A Daughter’s Disgrace
A heartrending story of family shame from Sunday Times bestseller, Kitty Neale. A gritty London tale, perfect for fans of Katie Flynn, Nadine Dorries and Maureen Lee.1950s Battersea is no place for a shamed woman…FracturedAlison is the ugly duckling of her family and has always been treated with disdain by her mother. After years of being bullied, she is drawn to the one man who shows her affection. But when he brutally rapes her, leaving her pregnant, she is cast out.ForgottenShunned by her family, Alison must start to make her own way and plan a life for herself and her unborn child – and for the first time she is master of her own destiny.Forgiven?But when the baby arrives, Alison feels no love for her new son. Terrified that history will repeat itself, can she find a way to love her child? And will she ever find the forgiveness she craves from her family?
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KITTY NEALE
A Daughter’s Disgrace
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2015
This ebook edition 2015
Copyright © Kitty Neale 2015
Cover design © Debbie Clement 2015
Kitty Neale 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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007587933
Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780007587926
Version: 2017-10-11
Table of Contents
‘Mum, I’ve got something to tell you. Neville has asked me to marry him.’ Hazel stood in the doorway, ready for an argument.
Cora Butler wasn’t surprised at the news. Her middle daughter had been courting Neville Parrot for a year, but as she didn’t think he’d make much of a husband, she said, ‘I hope you didn’t say yes. You’ll never be rich if you marry him.’
‘Money isn’t everything.’
‘It is when you’ve hardly got two pennies to rub together,’ Cora snapped. She knew what it was to struggle and wanted better for her daughter. After losing her husband during the war Cora had been left to raise three girls on her own. It had been so hard. She’d had to do anything to earn a few bob to feed them, and along with cleaning she’d taken in washing and ironing. Her back was permanently damaged from bending over the bath for hours on end, rubbing at the soaking laundry, and her knuckles were scarred from using a scrubbing board. Even though the war had ended twelve years ago she still felt the effects of it every day.
‘I don’t care about money,’ Hazel protested. ‘I love Neville and I’m going to marry him.’
Cora’s lips tightened and, gathering her thoughts, she walked across her tiny front room to the window. The room was as immaculate as she could get it, seeing as there were three of them living there, but nothing in it was new or close to it. She flicked back the lace curtain to gaze out onto another cold, miserable January day in Ennis Street. All the houses were the same, basically two-up, two-down, narrow, terraced, flat-fronted, and bleak. As bleak as her mood. She had hoped that her daughter would find a way out of this ugly working-class area, but Neville offered little chance of that. The streets were so close together she could hardly see the sky when she looked up. The houses opposite were a bit bigger because of the way the road curved but they were still nothing to shout about.
With a sigh Cora dropped the curtain and turned to her daughter again. Of her three girls, Hazel was the prettiest, with auburn hair that fell in natural curls to her shoulders. Her femininity was marred only by her big-boned build, making her look formidable, but with green eyes, a pert nose and full lips, she nevertheless turned men’s heads. Hazel could have taken her pick, but instead she’d fallen for Neville Parrot. His family lived in one of the houses opposite them, and they had moved in eighteen months ago when his father got a job on the railway. They seemed nice enough and Neville was a good-looking lad, but he probably earned a pittance in the local paint factory. ‘You’ve fallen for his looks, but looks ain’t everything. As I said, you’ll never be rich if you marry him.’
‘We’ll both be working, so we’ll be fine. I’m going to carry on at the café.’
‘Yeah, until kids come along,’ Cora commented. ‘You’ll feel the pinch then.’
