The Girl from the Corner Shop - blog tour

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The Girl From The Corner Shop – Alrene Hughes

About The Book

WW2 Manchester: Newlyweds Helen and Jim Harrison have big plans – to leave the family shop where Helen works and set up home together. But when Jim is tragically killed in an air raid, Helen is heartbroken, her life in ruins.

Battling grief and despair, Helen resolves to escape her domineering mother and rebuild her shattered world. Wartime Manchester is a dangerous place, beseiged by crime and poverty. So when Helen joins the Women's Auxiliary Police Corps, working with evacuees, the destitute and the vulnerable, she finds a renewed sense of purpose. She's come a long way from her place behind the counter in the corner shop.

But there's still something missing in her heart. Is Helen able to accept love and happiness and find the courage to change her life?

About The Author

Alrene Hughes grew up in Belfast and has lived in Manchester for most of her adult life. She worked for British Telecom and the BBC before training as an English teacher. After teaching for twenty years, she retired and now writes full-time.

Follow Alrene:  

Facebook: @alrenehugheswriter

Twitter: @alrenehughes

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EXTRACT

Helen pulled back the curtains and looked out over the roofs and chimney pots etched against a rare cloudless sky over Manchester. Jim would be two hours into his shift at the fire station by now and, because there had been no air raids overnight, there was a good chance he would be home in time for his tea and they would have all of Sunday evening together. There was so much to talk about. On New Year’s Day they would be moving out of the corner shop and away from her mother into a home of their own. Then there was the five pounds Jim had won in the Christmas raffle at the working men’s club, enough to buy some second-hand furniture. But best of all, she wanted to carry on the conversation they had started last night about having a baby.

As she did every Sunday, she made her mother’s breakfast and took it up to her, then she set about cleaning the house and shop. And as she worked, she thought about her mother insisting that she would still have to work in the shop when she moved. She was desperate for a clean break, but Jim had told her that they needed to get a bit of money behind them and why didn’t she ask for an increase in her wages for agreeing to stay on? He didn’t understand that she had been under her mother’s thumb all her life and she would put up with any hardship to be free of her.

She had just finished donkey-stoning the step at the front of the shop when Mrs Lowe appeared at her side, clearly agitated. ‘Helen, can you help me out? I’ve nothin’ for the kids to eat today. Could you let me have a loaf and a pint of milk on tick? Albert only got three days’ work this week and I’ve tried to eke it out…’

‘Come inside, I’ll see what I can do.’ Helen put the loaf and milk on the counter then added a couple of eggs and a tin of soup. ‘That’ll see you through.’

‘You’re a life saver. I’ll pay you back next Sunday – when you’re on your own.’

‘That’ll be fine, Mrs Lowe.’

The woman gathered up her groceries and at the door she stopped. ‘When you move out, you’ll still be working in the shop, won’t you?’

‘I will for the time being.’

‘God help us if you go. I know she’s your mother, an’ all, but Elsie Slater wouldn’t give you the dirt under her fingernails, let alone tick to feed hungry kids.’

When she had gone, Helen recalled her mother’s words. ‘Cash on the nail. You get nowt for nowt.’ She had grown up with that refrain and seen poverty every day in the shop. It was the women she felt sorry for, trying to keep body and soul together, but beyond giving them a few groceries on tick, there was nothing she could do for them.

It was afternoon before her mother made an appearance. Helen was sitting by the fire working on Jim’s Christmas present, a cricket sweater. She had been knitting it since the summer and had only to finish the V neck but, with the double stripe and getting the tension right so it didn’t pucker, she had already undone it twice.

‘Have you not finished that yet?’ asked her mother. ‘You’ll be lucky if he has it by the start of the season the way you’re going. You’d have been better saving up and buying him one.’

‘I couldn’t afford it, they’re far too dear.’