The Gunner Girl (45 page)

Rob came back with the drinks and sat down opposite her. She twined her legs round his. ‘Thank you,' she said, taking her drink.

‘Pleasure, Mrs Nelson,' he replied. ‘I got you these as well,' he tossed over a packet of pork scratchings. ‘Wedding breakfast.'

‘You know how to treat a lady.' She smiled.

He winked. ‘No expense spared.' And they laughed, a little, at the shared joke. ‘Tell you what, though, when this is all over we'll do it properly,' said Rob.
‘Champagne, huge cake – my Mum will love making the cake – and you can have an amazing silk dress, with a train that goes right out the door.' He reached for his pint.

‘When this is all over,' said Joan, wondering when that was likely to be.

‘To us,' said Rob, clinking her ladies' glass with his pint pot. ‘To the future.'

‘To us,' she agreed, feeling like she was trying to catch something in the wind, like a falling leaf always spinning out of reach.

When they finished their drinks he asked her if she was feeling better and if she still wanted to go through with this, and she said she was and she did. The shaky, fluttery feeling was still
there but at least she could breathe properly now. She told him she just needed to go and powder her nose.

The Ladies' smelled of urine and bleach. There were ripped copies of
Reader's Digest
in lieu of toilet roll, slippery and sharp as she wiped herself. She washed her hands
with the tiny sliver of greying soap in the sink. She patted her face with her damp hands and pinched her cheeks to make them pink. You couldn't get rouge for love nor money at the moment.
Bea used to get beetroot for them before a night out – she had a friend on kitchen duty. Beetroot juice worked pretty well, if you did it right.

Bea, she thought, looking at her reflection in the glass and pulling her lipstick out of her gas-mask case, how pleased you'd be for me today: my wedding day. They'd found the padre
having a quiet smoke by a weeping willow. They'd just had to grab two witnesses from whoever was available, so they'd ended up with Sheila Carter and Billy from stores. Bea would have
laughed at that, she thought: Sheila bloody Carter and fat Billy as my wedding witnesses.

Joan put on two coats of Californian Poppy. When she came out of the loos and back into the saloon, Rob was back at the bar, taking their glasses back to the barman, and he turned to look at
her, and she paused, returning his gaze and for a moment they were both silent, staring, as if it were the first time they'd ever clapped eyes on each other.

They walked arm in arm up Western Way, past the allotments. The air was hot, and the gin made her head swim and her mouth taste fruity, as if she'd been eating pear drops
from the sweet shop on her way home from school. She looked down at the pavement and tried to avoid the cracks, but her footsteps were way too big, these days. They were getting closer, now. Still
arm in arm, they carried on up the road, and the too-tight shoes made her wince at every step. There was a green bus, and a woman on a bicycle and a rag-and-bone man with his horse and cart. The
horse looked skinny and lame.

Do they ride much, in Finchley? I will not have horse eaten in this house!
Where are you now, Edie? Where have they sent you? Will I ever see you again?

Left-right, on they went, a slow march along the dusty pavement, where the shops gave way to houses: modern semis with clipped privet hedges and overblown roses spilling petals into the street.
Most of the little front lawns had been dug over, with fruit canes, runner beans, marrows and peas, just like Dad had had at the allotment. Who had his allotment now? she wondered. A woman came out
of the front door of number fifty-eight: grey hair, string bag full of lettuces. Was that Mrs Gladwell? Joan looked down at the pavement and sped up, and Rob kept in step with her.

Fifty-eight, fifty-six – she heard Mrs Gladwell's footsteps cross the street behind them and fade away into the distance. It wouldn't be long before they reached number
thirty-two. Number thirty-two Western Way. They were going back to where it all began. Two trucks lumbered past and an army dispatch rider sped in the opposite direction. She saw a string of blonde
hair escaping from the motorcyclist's helmet as she passed them. That's one of ours, thought Joan. They walked on in silence. And she could see it, up ahead, the cavity in the fascia of
semis. As they got closer, she could see that some of number thirty-four was still standing, but number thirty-two was gone.

It shouldn't have been a shock, but it was. Somehow, here in summertime, she'd half expected to see the white pebble-dashed walls and the bit of black gabling and the blue polka-dot
curtains at the upstairs bedroom window, and the black front door with ‘32' in polished brass letters and the doorbell that went ‘ping-pong' and Mum waiting in her pinny
with floury hands from making pastry, and opening the door and saying, ‘Oh, here's that nice young man we've heard so much about. Come in and I'll put the kettle on. Your
father will be home for his tea, soon.' But instead, there was a mound of rubble and a hastily painted sign in black on a broken plank that said, bomb site – keep out. Plants had begun
to grow among the fallen bricks: dandelions with downy heads floating away and some kind of vine that crept and smothered over everything. The front gate was still there, swinging on a hinge like a
dallying schoolboy. And the pavement was still broken, tree roots exposed like bare knuckles.

She stood and looked at the empty sky and the mess of her broken home underneath it. Rob put his arm round her: warm. She could smell him and feel him. Her eyes cast round the scene. Up the
street a bit, just there, that was where he tackled her to the ground. And over there was where he found his RAF cap. She never had managed to get the bloodstain out of that old woollen coat, not
even with bicarbonate of soda and an old toothbrush, like Bea told her to. She moved closer into Rob, needing him to be the still centre in the spinning circle rush of memories.

‘We don't have to go in, if you don't want to,' he said.

‘I want to,' she replied. She broke free from Rob's embrace, turned the keep out sign face down and pushed through the broken gate. She could feel Rob just behind her as she
picked her way towards the remains of her home. The front path was smashed apart. All that was left of the lawn was a few little triangles of green showing between the bricks and rubble, and the
weeds, shoving through, taking over. There were splinters of wood with black shiny paint near where the front door should have been. She had to clamber over fallen joists and broken blocks of
masonry. Shards of broken glass blinked, catching the sun like jewels hiding in the rubble. Her shoes caught and her ankle twisted on the jagged mass of bricks, but Rob was behind her. He'll
catch me if I fall, she thought, and carried on. At last she was there. There where she'd found Joan. She could still see the patch of lino with a dark brown stain. That was where she'd
taken Joan's hand, the perfectly manicured little hand with the sapphire engagement ring. And just there, not two feet away, that was where she'd found the call-up papers and the ID
card.

She sat down, sat amid the bricks and the plaster and the shattered glass and wood splinters and old, dried blood and remembered the noise and the hand, still warm, in the ash and the grit and
the dust, that night. Oh, Joan. I miss you. I miss you so much, my big sister. My perfect big sister.

‘They got the wrong one,' she said. ‘She was the good one. It should've been me, here, not her.'

‘Don't say that, Joanie,' said Rob, trying to put his arm round her. She shrugged him off.

‘I'm not Joan,' she said. ‘I'm Vanessa. I'm an usherette and I'm a stupid little tart who will never amount to anything. I'm not real.
You've married a fraud, Rob. You've married a bloody ghost.' And a sudden gust of wind took her words and hurled them, down the street and away. And Rob looked on, saying nothing,
waiting.

She saw the drops fall, splashing onto the dust. It can't be raining, she thought distractedly. There's not a cloud in the sky. But then she put a hand up to her cheek, and felt the
hot tears and watched them fall, down onto the broken masonry. And from somewhere deep came a tearing, ripping her throat and her chest.

She didn't know how long she cried for, or how long Rob sat, waiting, watching, patiently. He didn't move until her howls subsided to sobs and her heaving chest
slowed and he silently passed her a handkerchief.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, still not making eye contact with him.

‘You've nothing to be sorry for, Mrs Nelson,' he replied, and she could hear that his voice was thick. He cleared his throat. He put his hand on her arm again, and this time
she didn't shrug it off. He began to kiss her, gently, on the nape of her neck, and his lips were soft and his breath was warm. And she noticed how there were poppies growing around the base
of the Anderson shelter, as she turned to return his kiss.

Thank you to each and every one of you who helped with this book.

You know who you a re – thank you. xxx