Aunt Cosy reached up and patted his cheek, then left the room without a word, probably so Rose and Grandad could be alone together. Rose took a deep breath. She knew she should apologise, say sorry for what happened earlier. Grandad was only trying to be nice, she knew that, and she felt bad for storming out. But she couldn’t. She looked at him, standing at the sink wearing Dad’s old apron, the one with blue and white stripes, and opened her mouth to speak. But nothing came out.
‘All sorted now, Cabbage?’
He tried to smile, to pretend everything was all right. Rose’s heart flipped, but she still couldn’t say anything.
‘Look, love . . .’ Grandad shook the bubbles off his hands, dried them on his apron and took a step towards her. Rose could see the grey beard bristles on his chin and the little scar above his eye. ‘About what happened earlier—’
And then Mum came in with a pile of dirty plates, so Rose slipped past her and headed up to her room.
It was late now and the last of the guests had gone some time ago. Rose checked her phone. Fred hadn’t replied to her message, but then why should he? She’d made it pretty clear she didn’t want him to come to the wedding, the invitation had been a mistake. She’d even implied she didn’t want to see him at all. He’d probably never message her again.
Tommy looked up as he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Mum and Sal were going to bed, but Rose didn’t feel tired, so she went over to the window and looked out at the night. The moon was floating above the roofs, a perfect silver disc, and the garden was all navy blue and silver in the moonlight. In the distance a fox answered the scream of a police car’s siren with her unearthly screech. Rose shivered and thought about the bomb in the middle of the common, lying there beneath the earth for all those years, waiting for someone to find it. Waiting to explode.
Tommy’s ears went up as there was a tap on the door.
‘Rose?’
It was Aunt Cosy again. She was wearing her silky blue dressing gown and red velvet slippers, and the grey hair she usually wore up in a bun was hanging in a little plait down her back, which made her look younger and older at the same time.
‘Just got up to go to the lav, sweetheart. Saw your light on under the door.’ She came in and made her way over to the window. ‘Why are you still up, Rose? We’ve got a big day tomorrow.’
‘I know,’ said Rose. ‘I was just going to bed.’
They stood together in silence for a moment, then: ‘She’s there again, Rose.’
‘The fox?’
There was a fox that visited their garden sometimes, perhaps the same one Rose had just heard. She and Aunt Cosy looked out for her and Rose occasionally left her a plate of Tommy’s food. But she knew her aunt didn’t mean the fox. Not this time.
‘What can you see, Aunt Cosy? Tell me.’
But as she followed her aunt’s gaze, she realised there was no need for the old lady to describe her vision. Because she could see it too.
The garden looked the same. The hump of the Anderson shelter, the straggly lilac tree in the corner. It was the sky that was different. It was exploding with silent fireworks, making the garden whirl with speckles of white light, as if the moon was a giant mirror ball and the whole world was a dance floor. And someone was dancing. Down in the garden, in the middle of the whirling lights, a little girl was dancing barefoot on the grass, holding up her hands to the sky and spinning in celebration of this unexpected firework display.
Rose realised she’d stopped breathing. Who is she? She didn’t know if she’d said the words out loud or only thought them. She dragged her eyes away from the window and turned to her aunt. ‘Aunt Cosy? Who’s that little girl?’
But Aunt Cosy had gone.
‘Aunt Cosy?’
She went to the door. The landing was empty. For a second Rose wondered if she’d dreamt the whole thing. And then she heard the front door slam. ‘Aunt Cosy!’
There was no light beneath the door of Mum’s room, and Rose couldn’t bear to knock and disturb them (she still couldn’t get used to it being ‘them’ in there). No. She’d sort this out on her own. She ducked back into her room, grabbed her parka and her phone, and made for the stairs
‘Rose?’
It was Leo, in his pyjamas, peering down the landing. He looked even younger than usual, with his hair tousled and his face all blurry with sleep.
‘Go back to bed, Leo. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.’ Rose struggled to make her voice sound normal.
‘But—’
‘Really!’ Rose hadn’t meant to sound so aggressive. ‘Sorry. It’s just Aunt Cosy wandering again. You go back to bed.’
Leo shrugged. ‘If you say so.’
‘I do.’ Whatever was happening, Rose was going to deal with it on her own.
She hurried downstairs with Tommy behind her, his claws tapping on the wood. As they got to the hall, the cuckoo clock started the throat-clearing noise it always made before the cuckoo burst into action. But this time, nothing happened. It was as if the cuckoo had second thoughts about leaving his nest. Rose looked at the time. It was midnight. Tomorrow had become today, and today Mum was getting married.
‘Come on, Tom.’
He wagged his tail as she opened the door, and shot out in front of her.
Nightingale Lane looked quite ordinary in the orange glow of the street lights. A young couple was walking home hand in hand, and a group of laughing girls stumbled along, trying to hail a taxi. A night bus rumbled past at the end of the street. But where was Aunt Cosy?
‘Wuff!’
Tommy had spotted her, heading in the direction of the tube station, moving surprisingly fast for an old lady of nearly ninety-three.
‘Come on, Tom!’
And so they ran, past the pub and the old school, past the low-level blocks of flats that Grandad said had been built to fill the spaces where houses were bombed in the war, past the old-fashioned flower shop with its metal shutters closed against the night, just in time to see Aunt Cosy disappearing into the dark entrance of the tube station. Why was it still open? It was too late for the trains to be running, wasn’t it?
There was no time to think. With Tommy behind her, Rose followed her aunt into the station.
It had begun.
It was dark inside the ticket hall. The blue-black sky seemed to press down on the glass dome of the roof and there was a sour smell that reminded Rose of the breath of her least favourite maths teacher. A page from an old newspaper stirred in one corner as Rose’s footsteps echoed on the tiled floor, but there was no sign of Aunt Cosy. There was no sign of anyone. Rose felt in her pocket for her travel card, then realised there was no need – the barriers were open. Anyway, she told herself, she and Tommy weren’t going to go anywhere. They were just going to look around the station and find Aunt Cosy before—
The thought hit Rose with a thud.
Before she gets on a train.
‘Tommy! Quick!’
He was off, shooting through the barrier as if he was chasing a squirrel on the common. Rose ran after him and the escalator carried them down, past walls lined with identical adverts, announcing something called a ‘memory walk’. A ‘walk down memory lane’, they said, to raise money to fight dementia. Dementia. Rose knew that was what Mum thought was wrong with Aunt Cosy, but she had no time to think of that now. As she and Tommy jumped over the last step, Rose heard the urgent rumble of an approaching train and felt its hot breath on her face with its familiar smell of dust and electricity. Which platform? Which way? Which way?
Tommy seemed to know. He headed to the left, the northbound platform. A train was already there, its doors open as if it was waiting for them. Rose checked the length of the platform, but there was no sign of Aunt Cosy. That meant one thing: she must have got on the train.
Rose had never been on the tube this late, not on her own, and she knew Mum would be furious if she did. But Tommy didn’t hesitate. He hopped through the doors of the last carriage as if it was som
ething he did every day. Rose followed just in time. The doors closed behind them, there was a self-important whirring sound as the engine geared up to leave, and the train lurched off into the darkness.
Rose stood, balancing herself against the movement of the train, and looked around. It must be one of the oldest trains they had, she thought, with its scratchy-looking upholstered seats and wobbly round things hanging down from the ceiling for you to grab on to when the carriage was full and you had to stand—
But this carriage wasn’t full. It was completely empty.
Aunt Cosy had probably got on further along, Rose told herself. All she had to do was walk up the train and she’d find her. She pictured the old lady, sitting alone in a carriage near the front, smiling to herself as the train rattled along. Maybe humming that song of hers. Rose would sit down next to her and put her hand over her aunt’s tiny knobbly one with all its glittering rings, and say, ‘Where are you going, Aunt Cosy?’ And Aunt Cosy would turn to her with a surprised smile and shake her head and admit that she didn’t know. ‘I’m a silly old woman,’ she’d say and then she’d laugh and Tommy would wag his tail and Rose would say, ‘I think we’d better go home now.’ And everything would be all right.
So she started walking, swaying and lurching as the train rattled along, heaving open the doors between the carriages – stepping over the gaps that used to scare her so much when she was little, hoping that Aunt Cosy would be in the next one, the next one, the next one . . . And each time, her heart sinking as she realised that this carriage was empty too.
The last door was locked. They’d reached the front of the train, the driver’s door. The train really was completely empty.
And there was something else.
Rose knew this route, knew it really well. She must have been on it a million times, heading north to go shopping in Oxford Street with Mum or west to a museum with Dad, so she knew that there were loads of stops on this line, one every few minutes. But this train just rattled on and on through the darkness, swinging round the bends as if it was in a hurry to get somewhere.
Perhaps it’s the last train of the night, Rose thought. It was late, after all. They might end up at some depot and then she’d have to call Mum. She wouldn’t be too pleased to be woken up in the middle of the night before her wedding, but she’d understand when Rose explained and told her she hadn’t wanted to disturb her. It would be a relief to tell her in a way, to hear her voice on the phone, a bit cross, but reassuringly normal and organised. Mum would come and get her, and then she’d phone the police, explain that an old lady had gone missing, and they’d find her really quickly, much quicker than Rose could on her own.
And then the train stopped, shuddering to a halt with a gasping sound.
Rose peered through the window, the glass cold against her nose. It was too dark to see much, but it didn’t look as if they’d stopped in the middle of a tunnel, and when the doors opened, she could see there was a platform outside.
‘Where are we?’
It didn’t look like a station, not one that was in use anyway. Grandad had told Rose about these tube stations that had been abandoned for some reason and left empty and unchanged over the years, their old names still on the walls next to advertisements for brands of soap and cigarettes and sweets that you could no longer buy, while the trains rattled through without stopping. Ghost stations, he said they were called. Perhaps this was one of those.
Rose and Tommy looked at each other. The open doors of the train seemed to be waiting for them.
‘Come on, Tom.’
As they stepped on to the platform, the doors slid shut behind them and the train pulled away. They were completely alone.
Rose felt a bubble of panic rising in her chest. She took out her phone. There was no signal down here, of course. She’d just have to find a way out, go up to ground level, call Mum from there. There had to be an emergency staircase or something, even if the escalators weren’t working. Even if this was a ghost station. It was certainly much dirtier and darker than the ones she was used to and there was no sign, nothing to tell her where they were.
Just as the bubble of panic was about to burst, Rose felt the ground begin to tremble and a familiar blast of hot air stirred the clots of black dust on the ground. Another train was arriving. Not on this platform though, it must be a southbound train. One that would take them home then, back to Clapham South.
Tommy must have been thinking the same. Rose ran after him as he skittered away into a passageway leading off the platform. It was even darker here. The tiles on the wall were cracked and stained and great drifts of greasy-looking dust and rubbish moved in the corners like leaves on autumn pavements. And there was the station sign.
Clapham South.
They were back where they had started.
How was that possible? They couldn’t have gone in a circle; this line went south to north, north to south. It had to be a mistake. Didn’t it? Didn’t it?
Rose heard the train doors whoosh open on the other platform and then, footsteps and bustle, the sounds of people getting off. A lot of people by the sound of it. Why was the station suddenly so busy? Where had all these people come from in the middle of the night?
And now they were upon them, hurrying through from the platform: men wearing hats and dark suits, with moustaches and briefcases; some were in uniform, soldiers by the look of it; and there were women too, in neat jackets and skirts, dark lipstick, and curled hair bouncing as they moved. But the strangest thing about them wasn’t their clothes. It was something else.
They were all white.
The London Rose knew was full of all sorts of different types of people, people whose families had come from all over the world to settle there. It was partly what made it so interesting, so much fun to live there.
But all these people were white.
And as Rose watched them, pressed up against the station sign with Tommy beside her, a feeling of coldness crept over her as she realised there was no mistake. This was Clapham South station. It just wasn’t the one she was familiar with.
What’s happening? she thought. What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go?
She followed the crowd. There was nothing else she could do. She stepped on to the escalator with Tommy beside her, gripping the moving handrail to stop herself shaking, and keeping her eyes fixed on the broad khaki back of the soldier in front of her. The escalator wasn’t made of the familiar snaky metal, it was wooden, and it carried them from the gloomy depths at the bottom into bright sunshine. It had been past midnight when they’d left, but now the sky above the glass dome in the roof was bright blue and sunlight lit every corner of the ticket hall.
It wasn’t just the station that had changed, it was the time of day.
Hands clenched in her pockets, Rose allowed herself to be swept past a uniformed guard, who was checking tickets in a half-hearted way, and out of the station where she stopped and looked around, blinking in the sun.
It was the same street but different, so different. The cars and taxis rumbling past were bigger, blacker, bulkier than she was used to and there were far fewer of them. The shops were dark and dingy-looking, some were boarded up. There were no flowers outside what Rose knew as the flower shop – it had nothing in the window but a white china dish containing some dull, chalky-looking sweets. A young boy was selling newspapers from a pile outside, while another smaller boy squatted nearby, drawing lines for noughts and crosses on the pavement with a piece of chalk.
An elderly woman in a shapeless mud-coloured coat shook her head at Rose as she passed. ‘Some people!’ she muttered loud enough to make sure that she could hear. ‘Don’t they know there’s no dogs allowed in the stations these days? Tuh!’
These days? thought Rose. What are these days? Where am I?
Across the road, the common looked reassuringly familiar, although there was no sign of the old brick shelter. And what were those huge silvery balloons that hung above the trees i
n the distance, looking like flabby floating elephants? Rose shivered. There was a chill in the air in spite of the sunshine, and the leaves of the great plane tree on the corner were beginning to turn. It was autumn, then, she thought. It had been spring when they left. So the season had changed as well . . .
And then she saw her. Standing under the tree like a ghost in the sunshine, a tiny upright figure in a silky blue dressing gown and red velvet slippers, looking straight at Rose. Aunt Cosy. So that was it.
Her aunt had gone for a walk down memory lane. And she’d taken Rose with her.
Rose didn’t stop to think. She stepped into the road.
‘Hey!’
Someone grabbed her arm, jerking her back. An old red double-decker bus roared past, horn blaring, the conductor standing on the platform at the back shouting at her. Rose turned and looked into the face of the person who’d saved her.
It was the young man in the photograph, Aunt Cosy’s lost love.
Johnny.
He was actually there, standing in front of her, as large as life and twice as natural (as Grandad would say). He looked younger than he did in Aunt Cosy’s photograph, and he wasn’t in uniform. He was wearing a soft-looking white shirt open at the neck under an old grey jacket that looked as if it had once been part of a suit that belonged to someone else. And he was even more handsome in real life, with eyes that looked at you as if he’d known you for ever and a mouth that seemed as if it was about to laugh.
Johnny.
‘What is happening here?’ he said. He had a warm voice with an accent of some sort, Rose didn’t know what. It didn’t sound African. Grace’s dad was from Nigeria and it didn’t sound like him. West Indian, maybe? Jamaican? ‘You are trying to get yourself killed?’
Rose realised she was holding her breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought I saw someone I knew . . .’
She looked across the road. The bus had gone past now, but there was no sign of the small figure under the plane tree. Aunt Cosy had disappeared.
Rose in the Blitz Page 3