana Moore what’s bringing over the minnows to be trained, and my morning is all report writing from notes I’ve already done, so why don’t you take my reports and I’ll take your class and square it with Diana? She won’t be fussed who teaches the young ones, so long as they’re taught right. In fact, I think she prefers it when I teach them because she knows they don’t listen to you.’

‘Don’t they listen to me?’

‘No, they’re too busy making eyes at you.’

Peter’s colour rose again with embarrassment. ‘You don’t think Major Fergusson knows, do you? I wouldn’t want anyone to think I encouraged it!’

‘Everyone knows you don’t encourage it, and Major Fergusson thinks it’s very funny. I shouldn’t worry; as long as Major Fergusson is head of department we’ll both be reyt. I should think he’s got a couple of years until retirement.’ But there Reenie was wrong.

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