The Girls They Left Behind by Lilian Harry

Author:Lilian Harry [Harry, Lilian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Sagas
ISBN: 9781409130338
Google: OtlMbwvlq3oC
Amazon: B00QQQLABA
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2010-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The city of London exploded and burned about its inhabitants’

ears. There was no doubt now that the war would not be easily won. There was doubt that it might be won at all.

‘Why don’t we just give in?’ Kathy Simmons said miserably.

She crossed her arms over her bulging stomach, as if to keep her growing baby safe. Jess remembered feeling the same when she had been expecting Maureen. But a baby wasn’t any safer inside its mother than out. A mother’s body was as likely to be blown up as a baby’s … ‘Why don’t we just let him come and take over? We could just go back to living normal, without all this killing.’

‘Could we?’ It was tempting to think so, but Frank said that people who thought that way didn’t realise what life would be like under Hitler. They’d already forgotten what he’d done to the Jews. Making them wear yellow stars, not letting them do decent jobs, forcing them to live like rats … And there had been those horrible stories about camps like Auschwitz, reported in the papers last year. And the terrible things that had happened in Poland… Would he let anyone live a normal life?

‘We can’t give up now,’ she said. ‘We’re in it too deep.’ She looked compassionately at Kathy. ‘I suppose there’s no chance of your husband getting home?’

‘Not this side of heaven.’ Kathy flinched. ‘I didn’t hear that! It didn’t come out the way I meant. I just meant, it’ll be heaven when he does come home, not ‘

‘I know. It’s all right.’ It was all too easy to make a casual remark and then realise what it sounded like. ‘Look, you

know you can come over to Frank and me any time you want anything, don’t you? Day or night, it doesn’t matter.’ She thought of Kathy in her air-raid shelter at night, alone with two little girls. Suppose the baby started to come then? ‘If you want to be with us at night anyway, when the time comes well, you know you’re welcome.’

Kathy shook her head. ‘There’s not room, is there? These little dugouts aren’t meant to have parties in. I’ll be all right. I don’t have babies quick anyway, the girls both took over twelve hours. But I’ll be glad of your help just to give an eye to them while I’m laid up.’

Laid up! Why, she wouldn’t even be able to go to the shelter after the birth. She ought to be in hospital, Jess thought, where she can be properly looked after.

‘Haven’t you got any relations? Isn’t there anyone you can go to?’

‘Not a soul,’ Kathy said with a cheerfulness that didn’t fool Jess for a minute. ‘I’m not a Pompey girl, you see. Mike and me, we both come from Basingstoke. My mum and dad died when I was a kiddy, I was brought up by my gran. She’s over ninety now and lives with my aunty, and she hasn’t got room for rite as well, anyway, we never did get on very well.

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