“What’s wrong?” asks Auntie Sylvia. “Oh, you’ve just caught the edge of your scar. Here…”
As she pats my cheek with the corner of her hankie, I look at the smudge of blood on my fingertip, and my heart sinks.
Normally, I don’t believe in omens and signs and all that hocus-pocus.
But this … it’s like a flashback to the day of the bomb.
A reminder that happy as I felt just now, terrible things can lurk right around the corner…
“Stop. Stop, Lawrence!”
I don’t know whether to be cross with him or laugh.
“You know you like it when I spin you fast, Glory,” he calls out above the sound of the folk band’s flurry of guitar, fiddle and accordion.
“I know I’m going to be sick if you don’t let me go,” I tell him.
His warm hand in mine, the other pressed into my back … it’s lovely, thrilling. But I really need to get some fresh air.
“Spoilsport,” he says with a wide smile, as we wind down to a halt.
Now I can get my breath, I begin to see familiar faces whirl into view.
Reverend Ashton is chatting to Mr Carmichael, my teacher.
Lil and Harry are nearby, huddled close and gazing into each other’s eyes, as if it’s a slow dance and not a fast jig playing.
Jess – in her pristine white dress – is helping Charlie and Mary from the pub sell beer and lemonade at the table that’s been set up by the door.
And there’s Rich, clambering up hay bales at one end of the barn with a couple of small boys he seems to have become friendly with this week at school, thanks to Auntie Sylvia’s teacherly influence.
As for Auntie Sylvia, when we first arrived, I helped her find both a spare chair and a tucked-away corner where she could sit and happily watch the goings-on without being too much observed herself. In her lap she’s holding a glass of lemonade as well as Duckie and Mr Mousey. I bet she’s nervous now, waiting for Reverend Ashton to call her up to the piano that’s been wheeled out from the farmhouse.
But with a sudden twist in my tummy, I realize there’s someone missing. One of the Outsiders.
“Have you seen Archie anywhere?” I ask Lawrence, as the band end their tune and everyone in the crowded barn applauds madly.
“Nope. He’s going to be somewhere here with his mum, though, isn’t he?”
I clap along too, but realize Lawrence has left his hand on my back, where it was.
“I’m not sure… He’d have wanted to introduce her to us, wouldn’t he?” I suggest. I think of Archie when he passed Auntie Sylvia’s, his face lit up full of hope and excitement. I can’t wait to hear how he’s got on with his mother.
Somehow it doesn’t feel right – having fun at this party – without him being here…
“Yeah, maybe,” Lawrence replies casually. “Hey, this one’s good. C’mon, let’s dance again!”
I glance over at the busy, bustling refreshment table and see that Jess is watching us over the shoulders of her customers. She looks … forlorn, and I can guess why.
“I’m tired. Can’t you ask Jess to dance for a change?”
“She’s busy,” says Lawrence, wrapping both hands around my waist now.
I suddenly feel a little trapped. I really need air.
But then I spot Mr Wills talking to Mr Brett, the grocer. Mr Wills has swapped his farmer’s outfit of tweeds and wellies for a dark suit that looks nice, if a little tight. Same as most men here, it’s probably his one good suit. Maybe even his wedding suit.
Seeing him reminds me that I should try to speak to Lawrence again about his dad, Auntie Sylvia and the never-received letter. I told him, Archie and Jess about it at school on Wednesday, but Lawrence hasn’t said much about it since, just said he needed to think about it before he spoke to his father.
But I don’t want to say anything to him here, where we could be overheard.
“Come here,” I say, beckoning Lawrence to follow me outside.
He grins cheekily, which makes me uncomfortable. I hope that I didn’t give him the wrong impression.
“I just want to talk,” I tell him, pushing the door open.
And now I can see someone else has the wrong impression – Jess has just frowned at the two of us, wondering what’s going on.
The air has a bite to it tonight, chill wind whipping at my thin dress, and I wish I’d grabbed my coat before we stepped out.
It’s pitch-black too, especially once Lawrence quickly closes the barn door behind us. The only light is a trickle coming from under the rickety-edged wooden door.
“Need a hug to keep warm?” Lawrence jokes some more. At least I hope he’s joking. I do like him, but things are suddenly going a bit far, a bit fast for me.
“No, I’m fine,” I say, quickly, and take a step back. “I just wanted to talk to you about the letter. Do you think you should speak to your dad about it, since Auntie Sylvia is here?”
I hear Lawrence let out a long sigh, and his silhouette comes more into focus now that my eyes are adjusting to the light.
“Look, I don’t think I should. It’s ancient history, Glory,” he says. “And what good would it do? Yeah, it must have been tough for Miss Saunders, her parents doing that to her. But it’s not as if I like her now. Nothing’s changed. She’s still a snobby old—”
“Oi, Lawrence,” says Harry, his head appearing around the barn door, “want to leave your girlfriend alone for a minute and give us a hand to push some of the bales back further? We need to make more room for dancing.”
Embarrassment more than cold makes my skin prickle with goose pimples.
“Coming back in?” Lawrence asks me.
“In a minute,” I tell him.
I watch the shaft of light vanish again as the door closes behind him, and now – as if to compensate – the full moon drifts out from behind a cloud.
Outlines of hills and trees and fences and outbuildings become visible.
And – my heart skips a beat – an outline of a figure.
A figure sitting on the gate, hunched over.
My instincts tell me to rush back inside, but then I pause, recognizing the skinny someone and the flop of hair hanging over his forehead.
“Archie?” I call out.
“Hey,” he calls back, raising a hand.
“Archie – what are you doing out here?” I ask, hurrying over to him. “Where’s your mum?”
Close up, I see he’s got his gaunt, stray-dog look about him again. I scramble up on to the gate beside him, realizing only too late that the rust and dirt of the metal will probably stain my dress.
“I waited for three hours, for b-both buses that were due today, just in case she m-missed the first one. But she d-d-didn’t come.”
“Oh, Archie,” I say, feeling his hurt. “Something must have happened. Maybe—”
“Nothing will have h-h-happened, Glory,” he replies flatly. “It’ll be the same as last time, and the time be-before. I’ll get a letter next week saying s-s-sorry, with a ten-bob note in it. Then she’ll tell me about her latest, ‘lovely’ new b-b-boyfriend, I bet.”
I thought all my anger had gone since me and Auntie Sylvia had made up, but another spring suddenly uncoils. How could Archie’s mum let him down like that?
“She doesn’t deserve to have a son like you,” I blurt out, before I remember that sometimes family are the only people allowed to criticize family. But I can’t seem to stop myself. “I mean, you’re great. Doesn’t she know how lucky she is?”
Archie doesn’t respond at first; he’s just lifts his head and stares at me, his eyes roving over my face as if he’s trying to make out my features in the moonlight and memorize them all.
“You look beautiful,” he surprises me by saying.
“Me? No, I’m not! Specially not with this scar,” I bu
mble, taken aback. “It’s so ugly.”
“It’s not ugly – it’s interesting,” Archie says softly. “The f-f-first time I saw it, I thought it looked exactly like a star.”
His finger reaches out to gently touch my cheek.
I don’t pull away.
“A star?” I reply, shell-shocked and thrilled. “Er, I don’t think so. And I made it bleed today, so it probably looks even worse.”
Archie tilts his head to inspect my altered scar.
“Maybe it looks more like a shooting star now, or a falling one from this angle. And they’re both m-m-meant to be lucky, aren’t they?”
Catching my scar with my nail and making it bleed; I’d thought it must be a sign … and maybe it was. Could it have been a good sign after all?
A sign that I got it wrong again, in the best kind of way?
I thought I’d fallen for funny, cheeky Lawrence, but now I know as clear as night follows day that steady, sweet, gentle Archie is the boy who’s sneaked up on me and my heart.
“Where? Where’s the falling star, Archie?” a little voice pipes up in the darkness. “I can’t see it!”
“Rich! What are you doing out here?” I ask him, slipping off the gate and down on the uneven surface of the farmyard.
“I came to find you – Auntie Sylvia is doing her songs now. Quick!”
Sure enough, I can hear the strains of “You Are My Sunshine”.
I’m not leaving Archie on his own out here, so whether he likes it or not – and I think he likes it – I grab his hand and pull him inside.
The barn seems more crowded and warm when I go back in, and everyone is facing Auntie Sylvia at the piano, swaying and singing happily along to the music she’s playing.
At the end of the tune, she smiles shyly as the crowd applauds, and quickly launches into another song, and another.
I stand smiling and watching her, my hand still surprisingly, wonderfully entwined with Archie’s on one side while I drape an arm around Rich on the other.
“Glory?” Rich says at one point, and I lean down to hear what he has to say. “I’m a bit cross with Duckie. He made me do something I shouldn’t have…”
“What was that, sweetheart?” I ask him.
“He made me tell the farmer about the letter Auntie Sylvia didn’t get. That was a wrong thing, wasn’t it?”
So my brother did hear our conversation the other day, and he understood more of it than I gave him credit for. And now he’s blinking up at me, hoping I’m going to say that what he – what Duckie – did is fine.
“I don’t know,” I tell him, being honest. “Maybe—”
“Richard? Richard?”
I’m suddenly aware of Auntie Sylvia calling out, and the people in front of us parting to let him through.
“Ah, there you are – I need my page-turner for this next song!”
The parting of the crowd doesn’t just let Auntie Sylvia spot Rich; it lets a visibly startled Jess and Lawrence see that me and Archie are holding hands.
I let go straight away, just as the crowds shuffle back to their original positions, but denser than ever, blocking my view.
“Are you all right?” Archie asks.
“Mmm,” I say, not sure if I am. I quickly fake a bright smile and immediately feel the tug and twinge of the new speck of scar that’s formed on my cheek.
It’s a sign…
Like I say, I don’t believe in signs.
But what if it matters? What if…
I give myself a shake back to sense and concentrate on the pretty tune Auntie Sylvia is now playing.
“If I was the only girl in the world…” everyone in the barn begins to sing, their voices swelling and soaring.
At the same time, there’s also a shuffling, and a sense that something is happening.
Putting my hand on Archie’s shoulder for balance, I peek over everyone’s heads and shoulders towards the piano … and see that Mr Wills is now standing behind a pink-cheeked Auntie Sylvia, acting as her page-turner instead of Rich.
“Didn’t expect to see that!” Archie whispers to me. “It’s almost as if M-M-Mr Wills knows something’s changed…”
“He does,” I whisper back. “Rich just told him about the letter!”
And now my brother himself is the sudden cause of chitter-chatter, as Lil shoves him up on to the hay bale stage and swirls him into a waltz.
As the song ends, all eyes are still fixed on Rich and Lil, with everyone oohing and ahhing, commenting on what a sight for sore eyes they are.
Which means only me and Archie spot the surprising thing that’s happening over by the piano… Mr Wills has just bent down to give Auntie Sylvia a fleeting, tender peck on the cheek.
I’m still reeling at that wonderful scene when I realize people are turning to look and smile at me.
Why?
What’s happening?
“Hey, how about ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ next?” Lil is yelling out to thunderous cheers. “In honour of my kid sister, of course, as well as Her Majesty!”
Everyone is laughing, and when Auntie Sylvia launches into the first chords, the patriotic roaring nearly raises the rafters. It’s just as well the Luftwaffe only rely on maps and landmarks and lights. If they worked by sound, we’d have a squadron of Messerschmitts heading our way now…
“Glory!” Someone grabs my attention with an urgent tone to their voice.
It’s Jess. Her eyes rest on the hand I have placed on Archie’s shoulder; then she quickly lifts her gaze to my face. She seems anxious, agitated.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s Rich – he’s run outside. He’s looking for you, Glory. He thinks you’ve gone up to the sprout field.”
I think how dark it is out there, especially if the moon slips back behind a cloud. And the strange, waist-high spikes of sprouts might look almost comical in the daytime, but they’ll be positively eerie now.
“But why would he think that?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” Jess replies with an urgent shrug. “I tried to stop him…”
“What’s wrong?” Archie asks, leaning in to hear, the sing-along is so ear-splittingly loud.
“It’s Rich – he’s gone up to the sprout field on his own. I have to get him.”
I’m out of the barn first, leaving whoever’s behind me to close the door.
“Glory?” says a figure outside. “I think I just saw Rich in the distance. Here…”
Lawrence holds out his hand and pulls me into a run.
What’s he doing out here, I wonder, gathering up my rustling skirts in one hand so I can move more easily.
“Don’t worry,” Lawrence says breathlessly, “we’ll find him together, Glory.”
“And I’m h–here too,” Archie calls out from just behind us.
Lawrence makes a sudden noise that sounds a lot like a cross between a snort and a sigh. But it’s probably just because we’re running uphill now, up the back field.
“I see him!” Jess’s voice drifts in the chill air as she hurries to catch us up. “There – he’s climbing over the fence into the sprout field!”
She’s right – he looks so tiny and frail, like a stick man, a stick boy, now balancing on the fence and holding his arms out wide.
“What’s he doing?” I gasp out loud, my chest burning with the effort of running.
“Is he looking at the stars?” Lawrence guesses.
The sky is still dark with clouds, but he’s right – pinpoints of bright lights are glimmering.
Only they’re not just glimmering; they’re moving.
“They – they’re not stars!” Archie yelps, hurtling past us, as if Rich is the finishing post. “They’re NOT STARS!!”
Oh no … he’s right! What we’re seeing is strafing bullets
glowing orange as they fly through the night sky.
And a rumbling and rattling – which I’d barely noticed in my rush and panic – is getting louder, as the dogfight above us draws nearer. Any second now the fighter planes will blast out from behind their cover of clouds…
“Rich! RICH!!” I screech, finally getting my brother’s attention as I stumble towards him.
There’s another noise now, a cacophony of drones, the moans of air-raid warnings overlapping in the surrounding villages.
“Look, Glory!” Rich calls out to me, holding his hands to the heavens. “The stars are falling! I’m going to catch one, for luck!”
I’m just a few feet from him, but I think our luck has run out.
Thundering behind his head is the looming, growling black monster of a plane, coming down to earth any second.
“This was what the sign meant!” I whisper desperately to myself. “This is where we die.”
And then the explosion throws me and my parachute dress into the soft, dark earth…
Mine wasn’t the only parachute in Mr Wills’ fields on Saturday night.
There was Jess’s, of course, then the ones belonging to the pilot and his gunner, who bailed out and landed in the sprout field.
The two dazed and injured men found themselves surrounded by slightly drunk barn dancers, some brandishing guitars and fiddles – till the partygoers heard their Scottish and Liverpudlian accents and realized the plane that came down was an RAF Bristol Blenheim and on our side.
I don’t know what happened to the crew members after that, but I do know what happened to me and Rich. Neither of us have much of a memory of being rescued, checked over by the doctor and ferried back to the cottage and put to bed.
What’s clearer is that we spent all day at home yesterday, never getting out of our pyjamas once. We were fussed over and mended by Auntie Sylvia, fed sweet treats and hot milk in between, and allowed to read books and comics and play records on the gramophone as much as we wanted.
It would’ve been like heaven, if we hadn’t ached so much.
“Ka-pow, ka-pow, take that!” Rich yelps, dancing around me now as we walk across the green towards school.
“You look like a panda,” I laugh.
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