Rose in the Blitz by Rebecca Stevens

Author:Rebecca Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicken House

The night was cold and clear and glittering with ice and stars and broken glass. Rose was shivering in spite of her parka, which she was wearing over Rosemary’s blue dress. She knew it didn’t look right, but who cared? She could take it off when they got there.

‘All right, Rose?’

They had come into central London on the tube and Rosemary was leading the way to the opera house at Covent Garden, shining her torch on the pavement in front of them as they picked their way between piles of rubble and broken glass.

‘It’s so dark.’

‘You’ll get used to it. Stick close to me and you’ll be all right.’

‘What happens if there’s an air raid?’

‘We can go to a shelter, if we feel like it.’ Rosemary looked back over her shoulder. Rose saw the gleam of her grin in the dark. ‘Or . . . we just keep on dancing!’ She looked up at the sky and shook her small fist at an imaginary plane. ‘Do your worst, Adolf! London can take it!’

They stumbled on. Rose stood on a piece of glass that crunched under her foot like snow. A dark shape in a doorway turned into a man as a match flared, lighting up his face. He looked at Rose from under his hat, his mouth twisting into a crooked grin, before the flame went out, leaving just the glow of his cigarette in the darkness. There was a cackle of female laughter and a burst of singing from an unseen pub.

‘Come on!’ Rosemary took Rose’s hand and pulled her away. ‘Billy said they’d let us in at the stage door. It’s this way.’

As they turned into the alleyway, a door flew open and two young women wearing some sort of uniform tumbled out in a gust of laughter and cigarette smoke, then stumbled off into the darkness, their arms round each other. In another doorway a couple were kissing. A black cat scuttled through the beam of Rosemary’s torch and somewhere a trumpeter played a few sorrowful notes.

‘This is it.’

Rosemary had stopped outside a door in the wall. She shone her torch over chipped green paint and a sign that read ‘STAGE DOOR’. As she lifted her fist to knock, the door opened, spilling light into the darkness and revealing the outline of a tall man whose shadow shot out in front of him on to the greasy black pavement.

‘Ladies.’ He showed them his teeth in a creepy smile and held the door open for them. He was wearing a black suit and bow tie. One of the musicians? thought Rose. He looked like a figure from a bad dream.

Rosemary stepped into the light. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and pulled a ‘yuck’ face at Rose behind his back as they went through.

Inside, an elderly man in a flat cap was sitting in an ancient armchair, reading the paper in front of an electric bar fire.

‘Hello!’ Rosemary gave him her biggest smile. ‘We’re friends of Billy Boyce. He’s with

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