Terry's snuffling grew loud. His mouth fell open as the blood congealed in his nose.
'Tomorrow we'll tell Micky,' she whispered as a plan formed in her mind. Micky would know what to do. He always did.
Bella comforted herself with the picture of Micky's gun, not aimed at the wriggling sewer rats but pointed lightly against the brow of the man's head.
Bella rubbed her bruised cheek as she sat up.
A pale morning light seeped under the blackout. She stretched her stiff limbs as Terry stirred beside her, his long brown lashes laying softly on his swollen face. He'd rubbed the scabs from his nose in the night and was snuggled down in his coat. Both children were frozen, the temperature in the room at an all time low.
'Terry, wake up.'
His almond shaped eyes flickered. He groaned at he sat up. 'Terry hurts.'
'He gave you another bashing, that's why.' Bella took his hand and pushed the blanket away from his tight grasp. 'We're leaving before they come back.'
His eyes filled with tears. He lay down and pulled the blanket back over him. 'Terry don't want to.'
Bella wondered why God couldn't have left just a few brains in his head. Enough to tell him when he was safe and when he wasn't. Enough to make him understand that the man would kill them both after last night. Why had God forgotten Terry?
She ruffled his thin brown hair. 'Be a good boy, now. And do as Bella tells you.'
In the clothes they had worn day and night for more than a month they stole into the street. The cold March wind whipped around them and rain spattered down. Bella gazed up and down the rows of cottages. Only the rats, bugs and fleas that infested them moved in the early light. She looked up at the rotting pile of bricks that comprised number three, at the sunken roof and shattered windows lost in the drifting smoke of last night's raid. She shivered. It was the only home they knew and they were leaving it.
'Terry wants to stay.'
'We've got to find Micky.' She pulled his gas mask tighter across his shoulder. Jack would be home first, looking for trouble. And resisting the tears herself, she urged him forward.
'Is the bombs coming?'
'Tonight they will.'
'Terry don't wanna run away.'
Bella didn't want to either. But if only God had given him half a mind he'd know they didn't have a choice. The man said one day he would put them in a pot and cook them. And after last night, Bella believed him.
Chapter 2
Ronnie Bryant stood in the big kitchen of the rambling three-storey building and frowned out on the cold March morning. He pushed back his hair and stretched his aching arms. From the kitchen window he could see the piles of junk that filled the yards of Piper Street, and spilled around the Anderson like a shark-infested sea. No one would ever guess what was hidden under the floorboards of the air raid shelter. That's good planning, Ronnie my lad, he congratulated himself. The dugout had its uses after all. If the law came sniffing round, they were welcome to sort through all Dad's rubbish piled high on the stones. But it would take a shrewd copper to suspect the neat interior of the Anderson where all the booze and fags him and Micky and Sean had nicked from the docks were stashed safely away.
A gentle dew sparkled on the legs and arms of the ancient furniture and junk going back to the year dot. Their Dad's treasure trove, his legacy to his sons as he was always telling them.
Ronnie smiled, the quirk of his full, sensual mouth giving his young face a touch of maturity beyond his sixteen years. His cool grey eyes gleamed penetratingly, missing nothing under the heavy shock of raven black hair.
He glanced across the kitchen to his brother dozing in Dad's old armchair by the range. Micky's curly dark hair flopped over his thin face and his size ten boots were filthy from the mud that had congealed on their soles. The lino in the hall needed cleaning before Mum arrived back from Auntie Gwen's. Another bonus that, Auntie Gwen asking her to stay the night. Luckily it was a good bus ride to Poplar from Cubitt Town. The two widowed sisters liked to chinwag and they wouldn't stir once the fire was made up.
Ronnie sighed heavily as thoughts tumbled in his brain. Him and Micky hadn't had a wink all night and hadn't expected to what with dodging the raids and bringing the haul up from the docks in the old van Dad parked under the railway arches. It was a real rust bucket and on its last legs but it had done the job. What a night it had been! They'd worked like stink digging up the Anderson floor and battening down the boards again. When they sold this lot off he was going to give her and Auntie Gwen a good holiday. Send them to the seaside. That's what Dad would have wanted …
Ronnie felt a moment's deep miss of the father he'd worshipped and the gap in their lives that had never been filled since his death three years ago. His loss hadn't been easy for Mum or indeed for any of them. But Sean had only been eleven when Dad went and taken it the worst. Odd that, as him and Dad had been opposites. Dad was a real man's man, and Sean all curls and a mummy's boy. Still was, in fact. Yet Dad's death had knocked him sideways. Micky on the other hand, had been down the market the very next week, trading junk up the Caledonian or Cox
