Catching Falling Stars (20 page)

“We’re going?” I practically squeak in surprise.

“Just for a short while,” she explains, trying to tuck her wavy hair behind her ears. “Reverend Ashton has persuaded me that it really is my civic duty to play some uplifting, patriotic music on the piano, to raise spirits.”

I feel my own spirits rising, as I realize I won’t miss out on the party after all. Though how I can be with my friends – especially Lawrence – without her noticing, I’ll have to figure out later.

“Miss Saunders,” a man’s voice interrupts us, and we both turn to see Mr Wills tipping his cap our way as he hurries by.

Auntie Sylvia’s face darkens.

I wonder why the farmer, of all the villagers, bothers her the most.

But that’s one question I think might be
too
impolite to ask…

I tried very hard to say no. Honest I did.

But Lawrence, Jess and Archie just wouldn’t listen.

“What do you think? Am I a Roman emperor, or what?” says Lawrence, draping a length of the white parachute silk around him. “You lot had better say yes, or I’ll have you all thrown to the lions.”

“Take it off – don’t mess everything up,” I tell him, making a grab for the cloth. Auntie Sylvia let me store it – Lil’s useless present – up here in the attic.

“Snobby Saunders is in Basildon,” says Jess, crawling across the floor to investigate a battered suitcase full of old-lady underwear. “She can’t see us, Hope ’n’ Glory.”

Auntie Sylvia taught in school for the first time today, and Rich stayed with her the whole time, through the lessons with both evacuees and locals. And then they both went straight to the bus stop and headed for town and the music shop there. Auntie Sylvia wanted to buy new sheet music for the upcoming barn dance, she said.

My
job was to come up to the loft and rummage for more clothes to turn into bunting. We made a start yesterday, bumping the heavy sewing machine down the ladder steps and then lifting it one more flight down to the sitting room.

It’s now perched on Auntie Sylvia’s father’s writing desk with a pile of fabric triangles beside it, ready to be stitched on to lengths of rope.

And I’m not only looking through the old clothes up there for possible pieces of decoration. Auntie Sylvia says she’ll make some new, smart things for me and Rich to wear on Saturday.

She’ll think I’m here on my own, maybe setting aside an old pair of trousers of her father’s to cut down into shorts for Rich, or an old crêpe de Chine dress of her mother’s to make me a pretty blouse.

But instead, I’m with my friends, who persuaded me to let them “help”, though they’re actually just mucking around and driving me crazy.

“Now I’m an Egyptian mummy …
woo!
” says Lawrence, throwing the end of the sheet of parachute silk around his face and shuffling on his knees towards me with his arms outstretched.

I duck away from him, feeling shy – and worried. Auntie Sylvia and Rich won’t be back for at least another hour, I think, but it’s going to take me for ever to tidy up the mess that my friends are making.

“What about this?” says Jess. “Does it give me an hourglass figure?”

Lawrence bursts out laughing before I can see what our friend’s doing, so I know it’s going to be bad.

It is.

Jess is holding an oversized, boned, pink corset around her waist. Old Mrs Saunders must have been a big woman, totally different from her tall, slim daughter.

“Take it off,” I say, though I can’t help giggling.

“Look at all this s-s-stuff!” says Archie, who’s flipping through the picture frames leaning against the walls. “My mum and me, we don’t have ‘stuff’. Our f-f-flat’s too small.”

Archie’s getting really excited about his mum coming now, since she’ll be here the day of the barn dance. Charlie and Mary at the pub even offered her a room for free, so she can stay the night if she likes. “Hey, they can afford to,” Jess had said when she passed on the message to Archie. “Think of all the money they save getting me to skivvy for free when they could be paying someone…”

As I shove the corset back in the suitcase, I see Archie has moved on to something else.

“Oh! Please don’t,” I say, not wanting my friends to see the photo of the soldier.

They all think so little of Auntie Sylvia that it feels like treachery to let them see her precious portrait, her lost love.

“What, what is it?” says Lawrence, clearly sensing it might be something interesting from my reaction.

Jess’s already there, staring at it with Archie.

“Who is it?” she asks.

“Please be careful with it,” I beg them. “It’s Mrs Saunders’ sweetheart. He died in the Great War.”

“Er, I don’t think he did,” says Archie, raising his eyes from the photo to look at us all.

“What do you mean?” I ask, frowning at him.

“He didn’t die,” Archie says plainly. “This – this is your d-d-dad, Lawrence!”

“What?” says Lawrence, grabbing the frame and staring at the young man’s face, his dark, bright eyes. “It can’t be!”

“Turn it round – see what’s on the back,” says Jess, scrabbling at the reverse of the frame, flipping the tiny catches so the backboard comes away. “Usually there’s the name of the photographer’s studio, and sometimes the sitter. Yes! Look – see?”

Three sets of hands turn the frame around. And there, on the back of the photograph, is more than just a name. Written in faded, scratchy copperplate lettering, are
these
words…

To my dearest Sylv,

With love and affection always,

Your Joe

My mind is racing, running, twisting itself in knots to understand this. And Lawrence isn’t finding it any easier.

“Joe,” he mumbles. “My dad’s name is Joe…”

“T-told you!” says Archie.

“And if you still don’t believe it, look at this,” says Jess, grabbing the picture and now holding up the soldier’s face next to Lawrence’s. The brown, laughing eyes are the same. There’s no doubting the resemblance, scribbled love note or not.

Even Lawrence can’t deny it, now that I’ve grabbed an old rust-spotted mirror and held it in front of him.

“It IS my dad!” he whispers, shocked.

So … the soldier in the portrait
didn’t
die.

He’s Lawrence’s father – Joe Wills – and he survived the war and went on to be a farmer.

Mr Wills
was Auntie Sylvia’s sweetheart.

And now they act like they never knew or liked each other
ever
.

What happened to change—

I pause, spotting that Lawrence, Archie and Jess have gone silent, and are looking at something behind me.

Slowly – with a tight knot of dread in my tummy – I turn and see Auntie Sylvia staring at me, her head and shoulders rising through the attic hatch.

“Would you care to explain what on earth is going on here, Gloria?” Auntie Sylvia asks in a voice so cold and angry it chills me. She’s using my full first name too.

“I’m sorry, they came to help me and—”

“I told you before – I don’t want you associating with children like this, never mind inviting them into my house and letting them rifle through my private things!”

Auntie Sylvia is right to be angry, I know.

But suddenly I’m angry too.

A coiled-up spring snaps inside me and I can’t help the words that come out next.

“You don’t even
know
my friends; you won’t even give them a chance!” I yell. “Archie has a stammer that everyone teases him about, and so they don’t know how kind and sweet he is. Jess is treated like a slave at the pub, and she’s lovely to Rich because she has a brother just like him. And Lawrence has to put up with people like you being snobby about his mother leaving, and he can hardly help that,
can
he?”

“Gloria!” barks Auntie Sylvia. “Stop it this instant or—”

“And you’re not perfect either. In fact, you’re a liar. You said your sweetheart died in the war, but he’s not dead and he’s Lawrence’s dad!”

“Gloria, I did not – at any time – tell you he was dead,” Auntie Sylvia hisses at me through tight lips, as if she’s struggling to hold her temper.

My own anger fizzles away as I consider what Auntie Sylvia has just said.

Sure enough, she never mentioned that he’s been killed, only that the Great War had got in the way and ruined everything.

I’m no closer to understanding what went on between Auntie Sylvia and Mr Wills, but I do understand that I’ve made yet another mistake.

A horrible one.

“Children, I’d like you to leave now, please,” says Miss Saunders, in as steady a voice as she can manage. “And Gloria, I think it’s best if I write to your mother this evening and ask her to come for you and Richard.”

My heart practically stops as I hear a plaintive cry from the bottom of the ladder below.

“Glory, Glory, Glory?”

Oh, no.

What have I done…?

Me and Auntie Sylvia didn’t talk yesterday evening.

We didn’t talk this morning.

So I was in no hurry to get back to the cottage after school today.

Instead I followed Lawrence, Jess and Archie as they cut through the churchyard and over the stile.

Together, me and my Outsider friends wandered across the common, half-heartedly throwing overripe damsons at each other and ducking so we didn’t get hit.

We climbed the fence and meandered through the strange field of sprouts, which, until I came to Thorntree, I hadn’t even known grew this way: like small, branchless trees, dotted with green nodules all over the stems.

Sitting on the fence that overlooked the back field, we watched as Harry drove the tractor and a giggling Lil rode casually on the back bumper.

I’d thought about coming here and talking to her, telling her how it had all gone wrong with Auntie Sylvia, maybe even asking her advice.

But then I saw in the distance Lil lean over and kiss Harry and reckoned my big sister wouldn’t be interested in what I had to say anyway.

And so me and Jess waved bye to the boys and walked down the lane that would bring us out on to the green, beside the cottage.

“So, do you definitely think your parents
will
come and collect you before the barn dance?” Jess asks me now, kicking stones along the way.

“I don’t know,” I reply. “I expect Mrs Saunders will tell me as soon as she hears back from them.”

Jess mutters something under her breath. I don’t ask her to repeat it because I think it might have been something incredibly rude about Auntie Sylvia.

“Lawrence was really quiet today, wasn’t he?” I say instead.

We’ve all been quite quiet and gloomy after what happened yesterday. While the whole class gossiped about the film that was shown at the weekend and gossiped even more about the fundraising dance
this
weekend coming, we three were mostly silent, as if we were in mourning.