The Shop Girls of Chapel Street by Jenny Holmes

it fell to her to fill the gaps. ‘I’ve told Ida I’ll be forced to back out of
Mistaken Identity
, what with keeping an eye on Uncle Donald and having to earn a bit extra. So I won’t be coming to any more rehearsals.’
    â€˜Now it’s me that’s sorry,’ he admitted, leaning forward to gaze down at the mossy green rocks and tumbling water of the glen. He gave Violet the space to carry on talking if she wanted to. If she didn’t, he felt that very soon he would make a move to put an arm around her shoulder and draw her to him.
    Violet was ready to prattle on but then the peace of their surroundings registered with her and she too fell silent. She joined Eddie in gazing at the beauty below them – water drops falling on ferns, glistening spiders’ webs stretching from branch to branch of green saplings, the gurgling stream. She felt his hand reach out to clasp hers.
    â€˜I’ve waited a long time for this,’ he told her plainly and simply.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜For us to come here again, not having to talk, just sitting.’
    That was the exact moment when she fell in love, Violet realized afterwards. Eddie saying there was no need to talk, holding her hand, looking into her eyes. She wanted to tell him how she felt but it seemed too soon and instead he kissed her and held her close.
    There was a sliver of silver moon in a clear sky, a breeze that made her shiver.
    â€˜Come on, I’ll take you home,’ Eddie said, offering his hand to help her stand. ‘At this rate I’ll be getting you into trouble and that’s the last thing I want to do.’

CHAPTER EIGHT
    I should be in seventh heaven
, Violet told herself as she sat at her sewing machine in the front room of number 11, the wireless playing in the background. The long summer evening meant that she didn’t need to turn on the gas mantle and instead used the daylight to complete the close work on Sybil’s rosebud blouse. Buttonholes were complicated – you had to cut out a small rectangle of material and place it right sides together against the edge of the right front of the garment. The next stage was to machine-stitch a still smaller rectangle that you then cut into with a razor blade before turning the whole thing right side out. Then – eureka! – once you’d ironed it flat you had your finished buttonhole.
    â€˜Carefully does it,’ Aunty Winnie used to say for a job such as this. ‘One little slip-up and the whole thing is ruined.’
    As the sun sank and dust mites danced in its last rays, Violet banished a sharp regret that she wasn’t at Hadley Institute rehearsing her part for the Players. She concentrated hard until she’d completed six of the eight buttonholes then paused to look around the room at the bric-a-brac that her aunt had collected – a photograph of Violet as a baby taking pride of place on the mantelpiece, alongside a Minton vase with a pattern of red roses and a clock that no one had bothered to wind since Winnie died.
    I
am
happy
, she told herself, recalling the soaring feeling she’d had when Eddie took her hand and tenderly kissed her. Floating and drifting, pressing her lips to his, not daring to believe.
    But then again it’s not right to feel this way – not so soon and not while Uncle Donald is miserable, not to mention the difficulty over paying the rent. It’s wrong of me to fill my head with Eddie and his dark brown eyes, thick, long lashes and that way he has of looking up from under his fine straight brows, a slight smile on his lips.
    As Violet drifted off once again into her happy memory of last night’s kiss while the wireless played a lively jazz tune, she hardly noticed her uncle’s footsteps descending the stairs and it was only the opening of the door that brought her crashing back down to earth.
    â€˜What the dickens …?’ he grumbled, striding across the