LITMIR.BIZ

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step onto the sea and follow it.

      ‘Where will your heart lead you, Joan?’ His voice broke into her thoughts. She leaned back on the bench, and his arm slipped around her shoulders. She nestled into his warmth.

      ‘To tell the truth, Jack, I don’t know. I’m only seventeen. My life is ahead of me. The only thing I’m certain of is that you are right—we must all follow wherever our hearts lead. When my heart calls to me I shall follow. I promise you that.’

      He smiled at her. For a moment she thought he was going to try to kiss her, and she wondered how that would feel. Not like Freddie’s rough, urgent slobberings, she guessed. Jack would be gentle and considerate. But he turned his face away, and she felt an unexpected shiver of disappointment.

      ‘You’re cold. Here, take my coat.’ He shrugged off his thin tweed jacket and tucked it around her shoulders. She pulled it close around her neck. The collar smelt of wool and spice, as though his aftershave had rubbed off on it.

      ‘Thank you. You are very kind.’

      ‘It’s my pleasure.’

      They sat in silence for a few minutes more. Joan was still considering what he had said about doing his part in the war. Could it really be that a small action from one person could change the whole course of the war? She supposed it was like dominoes—as a child she had spent hours standing her set in a row up on their ends, then gently flicking the first one and watching as the whole series tumbled down. Maybe what Jack meant was that he might be the first domino. Some action of his in the future could be like the toppling of that first domino, and could lead ultimately to the toppling of Hitler. It was the most compelling reason she’d heard yet for why a man would want to join up.

      ‘I wonder if perhaps I should take you home, now?’

      Joan wished she could sit there on the bench gazing at the moonlit sea, with Jack’s arm around her shoulders, for ever. But no doubt he was cold without his coat, and it must be getting late. She nodded, and stood up, handing him back his jacket. ‘I shan’t need that while I’m walking, but thank you so much.’

      He slipped it on, and she held out her hand to him. After a moment’s hesitation he took it. His hand was surprisingly warm despite the chilly evening. They walked in step along the prom, under the cliffs, and finally up a zigzag path that led to the clifftop. ‘This is my road,’ Joan said, as they turned away from the sea.

      ‘I’d better say goodbye to you here,’ said Jack, stopping on the corner. ‘In case your parents are looking out of the window. I don’t want you to get in trouble for walking home with a boy.’ He let go of her hand and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

      ‘Goodbye, then, and thank you, again, for saving me from that horrible thug.’ On a whim she put her hands on his shoulders, reached up and kissed his cheek, before turning and running along the street and back to her house. At the garden gate she looked back. He was still standing there on the corner, shoulders hunched, watching her. He lifted a hand to wave. She waved back, and darted into the house by the back door into the kitchen.

      Mother was sitting at the kitchen table. She wagged a finger at Joan. ‘There you are! Margaret was back ten minutes ago. I know you were at the dance with her and not at the WVS, so you needn’t try to pretend you weren’t. Thankfully your father went out to his bridge club and isn’t home yet, or you’d be in real trouble, my girl. You’re very lucky.’

      ‘We walked back separately. I came along the prom as it is such a beautiful evening. I stopped to look at the moonlight on the sea.’ Best to be as truthful as possible, Joan reasoned, but no need to say she’d walked home with a young man. Mother would only suspect the worst. With a shudder Joan realised that Mother would suspect Jack of being like Freddie, trying to take advantage of innocent young girls.

      ‘Are you all right? You look frozen half to death. I don’t know, wandering along the prom on your own at this time of night. Anything could have happened to you! There are bad people out there, Joan, bad men who will hurt girls like you.’

      ‘I’m all right, Mother. I’ll go to bed now, I think.’ Joan left the kitchen and ran up the stairs, before she found herself blurting out that she knew all about the bad men Mother was talking about. With Jack she had felt safe and secure, but back home the horrors of the earlier part of the evening were catching up with her, and she felt like sobbing. She took a deep breath before entering her bedroom. She didn’t want to explain any of it to Mags, either. It was strange. Until this evening she’d always told Mags everything of importance that happened to her, and a lot of things that weren’t important as well. But the events with Freddie and then Jack had changed her. She felt as though she’d crossed some kind of line between girlhood and womanhood. Or at least taken the first steps towards crossing it. And it felt like a journey she would need to make on her own, without her sister.

       Chapter Five

      September 2014

      ‘Ali, give us a hand with this,’ called Pete from the hallway. Ali put down her magazine—it had been too much to hope that she might get a few minutes’ quiet reading time with a cup of tea—and went to see what he was up to. He was half inside the under-stairs cupboard, in which a downstairs loo had been installed at some point in the house’s history. They had agreed to rip out this cloakroom and replace it with one in a planned, back extension, beside a new utility room, which would replace the old coal shed.

      ‘What do you need doing?’ she asked. He’d made good progress since she last checked, and the old toilet was now in the driveway awaiting a trip to the tip.

      ‘I’m trying to pull off this old wooden cladding,’ he said. ‘It’s just so tight working in this confined space. If you can stand there and pull at the boards as I wrench them off, then stack them out in the hallway—that’ll halve the time it takes.’

      ‘Sure. Will do.’ Ali positioned herself, and they began work. He was right. It was a quick job with the two of them working, now that Pete didn’t have to keep squeezing in and out of the tiny space.

      Soon they had all the cladding off and neatly stacked in the hallway. More for the tip, thought Ali, although maybe it could be used as firewood in the winter, after they’d had the chimneys swept.

      ‘Interesting,’ said Pete, who was examining the newly uncovered wall.

      ‘What is?’ Ali poked her head inside the cupboard.

      ‘That cladding covered up a door.’ Pete picked up his crowbar and began forcing it into a crack.

      ‘A door? Leading where?’

      ‘Let’s find out. I’d imagine it leads to an under-floor space.’

      ‘A cellar?’ Wow. So perhaps this already enormous house had a cellar as well? Ali felt a little rush of excitement. More to explore!

      There was a huge crack as the door splintered open. Pete put down the crowbar, kicked his toolbox aside and took hold of the door with both hands to pull it open further. Ali looked inside. Beyond the door were steep steps leading downwards—it was a cellar!

      ‘Bloody hell! As if we needed any more space!’ exclaimed Pete. ‘Fetch the inspection torch, will you? It’s hanging up in the garage.’

      Ali ran to get the torch, and plugged it in a nearby socket in the hallway. Carefully, Pete made his way down the crumbling concrete steps. Ali followed, her hand on his shoulder to steady herself.

      The inspection torch was bright, and lit the space well. ‘Mind your head,’ said Pete, bending double to dodge the joists from the floor above. ‘It’s not full height, sadly. I’d hoped we could put a games room or home cinema down here.’

      Ali laughed. ‘Typical boy stuff. I had in mind a storage area for Christmas decorations and camping gear. Probably easier to get it from here than going up in the loft.’ The loft wasn’t boarded. If they could

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