Secrets of the Chocolate Girls by Annie Murray

Author:Annie Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Twenty-Six

Mildred parked up within sight of the department store Owen Owen, which at first Ann thought had got away unscathed as she could see the shop sign against the sky. Later, taking it in more closely, she could see that its roof was gone. Even though by now the fires had all been put out, a thin trail of smoke was still seeping out through the blackened windows.

When Edwina opened up the back, Ann saw the two other members of their team who had been perching on stools and clinging on during the journey and both looked relieved to be let out. One was a quiet, plump woman whose name Ann did not catch; the other a tiny insect of a person in steel spectacles, called Dorrie Rudge.

There was no time for small talk and they immediately got busy, handing out soup – some very thin vegetable concoction, kept warm in an urn with rugs wrapped round it – and buns and sandwiches and tea. Ann, who was put in charge of the urn, handed out cup after cup of tea – the thing people seemed to want most – and Dorrie was kept busy rinsing out cups in a tin bowl for re-use.

They worked like mad. As well as the lack of water, there was no gas supply in the city, and many people had lost their homes. The queues never ended, of dust-covered, distraught people. Ann was glad she did not have too much time to stop and absorb the terrible reality of sights and sounds around her – the bodies she knew must be being recovered, the hysterical weeping she could hear from somewhere in the distance. But the thing that she could not shut out, that none of them could, was the stench. The mixture of charred things, the whiffs of gas and hints of something much worse mixed in with it – a foul, animal smell like burning meat – was something her mind did not want to linger on even for a second, but she could not escape it either.

She felt almost overwhelmed by the number of people – they seemed to keep coming and coming, all of them shocked, either into a sort of stunned silence, or chattering endlessly from nerves.

A lady approached the van, a stout, matronly person with black, oily hair pinned back with a grip on one side. She wore rough, patched clothes and what looked like an army trench coat from the last war draped over her shoulders and almost reaching the ground. She was carrying a child in her arms, between one and two years of age, Ann gauged, and a gaggle of others – six more – all following, like a mother goose with her brood.

‘Ooh – a cuppa’d see me right, that it would!’ she said, with surprising cheerfulness, revealing few remaining teeth.

Oh Lor’, Ann thought. They had just run out. She felt terrible.

‘Here, children,’ Mildred said from beside her. ‘There are a few buns left – you share these out between you.

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