The Milliner's Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

sermon just by looking at you. And the brown dress made Cora feel that her own red polka-dot and yellow cardigan was shouting something undignified.
    ‘By “time off”, Cora. I presume you mean “freedom”?’
    ‘Nothing wrong with that.’
    ‘No.’ Miss McCullum clicked her tongue. ‘Under firm regulation, freedom is a good thing. And this is my point. Name another respectable trade where a girl such as yourself can rise to a level where she may eventually draw a salary of two hundred pounds a year. As much as a well-paid man. Don’t settle for a life of low-paid manual labour, Cora. Seize your chances.’
    ‘I do seize them.’
    ‘The right chances. I began at the milliner’s bench too. And Miss Lofthouse is one of only a handful of female board directors in the whole of London, and she’s a trained milliner. You could be a forelady by the age of thirty. You’d not run from that?’
    Cora didn’t know. Her thirties felt centuries off. But Derby Day was here now. Her gaze strayed to the window, to a vista of scudding clouds even factory smoke couldn’t dim. Who liked rules, except the people who made them? Everyone had ideas about what she should do with her life and they all led her through the factory gate. She knew Miss McCullum was being kind and didn’t want to seem ungrateful. So why not tell the truth? ‘I fancy my chances in Paris, Miss McCullum.’
    ‘Paris? Goodness, why?’
    ‘ Love me Tonight .’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘It’s a film. And you have to see Roberta with Irene Dunne. So glamorous. The dresses, the hats . . . I’d be in Heaven in Paris.’
    ‘Films are not real life, Cora.’
    ‘Oh, they are, Miss McCullum. They’re other people’s lives, that’s all.’
    ‘You really want to live somebody else’s life?’
    ‘Every minute of every day.’
    Miss McCullum blinked. ‘I don’t think you can have thought it through, dear. Assuming you arrived in Paris, what would you do?’
    ‘I can sing a bit, and you’ve seen me dance. I could go on the stage, like my mum.’
    ‘No. You aren’t small or pretty enough.’
    Cora nearly opened her mouth to point out that that hadn’t stopped Joan Crawford, but in the end, said nothing. Being an actress was a red herring. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, only that she couldn’t bear the idea of growing old at a workbench, or marrying some bloke called Albert or Bill just to get away from her dad’s fists and the factory whistle.
    Now, as the Epsom-bound train chugged past the cramped backyards of New Cross, Forest Hill, Croydon, Cora reran that conversation and finished it: ‘The thing is, I don’t want to stay at Pettrew’s. I want to go to Paris. Or Timbuktu or China. Anywhere, Miss McCullum. But I haven’t got the courage. I’m a coward, see, like Granny Flynn says: stuck like a hobnail in a crack in the pavement.’

    Donal and Cora bought passes for the public grandstand. Standing only, but you got a decent view of the racecourse. The other side of the white rails was The Hill, where the public roamed for free, a mosaic of spectators, cars and open-top red double-deckers. Sunlight bounced mercilessly off metal and Cora was glad of her shadowy veil. ‘What race is next?’ she asked Donal. A squadron of jockeys was cantering towards the backfield.
    Donal checked his card. ‘That’ll be the two thirty going down to the start. Half an hour to the big one.’ The betting rings were heaving, tic-tac men signalling coded messages. Odds were being bellowed, starting prices chalked up, rubbed out, rewritten. Each time the price of a horse changed, a roar went up. She’d given Donal two pounds. They’d each bought their fares and grandstand passes and kept back a few shillings to feed themselves. Everything she had left was going on one horse, to win.
    ‘Here’s the plan,’ she shouted, over the roar that heralded the start of the two thirty. ‘You get us a drink and something to eat and I’ll