Nightingales at War by Donna Douglas

Author:Donna Douglas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473517288
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2015-05-07T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND. What was she doing in the cellar?’

‘I don’t know, my dear,’ Reverend Stanton replied. ‘Perhaps she was taking shelter there?’

‘But why wasn’t she in the Anderson shelter with her aunt?’

Eve could hear them talking as she sat shivering under a blanket, but she didn’t know what to make of it. She didn’t know what to make of anything any more. One minute she was in the workshop, mending a pair of trousers, and the next she was being lifted out of the wreckage by strangers in uniform.

The last thing Eve remembered as they took her away was the sight of her aunt’s cash register, lying amid a heap of splintered wood that had once been the shop counter.

Now she was here, in the church hall with all the other dispossessed people. But there was no sign of Aunt Freda.

Reverend Stanton’s daughter Muriel approached her with a tea tray. ‘Here you are. I’ve put extra sugar in it.’ She held out a cup but Eve didn’t take it.

‘Have you seen my aunt?’ she asked.

Muriel’s smile wobbled. ‘Drink your tea, dear. It will make you feel better.’ She put the cup down on the floor beside her.

Eve stared at it. She didn’t deserve to feel better. ‘This is all my fault,’ she whispered.

She hadn’t realised she’d said the words aloud until she caught sight of Muriel’s quizzical look. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ she asked.

Eve shook her head. How could she answer that? Muriel was too good-hearted. She would never understand how someone could be as wicked as Eve.

Muriel hurried off with her tea tray, and Eve looked around her. Reverend Stanton had turned the church hall into a temporary rest centre for the homeless. The empty space where her aunt and the other ladies of the church had once held bazaars was now lined with mattresses. Families had set up camp there, surrounded by a hotchpotch of whatever belongings they had managed to retrieve.

Eve recognised the young mother who rented a room two doors down from Aunt Freda’s house. She sat on the floor, baby in her arms, her four other grubby-looking children crammed on the mattress around her. She claimed she was a widow, but Aunt Freda reckoned she knew better.

‘I daresay none of those children has the same father,’ she always said. ‘I’d be surprised if she knew who half of them were.’

Aunt Freda would certainly not approve of this woman being offered shelter in the church hall. ‘God’s house is no place for the ungodly,’ she would have declared.

The young woman looked up, caught Eve’s eye and sent her a wobbly smile of sympathy. Eve automatically slid her gaze away. Her aunt’s training was so drilled into her, she responded without thinking.

Besides, she didn’t deserve the woman’s sympathy. Not after what she’d done.

This was all her fault. She had prayed for a miracle to change her life, and God had punished her for it. He had sent down destruction, and all these poor people had paid the price for her blasphemy.

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