Secrets of the Homefront Girls by Kate Thompson

Author:Kate Thompson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical Saga
ISBN: 9781473698123
Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
Published: 2019-07-24T23:00:00+00:00

17

Lily

By the Friday of that week, Pat and his gang from the docks were still missing and the news coming out from France was beyond anything Lily could’ve imagined.

It was a sombre group of girls who huddled over their usual table in the Yardley canteen. The only food on offer was a tureen of watery soup and a rather flaccid-looking piece of tongue served with boiled marrow, not that anyone had much of an appetite.

‘Guess you could say that’s the end of the bore war then,’ said Fat Lou bluntly, tossing a copy of the Daily Mirror down on the tabletop. ‘So much for having the Hun on the run. Hitler’s having a great big smash-up, ain’t he?’

Photographs showed streets littered with wreckage and bodies, smoke roiling into the horizon.

‘We made a trip clean into hell,’ the skipper of a small boat was quoted as saying.

‘I can’t bear to think of my Jimmy there,’ wept Nan, burying her face in her hands. ‘Please God, spare him, we’ve only been married five minutes.’

The girls sat in silence as her sobs echoed around the canteen, with no one sure what – if anything – they could say to alleviate her suffering.

‘And what of your Alfie?’ Esther asked Renee. ‘Any news?’

Renee shook her head, her face a mask of misery.

Lily could’ve wept for her. Her little sister was scarcely recognisable from the bombastic young woman she’d first met on her return to Yardley’s. The life seemed to have bleached out of her. Her skin had a sickly pallor and underneath the tabletop, Lily could see she had clenched her fists so tight, her fingernails were cutting crescents into the flesh on her palms.

‘Count your blessings you ain’t married, Renee,’ Nan remarked. ‘At least you ain’t looking at life as a widow!’

Uncharacteristically, Renee said nothing, just nodded and traced a complicated pattern through some grains of salt on the tabletop.

‘Nan,’ said Lily tactfully. ‘I don’t think anyone can hold a monopoly on grief in these dark days. Look at Esther here. She’s just lost her father.’

‘To TB in a ghetto,’ Nan snapped, dabbing her eye with a hankie. ‘It’s not as if he died in action.’

A collective inhale went round the table as everyone stared at Esther. She stood slowly, picking up her plate and mug.

‘Excuse me,’ she whispered, before making a dignified exit from the canteen.

‘How could you say such a thing, Nan?’ Lily blazed, once Esther was out of earshot. ‘That girl will never see her father again. Her family and her homeland have been torn apart.’

‘Oh, I know I shouldn’t have said that,’ Nan sighed. ‘I’ll apologise. I’m not sleeping at the moment.’

‘You know what we need,’ Fat Lou remarked, sparking up a Craven ‘A’. ‘We need a night out, cheer ourselves up.’

‘There’s a wartime knitting demonstration by Miss Muriel Grantham at Roberts this evening. It might be fun …’ said Betty.

Fat Lou shot her a withering look.

‘I said cheer us up, not bleedin’ finish us off. No, I was thinking about a beauty party.

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