LITMIR.BIZ

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then,’ Victor said. ‘Let’s see what’s what, shall we?’

      He unlocked the door and stepped into the room. The faded cotton curtains were drawn and in the dim light they saw a single bed, a dark wardrobe, two dining chairs by a small rickety table and a chest of drawers with a cracked mirror above it. None of the furniture matched and the walls and lino and dirty rug were all in depressing shades of green, brown and beige.

      ‘Well—’ Victor said. ‘It’s got everything we need, I suppose.’

      ‘It’s horrible,’ Scarlett said.

      She stepped over to the window and drew back the sagging curtains. They felt greasy. The view from the dirty window was of the back street they had come in from. She could see Jim there, still waiting by his van. She longed to rush back down and beg him to take her back to the Red Lion.

      ‘Want to see your room, pet?’

      Scarlett sighed. ‘S’pose so.’

      He unlocked the other door. This room was much smaller, hardly more than a boxroom, with just enough space for a single bed, a small wardrobe and a chest of drawers all set in a line along one wall. There was no rug, no wallpaper and the curtains didn’t quite meet in the middle. Scarlett hated it.

      ‘Better get our stuff in. Mustn’t keep Jim waiting any longer out there.’

      Scarlett’s whole body felt heavy and listless. How was she going to bear living in this horrible place? Reluctantly, she followed her father down the maze of stairs and corridors to the back door. They unloaded the boxes into the back yard, thanked Jim, and lugged everything upstairs. By the time they had got it all in, Scarlett did at least know the way.

      As they unpacked, she began to feel just a bit better. The wireless was placed on the chest of drawers with her parents’ wedding photo and one of herself as a baby. Their crockery and cutlery and cooking things were piled on the table. Scarlett made the single bed up rather awkwardly with the sheets and blankets and eiderdown from her parents’ double one. Then she turned her attention to her own little room. Her small store of books, her old teddy, her musical box and the pink glass vase she had won at a fair were set out, her hair things and clothes were put away. A photo of her mother on a beach, laughing, went on a nail conveniently situated on the wall above the bed, while her pink and blue flowery eiderdown went on it. It should have made the room seem more like home, but somehow seeing the familiar things in this alien setting only seemed to emphasise just how different it all was.

      Her father tapped on the door and put his head round. ‘All right, pet? Oh, it looks better already, doesn’t it? You’re a born homemaker, just like your mum.’

      Scarlett said nothing. She was trying hard not to burst into tears or scream with rage, she wasn’t sure which.

      ‘We’ll get one of those electric kettle things in the morning, so we can brew up,’ Victor went on.

      It was only then that Scarlett fully realised that something was missing from their new living arrangements. ‘Where’s the kitchen?’ she asked.

      Victor looked uncomfortable. ‘Well—er—there isn’t one. Not as such. But, like I said, we can get a kettle. And maybe one of those toasters. You know.’

      ‘But we can’t live on tea and toast!’ Scarlett burst out. ‘How can we live in a place where you can’t cook?’

      ‘Well—no—I’m sure there’s some way round it—’

      ‘And the bathroom—where’s the bathroom?’

      Victor was on firmer ground here. ‘Oh, I found that. It’s down the first flight of stairs, second door on the left.’

      ‘So it’s not ours? We have to share it?’

      ‘Er—well—yes—’

      It was all getting worse and worse. Scarlett felt as if she were trapped in a bad dream from which there was no waking.

      Victor shifted uneasily. ‘Look—er—it’s nearly five. I got to go. Mustn’t be late for my first shift. Will you be all right here by yourself, pet?’

      ‘Oh, fine, just fine,’ Scarlett said with heavy sarcasm.

      Her father reached out and patted her shoulder. ‘There’s my good girl.’

      When he was gone, Scarlett went and sat on her bed. The place smelt all wrong. There were mysterious bangings of doors and muffled shouts coming from below. The tiny room seemed to close round her like a prison cell. It was all strange—strange and horrible. She reached for Gone with the Wind, but even that couldn’t distract her from the aching loneliness. She clapped the book shut, threw it on the bed and went out, clattering down the gloomy staircases towards the brightness and life outside.

      In the downstairs passage she stopped short. Coming in at the back door was a tall fair-haired boy. He was wearing salt-stained khaki shorts, a faded red shirt open at the neck and a pair of old plimsolls. His skin was tanned golden-brown by the sun and he had a rolled-up towel under his arm.

      ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You must be the new cellar man’s daughter.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Jonathan. I live here.’

      Scarlett took his hand. It was warm and strong. ‘I’m Scarlett. How do you do?’

      His smile broadened into one of delight. ‘Scarlett? Really? Like Scarlett O’Hara?’

      Scarlett found herself smiling back. ‘That’s right. My mother named me after her.’

      ‘Well, I do declare!’ Jonathan said in a drawling southern states accent. ‘Welcome to the Trafalgar, Miz Scarlett.’

      Suddenly, life didn’t seem quite so dreadful.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      JONATHAN’S first thought was that he made a very poor Rhett Butler. His first instinct was to keep her talking.

      ‘Where are you off to?’ he asked, without thinking. It sounded lame the moment it came out of his mouth.

      ‘Oh—just out,’ Scarlett said.

      Scarlett—such a wonderful name. And it suited her. There was something wild and vivid about her. When his parents had said something about the new cellar man bringing his daughter with him, he’d not really thought about it. If he had any notion of what she might be like, it was a pasty-faced kid, someone who got in the way. Not a girl like this, with a challenging stare and a mobile mouth and the beginning of a woman’s figure showing through her thin cotton dress.

      ‘I’ll come with you, if you like. Show you round a bit,’ he offered.

      ‘I have been to Southend before, you know,’ Scarlett said.

      Jonathan felt horribly rejected. He hid it with a nonchalant shrug. ‘OK. If you’d rather be on your own—’

      To his delight, she looked slightly flustered.

      ‘No…I mean…I just thought you might have something else you wanted to do,’ she said.

      ‘Tell you what I do want to do, and that’s eat,’ Jonathan admitted. ‘I’ve been out all day in the Ray, and I’m starving.’

      ‘The Ray?’

      Of course, stupid of him, she wasn’t local, she wouldn’t know what he was talking about.

      ‘It’s a channel of water out in the estuary beyond the mud-flats,’ he explained. ‘You sail out on the falling tide, then you can spend all day out there sailing and swimming and having races and that, and playing cricket on the Ray Sands. It’s brilliant. Do you sail?’

      Scarlett shook her head. Her ponytail of dark, almost black hair shivered in glossy waves.

      ‘We lived in the country.’

      ‘Can you swim?’

      ‘Oh,

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