Moon by Sarah Steele

Author:Sarah Steele [Steele, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2020-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

17

LONDON, 1960

It had been Diana’s birthday. They were going to go back to her Cheyne Walk flat after work to drink champagne and make spaghetti and plaster their faces with creams while they watched The Avengers. ‘Absolutely no boys,’ Diana had said as they walked out of the workshop and into the car parked in the street outside Belgrave’s, an early birthday present from her parents.

Nancy was more than happy with that: they’d been out twice this week already with Diana’s brother and his friends, and although she loved a night out on the town, she needed a quiet one. It would be fun, just the two of them: Diana was hilarious, even if she was a bit of a madam sometimes, and could take off just about anyone from work. Her impersonation of Monsieur Jacques was so good that one of the new girls had thought he was actually ordering her, from behind a partition, to go and buy tartan thread for the workshop.

She really ought to go home tonight, she knew: she’d slept more on Diana’s put-you-up than in her own bedroom this week. Dad’s jokes about dirty stop-outs were beginning to feel slightly less jokey every time she put her key in the door of number 75, and Mum had long since replaced her ‘treat this house like a hotel’ rants with the silent treatment.

She’d go back tomorrow, and maybe buy them all fish and chips and a few bottles of Dad’s favourite beer. Perhaps Peggy and Donald could come over, if her sister was feeling up to it. Should she have spent more time with Peggy? she wondered. It was hard to know where the line was between being a support and getting in the way, and she had no idea how to begin comforting her heartbroken sister and quietly stoic brother-in-law. No one could really know what they were going through again. She made a mental note to buy Peggy some flowers. Before she went to the chippy. And the offie.

They clattered up the stairs to the flat, throwing their coats on the sofa and their shoes on the floor, before Diana disappeared into the kitchen to fetch a couple of greasy wine glasses, filling them from a bottle straight from the fridge, the condensation on the heavy cold glass nearly causing it to slip from her hand. Nancy was always amazed at the contents of Diana’s little fridge, where the ratio of champagne to sour milk was at least six to one, and the only foodstuffs were dried-up lemon halves and a pot of Gentleman’s Relish. ‘Cheers,’ she said, handing Nancy a glass. ‘You hungry? We could just go to the Stockpot.’

‘It’ll be closed by now.’

‘You’re right. And it is a bit working-girl, isn’t it? All those shepherd’s pies. Boarding school all over again.’ She shuddered. ‘I forgot to go shopping, so there’s not much here, I’m afraid.’

Nancy did wonder if Diana ever ate. She’d never seen her friend consume more than the lettuce out of the middle of her lunchtime sandwich, or the lemon in her gin and tonic.

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