Chapter 11: Nelly Shuttleworth

Ashford, morning: Thursday, September 18th

Nelly Shuttleworth yawned and dragged the bed-covers further over her shoulders, reluctant to wake, unwilling to let go of the image that was so often in her dreams these days. The memory of when she was Nelly Bentley. Hair thick, Greta Garbo-style. Nothing like the thin wire wool that covered her scalp these days. Marlene Dietrich eyes. Slender figure, not the mounds of flesh she sometimes didn’t recognise as hers. Young. So young. Making the most of life after that first World War.

‘Throwing herself at all and sundry,’ her mother had called it. And what a time she’d had. Nelly chuckled, which turned into a prolonged phlegmy cough. She pushed herself up off the pillow and thumped her chest. Eventually lying down again she smirked, not chancing another laugh.

Nobody could take that away from her. Prettiest girl on the street, she was known as, before that old bugger forced himself on her and got her pregnant. Then her mother couldn’t wait to get her out of the house and married. Nelly refused to give her husband the dignity of his name, even in her thoughts; she hadn’t spoken it since the day he’d walked out on her and their sons. Her sons. One dead and one gone God knows where for almost twenty years. One thing for sure, she didn’t want to know where.

She yawned, pushing her face into the pillow. Downstairs the letterbox clanged as the postman pushed at it. Bet it’s only more bloody bills, she thought, scratching the vast expanse of her stomach. It was no use; she couldn’t chase after sleep all day. And the sun was so bright through the thin curtains they might as well not be there. She turned onto her back and opened one eye. There was a long strand of a silver cobweb swaying from the light shade to the far corner of the room that hadn’t been there yesterday. Or had it? She pursed her lips. So what? Nobody came into her bedroom, only her. Except for young Linda, of course. But she didn’t judge her old gran. It gave Nelly a lovely warm feeling when she thought of Linda. Best thing that had happened in her life, finding out all those years ago, that she had a granddaughter. The one and only thing her elder son had produced in his life that was worth anything.

Nelly pulled the covers under her chin and determinedly closed her eyes. She’d just have five more minutes.