Go To Him (A Beatles Fan Fiction)

Chapter One - Misery

24th August, 1958

Dear Diary,

Help! I am writing to you out of despair for my future and I am hoping that while everything seems so bleak, keeping this diary might bring me some solace. My name is Anna, and I'm fifteen years old. Up until recently, I lived in Grovedale Avenue, a modest but comfortable estate in a decent part of town. We didn't have the din and the pungent odour of the docks nearby and I could walk across the Penny Lane golf course in my leisure time. When I was younger, I would pretend that the golf course was a large country estate with green as far as the eye could see. It's always fun to play make-believe in a place as eternally grey as Liverpool, because I really don't see how else I will ever have the opportunity to see beyond the red brick jungle of suburbia.

Anyhow, my father has been let go from the construction industry. "The war's long over now, Sonny," they had said, "and there's only so many blitzed-up estates we can repair." Daddy's been in the employment line for the past two months and although he's too proud to admit it, Mummy has whispered to me that he's had to take the dole, just until a job at the docks or something comes through for him. My heart quivers at the very thought of Daddy, a middle-aged man whose physical stature has seen better days, splitting his spine in two at the docks with boys not much older than myself. His heritage has been coming back to bite him too, as the signs in front of just about every business in town read in bold letters: "No Irish need apply".

The only perk in this new streak of misery for my family is that the construction company pulled a few strings so the city council would grant us a council house in Allerton. When I say that this is a perk, I mean the fact that we have a roof over our head at all, because I would hardly call where we currently live a house. Allerton is known across the city as the slums of Liverpool; the part of town where only the bottom of the heap would even consider living. Our house, as with each exactly identical house on the estate, is claustrophobic, and it somehow always seems colder inside the house than outside. Even with three blankets, I shiver uncontrollably at night and my bedroom is not much larger than the toilet cubicle in that my bed takes up most of the floor's surface area.

I do, however, have some good news to report. I worked hard at my schoolwork last semester and before the summer holidays, the headmaster called me to his office. I was certain it was for a caning and I spent the entire journey to his office trembling and wondering what I could have possibly done to deserve it. It was my first time alone with the headmaster and it is said that he is a formidable man, so I assumed I had flunked an algebra test or something, bit my lip and expected the worst.

However, I found him rather pleasant as he explained how he heard about my family's situation and offered his sympathy. He told me that he didn't want an intelligent girl like myself to miss out on an education worthy of my ability because of the country's depressed economy and thanks to the Welfare State, he can offer me up a place at Liverpool Institute starting this semester! Can you believe it? I'll get to learn with the smartest kids in town! My hand is getting sore and that's all I have to say really, so goodbye for now!

Anna.