A Mother's Trust Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Dilly Court

  Title Page

  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

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Phoebe Giamatti lives with her boisterous Italian family in the heart of London’s East End. Phoebe’s father was killed in gang warfare and she and her family share a deep hatred for the Paxman brothers – whose lawless ways strike terror into the whole community.

  Despite her English mother’s feckless ways, Phoebe is fiercely protective of Annie. Then just as the family are about to go to Italy for the winter, Phoebe discovers Annie is in trouble – and the Paxmans are involved. Phoebe is determined not to betray her mother’s trust and, giving up her own chance of happiness, she stays behind to care for her. But when Phoebe and Annie are forced to leave London and Annie falls dangerously ill, Phoebe has little choice but to turn to the man she holds responsible for all her family’s troubles…

  About the Author

  Dilly Court grew up in North-east London and began her career in television, writing scripts for commercials. She is married with two grown-up children and four grandchildren, and now lives in Dorset on the beautiful Jurassic Coast with her husband and a large, yellow Labrador called Archie. She is the author of fourteen novels and also writes under the name of Lily Baxter.

  www.dillycourt.com

  Also by Dilly Court

  Mermaids Singing

  The Dollmaker’s Daughters

  Tilly True

  The Best of Sisters

  The Cockney Sparrow

  A Mother’s Courage

  The Constant Heart

  A Mother’s Promise

  The Cockney Angel

  A Mother’s Wish

  The Ragged Heiress

  A Mother’s Secret

  Cinderella Sister

  For Sara and Grace

  Chapter One

  Saffron Hill, Clerkenwell, 1877

  THE DARKNESS SURROUNDING the table was heavy with the spirits of the departed, or so it seemed to Phoebe, who was hiding in a cupboard watching the proceedings through a knothole in the door panel.

  A single candle created a pool of light in the centre of the green chenille tablecloth on which rested the hands of the nervous participants in the séance, their fingers touching and their heartbeats palpable in the eerie silence.

  ‘Is there anyone there?’ Annie Giamatti’s voice rang out loud and clear. ‘Are there any spirit people who would like to speak to me?’

  Phoebe waited for her mother’s cue which meant she must tug the piece of string dangling in front of her face. It was attached to a length of gauze that had been smeared with fish scales to make it appear phosphorescent and concealed in a gaudily painted vase on the sideboard. It was hot and stuffy in the cupboard and she had a sudden urge to sneeze. She wrinkled her nose, holding her breath until the moment passed.

  A low throaty moan from Annie was the pre-arranged signal and Phoebe pulled the cord with the expertise of long practice. If she tugged too hard the material would fly up to the ceiling and might get caught on one of the cup hooks that held it in position. If she did not exert enough pressure it would hang limply like a chemise on a washing line and the game would be up.

  ‘I see a spirit manifesting itself,’ Annie droned in a monotone. ‘Come closer, friend, and speak to us.’

  A muffled scream followed by excited gasps and whispers passing between the three women at the table indicated that the apparition had created the desired effect.

  ‘Is that you, Henry?’

  Phoebe recognised the voice of Mrs Fowler, widow of the late Henry Fowler, cobbler and notorious skinflint. She sounded frightened but filled with hope.

  ‘It’s me, ducks.’ Annie’s tones deepened into her interpretation of a male voice.

  ‘Are you happy where you are now, Henry?’

  ‘Very happy, Ethel.’

  ‘Are you in heaven or the other place, Henry?’

  ‘I’m all right, Ethel, but I have to leave you now …’ Annie’s voice trailed off as if the tortured spirit of poor Henry was being dragged back to limbo.

  ‘Don’t go yet, ducks,’ Ethel pleaded. ‘Tell me where you kept your cash. I got to pay the bills and I’m down to me last farthing.’

  Phoebe held her breath, hoping that her mother remembered Henry Fowler’s boast that he kept his money hidden in a place where Ethel would never think to look. It had taken several pints of brown ale to loosen his tongue in the public bar of the Three Bells, but Annie had come home laughing fit to bust, and a little swipey herself. ‘The crafty old codger hid his gold sovs in his peg leg, Phoebe. He hollowed out the wood and dropped them in one by one. Would you credit it?’

  Annie exhaled three shuddering breaths. ‘I’m fading fast.’

  ‘Tell her, you mean old goat.’ This time the voice belonged to Ethel’s sister, Minnie Sykes, a large woman with fists like hams who, widowed at an early age, had taken on the profession of rat catcher. It was fabled from Saffron Hill to Bleeding Heart Yard that she killed the vermin by biting off their heads. Phoebe was convinced that it was no lie. She gave the string a gentle tug, hoping to distract Minnie’s attention for long enough to allow her mother to finish the séance before things turned ugly.

  ‘Tell me, Henry, please. You got no use for money where you are. For the love of God think of your dear ones left to struggle on alone.’ Ethel ended on a sob, which might have been more convincing if Phoebe did not have first hand knowledge of the dear ones left to struggle on their own. Henry had fathered three sons, all of them raw-boned and burly, and a daughter, Dolly who was a bit simple. The brothers worked at the metropolitan railway terminus, doing jobs that required brawn and no brains. It was said that by the time they reached the door of the family hovel in Bleeding Heart Yard on a Friday night they had already squandered their weekly wages on strong drink and loose women. Phoebe peered anxiously through the knothole.

  ‘Please, Henry,’ Ethel cried, wringing her hands. ‘For the sake of our boys tell me.’

  ‘Me wooden leg,’ Annie murmured. ‘You’ll find it there. Don’t let them layabouts have it, though, and pay Annie Giamatti double what she asks.’

  Ethel leapt to her feet. ‘Gawd save us. I told Dolly to use it for kindling. We got to get home double quick, Minnie.’

  ‘Trust the old miser to do something bloody silly like that.’ Minnie rose from her seat. She glanced down at the small woman cowering on a stool beside her. ‘Get up, you silly bitch. The dead can’t hurt you.’

  ‘I seen his ghost. It’ll come to us in the night and suck the life blood from us.’

  Minnie caught her a resounding clout around the ear. ‘Shut up, Biddy. Get out of that door and run to Bleeding Heart Yard as fast as your skinny little legs will carry you. Stop that stupid girl from lighting the fire with Henry’s wooden leg or it’ll be the worse for all of us an
d you in particular.’

  Biddy let out a low wail and made for the door.

  Phoebe grasped the latch on the cupboard door with fingers that shook a little. She was always nervous when things did not go entirely to plan. How Ma kept herself calm under such circumstances she did not know, but from her vantage point she saw her mother snap upright, coming out of her trance with amazing speed. She leapt to her feet and moved swiftly to bar their exit. ‘Not so fast, Mrs Fowler. There’s a matter of my fee. A shilling, if you please. Although I do believe that the late departed Mr Fowler said you ought to pay me double for revealing his secret.’

  Ethel attempted to shove her out of the way but Annie was used to such tricks and she stood her ground. ‘My fee, if you please, or even if you don’t. You ain’t leaving here until you cough up, lady.’

  Minnie advanced on her like a warship with all guns primed and ready. ‘You’ll get out of the way, Annie Giamatti, if you know what’s good for you.’

  Ethel put her hand in her pocket and took out some coins which she thrust at Annie. ‘Here’s tuppence. I got no more until I find Henry’s money.’

  Minnie grasped Annie by her throat and for a moment Phoebe thought that her mother’s thin neck might snap like a twig. She was about to rush out from her hiding place and go to her assistance when the door burst open. Fabio Giamatti strode into the parlour, filling the small room with his presence. ‘What’s up, Annie? Are these women giving you trouble?’

  ‘It’s all right, Father-in-law. Mrs Fowler was just about to cough up the reddy.’

  Phoebe’s grandfather stood with his arms akimbo. He might be all of sixty-five but he was muscular and fit from years of working in the ice cream trade, lifting the blocks of ice that he purchased from the depot to say nothing of handling heavy milk churns. His hair had once been black as jet, although Phoebe could only vaguely remember him in those days, but now it was streaked with silver as if an artist had tinted it with a paintbrush. As light flooded the room from the passageway, Phoebe could see his heavy features contorted in a fierce scowl. He did not have to say anything more. Minnie Sykes was no match for Fabio Giamatti and Ethel was patently terrified. She tipped the contents of her purse into Annie’s outstretched hand, and swearing beneath her breath she scuttled from the room, closely followed by Minnie who was dragging Biddy by the scruff of her neck. ‘Get a move on, Ethel,’ she roared. ‘If that brainless fool’s burned the thing I’ll throw her on the fire after it.’

  Phoebe opened the door and stepped out of the cupboard, wiping the perspiration from her forehead on the back of her hand. ‘Did she pay up in full, Ma?’

  Annie studied the coins, frowning. ‘A penny short, but for a moment I thought I was a goner. That Minnie is a fierce woman.’

  Fabio went to pull back the curtains and light filtered through the grimy windowpanes to reveal a room crowded with large, ornately carved mahogany furniture upholstered in red plush. The mantelshelf was crowded with bric-a-brac, as were the shelves in the recesses on either side of the chimney breast. The walls were hung with poorly executed watercolours of scenes of the Italian lakes, brought back from trips to the mother country by the Giamattis, who purchased them in their native Stresa on the shores of Lake Maggiore. A distant relative fancied himself as an artist and sold his work to tourists and members of his family who were disposed to encourage him in his chosen career, although Phoebe fancied that he must be quite poor if that was his only source of income.

  ‘When are you going to stop this nonsense, Annie? Why you no find something more suited to the widow of my sainted eldest son?’ Fabio shook his head, sending a pitying glance in Phoebe’s direction. ‘The poor bambina. What sort of life is it for her? Eh? What man will want to marry the daughter of a woman who speaks to the dead?’

  Annie shrugged her shoulders as she pocketed the money. ‘Phoebe isn’t a child. She’ll be twenty next birthday, and I don’t have to listen to this sort of talk. I get enough of it from Mamma Giamatti. If your sainted Paulo had not got himself into a fight with one of the high mob he might be here today to look after his wife and daughter.’ With a toss of her flaxen curls, Annie stalked out of the room. Her high-heeled boots made tip-tapping sounds on the tiled floor of the passage leading to the front door. Phoebe heard it slam behind her mother as she stormed out of the house.

  ‘Are you all right, cara?’ Fabio asked, frowning. ‘You look pale.’

  ‘I’m fine, Nonno.’ Phoebe sat down on the chair recently vacated by Ethel Sykes. Only now she realised that her knees were trembling. Her grandfather was right. Minnie Fowler was not the sort of woman to cross, and if he had not arrived on the scene at that moment matters might have got completely out of hand. Ma was playing a dangerous game when she took on the denizens of the back alleys and courts in Clerkenwell, not to mention the members of the street gangs with whom she consorted in the pubs. Ma was a good woman at heart, but she had a weakness for strong drink. Right now she would be heading for the Three Bells or some other public house with the money from the séance in her purse. It would not remain there long. Annie would roll home the worse for liquor and fall into a drunken stupor in the room they shared at the top of the house, and Phoebe would be left to do her mother’s chores as well as her own. Grandmother Giamatti was a hard taskmistress. She ruled the house in Saffron Hill with a rod of iron. Her two remaining sons, Lorenzo and Julio, were big muscular men who, like their father before them, earned their living making and selling ice cream on the streets of London, but they were patently in awe of their indomitable mother.

  Fabio pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. ‘You should not allow your mamma to ruin your life, Phoebe. I keep her under my roof for the sake of my dead son and for your sake too, but not for hers. It is a bad thing that she does. She no more speaks to the dead than I am the king of England.’ He patted Phoebe’s hands as they lay clasped on her lap. ‘You’re a good girl. Find yourself a worthy man. Get married and have lots of bambini. That is a woman’s real destiny, my flower.’

  Phoebe smiled and squeezed his fingers. ‘Perhaps, Nonno. But not yet.’

  ‘Gino would make a good husband, and he is very fond of you.’

  ‘And I like him, but not enough to spend the rest of my life with him.’ Rising to her feet, she smoothed the worried lines from his forehead with the tip of her forefinger and dropped a kiss on the top of his silver-streaked hair. He smelt of cream and melted sugar, lemon zest and strawberries; all the good things that went into Giamatti’s ice cream and water ices. Not for him were the cheap tricks used by some of their neighbours, who used cochineal to colour water and called it raspberry ice, or milk diluted with water and even worse water coloured with chalk to manufacture the product they sold as penny licks. Fresh unadulterated milk, eggs and sugar were the ingredients of Giamatti’s ice cream. Crushed raspberries or strawberries bought in Covent Garden market with the dew still on them were used to make the refreshing water ices for which people queued on days when the heat in the city would fell an ox.

  Phoebe was proud to be a part of a family with a long tradition of honest trading, but she could not abandon her emotionally fragile mother to the fate that must befall a woman with a weakness for strong drink. She gave her grandfather an affectionate hug. She loved every line and wrinkle, and the craggy contour of his face that had the strength of a lion and the gentleness of a lamb. She would do nothing to hurt him, but she must make her own way in the world and that did not include marrying Gino Argento or any of the young Italian men she knew who were involved in the ice cream trade in Saffron Hill. ‘I must go and find Ma before she spends the whole shilling on gin or she’ll be dead drunk by nightfall.’

  He patted her hand. ‘Go, then. But think about what I said, cara. It will soon be autumn and Mamma and I will be heading south to Italy for the winter months with Lorenzo and Julio. I want you to come with us, little one. Leave Annie to look after herself, I beg of you.’

  ‘I’ll think about it, Nonno.’ P
hoebe hurried from the room before he had a chance to press her further on the subject. It came up every year at the end of the summer season, when those families in the community who had made a handsome profit from their labours and saved every penny of it set off for their homeland to spend the winter. Each year since she was considered old enough to have an opinion of her own, Phoebe had chosen to remain in London with her mother. Sometimes it was tempting to escape from the mud and filth of the city and head for the sweet clean air of the Italian mountains and lakes, but to leave her mother to cope alone would be like abandoning a small child to her fate. In the close-knit Italian community, blonde, blue-eyed Annie was still a foreigner despite having married into an old-established family, and Saffron Hill, belying its colourful rural-sounding name, was in reality a mean street lined with a higgledy-piggledy mixture of overcrowded tenements, pubs and small dirty shops selling everything from milk to articles lifted from the pockets of the unwary by street urchins. Phoebe could speak the language of her father’s family like a native, but Annie still stumbled over the words and pronunciation, especially when her brain was addled with jigger gin.

  It was to the Three Bells that Phoebe hurried, making her way through the piles of rotting vegetables, horse dung and drifts of straw that covered the cobblestones. She was used to the stench of overflowing sewers and the putrid flotsam washed up on the banks of the Thames at high tide, but today it was hot and clouds of bluebottles feasted on the detritus. She held a handkerchief soaked in some of her grandmother’s lavender cologne to her nose as she stepped over a dead rat in the gutter. Overhead a couple of carrion crows circled hopefully, waiting their chance to alight in the busy street and tear at the rotting flesh.

  ‘Phoebe, wait for me.’

  Recognising Gino’s voice, Phoebe stopped, turning her head to look at him in surprise. ‘Gino. What are you doing here? I thought you would be out selling hokey-pokey.’

  He grinned, displaying a row of even white teeth. ‘Sold out, cara. It’s a hot day and I got nothing left to sell, so I come looking for my bella Phoebe.’