Anyone Who Had a Heart Read Online Free PDF

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    ‘The Brooks’ are going places,’ he exclaimed with pride and patted his daughter’s knee. ‘You’re a clever girl, our Marcie. I always knew you were. OK, you made a little mistake – not that it was your fault,’ he added before she had chance to remind him that Johnnie had died. His motorcycle had been crushed by an oncoming lorry. They would have married. She knew they would have married. ‘And we got Joanna out of it. Wouldn’t wish her away for the world,’ he said proudly.
    ‘Looks as though you’re going places too, Dad. I didn’t know you could drive.’
    He made a huffing sound. ‘There’s a lot of things you don’t know your father can do, our Marcie. Driving’s only one of them. Not that it’s that difficult mind you. It’s like riding a bicycle, once done never forgotten.’
    ‘Don’t you have to have a licence?’
    ‘Not if you don’t want to or if you were driving before the war when licences weren’t needed.’
    Marcie wasn’t sure what he was saying here and was wise enough not to push the matter. She preferred riding along in ignorance rather than worrying about being stopped by the law. The police and her father were past bedmates. So was prison.
    She tried studying her father’s face to glean some semblance of the truth, but without success. He was whistling and smiling as though he hadn’t a care in the world.
    ‘So what do you think of the car,’ he asked suddenly.
    ‘It’s lovely. Where did you get it?’
    ‘A mate of mine in London lent it me. I did a few jobs for him when I was up there last. “Tony,” he said. “You’re a right diamond and that’s a fact. You’ve done me proud. Here’s your moolah. Now get off down and see that family of yours. Family is dead important,” he said to me. More important even than dosh, except that you get to spend it on your family.’
    Marcie laughed. It wasn’t what her father was saying that made her laugh, but the way he was saying it. He’d picked up a lot of cockney idioms during his sojourn ‘working’ in London.
    Her father laughed too. ‘It’s great. Bloody great!’ he exclaimed with overblown exuberance.
    The boutique was named ‘Angie’s’. The window display consisted of black and white dresses, black and white shoes, black and white sweaters, hats, feather boas and tights.
    Her father promised to wait for her outside. ‘Now go on,’ he muttered, shooing her towards the shop door.
    Heaving the dresses over her arm, she headed in that direction and pushed open the door.
    An old-fashioned brass bell jangled above her head. Multicoloured spotlights picked out the clothes hanging on the rails and pinned to the walls. A huge poster of the Rolling Stones, a fairly new group with an R and B beat and an impertinent attitude dominated one wall.
    ‘Can I help you?’ The speaker was a tall, slim girl with long black hair and a square-cut fringe hanging low over sharp blue eyes. Marcie was reminded of Cathy McGowan on the TV show
Ready Steady Go!
Her clothes were spot on too. She was wearing a pale-mauve dress with a mandarin collar and a zip up the front. Her tights were white and her shoes patent burgundy that changed colour dependent on which spotlight she was standing under.
    Marcie went straight into her pitch. ‘I’m Marcie Brooks and I believe the shop owner, Angela Babbington, expressed interest in my dresses.’
    ‘I’m Angela. How do you do.’
    They shook hands, Marcie almost dropping her samples when she did so.
    ‘I’ve brought three along to show you.’
    The welcoming smile tightened a little. ‘Look, I know I did say I would take a look, but you have to understand –’
    ‘You can have them on sale or return,’ blurted Marcie. She’d heard the term somewhere and it did sound self-explanatory. If the dresses got sold, she got paid. If they didn’t sell then she would not.
    Angela Babbington seemed to pause for breath, her pink lips slightly parted. ‘Well …’
    Marcie jumped in