When Lucy Patterson promises her dying mother that she'll leave the comfortable home they've shared with her mother's employer, Stanley Jones, to go and live with her Aunt Flo on the other side of the Mersey, she has no idea of the terrible consequences. Life with the Flanagans in the slums of Liverpool, and Lucy's new job in a factory, are totally different from the world she has known. Mocked by her cousins and the women she works alongside, and terrified by the brutality of her uncle and the unwelcome attentions of her cousin Frank, Lucy is desperately unhappy. And then one day, the worst happens and Lucy finds herself homeless, friendless and destitute. It seems there's only one person in the world willing to help her. But can she break her promise to her mother? Or should she accept that there's only one place a girl in her situation can go...
One Step Forward-A GRIPPING AND MOVING SAGA SET IN WALES Ever since she was eight years old, Katie Roberts has dreamed of getting away from the Cardiff slums where she lives. When she is only a girl, her handsome but wicked father, Lewis, is imprisoned for theft leaving Katie and her mother homeless and penniless. Life is hard for Katie - not only because of their poverty but also because of the stigma of her father's shame. When Lewis is released years later, it seems that life must improve. But to Katie's horror, it becomes worse than she has ever known it. When she and her father are left alone together, Katie seeks happiness and love elsewhere but, as she struggles to make a new life for herself, there is difficulty and danger at every turn.