Home Front Girls (34 page)

No one tried to stop them. It was as if everyone in the room had been rendered speechless, so Lucy and Dotty made a hasty retreat.

‘Phew!’ Dotty said some minutes later as they walked away from the house with Dotty clutching a small bag. ‘That was some party, wasn’t it? Poor Annabelle. She’s always been so full of herself, hasn’t she? I mean, she truly believed that she’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, so this is going to hit her like a ton of bricks.’

‘Hmm, seems like I’m not the only one who had a secret in her past, doesn’t it?’

They walked on in silence for a time until Dotty suddenly took Lucy’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘Whoever we all are I’m glad we met and became friends,’ she said quietly. ‘And neither you nor Annabelle should feel ashamed of your past. Neither of you had a say in it, none of what happened was your fault.’

‘I just hope Annabelle will look at it like that,’ Lucy answered stoically.

The two girls then moved on, their thoughts firmly fixed on Annabelle, who had possibly just had the worst birthday ever.

*

‘Oh, good morning, Miss Smythe,’ Mrs Broadstairs said in astonishment the following Monday morning as she walked through the cosmetics department. Annabelle was behind her counter, but this girl looked nothing like the Annabelle that the woman was accustomed to seeing. Annabelle was usually so glamorous but today she was bordering on downright dowdy. Her beautiful blonde hair was scraped back into a severe ponytail at the nape of her neck and her face was bare of make-up.

‘Are you feeling unwell, dear?’ she asked as she stared at the transformation. She had often had cause to tell Annabelle off for being too glamorous, but now she realised that she actually preferred the glamorous to the dowdy.

‘I’m fine, thank you, Mrs Broadstairs,’ Annabelle answered meekly and again the woman was shocked. The girl had always been so full of herself and lippy into the bargain, but today she seemed positively subdued.

‘Good, good,’ she muttered and quickly moved on. Ah well, she thought to herself, we’re all entitled to our off days. Perhaps it’s the wrong time of the month? No doubt she’ll be back to her usual confident self tomorrow. She then continued with her inspection and moved on to the next department.

‘How are you feeling?’ Dotty asked when they all met up in the dining room for their break.

Annabelle shrugged. ‘How would you expect me to be feeling? I dare say you’ve both had a good laugh at my expense now you know what I really am.’

‘What do you mean, what you
really
are? You’re Annabelle Smythe, the same person you’ve always been.’

‘But I’m not though, am I?’ Annabelle stared down into her mug. ‘I’m the daughter of a common runaway girl.’

‘How do you know she was common?’ Dotty said indignantly. ‘Don’t you remember Mrs Cousins, my neighbour from Hillfields? She resorted to walking the streets, bless her, to put food on the table for her children. But she certainly wasn’t a bad person or common. Circumstances made her do what she did out of desperation. Perhaps it was the same for your mum? From what I could gather she was very young so perhaps she had no way of keeping you. She probably let you go because she wanted the best for you.’

‘Oh yes, how romantic,’ Annabelle said sarcastically.

Dotty lowered her head then before saying cautiously, ‘I went to meet Miss Timms yesterday afternoon and she’s asked me again to move in with her, so I thought . . . Well, I’m very grateful for all you and your mother have done for me but I think it’s time to give you both a bit of space. You have a lot to come to terms with at present.’

‘If that’s what you want,’ Annabelle answered carelessly.

Lucy and Dotty exchanged a worried glance, but they didn’t say anything. It was as if Annabelle had put up a brick wall and there was no getting through to her at the moment.

That evening after work, Annabelle and Dotty travelled home together on the bus and Dotty told Miranda of her decision to move out.

Miranda cried a little. She had grown very fond of Dotty and enjoyed having her around, but she didn’t argue with her. At the moment she was trying to spend as much time as she could with her daughter and Annabelle was her priority. Dotty packed her belongings quickly and efficiently. The whole of her worldly possessions amounted to no more than a small suitcase full of the clothes that Robert had bought for her, and her typewriter, which she packed carefully into its small hard case. She said her goodbyes to Miranda and within an hour was back on the bus on her way to stay with Miss Timms, who had written her address down for her. She lived on the main Kenilworth Road and when Dotty toted her cases off the bus she chewed her lip in agitation. The houses all looked very grand, even grander than Annabelle’s, and she felt out of place. They were all a very far cry from the orphanage she had been brought up in and her little flat in Hillfields, but she had no choice but to go on now. Perhaps she could just stay for a few days and then start to look for somewhere else of her own again the following weekend?

She walked on a little further until eventually she came to the number Miss Timms had given her. She took a deep steadying breath before setting off up the path and tapping on the door. It was a lovely old timbered house painted in white with the timbers painted black and its leaded windows sparkled in the early evening sun. Just like Miss Timms it looked very spick and span.

The woman answered the door almost immediately. So quickly in fact that Dotty wondered if she had been watching out for her.

‘Oh you’re here at last,’ Miss Timms said happily as she took Dotty’s case from her. ‘You are so welcome and I have your room all ready for you. I do hope you’ll like it. I’ve put you in the back one overlooking the garden. But first you must eat. I have a meal all ready for you.’

Dotty was overwhelmed at the greeting. It was almost as if she was visiting royalty.

‘I er . . . hope you don’t mind,’ she said as Miss Timms hauled her into a spacious hallway where a highly polished parquet floor shone in the dull light, ‘but I rang Robert and gave him your phone number this afternoon. I didn’t want him worrying about where I was.’

‘Ah, that’s your boyfriend in London, isn’t it? Of course I don’t mind. Your friends are welcome to ring you or call whenever they wish. This is your home now.’

‘Well, just temporarily,’ Dotty answered quickly. ‘And I really appreciate this but I think I might start to look around for another flat at the weekend. I can’t keep putting on people forever. And Robert isn’t my boyfriend. We’re just friends,’ she added.

‘Oh, but you can’t think about leaving when you’ve only just arrived!’ Miss Timms exclaimed. She spread her hands then. ‘This place is far too big me for now that Mother is gone,’ she confided. ‘In fact, it was too big when Mother was alive. We rattled around in it like peas in a pod, but she wouldn’t hear of moving. I’m afraid she was a terrible snob. Not an easy woman to live with at all, to be honest.’ She glanced nervously over her shoulder then as if the dead woman might magically materialise at any moment. But then she smiled again as she took Dotty’s elbow and led her towards the back of the house. Dotty was amazed as they moved on and felt as if she had stepped back in time. The house and its contents were very dated and fussy, and all the heavy furniture gleamed as if it had been polished to within an inch of its life. She got the impression that Mrs Timms must have been quite a slave-driver.

Miss Timms led her into an enormous kitchen, and Dotty’s eyes goggled. It was like a picture she had seen of a kitchen in the last century, but once more everything was as neat as a new pin with not a single thing out of place.

‘I got some fish from the stall in the market,’ Miss Timms told her, ‘and I’ve done you some potatoes that I grew in the vegetable patch in the garden and broccoli to go with them. You do like cod, don’t you, Dotty? I seemed to remember you did when you were at the orphanage.’

‘I love fish,’ Dotty assured her, touched at how hard the woman was trying to please her. ‘But you really don’t have to go to all this trouble every day. I can get a meal in the staff dining room at work.’

Miss Timms sniffed disapprovingly. ‘That isn’t the same as having a good home-cooked meal,’ she said. ‘And you’re so thin. But never mind, now that you’re here I shall soon get you fattened up a little.’

Dotty grinned, thinking that Miss Timms had made her sound like a Christmas turkey, but she didn’t object because she knew that the dear soul only meant well.

The meal was actually delicious, and Dotty cleared her plate – much to Miss Timms’s delight.

‘And now I must show you your room,’ she said when she had plied the girl with soft stewed fruit from the garden and thick custard.

Dotty followed her upstairs where Miss Timms showed her into a very pretty bedroom. A chintz bedspread lay across a large brass bed and matching curtains hung at the window, which overlooked a very neat garden, most of which was clearly being used to grow fruit and vegetables. There was a heavy oak wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a thick wool rug on the floor at the side of the bed.

‘Why, it’s lovely!’ Dotty exclaimed and Miss Timms beamed.

‘Then I’ll leave you to unpack,’ she chirped merrily. ‘The bathroom is the third door on the right along the landing. I’ve put you some fresh towels in there but do let me know if there’s anything else you need.’

‘I will,’ Dotty promised as the woman backed out of the room looking very happy. She must be very lonely if she’s so pleased to have me here, Dotty thought and then set about unpacking her case.

Later that evening, Robert telephoned Miss Timms and asked if he could speak to Dotty. The woman tactfully left Dotty to speak to him in private, then came back into the hall when she heard the receiver go down.

‘Are you all right, Dotty?’ she asked, seeing the girl’s glum face.

‘Oh yes, I’m fine,’ Dotty assured her a little too quickly.

Miss Timms stared at her thoughtfully. ‘You love that young man, don’t you?’ she asked bluntly, and when Dotty immediately lowered her eyes, her suspicion was confirmed. For months Dotty had talked of little else but Robert, but recently she had seemed very subdued and had scarcely mentioned him.

‘Of course I don’t,’ Dotty responded rather heatedly. ‘We have to stay in touch because of my writing, but that’s all there is to it. Robert regards me as nothing more than a friend – I think.’

‘And how do you regard him?’

Dotty squirmed uncomfortably. ‘As a wonderful man,’ she admitted. ‘But we live in different worlds. And Robert is older than me too. I think he sees me as just a silly kid who has a flair for writing.’

‘I doubt that very much,’ Miss Timms said quietly. ‘And age and class between two people who care about each other should be no barrier at all.’

Dotty sighed and moved away, and as the older woman watched her go her heart was heavy. Poor Dotty, life had not been kind to her, but Alice Timms hoped that from now on, she could make things a little easier for the girl.

During the autumn air raids continued on a regular basis, although thankfully many of them turned out to be false alarms. And then they were into November, with Christmas racing towards them again.

‘Crikey, it’s enough to freeze the hairs off a brass monkey out there,’ Mrs P shivered one night when Lucy called to collect Harry after work. Lucy couldn’t imagine being without him now and blessed the day she had found him. Apart from when she went to work they were inseparable, and Mrs P loved him too, although she still hadn’t got herself another dog.

‘An’ how were things at work today?’ she asked now as Lucy ruffled Harry’s silky ears.

‘Well, depending on how you look at it, Annabelle and her mother have had some good news. They had a telegram saying that Mr Smythe has been taken prisoner of war.’

‘An’ that’s good news?’ Mrs P said uncertainly.

‘Well, it’s better than being told that he’s been killed, isn’t it?’ Lucy instantly felt guilty as she thought of Mrs P’s son and added hastily, ‘At least he won’t be in the firing line any more. And hopefully when the war is over he’ll return home. I think Miranda is quite relieved. She’s been going out of her mind with worry because she hadn’t heard from him.’

‘Aye, well I know what that feels like,’ Mrs P said sadly. ‘An’ so do you, love, wi’ still no news from your Joel.’

‘Joel will survive,’ Lucy answered determinedly. ‘He has to, because he’s all I’ve got left in the world now apart from Harry.’

Mrs P nodded and gave her a hug. ‘An’ how’s Dotty? I ain’t seen her fer a while neither. Nice girl she is.’

‘Oh, she’s fine and still living with Miss Timms. She reckons she wants a place of her own again now but I don’t think she likes to leave her.’

‘Well, her short story in
Woman’s Heart
were brilliant last week,’ Mrs P commented. ‘I reckon she’s gettin’ better all the time, an’ I can’t wait fer her book to come out. I shall be at the front of the queue to buy that, I don’t mind tellin’ yer. An’ what’s more, I reckon in the not too distant future she’ll be earnin’ a livin’ writin’ full-time. But what’s goin’ on between her an’ that London bloke now?’

‘Not a lot, as far as I can gather.’ Lucy stifled a yawn. They’d spent half of last night in the shelter again, and she was worn out. ‘And I think it’s a real shame because I believe Dotty loves him even if she hasn’t admitted it to herself yet. Suddenly she’s stopped going to London, and between you and me she’s as miserable as sin half the time. I just don’t understand it.’