The Telephone Box Library

by Rachael Lucas

  Lucy looked at him then. She had pulled the sleeves of her cardigan down so they covered her hands, and she chewed her lip for a moment before she spoke.

  ‘Do you worry that if her mum did come back, you’d be edged out? Because honestly, I can’t see that happening.’

  He looked down at the table for a moment and didn’t meet her gaze as he spoke.

  ‘I think maybe – I don’t know. I just – she left, because she said she didn’t want it. Any of it.’

  Lucy cleared her throat and shifted slightly in her chair, pushing it back almost imperceptibly.

  ‘I don’t want to get back together with her,’ he said, lifting both palms in a defensive gesture.

  She laughed gently. ‘I didn’t say you did.’

  ‘I know, I mean – it’s just – God, I’ve had so much hassle from people about this over the years. I’ve tried so hard to do the right thing.’

  ‘And you think now Freya’s growing up and changing, everything you’ve done won’t matter?’

  ‘I sound like a complete arse when you say it like that.’ She tipped more wine into their glasses and he took a large mouthful. It made him cough.

  ‘I don’t think you do. You want the best for Freya. You’re just being protective.’

  ‘And I’m worried she’ll swoop in and take her away from me.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen. Freya adores you. Love’s not a zero sum game – she can love you and have a relationship with her mother.’

  The wind changed, bringing a coolness to the evening. Darkness was falling and moths were circling the lights that hung around the little garden hut.

  ‘I guess I feel weird about the idea of someone else being part of our family of two.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ Lucy leaned forward, cupping her chin in her cardigan-covered hand. ‘But you’ve got to have a life of your own, too.’

  He looked at her for a moment, his eyes meeting hers, and felt a shift in the atmosphere. Was she – no. He thought of Mel teasing him earlier, and looked down at his glass of wine. It was almost finished.

  ‘Sorry if I kept you.’ He picked up the bottle. ‘And led you astray.’

  She looked up at him for a moment. ‘I don’t mind being led astray.’

  His heart thudded against his ribs. For a second he wondered how it would feel to lean across and . . .

  Hamish shot past them, barking furiously, breaking the spell of the moment. He skittered around the patio, making enough noise to set off the dogs in the cottages nearby.

  ‘Hamish, will you get inside, please.’ Lucy whistled him and he scuttled back into the kitchen. They stood up and followed, and she closed the door.

  ‘I’ll have a word with Freya.’

  ‘Do.’ They were standing in the narrow galley kitchen. He took the two wine glasses from her hands and put them down in the sink. ‘Right, I’d better get going.’

  As she opened the door and he ducked to avoid banging his head on the lintel, she laughed.

  ‘This place isn’t designed for people your height.’

  ‘I know. Ours is exactly the same. I spend my whole time avoiding beams.’

  ‘Let me know how you get on with Freya.’ She fiddled with the heavy curtain that hung by the cottage door.

  ‘I will. I’ll give you a shout about the bat walk.’

  ‘It’s a date.’ She clearly said it without thinking. He looked at her for a moment and she laughed. He was relieved she couldn’t see the embarrassment on his face in the evening darkness.

  ‘Deal.’ She put out a hand, jokingly, for him to shake. And then, when he took it, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Thanks for a lovely evening.’

  When she closed the door, he stood for a moment, reeling with a million and one conflicted feelings. Most of them, he had to admit to himself, were pretty much X-rated. Whatever was going on, it was very definitely not what he had planned.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Ugh, Hamish.’

  Lucy woke up to the morning breath of a West Highland terrier and his shiny black nose nudging her cheek. She put a hand to her head and sat up, groaning. She’d only had half a bottle of wine, but she felt like death. The glass of water she’d taken to bed to cancel out the wine was sitting by the bed untouched. It tasted disgusting but she downed the entire glass, wincing; and then she winced even more when she remembered that she’d kissed Sam on the cheek last night as he left. Last night it had felt confident, a little bit flirty, and – oh dear God. This morning it felt like she wanted to cringe under the covers and pretend it hadn’t happened.

  She went downstairs, letting Hamish out into the garden and putting on the kettle. She was supposed to be here to relax and recuperate. And then somehow she’d been roped in – admittedly quite willingly – to help Susan compile memories for the WI anniversary book, which was all but complete. If only she could get Bunty’s stories on record, it would be perfect. And of course she’d promised to help source books for the telephone box library. Not to mention the fact that she was there to keep an eye on Bunty. She was very definitely not here to flirt with an – admittedly good-looking – treehouse builder (what a bloody ridiculous thing to do as a job), or daydream about what it would be like if she stayed here permanently, didn’t go back to Brighton and never returned to teaching.

  She spooned in an extra half-teaspoonful of coffee and added sugar, taking her mug outside into the garden. The sky was a hazy grey, and there was a fresh nip in the air. Hamish pootled about happily and she sat on the wall watching him, listening to the silence of the village and thinking.

  She showered off the wine hangover, got dressed, rubbed her hair dry with a towel and knotted it back off her face. Maybe this morning she’d try another approach.

  In Bunty’s cottage, one end of the huge oak table was covered with flour.

  ‘Hello,’ Bunty looked up and beamed. Such a difference from the first time they’d met, when she’d glowered at Lucy disapprovingly. Now they were friends, but even so Bunty kept pockets of her life closed off – through choice, Lucy was sure, not through forgetting. ‘I’m making some scones for the WI meeting tomorrow.’

  Lucy moved towards the window, realizing that Stanley was coiled in a patch of sunlight on the end of the table. She’d managed to reach an uneasy sort of truce with him – or at least, she’d worked out that the secret to living near a boa constrictor was to keep her distance. Sometimes she wondered if Stanley was quietly biding his time and that one day she’d pop in to see Bunty and find her gone, swallowed in one gulp. She shuddered involuntarily.

  ‘Cold, dear?’

  Lucy shook her head. No, I was worrying that your pet snake was going to devour you, she thought. Instead she said, ‘I was speaking to Sam last night.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Bunty raised her eyebrows slightly, looking at her through her heavily hooded lids. ‘I did see him calling on you last night.’ She gave a wheeze of amusement.

  ‘He came to talk to me about Freya. Said she’s been a bit – well, the thing is – I know what the problem is, but I don’t know if I can break a confidence. I really don’t know what to do.’ Lucy chewed her lip.

  Soft light illuminated the kitchen table, shining in butter-yellow squares on the wood. The guinea pigs rumbled around in their cage on the other side of the room, squeaking hopefully. Lucy bent down, checking their water bottles and filling up their food bowls. There wasn’t really that much Bunty needed help with, despite Margaret’s insistence. She was more than capable of living – quite fiercely – independently. And she knew her own mind.

  ‘You can tell me, dear.’ Bunty turned the disc of scone dough and floured it before rolling it out. Her movements were sure, although her hands were gnarled and spotted with age. ‘As Margaret would have it, I’m so old I’ll have forgotten it by this afternoon.’ She chortled.

  ‘Nonsense.’ Lucy perched at the far end of the table, watching as Bunty cut the dough into neat cir
cles, placing them one by one on an age-blackened baking tray.

  They both knew it wasn’t true. Bunty might not move as fast as she used to, but she was sharp as a tack, and those faded blue eyes didn’t miss a thing.

  ‘You knew Freya’s mother?’ Lucy began, hesitantly.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Do you think she ever regretted leaving Freya with Sam?’

  Bunty shook her head. ‘Not every woman has a maternal instinct. Sam’s a good father to Freya, and she’s got Melanie for a mother figure as well.’

  Something uncomfortable shot through Lucy. She swallowed and looked away, gathering herself. ‘They’re not – I mean, I know they say they’re not, but . . .?’

  ‘Sam and Mel?’ Bunty laughed. ‘Good God, no. Just friends, stuck together through circumstance. Both single parents, both with girls the same age.’

  ‘You don’t think they’ve ever thought about it?’ It was like poking at a bruise to see if it hurt.

  ‘I’m sure it’s crossed their mind at one point or another.’ Bunty glanced at her. ‘Not that you’re interested, of course.’

  Lucy examined her nails. ‘No!’

  ‘Hrmm.’ Bunty pursed her lips.

  ‘I’m only trying to work out what’s going on. Freya hasn’t mentioned to you that anything’s troubling her?’

  ‘Well, you know what young girls are like. She’s hardly about to pour out her heart to me, is she?’

  Lucy thought back to her adolescence. She’d been the one holding the place together while her mother flitted about, swapping one boyfriend for another at a steady rate.

  ‘Freya will be fine. She’s a good girl.’ Bunty took the tray of scones and put them in the oven.

  ‘I’m sure she will.’ Perhaps she’d try and have a word again, see what was going on. She didn’t want to interfere, but at the same time, she wanted to do the right thing for Freya – and for Sam. God, why was it all so complicated?

  ‘How’s the WI book going?’ Bunty asked.

  ‘I bumped into Joan from the Abbeyfield house the other day. She keeps telling me I should ask you for your stories.’ Lucy gave a hopeful smile.

  ‘Pfft.’ Bunty tossed the cloth into the sink and pulled out the chair. ‘We were all in the same boat. A pretty grubby one at that. Overcrowded, too. And goodness, it was dull. And of course we didn’t have a clue what we were doing at the time. But we had our fair share of adventures.’

  Lucy sat still, bottom still perched on the end of the table. She was afraid to speak in case Bunty realized she was actually talking at last about her work during the war.

  Bunty looked at Lucy, coming to a decision. ‘Let me show you this.’

  Lucy’s heart was thudding against her ribcage as Bunty went over to the dresser drawer and pulled out a diary.

  ‘Sit down,’ Bunty instructed, waving towards a kitchen chair. ‘You look like you’re about to shoot out of the door and off somewhere more exciting.’

  That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Lucy shifted from the table into a chair, not even minding that Stanley was closer than she’d like, looking at her through narrow, sleepy eyes.

  ‘Here we are,’ Bunty passed over the battered black diary, rifling through the pages and then laying it out in front of Lucy. The sepia ink of the handwriting was so small that it looked like a procession of tiny ants on the page.

  Lucy looked at Bunty, who nodded to the diary. ‘Go ahead, read it,’ she said. ‘Some stories are too important not to be shared.’

  July 1st, 1941

  Left London with my railway warrant in a sealed envelope, clutched in my paw. I was utterly terrified that I’d misplace it and end up stranded like one of the evacuees on a platform. No such bad luck, though.

  After a train journey where we were squashed together like cattle and absolutely baking hot, we arrived at Bletchley Station. It was such a relief to get out and breathe without having someone’s serge sleeve in my face. As soon as the doors were open, what felt like thousands of bodies streamed out and all headed in the same direction. All my worries about not knowing where to go came to naught – it seemed like half of London was being shipped to the same place. I whispered to a friendly-looking Wren if she was going to Bletchley Park, and she gave me a very cross look and furrowed her brow. Then she looked over both shoulders before whispering that yes, she was. So we went together, like two rather frightened little lambs. There was a hut at the gates, which were teeming with guards, where they checked our names, and the very moment we arrived we had to sign the Official Secrets Act.

  The room in the mansion (which was very fancy – all high plastered ceilings and carved wooden doors) was full of girls around my age. Some of them looked like they’d come up from the city, gas masks over their shoulder, carrying a holdall with their worldly goods inside, but others were clearly upper-class sorts in expensive skirts and jackets, that sort of thing. And of course heaps and heaps of Wrens looking very smart, who all flocked together like their namesakes. I felt a bit of an odd one out, but I was excited at the thought I’d be making friends with some of them. There were posters up for dances and plays and all sorts of jolly things, and it all seemed like a bit of a lark. Then they divided us up, and a very serious-faced older woman told us where we were going and which hut we’d be in. I waited and waited, and right at the very end, when almost everyone else had left the room, I was still standing there. I don’t mind admitting I had a bit of a knot in my tummy. I was nervous in any case, and there I was standing about like a spare part, not having been assigned a role. Then a chunky young man with a thick ginger moustache appeared, looked at a clipboard, and the next thing I knew I was following him outside.

  ‘You’re one of the Whaddon lot,’ he said. Of course this didn’t mean a thing to me.

  ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘Shove up,’ said someone else, getting in and squashing me against the window. We drove off then, and I didn’t have a clue where I was going because the bus windows were painted with blackout paint. We stopped off several times. Each time people went out in twos – nobody was talking, because we were all fresh behind the ears and shy, I think. And then we stopped. The chap who was driving hopped out and opened the back door, and I waited for a second.

  ‘All right, love, last stop.’

  I peered into the darkness around me. That’s when I realized I was the only one left.

  ‘Be ready tomorrow morning at seven.’

  Lucy looked up at Bunty, who was sitting very still, her hands folded in front of her on the table. She looked down at the diary, feeling torn. She desperately wanted to keep reading. Inside this book was a whole life – and Bunty’s writing was so real and immediate, Lucy almost felt as if she was there, sitting beside her. In comparison, the words she’d been slaving over for the last couple of months seemed as if they were written at a remove – which of course they were. She sat back on the chair and pushed her hair behind her ears.

  Bunty reached across, taking the diary back and closing it. ‘Oh, that’s enough of my self-indulgent nonsense.’

  ‘It’s not at all, it’s amazing. I’d love to read it all. So where did you sleep? What happened the next day?’

  ‘Oh, well, as you know – I was taken in by Mrs Brown and that’s when I met Milly, the schoolteacher I was telling you about, who I was sharing a room with. I was full of dread, expecting her to be cross about sharing. But she was jolly and kind, gave me one of her blankets in case I was cold, and told me that Mrs Brown made the best breakfasts you could dream of.’

  Bunty closed her eyes for a moment, and a smile curved at her lips. ‘Gosh, they were lovely. The next morning she woke me up at six and we had crumpets with honey and absolutely tons of butter. You couldn’t get that sort of food in London, of course, unless you were willing to get it on the black market. But Mrs Brown had a beehive, and two Jersey cows, and she made her own butter. Oh, it was delicious.’

  Lucy wished she had her phone and could be recording all this. B
unty carried on.

  ‘Of course Milly was up and off to school – she told me over breakfast that they had thirty evacuees in the village, so they’d had to extend the school day and she’d been brought in to teach. I hadn’t a clue where I was going. Back to Bletchley, I supposed. But no.’

  ‘No?’

  Bunty shook her head.

  ‘Of course I said to poor Mrs B “Is this Whaddon?” and she looked at me as if I was slightly mad. “No, my dear,” she said. “This is Little Maudley. If you’re supposed to be in Whaddon you’re a good ten miles off.” And she laughed at her own joke, which she clearly thought was very funny.

  ‘Anyway, I was shipped off to a field just outside the village, and reported for duty – absolutely freezing cold – to the station.’

  ‘Train station?’

  ‘No. Remember when I took you on a detour?’

  ‘To that old building up on the hill?’

  ‘Yes. That’s where I spent my war. Signal Hill. I was the only girl. Thank goodness I shared a billet with Milly, or I’d have gone crackers. The boys were nice enough, of course, but they treated me as if I didn’t have anything between my ears.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘It’s all in here,’ Bunty said, tapping the faded cover of the diary with a gnarled finger. ‘And lots more besides.’

  ‘I’d love to read more.’

  Bunty rifled through the pages and handed the book back to Lucy. Lucy opened a page and started to read, transported back to a summer’s day many years ago.

  August 2nd, 1941

  It’s so peculiar. Sometimes, here in the village one could almost forget there’s a war on. In other ways it’s not so easy. Poor Milly is having to work terribly long hours at the school, and they’ve decreed that the summer holiday has been cancelled because the children need to be out of their mothers’ hair so they can get on with important war work. Milly says it’s like running a nursery school and a prison all at once.