His face darkened. ‘Who can tell? Where is she?’
‘Why don’t you go and find her?’
His lips twisted wryly, and she understood the message. Mark Sellon did not search yearningly for a woman, or beg for her attention. He let them beg him.
‘You’re the only one she cares about,’ Dee urged. ‘She’s probably just trying to make you jealous.’
‘Then she’s failing,’ he said lightly. ‘Let’s go.’
He swung her higher in the air but, before he could do more, they both saw Sylvia on the edge of the crowd. She was with a different young man, struggling with him, although not seriously, and laughing all the while. She laughed even louder when he managed to plant a kiss on her mouth.
Suddenly Dee found herself alone. There was a yell from the young man as he was hauled away and dumped on the pavement, and a shriek of excitement from Sylvia as Mark hurried her unceremoniously down a side street and into the darkness. The fascinated onlookers could just make out raised voices, which stopped very suddenly.
‘No prizes for guessing what’s happening now,’ someone said to a general laugh.
But then they all fell silent as the church clock began to strike midnight, looking up into the sky as though they could read there the tale of the coming year.
‘Hey, Dee!’ Helen and Joe were waving, beckoning for her to join them as the clock neared twelve.
‘Where’s Sylvia?’ Helen demanded. ‘Ah, yes, I can see her.’
There she was, drifting slowly back along the street, arms around Mark, her head resting on his shoulder, gazing up at him with a look of adoration; a look he returned in full. As the clock reached the final ‘bong’ he pulled her into a tight embrace, crushing her mouth with his own as the crowd erupted around them.
Mark and Sylvia heard none of it. At one with each other, they had banished the world. Nothing and nobody else existed.
‘Including me,’ Dee whispered softly. ‘Happy New Year.’
Two days later, Mark moved out to a local bed and breakfast, and after that Dee saw less of him. They would sometimes pass as she was leaving for work and he was just arriving at the garage, but she was usually home too late to catch him. Once a week Sylvia would bring him to supper. Other nights she would go out and return late. Watching jealously, Dee saw that sometimes she came home smiling, and sometimes she seemed grumpy, but she always denied that there had been any quarrel.
Dee constantly braced herself for news of the engagement, but it never came. As the weeks passed, her nerves became more strained until it would almost have been a relief to know that he’d finally proposed to Sylvia, even set the date. If only it would happen soon, before she fell totally in love with him and it was too late.
And all the time she knew she was fooling herself. The spark of love had ignited in her the night they’d met, but she’d been too inexperienced to know it. Over the next few days it had flared and grown stronger. Now it was already too late. It had always been too late. It had been too late from the first moment.
Day after day, she waited for the axe to fall but, mysteriously, it never did.
There wasn’t always time to worry about her own life. As the early months of 1939 passed, the news from Europe grew more ominous and war more likely. Hitler continued to invade weaker countries, annexing them in defiance of the Munich Agreement that he’d signed with Neville Chamberlain the previous September, until even Chamberlain announced that negotiations with him were impossible.
‘Mark can’t talk about anything else,’ Sylvia said sulkily. ‘He’s set his heart on the Air Force, and he just takes it for granted that I’ll stick around.’
‘But of course,’ Dee said, shocked. ‘You couldn’t leave him when he was doing his duty to his country.’
‘To him it’s fun, not duty. I can’t even get his attention long enough to make him jealous.’
‘Is that what you’ve been trying to do?’ Dee asked curiously.
‘Just a little. It worked at New Year but-oh, I don’t know. I have to make him realise that I’m here and he’s got to notice me.’
‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Dee warned.
Sylvia’s response was a wry look that she didn’t understand until later.
Tom, the young man from three doors down who’d danced with Dee on New Year’s Eve, began to invite her out. Without encouraging him too much, she agreed to the odd trip to the cinema because she was blowed if she was going to spend her time pining for Mark Sellon, thank you very much!
Tom wasn’t brainy, but he had a cheeky humour that appealed to her. Laughing with him wasn’t the same as laughing with Mark. There was none of the edgy excitement that made it so much more than humour. But Tom could tell a joke well, and they were chuckling together the night they arrived at her home to find Mark there, looking troubled.
‘Is something the matter?’ Dee asked quickly.
‘No, I’m just waiting for Sylvia. She’s a bit late tonight.’
‘I thought she was meeting you in town,’ Dee said, frowning.
‘Did she say that?’ Mark said easily. ‘I must have got it wrong. Sorry to trouble you.’ He was out of the door before they could reply.
‘Your sister’s got them all running around after her,’ Tom said admiringly.
‘Funny,’ Dee mused. ‘I’m sure she said she wasn’t coming home early. Oh, well.’
Looking back, it was easy to see this as the first ominous sign. The second came later that night when Sylvia returned, beaming and cheerful, and seemed delighted to know Mark had been looking for her.
‘Was he very upset?’
‘He certainly wasn’t happy. Do you
Sylvia shrugged. ‘It won’t do him any harm to worry about me for a change. He winks at every girl who passes.’
‘But that’s just his way.’
There was a brief pause before Sylvia said, ‘That’s what I used to believe, but now I think it’s more than just a bit of harmless fun. There’s something in him-something I can’t reach because he won’t let me. He seems so outgoing and friendly but it’s an illusion. He keeps the important part of himself hidden. He’ll flirt and play the passionate lover, but that’s not love. Not really. He doesn’t like getting close in other ways.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t trust the idea of love,’ Dee said thoughtfully.
‘Why should you say that?’
‘I mean after what happened in his childhood-his father leaving and his mother being so withdrawn, you know.’
‘No, I don’t know. What are you talking about?’
So Mark hadn’t told Sylvia what he’d told her, Dee realised. He’d hinted as much but she’d thought that resolution would change as he grew closer to her sister. But it seemed they hadn’t grown closer at all.
‘Maybe I’d better ask Mark,’ Sylvia said shrewdly.
‘No,’ Dee said quickly. ‘I wasn’t supposed to repeat it. I forgot. It’s just that-’
Briefly, she outlined what he’d told her about his lonely childhood, and the dog his selfish mother had got rid of without even telling him.
‘That woman sounds hateful,’ she finished. ‘However unhappy she was, she had no right to take it out on a child. No wonder he grew up cautious about getting close to people.’
‘So that’s why he doesn’t open up to anyone,’ Sylvia mused. ‘Including me. But it seems he talks to you.’
‘Because he sees me as a sister. A sister can’t hurt him like you can, so he feels safe talking to me. But don’t tell him I told you.’
‘All right, I promise. I’ll keep hoping that he’ll tell me himself, but he won’t, I know that in my heart. You see, I don’t matter to him, or not very much. The other night we were going to meet for a date, and he was nearly an hour late. He made some excuse but I think he was with another girl. I’m sure I could smell her perfume.’
