Together, Tracy and her mother, Dorothy, watched The Dick Emery Show or Steptoe and Son or Mike Yarwood doing an impression of Steptoe and his son. She spent her nights in front of the television with her mother while her father drank-modestly-in the local Conservative club. Tracy was worried that she might never leave home. Nothing could have prepared her for that. She bought a tweed maxi coat from Etam and a new umbrella. Never eaten an avocado or seen an aubergine, never been on an airplane. Sixteen, never been kissed by a boy, never drunk wine, not even Blue Nun. You never know, PA to the MD one day.' She didn't know what 'MD' meant.

'You're a bright girl,' the man in personnel said, offering her a cigarette. And women were often slappers and scrubbers but he'd helped out a few street girls with cigarettes and cash, and he loved his wife and daughters.ĭespite pleas from her teachers to stay on and 'make something of herself,' Tracy had left school at fifteen to do a shorthand and typing course and went straight into Montague Burton's offices as a junior, eager to get on with her adult life. He could be violent when necessary, sometimes when not, but he didn't discriminate on the grounds of color when it came to reward and punishment. There were bad apples in the barrel-the dark cloud of David Oluwale's death still cast a long shadow on police in the West Riding, but Arkwright wasn't under it. Ken Arkwright had seen more than most but remained avuncular and sanguine, a good copper for a green girl to be beneath the wing of. Tracy Waterhouse was still wet behind the ears, although she wouldn't admit to it. West Yorkshire in 1975, awash with serial killers. Donald Neilson, the Black Panther from Bradford, hadn't been captured yet and Harold Shipman had probably already started killing patients unlucky enough to be under his care in Pontefract General Infirmary. They would both see the beginning of the Ripper's killing spree but Arkwright would be retired long before the end of it. WPC Tracy Waterhouse, a big, graceless girl only just off probation, and PC Ken Arkwright, a stout white Yorkshireman with a heart of lard. By the time they neared the top they were resting at every turn of the stair. The two PCs huffed and puffed their way up the stairs. They had been told that it was on the fifteenth floor of the flats in Lovell Park and-of course-the lifts were broken. It was growing bigger with every step she took. In the middle of it all, Tracy Waterhouse was only concerned with the hole in one of the toes of her tights. The Black and White Minstrel Show is still on television, John Poulson is still in jail. At the end of the month Saigon falls to the North Vietnamese army. At the beginning of the month, in Albuquerque, Bill Gates founds what will become Microsoft. Margaret Thatcher is the new leader of the Conservative Party. Gaslight still flickering on some streets. Leeds: 'Motorway City of the Seventies.' A proud slogan.

Kate atkinson started early