The Bad Penny [antikvár]

Chapter One Liverpool 1932 Patty Peel trudged across the snow-covered courtyard to where her bicycle was kept in the ramshackle shed against the jigger wall. It was eleven o'clock and a wild January night, and as she wheeled her bicycle through the narrow opening into the jigger she reflected that the only thing you could be sure about with babies was that they would arrive at the moment most inconvenient to mid wives. What was more, this birth should rightly have been attended by Nurse Stoddard, since it was in her area of the city. But Stoddard was in bed with influenza, so all her cases had been passed on to Patty. The family she was about to visit were the Mullins, who lived in Stanton's Court off Cuerden Street. Patty had been woken a bare ten minutes earlier by a ragged boy, blue with cold and wearing the thinnest, shabbiest jacket she had ever seen, totally unsuitable for such weather. 'Me mam's havin' the baby,' he panted, holding on to the doorjamb as though it were the only thing keeping him on his feet. 'Can you come. Nurse? And can you hurry, 'cos me dad's in a wicked temper and me mam's awful poorly.' Patty was not particularly fond of children, but her heart went out to the Mullins boy. He wore cracked and gaping boots through which his bare, bluish-grey skin could be seen and he looked as though he had not had a square meal for a month. Yet he had clearly