The Forgotten Girls by Lizzie Page

Author:Lizzie Page [Page, Lizzie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838881276
Publisher: Bookouture

Twenty-Four

LONDON, JUNE 1944

Alas, Marty was not so easily placated about the pictures.

While Bobby went to have some discussions about the ones that had passed, Marty and Elaine walked back through the offices of Life Corp. Elaine hoped her newly engaged ebullience didn’t show too much.

‘This is… infuriating, you know, really, really infuriating,’ repeated Marty. It was like he was talking in elaborate code, but Elaine didn’t need a fancy machine to decipher what it meant: ‘Dib, dib, dib, you’re rubbish, you’re really, really rubbish.’ And maybe a ‘Dib, dib, dib. After all I’ve done for you…’

‘I know.’

‘Are the eleven any good?’

‘The what?’

‘The photos, I heard there were eleven. Are there? Are they any good?’

‘No – yes, eleven, yes – I think so. They’re all rather out of focus. I’m sorry, Marty, really I am.’

Marty was catatonic with suppressed rage and indignation. His face was one tight over-drilled muscle. Elaine thought to herself, Marty has the same background as you. Fiercely smart and hard-working. Everything he’s got, he’s had to fight for.

‘It’s just such a waste. He nearly died for these pictures. Only to have some spinach screw everything.’

‘Marty saved my life. Put me back on the straight and narrow.’

‘I know,’ she said sullenly. Was it really just a couple of days since they’d travelled down to Eastbourne together?

She had to skip to keep up with his strides. Marty wouldn’t even look at her. She found this annoying. They weren’t his photos, were they? He hadn’t nearly died in a sea of blood taking them, had he?

‘How could this have possibly happened, Elaine? I mean, tell me, how the hell did your brother end up working here?’

‘Bobby seems to have got over it,’ she said spitefully. Restore the balance between them.

Marty turned. Elaine saw suddenly that he was even angrier than she had realised.

‘Bobby is easy come, easy go, do you hear me?’

It suddenly seemed to her that he wasn’t talking about the photos at all but implying something else entirely. She suddenly remembered Justin saying, Robert Capa has a girl in every port. Who had told him that?

Marty pressed his glasses against his face. ‘Robert told you Martha was there? In Normandy?’

‘Yes, he did,’ Elaine lied. Martha? Ernest’s girl was in Normandy?

Marty didn’t believe her. She could see it in his eyes. He thought he’d got one over her again.

‘He’s not steadfast, he’s not reliable.’

Elaine wasn’t having this. Not her fiancé, not any more. She raised herself up.

‘Maybe that’s between me and him, Marty. Do you get what I’m saying? We’re engaged now, and that is that.’

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