Courage of the Railway Girls by Maisie Thomas

Author:Maisie Thomas [Thomas, Maisie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781804942208
Publisher: Cornerstone

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was a good thing Raymond had got tired of her. Now he would never know what a dithering, dishonest fool Emily was and that she wasn’t worthy of him. If he had still been her boyfriend, though, would it have made a difference? As Raymond Hancock’s girlfriend, would she have held her head high as she reported the pilfering? Oh, if only she still had Raymond to talk to. But even if they had still been a couple, they wouldn’t have been able to discuss anything because he was away fighting.

Where was he? Was he safe? He must have finished his basic training by now. Sometimes Emily had an all-consuming temptation to go round and ask his mother, but that would be a huge mistake.

At other times her throat dried up and she felt hot all over as envy scorched through her when she saw Persephone looking radiant with new-found happiness, her skin glowing and her violet eyes dewy. Not so long ago, Emily had looked like that, but now her appearance was lacklustre. When she was Raymond’s girl, she used to look at herself in the mirror and it had been rather like looking at a photograph of a film star in one of those posed pictures where the light was angled just so in order to make her as lovely as possible; but whereas it was artificial light for the actress, it had been an inner glow for Emily. She had never felt happier or more confident.

Strangely, she still felt confident. Raymond had given her that. By loving her, he had made her feel self-assured, and bizarre as it might sound, that feeling was still there even though her heart was in tatters. It had been partly because of this that she had been able to insist on leaving her boring old job to start on the railways.

And look where that had got her! Into a right old pickle – although ‘pickle’ made it sound as if it wasn’t a serious situation. Should she confide in Daddy and ask for his advice about what she ought to do? But if she was going to do that, she should have done it ages ago when this had all started.

Every time she examined her new rota at work, her heart was in her mouth as she silently begged God not to let her be on stores duty. Mostly she wasn’t, because her official role was as a station porter, a job she loved. She also enjoyed tasks that did not take place on the station but were well away from the stores, such as salvage work.

‘And what does that entail?’ her father asked, lighting his pipe in the sitting room.

‘Mostly ferrying trolleys loaded with bundles of paper to the wagons to be taken away to paper mills. It’s not very exciting, but it matters.’

‘It’s important work, I agree,’ said Daddy, ‘but—’

‘I know,’ put in Emily. ‘It’s not going to help me find a job after the war.’

‘I was going to say, “not at all what I imagined for you when you were a little girl.

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