by Annie Groves
Emily had been in such a hurry to get out what she wanted to say that she was out of breath, what with having to hurry so fast to the station as well, in case she missed Francine.
To an onlooker they would have nothing in common, Francine realised. They presented such a contrast to one another: she in her expensive costume, with her face discreetly made up and her blonde hair carefully groomed, and Emily with her countrywoman’s appearance. But in reality they were not so much sisters under the skin as mothers. Mothers who both loved and longed for the same child. A tear ran down Francine’s cheek to land on her lap, followed by another, and then somehow Emily was holding her and comforting her and the two of them were crying together, and unexpectedly Francine knew that, beyond the pain she felt now, there was something born of their love for one boy that could be the foundation for a future in which they would be allowed to share that love. Out of selflessness had come generosity, out of love had come more love. She had prayed that having found him again she would not lose her son a third time, and now Francine recognised that that prayer had been answered.
It was a funny old world, Emily decided as she walked home – despite the urgings of both Wilhelm and Tommy she flatly refused to learn to ride a bike; who would ever have thought that she would actually grow to respect and, yes, like that too pretty, too young girl she had once watched from the shadows steal Con’s attention away from her. She had certainly never imagined that it would be that same girl who would be responsible for the greatest gift her life had given her – both the greatest gifts, if she added in the fact that she would never have moved to Whitchurch if it hadn’t been for Tommy and thus she would never have met Wilhelm.
It had been a shock when Francine had announced that she was stepping back and letting Tommy make up his own mind what he wanted to do, a shock and a blessed relief, and yet after Francine had gone and she’d had time to think things over, Tommy having headed for the vegetable plot to relay the good news to Wilhelm, Emily had discovered that beneath her joy and relief she could still imagine how and what Francine would be feeling. She would have all those years of loving Tommy and watching him grow, and how those years would rush by for her. Francine, on the other hand, would have the same number of years thinking about the son she had lost – and for her the years could end up dragging in a misery of grief and loss. Emily believed in fair play and justice being done. Francine had played fair by Tommy and by her, and now it was Emily’s turn to play fair by Francine.
It hadn’t taken a moment for her to put on her hat and her cardigan and set off for the station, and if she had had doubts about what she was doing on the way there, well, now that she was on her way back there was none.
Tommy was happy now to be relieved of his fear of being taken away from her, but in years to come, and once he was a young man, it seemed to Emily that it would only be natural for him to be curious about the woman who had given birth to him, the family she was part of and, of course, the man who had fathered him.
Far better for Francine to be a part of his life openly than for him to feel as an adult that he couldn’t seek Francine out without hurting her, Emily felt. Because when push came to shove what both she and Francine wanted was the same thing, and that was for Tommy to be happy, and to be able to contribute towards that happiness.
TWENTY-SIX
Tiredly Lou pushed her curls back off her face as she stepped down from the train to the platform at Lime Street Station.
It was just over two weeks since she’d received Sasha’s letter telling her about Bobby, just over two weeks since she had had that terrible row with Kieran that had ended their engagement before it had begun and sent him storming out of her life.
Her life, but not her heart. It might have taken a long time for her to get there but now finally she knew just how much she did love him, Lou admitted.
Losing him had left an ache inside her that would never stop, an emptiness in her life that could never be filled, but if she had to make her choice again she would make the same one, she told herself fiercely as she joined the other travellers making their way out of the station and into the bright May sunshine.
Three years ago this same month, Liverpool had almost been destroyed when it had been blitzed by the Germans. The city still bore the scars from that dreadful time, outwardly on its streets and buildings, but also in the hearts of those who had lost loved ones.
Lou and Sasha had still been girls at that time, giggling and dancing their way through life, never imagining that they would ever be apart, much less fall out.
So much had changed since then. The majority of uniforms Lou could see on the street around her were being worn by Americans, their presence in the city taken for granted now with so many of them at the huge supply base near Warrington.
The grey hulls of the convoy ships and their naval escort vessels, both in the docks and lying out at anchor across the Liverpool bar, were a familiar sight, though. The convoys had been making their dangerous journey across the Atlantic and back throughout the whole of the war.
The lifting of the rules about how much fabric could be used in clothes at least meant that the young women thronging the city centre were once again wearing pretty dresses, even if most of them were home-made rather than shop bought.
Lou hadn’t had the heart to wear anything pretty herself. What was the point when there was no Kieran to see her? Instead, she had travelled in her uniform blouse and skirt, but even wearing that had brought back painful memories of the night they had spent together, when they had first declared their love for one another.
She’d written to tell both Sasha and her mother that she would be coming home on leave. However, even though she believed with fierce conviction that she had done the right thing, she still felt apprehensive about seeing Sasha. Her sister had seemed so emotionally fragile the last time she had seen her that Lou was worried about how Sash would cope with what had happened to Bobby.
It would surely have been the cruellest of cruel things for her to turn up boasting about her engagement to a fit and healthy man who they had once both fallen for, in the face of her twin’s commitment to a man who had been so badly wounded.
The familiar walk home from the city centre took Lou up through Edge Hill to the bottom end of Wavertree, and then off into Ash Grove, where her parents lived, with its neat, immaculately kept houses, their small front gardens showing off carefully cultivated displays of spring flowers to one side of the patterned tiled paths that led up to donkey-whitened front steps and burgundy-painted front doors.
The houses had been built in the aftermath of the First World War, to home the more affluent members of the lower middle class, who had seen the benefits enjoyed by those well off enough to move out of the city into Wavertree proper.
Even the fallen blossom from flowering cherry trees was swept up daily by the Grove’s housewives, including her own mother, Lou acknowledged as she cut down the well-trodden path to one side of her home so that she could go in through the back door.
All the houses in the avenue had back gardens as neat as those to the front. A rutted lane separated the gardens from the allotments and Lou could remember her mother standing at the gate that led onto that lane, waiting for her and Sasha to come home from school the first week they had been allowed to walk there on their own.
Now when her mother stood at the gate it was to look towards the allotments, to call Lou’s father in for his meals.
Today, though, her mother was in the kitchen, making what smelled like leek and potato soup, the back door ajar to allow in some fresh air, Lou’s cheery, ‘It’s me, Mum, I’m home,’ causing her mother to turn round from the stove, putting down the spoon with which she had been stirring the contents of the pan, to hurry over to greet her.
‘You’re earlier than you said. Me and Sasha were going to walk down to the station to meet you.’
‘I managed to catch an earlier connection than I’d expected. How is Sash, Mum?’
‘Bearing up. I can’t say that it wasn’t a terrible shock, though. Now, let me have a look at you. You’ve lost weight.’ Jean’s smile gave way to a concerned frown as she turned to study her youngest child.
Lou shook her head ruefully, a young woman now, Jean recognised with a small pang of sadness for the speed with which the years had passed, her sadness immediately banished by her pride in her daughter.
Yes, she had lost weight and that was because she hadn’t felt like eating since she and Kieran had had their row, but of course she couldn’t tell her mother that.
‘It’s because we’ve been so busy, Mum, moving planes all over the place.’
Lou managed to present her mother with a reassuring smile. There was no point in giving her poor mum something else to worry about.
‘Well, you should still eat.’
The kitchen, so dearly familiar, and so taken for granted during the years she had lived at home, might have had to go without its biannual coat of distemper, thanks to the war and rationing, the colour on the yellow walls faintly patchy by the cooker from steam and heat, but this was still home, and this room in particular so filled with the warmth of her mother’s love for them all.
‘Is Sash here? I’ve been thinking about her all the way home.’
Her poor twin. How was she coping? Lou was both longing to see her and half dreading doing so.
‘She’s still down at the hospital. The nurses have let her give a hand looking after Bobby – not doing nursing things, of course, but keeping him company and that. I must say, I’m proud of the way she’s handling things. She’s being ever so sensible and making plans for when Bobby gets out of hospital. She’s pestering your dad to let them get married so that she can look after him and make sure he does what the doctors tell him to do. Not that Bobby’s the type to feel sorry for himself, bless him.’
Lou was conscious of a small surge of relief as she listened to her mother. She’d been so afraid that Bobby’s accident would be too much for Sasha to bear, with her being so dependent on him, but from what their mother was saying, Sash was coping really well.
‘Sash still wants to marry Bobby then, despite what’s happened?’ Lou asked.
Jean’s frown deepened. ‘Well, that’s a fine question to ask, Lou. Of course she does. She loves him and you don’t stop loving someone just because they’ve lost their leg. I should have thought you’d have known better than to think otherwise. Sasha is proving what she’s made of and we’re all very proud of her.’
Jean saw the expression on Lou’s face and immediately her maternal anxiety was aroused. Something was wrong; now that she had had the chance to look at Lou properly she could see that it wasn’t just weight she’d lost. She’d lost the sparkle from her eyes, and the glow from her cheeks as well. They’d been replaced by dark circles beneath her eyes and hollows under her cheekbones. Her daughter had something on her mind that was troubling her – or was it something in her heart that was the cause of the sadness in Lou’s eyes?
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Jean announced. ‘Your dad’s out and won’t be back for a while.’
‘Down at the allotment, is he?’ Lou asked, summoning a smile. It was all very well for their mother to say that Sasha still wanted to marry Bobby and that she loved him; Lou wanted to hear her twin tell her that herself, before she could believe it. The Sasha she had seen in Newcastle would not have been strong enough to cope with what had happened. She had leaned on Bobby for support, and Lou couldn’t visualise her twin taking on the role of being the one to do the supporting. She hated the thought of Sasha having not just to struggle with the awfulness of what had happened but also having to pretend to be brave and strong when inside she really felt frightened and alone and trapped – the very feelings Sasha had described so vividly to Lou over Christmas.
‘No. He’s gone down to the depot to speak to the bosses to see if there’s any chance of them taking Bobby on at the Salvage Unit once he gets his discharge from the army. Sasha told your dad how much Bobby looks up to him and how he’d talked to her about trying to get into salvage work once the war is over.’
Lou took off her coat and went to hang it up in the hall, returning to pull out one of the kitchen chairs and sit down on it.
‘But Bobby’s lost a leg, and the work they do—’
‘They do all sorts, Lou. According to your dad Bobby’s very good with his hands, and good at electrics too, so it could be that they’ll take him on and train him up to work in that department. The doctor says that once they’ve sorted him out with a false leg, Bobby will be able to move about very well. He won’t need to be in a wheelchair or anything.’
The kettle was singing. Jean picked it up and poured a little of the boiling water into the pot, swilling it round to warm it before emptying it out and then putting in the tea leaves and filling the teapot.
Watching the familiar ritual, Lou felt the tight bands of pain round her heart tighten even further. Would she ever stand in her own kitchen, making tea for the man she loved and the children they would have had together? Blinking away tears, she took the mug of tea her mother handed to her.
Something was wrong, Jean just knew it. And girls being what they were, Jean was pretty sure that the cause of Lou’s sadness was some young man.
Some young man? A mother’s memory was very keen where her children were concerned. Names mentioned, looks given, things picked up on were never forgotten, simply stored away.
Picking up her own mug, and sitting down across the table from Lou, Jean asked as casually as she could, ‘Have you seen anything more of that Mallory boy?’
The mug slipped from Lou’s grasp, hot tea spilling on to her mother’s immaculately clean kitchen floor, and it wasn’t just the hot sting of the tea on her arm that filled her eyes with tears, Lou knew.
‘So it is him that’s got you looking like a wet weekend,’ Jean pronounced once she had cleaned up the mess and made Lou sit down with a cold cloth over her slightly scalded arm. ‘You’re better off without someone like that, Lou. It was his uncle that caused your Aunt Francine so much trouble, leaving her with a baby and her only just sixteen and him married.’
An awful thought struck Jean. ‘It isn’t that, is it, Lou? He hasn’t had what he wanted and then left you…?’
At another time she might have been more shocked to learn about Kieran’s uncle Con and her aunt Francine, but right now her mother’s question had Lou swiftly defending her love.
‘It’s nothing like that, Mum. Kieran isn’t like that. He’s honest and decent, and brave…and he’s got ambitions, plans for what he wants to do after the war.’
Jean’s heart sank when she heard the emotion in Lou’s voice. She was right then: it was the Mallory boy that was the cause of the bleak look in Lou’s eyes.
‘Well, I’m sorry if he’s hurt you, love, but—’
‘It isn’t Kieran who’s hurt me, Mum. He…he wants to marry me. We were going to go and choose the ring the day I got the letters from you and Sasha telling me about Bobby. He wanted us to come to Liverpool so that he could ask Dad’s permission for us to be engaged.’
Jean was nonplussed. She could understand a girl feeling low because she was keen on a boy who wasn’t keen on her, but for a girl to feel low because the lad she was obviously head over heels about had proposed to her? That was something Jean didn’t understand.
‘So if you love him and he wants to marry, why the long face?’ Jean demanded before asking in a more concerned voice, ‘He hasn’t got a wife, has he, or…or got some poor girl into trouble?’
‘No. It’s nothing like that, Mum. Kieran’s too honourable to do anything like that,’ Lou repeated.
‘Then what is it?’
Lou hadn’t meant to say anything to her mother but now that somehow she had guessed that something was wrong, Lou couldn’t see any point in refusing to say what it was.
‘It’s Sash, Mum.’
‘Sasha?’
‘Yes. You see, when w
e first met Kieran, when we were doing our dancing and he was working for his uncle, we were both sweet on him, and if anything I reckon that it was Sash he favoured rather than me. He was just a lad then, Mum,’ Lou defended her beloved, guessing what her mother was going to say about a young man encouraging both her young teenage daughters. ‘He’s different now, more grown up. The war does that to you. He says now that he thought of us just like he does his own siblings – a bit of a nuisance and always getting into scrapes for which he got the blame.
‘But it was because we fell out over him that Sasha turned back that night she fell into the bomb crater. When I saw her at Christmas she told me how she has these awful nightmares about being trapped and me leaving her there to run after Kieran. You heard her say not long back that she hated the sound of his name. I told her in Newcastle that I’d never let her down, and that I would never have chosen Kieran over her. I promised her, Mum, and we both said how much we’d missed one another and how we’d never fall out again. When me and Kieran first realised how we felt about one another, I was so happy I couldn’t think of anything else, but then when I got Sasha’s letter saying what had happened to Bobby I couldn’t help thinking how she’d feel about me and Kieran, especially if secretly she is still sweet on him. I can’t do that to her, Mum. I can’t have her thinking that I’ve let her down and that she doesn’t matter to me.’
In her agitation Lou got up, discarding the towel Jean had placed over her arm, pacing the kitchen floor as her emotions spilled out of her.
‘I tried to tell Kieran but he just got angry with me and said that I should put us – him and me – first and that I couldn’t love him if Sasha is more important to me than he is.’
Jean stood up and then sat down again. Beneath the anxiety she felt for Lou she was filled with pride and love for this, the youngest and the most turbulent, the most troublesome, some might say, of her four children. Who would have thought that boisterous headstrong Lou would feel so deeply about her loyalty to her twin or be prepared to make such a sacrifice for her?