Content, he closed his eyes again. But she did not sleep. She lay looking into the distance, remembering
CHAPTER TWO
‘ANY sign of them yet?’ Helen Parsons’ voice sang out from the kitchen.
Dee, her seventeen-year-old daughter, paused from studying a box of Christmas decorations and went to the window. The narrow London street outside seemed empty, but the darkness made it hard to see far so she slipped out of the front door and down the small garden to the gate.
‘Not a sign,’ she said, returning to the house and hurriedly closing the door.
Her mother appeared, frowning. ‘Have you been out without a coat, in this weather?’
‘Just for a moment.’
‘You’ll catch your death of cold. You’re a nurse; you should have more sense.’
Dee chuckled good-humouredly. ‘It’s a bit soon to call me a nurse. I’ve barely started my training.’
‘Don’t tell your father that. He’s dead proud of you. He tells everyone that his daughter became a nurse because she’s the bright one of the family.’
The bright one, Dee thought wryly. Her older sister, Sylvia, was the beautiful one, and she was the bright one.
‘Now, don’t start that again,’ her mother said, reading her face without trouble.
‘It’s just that sometimes I’d like to be gorgeous, like Sylvia,’ Dee said wistfully.
‘Nonsense, you’re pretty enough.’ She bustled back to the kitchen, leaving Dee to gaze into the mirror.
She had pleasant, regular features under short brown hair, with dark brown expressive eyes. Pretty enough. That was about the best anyone could say and, if it hadn’t been for Sylvia, Dee might have been content with it. But when she compared Sylvia’s luscious features with her own, which were pleasant but not spectacular, she knew she could never be content.
Her figure was slender, almost too much so, which would have pleased many girls. But they didn’t have the constant comparison with Sylvia’s ripe curves. Dee didn’t appreciate her own shape-with all the yearning of seventeen, she wanted Sylvia’s.
She wanted to be beautiful, she wanted boyfriends trailing after her, and a throaty, seductive voice. Instead, she was ‘the bright one’ and ‘pretty enough’. As though that was any comfort. Honestly! Older people just didn’t understand.
‘I wonder what this one’s like,’ her mother said, returning with a duster that she put into Dee’s hand.
No need to ask who ‘this one’ was. Yet another of Sylvia’s conquests. There were so many.
‘She’ll get a bad name, having a new young man every week,’ Helen observed.
‘But at least she’s got some choice,’ Dee observed wistfully. ‘Not like being stuck with Charlie Whatsit down the road, or the man who comes round with the pies every week.’
‘I don’t want this family being talked about,’ Helen said firmly. ‘It isn’t nice. Anyway, what about all those doctors you meet at the hospital?’
‘They don’t look at student nurses. We’re the lowest of the low.’
‘The patients, then. You wait, you’ll meet a millionaire. He’ll take one look at you and fall madly in love.’
They laughed together and Dee said, ‘Mum, you’ve been reading those romantic novels again. That’s just dreaming. Real life isn’t like that-unless you’re Sylvia, of course. I wish she’d hurry up and get here. I’m longing to see her latest.’
Sylvia worked in an elegant dress shop on the far side of London. As Christmas neared, business was booming and her hours were longer. Today she was arriving home late, along with her new young man.
Mark Sellon was a mechanic, newly out of work because his employer had lost all his money. Sylvia was bringing him home for Christmas in the hope that her father could offer him a job in the tiny garage he owned beside the house in Crimea Street. In that shabby corner of London, Joe Parsons counted as a prosperous man.
‘Of course, he might simply be a good mechanic, and she’s bringing him for Dad’s sake,’ Dee mused.
‘Then why would she want us to invite him to stay the night? By the way, have you finished putting the spare bed into her room?’
‘Yes, but-’
‘You’ll sleep there with Sylvia. And make sure you stay with her as much as possible. I don’t want any hanky- panky in this house.’
‘You mean-?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean, so you see that Sylvia behaves herself. Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about you!’
Dee knew better than to answer this. To say that she yearned to be a ‘bad girl’, in theory if not in practice, would bring motherly wrath down about her head and she had some urgent dusting to do.
In this she was helped by Billy, the family dog, an enormous mongrel who tackled everything with gusto. His contribution to the cleaning was to follow Dee everywhere, pouncing on the dusters and shaking them.
‘Let go,’ she told him, trying to sound stern and not succeeding. ‘Billy, I shall get cross with you.’
His glance said he’d heard that before and knew better than to believe it.
‘Stop it, you idiot!’ she said through laughter, managing to rescue a duster. His response was to seize another and run off.
‘You haven’t got time for play,’ Helen said, appearing. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
She applied herself to the work, finished it as soon as possible, then said, ‘I’m taking Billy for a walk. He needs exercise or he won’t behave himself.’
‘All right, but don’t be too long.’
She pulled on a thick coat and slipped out of the door, with Billy on a lead. It was a beautiful clear night, stars and moon shining down with a dazzling intensity that revealed her surroundings sharply.
‘Shame there’s no snow,’ she mused. ‘Never mind. Still, a little time before Christmas Day… All right Billy,
Down the street he hauled her, across the road into another long street and down a narrow path that went along a string of back gardens. Voices greeted her as she went, for she had lived here all her life and knew the neighbours.
Now Billy was on his way back, taking her for a walk rather than the other way round. As they reached Crimea Street, she heard a sound in the distance, quickly growing louder and louder until it was deafening.
Then she saw a motorbike turning the corner, coming towards her, driven by someone in a helmet and goggles that obscured his head. In the sidecar was another person, also mysterious until it raised an arm to wave at her and Dee realised that it was Sylvia.
So the driver must be her young man. Dee stared in wonder. She’d sometimes seen motorbikes being repaired in her father’s garage, but she knew nobody who actually owned one.
The bike stopped and the driver got off to help Sylvia out, then remove her helmet. She clung to him, wide- eyed.
‘Oh, goodness!’ she gasped. ‘That was-that was-’
‘Are you all right?’ Dee asked.
Sylvia’s response was to release her companion and throw her arms around Dee as if her legs were giving way beneath her, so that Dee had to support her.
She glanced at the young man. He was removing his goggles and the first part of him she saw was a smiling mouth-something she afterwards remembered all her life.
Then his whole face was revealed-handsome, lively, full of pleasure.
‘Sorry if I was a bit noisy,’ he said ruefully. ‘When I’m going really fast the excitement tends to carry me away. I’m afraid I’ve offended your neighbours.’
The words sounded contrite but there was nothing contrite about him. He’d enjoyed himself to the full and was
