Desperate Measures. Kitty Neale

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       Chapter One

       Battersea, South London, 1969

      Though it was early on Saturday morning there were already signs that it was going to be a lovely day and the sunshine drew Betty out of her poky flat to the park on the opposite side of the road.

      She walked for a while, but it was unusually warm for June and, feeling hot, Betty sat on a bench. The park began to fill and she frowned as two young women walked towards her, still unable to get used to the way youngsters dressed nowadays. They were both in A-line mini-dresses, one blonde, one dark, their hair cut short in the geometrical shapes made popular by the hairdresser Vidal Sassoon. Make-up was skilfully applied – heavy, but at least they weren’t wearing the thick, black, false eyelashes that were at last going out of fashion.

      Betty sighed. She was fifty-one now, but as a young woman a bit of powder and lipstick was all she’d been allowed to wear, and her clothes had been respectable, in the same style as her mother’s. And not only that – what about underwear? These young girls didn’t wear vests or corsets and, worse, sometimes they went without a brassiere. She shook her head. Anne, her twenty-nine-year-old daughter, accused her of being old-fashioned, saying that things were different now. Women were no longer shackled to men, Anne insisted. They had freedom, equality, the means to make their own way in the world.

      The two young women walked past without sparing her so much as a glance, and Betty blinked away tears as a surge of loneliness swamped her. She watched a small, brown dog as it circled a tree, sniffing the trunk until, finally satisfied, it lifted its leg.

      ‘Treacle, come here,’ a woman’s voice called.

      Betty saw the dog’s ears twitch, but intent on exploring fresh pastures the command was ignored. It trotted towards the bench she was sitting on, tail up, and obviously liking what it saw, reared up to place its paws on Betty’s lap.

      ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Get down, Treacle.’

      Whilst stroking the dog’s head, Betty looked up at his owner. She’d seen the elegant, middle-aged woman before, had noticed her dark brown hair, styled into a French pleat that emphasised her high cheekbones. ‘It’s all right, I like dogs,’ she assured her.

      ‘Not everyone feels the same and he’s a holy terror. I shouldn’t have let him off the lead, but I’m trying to get him to obey me,’ she chuckled. ‘As you can see, it isn’t working.’

      ‘He looks so sweet.’

      ‘Don’t let that fool you,’ the woman said as she sat down. Treacle immediately jumped onto her lap and she laughed as his tongue slobbered her face. ‘Oh, what am I saying? He’s a darling really but, as I said, he won’t obey my commands.’

      ‘What СКАЧАТЬ