The Family
The follow-up novel to the hugely successful debutTHE STREETIn this dank corner of town, you have to keep your friends close and your enemies closer – even if those enemies are your family.Jimmy Wild saunters around the streets of Campbell Road, and among the people he used to terrorise. Even though the years have passed, he’s still a tyrant. The sight of his lanky frame is enough to terrify the inhabitants of this close-knit community, who reside in this villainous corner of London.Jimmy’s beautiful step-daughter Faye and his downtrodden wife Edie eek out a meagre existence for their family, having left behind their lives in Kent. What devastating act was so bad that it drove them away from the place they called home to this hovel of a house in Campbell Road?Robert and Steven Wild thought they’d moved on. It was hard enough coming to terms with the death of their mother – and now their abusive father, presumed dead, has returned. One thing you can bet on, Jimmy Wild’s not returned to start playing happy families…How can young Faye make a life for herself and carve a future for young siblings? Who is this aged woman that Jimmy Wild has come back to see? And can a romance between Faye and Rob blossom amidst a family at War?
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KAY BRELLEND
The Family
For my sons, with love
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
November 1919
‘Shut up making that racket, fer Gawd’s sake, you’re not a kid any more.’
Robert Wild glowered at his younger brother, who was cuffing tears and snot from his face, then snapped defiant eyes to a couple hovering close by. They were frowning in censure rather than sympathy as Stephen carried on sobbing his heart out. The bigger boy stared back belligerently until the woman gripped her companion’s elbow, urging him to hurry on.
Yanking at his brother’s arm, Robert steered him into the grimy corridor of the Duke of Edinburgh pub. From beyond the closed door of the saloon bar they could hear their kith and kin, voices raised in revelry; it served only to increase Stephen’s misery.
‘They ain’t bothered she’s dead, are they?’ he hiccupped. ‘Just us, ain’t it, who’s real upset?’
‘’Course they’re bothered,’ Robert muttered. ‘Only it won’t be till they’ve sobered up that they’ll remember it.’ From his superior height he cast a look at the top of his brother’s wiry dark curls, glistening with droplets from the November night air. ‘Want a drink?’ he asked in an attempt to cheer Stephen up. ‘I mean a proper drink, not another sup of shandy.’
Stephen shook his head then let his chin drop towards his chest. He stuffed his icy fingers into his pockets to warm them.
‘I’m gettin’ one,’ Robert stated confidently. The door to the saloon bar was within arm’s reach, but he stayed where he was. Much as he would have liked to enter and buy himself an ale, he wasn’t old enough to be served; besides, he had no money. It would have been easy enough to cadge one off somebody, but right now he couldn’t stir up the cheek to do it. Hearing his name called, he raised a lethargic hand in greeting as two young women emerged from the twilight, huddled in their coats. Alice and Bethany Keiver were their cousins, and their friends.
‘Had enough in there with that rowdy lot?’ Alice asked gently, putting an arm about Stevie’s slumped shoulders. She offered no more words of sympathy; she and her sisters had given the boys enough support earlier that day. Having only recently lost people they loved to the Great War, the Keivers knew that pity, however well meant, should have its limits. But Alice’s voice throbbed with emotion when she suggested, ‘Why don’t you both come up the station with us and see Sophy off?’ She cocked her head, waiting for an answer. ‘We’re going to fetch little Luce and let her come with us. It’s way past her bedtime.’ She grinned, thinking how excited her seven-year-old sister would be about going out with the grown-ups so late at night. ‘Come on,’ Alice urged, ‘Sophy’s catching her train in about half an hour.’
Sophy, the eldest of the Keiver girls, was in service in Essex. She’d travelled down yesterday, but her employer was not prepared to give her more than a day’s leave to see her Aunt Fran laid to rest, so she had promised to return within hours of the funeral.
‘Yeah, it’ll give you both something to do. Take your minds off things. We can get some chips on the way back,’ Bethany encouraged. ‘You hungry, Stevie?’ she asked brightly.
He shook his head, snorting back a sob.
‘We’re all right,’ Robert said gruffly. ‘Goin’ off home soon in any case.’ This was a lie. Neither he nor Stevie wanted to return to the dank, depressing room in Campbell Road where they lived. Better to loiter on the corner of Fonthill Road, breathing in air so cold it glassed their throats, than return to a place where their mum’s whispering presence seemed to melt into every shadow.
‘Best be off then,’ Alice murmured and the two sisters walked on arm in arm in the direction of Campbell Road, heads down against the drifting mist.
Stephen raised his bloodshot eyes to Robert’s face. ‘What we gonna do now Mum’s gone?’ he croaked.
‘Same as we did before,’ Robert returned. ‘No, that ain’t right,’ he corrected himself with a bleak smile. ‘I’ll be doin’ the same as before, but you won’t.’ His tone grew bitterly ironic. ‘Come Monday morning, you’ll be out o’ school and knockin’ yer guts out down the market, same as me. I was thirteen when I started work, so it ain’t gonna kill you, doin’ the same. We’re going to need every penny we can get to pay the rent and get fed now Mum’s not around, so you’ve gotta do your bit.’
‘But I ain’t thirteen,’ Stevie whimpered.
‘Soon will be. You’re close enough.’
At this, Stevie’s fragile composure crumbled and he started sobbing again, head hanging between his hunched shoulders.
