Unforgettable Read Free Page B

fish?’
    â€˜None,’ Gracie said, pulling her wayward auburn curls more neatly around her cheeks with a lick of spit. ‘Only that he probably meets all the nobs in his job, and I was just a face in the crowd.’
    She felt a swift surge of misery at the thought. She really liked him. He could talk nicely, and she knew she had tightened up her sloppy talk when they were dancing. She ignored the memory of her mum saying with a sniff that putting on airs never got anybody anywhere, our Gracie, and it’ll only end in tears …
    â€˜You should think a bit more of yourself,’ Dolly went on lecturing. ‘I told you he had his eye on you. He never needs to know what your dad does, does he? Tell him you’re a duchess, out slumming for the evening,’ she invented wildly.
    Gracie laughed again. ‘I’m sure he’d believe that! Especially if he’d seen me hauling poor Billy around on the dance-door.’
    â€˜I suppose a coalman’s not good enough for you now,’ Dolly said.
    â€˜Well, not Billy! Nor Jim, if you want to know what I think.’
    â€˜I don’t. Anyway, he’s good enough for me, and you’re a snob!’
    She flounced out of the ladies’ cloakroom, and Gracie felt her cheeks flame. How could she be called a snob when she worked like stink from morning till night in that miserable sweat shop for a pittance? The only thing that kept her there, apart from the excitement of living and working in London and being independent, was that the girls were allowed to take scraps of material home, and she was skilled at making smart blouses from the offcuts. She didn’t need to look poor, just because she was a docker’s daughter.
    She lifted her chin high and marched out of the ladies’ cloakroom to make her peace with Dolly. If she fancied Jim and didn’t mind being pawed by those unsavoury fingernails, it was none of her business.
    The band was playing again now, and her searching eyes went straight to Charlie. He really was lovely-looking, and any girl would be proud to have him as her young man. For a moment, Gracie let herself dream. And then a classy-looking girl with blonde hair, wearing a black evening dress and long, satin blackgloves went on to the stage and began to sing, and Gracie’s heart jolted.
    â€˜Looks like you’ve got a rival, Gracie,’ Dolly said, close beside her.
    Gracie tried not to feel disappointed or stupidly betrayed, when she had no business to be, just because he had danced one dance with her. Just because he had picked her out of the couple of hundred people here, and made a point of coming up to the table where she sat, and asked her in that so-polite way if she would care to dance with him. He probably did that on every occasion. He probably played at ever so many dances, every night of the week except Sunday, and she’d be a fool if she thought she was anybody special.
    â€˜Do you want another dance, Gracie?’ Billy asked her a while later.
    She gave a sigh. He was all right in a dull, undemonstrative kind of way, but he wasn’t the sort to make any girl’s blood tingle. But he looked at her so hopefully that she didn’t have the heart to refuse him.
    â€˜All right, but then I’m going outside for a breath of fresh air.’
    She had to admit that the atmosphere was becoming claustrophobic. There were too many people crammed into a hall that had seemed large and spacious at first, and nowseemed pathetically small for them all.
    The air was thick with cigarette smoke, wafting upwards to that great glittering ball of light in the ceiling, creating wreaths and patterns of a peculiar opaque beauty. The smoke made her cough, and crushed in the middle of the heaving mass of dancers she realized she was finding it hard to breathe comfortably.
    â€˜Billy, I need some air,’ she said, her throat catching.
    â€˜All right,’ he said, obliging as ever.
    They