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'Lily Thorpe, if you don't come in this minute I'll batter your face with a wet kipper.  See if I don't!'
        The recipient of this dire warning made no move to respond, for she was entirely engrossed in holding her breath so as not to interrupt what must be the longest kiss on record.
        'That was your mam,' the boy said at last when nature forced them up for air.
        Lily, dizzy from the kiss, swept aside her shining brown hair and laid her cheek upon Dick's chest with a sigh of blissful contentment.  For a long moment she lay listening to the rapid beat of his heart then lifted her face a fraction to give him the full benefit of her bewitching hazel eyes, glowing almost gold with desire, her tiptilted nose, and the bluntness of a deceptively demure chin which, he claimed, only proved how very stubborn she was.  Lily meant to let him see that she would not be averse to the kiss being repeated.
        Not, she admitted wryly, that the ash-pit roof from which strings of washing flapped, was the most romantic place in the world to experiment with these delightful new sensations.  Situated at the bottom of a yard shared by half a dozen other houses besides her own, shovel-loads of ash from the fire were stored in the pit and used to sweeten the tippler privy next door.  But from its roof Lily could see beyond the huddle of narrow streets and overcrowded fishermen's cottages that made up The Cobbles, as far as the dark green fringe of woodland that cloaked the lower reaches of the Lakeland hills, the bare tops of the more  distant peaks, and, if she stood on tiptoe, the glimmer of silver-bright water that was the lake.
        Lily hated The Cobbles and all it stood for.  The sweet-sour stink of poverty gave a sense of hopelessness to the tiny overcrowded cottages.  Walls ran with damp both inside and out.  The alleys were infested with the kind of livestock nobody welcomed, and her mother fought a thankless daily battle against cockroaches.  Each night the drunks would noisily roll home and by morning the stink of urine and vomit would be stronger than ever.  Lily's single all-pervading desire was to leave The Cobbles for good.

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