by Annie Groves
She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out. She still hadn’t told her family just what she was doing. They’d got enough to worry about with Luke, she’d reasoned. That was all right where her parents were concerned, but what about Sasha? What was her excuse for holding back from her twin something that was such an important part of her life? After all, Sasha hadn’t hesitated to write to her telling her that she and Bobby hoped to get their father’s permission to become engaged.
That was different, Lou told herself. The importance of getting engaged was something that anyone could understand, even her, although she had no desire whatsoever to do the same thing. Her dream of becoming a pilot, though, was something that only those who felt the same could understand. It wasn’t something she could share with Sasha; they weren’t close enough any more for that. And that was her fault, Lou acknowledged. In Sasha’s opinion as well as her own.
‘Hey, Campion, stop daydreaming about flying Spitfires and come and listen to what Sandra’s got planned for our next forty-eight-hour pass. She’s suggesting that we all go to London.’
‘Coming,’ Lou called back. This was her life now, not Liverpool. She wished Sash well, but Lou knew she would choke on her own boredom if she had to return to the life she had left behind.
* * *
Weddings. Why was it that there was something about them that brought tears as well as smiles, Katie wondered, blinking back her own as Gina and Leonard emerged from the small grey Norman church into the June sunshine of the Dorset village where her parents lived.
Gina had worn her mother’s wedding dress, hastily altered, and Leonard, of course, was in uniform. Katie, at Gina’s request, had worn her, or rather Francine’s, grey silk, and the two mothers had done the bridal couple proud with silk frocks and elegant hats bought before the war, but none the less appropriate for all that.
The wedding breakfast was to be held in the pretty Queen Anne house owned by Gina’s parents, and Katie had been touched by the genuine kindness and warmth both families had shown her, especially Eddie’s parents.
‘They’re sizing you up for the family jewels,’ Eddie had warned her the previous evening after his mother had finished showing her a family photograph album. ‘They’re desperate to find a decent girl to take me on and produce grandchildren for them.’
The twinkle in his eye had confirmed, as Katie had guessed, that he was teasing her. She doubted that there would ever be any lack of ‘suitable’ girls willing to marry a man as attractive and from such an obviously well-to-do family as Eddie.
‘What do you say?’ he murmured to her now as they watched the bridal couple walk under the raised swords of their RAF guard of honour ‘Shall we make it a double, and tell the vicar that he can start to call the banns. The parents would be jolly pleased, I can tell you.’
Katie laughed. She liked Eddie and felt all the more at ease with him for knowing that she would never be in any danger of falling for him.
‘You are a wicked tease,’ she told him, ‘and it would serve you right if I took you seriously.’
‘No, it wouldn’t serve me right, dearest Katie, it would serve me very well, and better than I deserve to have such a sweet girl as you as my wife. You should think about it, you know. After all, the war isn’t over yet and you could end up a very comfortably placed young widow.’
‘Eddie, don’t. You mustn’t say things like that,’ Katie told him fiercely. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, and when the war is over you’ll find a girl who is far more suited to you than I could ever be.’
‘How do you know we aren’t suited? You haven’t even let me kiss you yet.’
Katie gave him a stern look. He really was irrepressible.
‘No, and I’m not going to either,’ she told him severely.
Happiness was such a fragile thing, a chameleon in many ways, sometimes so intense you could hardly bear it, and other times, as light as a drift of cloud.
Perhaps it was cowardly of her, but really she preferred the light fluffy white-cloud kind of happiness that couldn’t hurt you to the heartstopping-intensity kind that could, Katie decided.
THIRTY-TWO
It was a hot day, and she had been working hard in the garden. Surely she deserved a few minutes of blissful uninterrupted peace and laziness, Bella thought crossly as she heard the squeak of the front gate, and resolutely kept her eyes tightly closed as she lay in a deck chair, wearing an old sun top and a pair of shorts, hoping that whoever it was would go away when no one answered the door, instead of coming to look in the back garden. After all, it wasn’t often these days she got time to herself, and she wouldn’t have it now if her mother hadn’t been coaxed into manning a stall at the WVS bring-and-buy sale.
The sun was so warm and more than anything else she simply wanted to drift off and daydream about Jan.
Something was tickling her chin, a greenfly, probably, from the roses. Without opening her eyes she lifted her hand to brush it away, her body going rigid with shock and her eyes opening wide when hand took hold of her own.
The bright sunlight was dazzling but that wasn’t why she blinked and stared and tensed again, this time with disbelief, whilst all the while the hand holding hers stroked her fingers, and her lips formed the name it was surely impossible for the man standing over her to be.
‘Jan. It can’t be you. It can’t be.’
But it was, and she was on her feet, laughing and crying, holding him tightly whilst he held her tightly back, and the joy of it, of him being here with her, filled her until she was overflowing with it.
Miraculously Jan was here, holding her and kissing her, and she was kissing him back, and she didn’t care who saw them. She didn’t care about anything other than this, holding the man she loved in her arms, the feel of him, the scent of him, the reality of him, all and everything she could ever want or need.
It took a while and a lot of shared intense kisses before she could come back down to earth enough to ask, ‘Jan, how can you be here? We heard that you’d been taken prisoner, that you were a prisoner of war. I wrote to you … I…’
‘I know. I got your letter.’
‘You didn’t write back.’
‘I did but obviously my letter never reached you. Bella, before I answer any more questions, I’ve got one I have to ask you.’
Bella looked at him.
‘Will you marry me?’
She didn’t need to hesitate or think. Her fiercely determined, ‘Yes, yes I will,’ came straight from her heart. Against all the odds she had been given a second chance, and she wasn’t going to risk losing it.
‘I’ve thought of this moment more than you can know, thought of it, dreamed of it and longed for it. You and loving you are what has brought me here, Bella, my heart. It was for you, to be with you, that I was so determined to escape from our prison camp so that I could tell you how much I love you and how wrong I was to say what I did the last time …
‘No,’ Bella stopped him, shaking her head. ‘I am glad you spoke as you did. Those words, your love, the letter you gave Bettina to give me have sustained me, helped me, been my food and drink and the air that I have breathed these last months. They, you, gave me the will to go on. Because of you I was able to be strong. Have you seen Bettina and your mother yet?’
‘Not yet. I wanted to see you first.’
‘Tell me what happened, Jan.’
‘Oh, well, I told Hitler that I was missing you and he said, well, why don’t you go and see her?’ Jan teased her, relenting when she shook her head, then telling her quietly, ‘I got the opportunity to join an escape group. The group had been planning the escape for months. Then one of the chaps who should have been going to escape fell ill and the rest of us drew straws to take his place. I was the lucky one. We used a tunnel that went right under the perimeter fence. We went at night, as soon as it got dark, a couple of the guards were in a card school run by some of our chaps; they let them win–cigarettes–so we waited for a night when they were on duty. That g
ave us a head start, but we knew they’d come after us once they realised we’d gone. We split up to give ourselves a better chance. The plan was to head for Switzerland, but when I was waiting on the station for my train I saw some SS officers arrive, so I switched platforms and ended up in France instead.
Luckily as it happened I fell into the hands of the Resistance. They thought I was a German at first, of course, but eventually I managed to convince them that I wasn’t. From there it was relatively easy. There’s an established organised system in place to return aircrew to England and they simply got me on to that. Of course, there were several hairy moments, but I was lucky. I tell you, Bella, swimming out to get on board the boat waiting to bring us back–there were three of us by this stage, the other two the only survivors of a Lancaster that had seen shot down on its way back home–I prayed as I have never prayed before. To be so near to you and yet still so far away … Of course, once we did get back officialdom took over and it was all debriefings and medicals and the like, but finally, yesterday, they told me I was officially on leave.’
‘On leave?’
‘They’ve given me a month.’
‘Could we be married by special licence, do you think?’
Jan reached into his pocket and produced an official-looking document, smiling at her as he did so.
‘I already have it, just in case I could persuade you to say yes.’
She should perhaps take him to task for taking her acceptance for granted, Bella acknowledged, but then in order to do that she would have to tell him to stop kissing her, and really that was the last thing she wanted to do.
EPILOGUE
‘Well, I know that June’s the month for weddings, but I never expected both Bella and Francine to say that they were going to get married at such short notice,’ Jean told Grace, as they sat together companionably on the back step, the door to Jean’s kitchen behind them open to the fresh air whilst they hulled the first of the strawberries from Sam’s allotment.
‘It’s the war, Mum,’ Grace responded. ‘People don’t want to waste a minute when they might not have much time together.’
Both pairs of busy hands stilled as they looked at one another, both of them thinking of all those men who might not come home and all the women who loved them.
It was the end of the beginning, Churchill had said.
Everyone knew that the tide had turned, that the risk of invasion was over, but there was still a long way to go to victory and many lives to be lost, and everyone in the country knew it.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following for their invaluable help:
Teresa Chris, my agent.
Susan Opie, my editor at HarperCollins.
Yvonne Holland, whose expertise enables me ‘not to have nightmares’ about getting things wrong.
Everyone at HarperCollins who contributed to the publication of this book.
My friends in the RNA, who always have been so generous with their time and help on matters ‘writerly’.
Tony, who as always has done wonders researching the facts I needed.
Also by Annie Groves
Ellie Pride
Connie’s Courage
Hettie of Hope Street
Goodnight Sweetheart
Some Sunny Day
The Grafton Girls
As Time Goes By
Across the Mersey
Daughters of Liverpool
The Heart of the Family
What’s next?
Tell us the name of an author you love
and we’ll find your next great book.
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009
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Copyright © Annie Groves 2009
Annie Groves asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-00-726593-0
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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