She looked at her watch. It was just before six. Pulling open the door, Elsie quietly stepped out into the hallway. From downstairs rose a clattering of pans and the pungent odours of a dinner cooking.
Standing quietly, she waited. Several seconds passed then she crossed the corridor diagonally, stopping in front of a closed white door. It was this one, if she remembered correctly. As she placed her hand on the doorknob, she half expected the door to resist, but it didn’t. She cringed as the hinges creaked and cracked from lack of use. The curtains were drawn on the little room, yet it was just as she remembered it from last summer. Laurie’s old bedroom. It was a boy’s bedroom, not a man’s. Models and pictures of aeroplanes adorned the pale blue walls and a collection of Biggles books were stacked neatly on a bookshelf. Aimed at the closed blackout curtains was a telescope. Elsie recalled Laurie saying that on fine days he could make out the detail of the French cliffs. The realisation that Laurie had spent his childhood watching the beaches, on which he was to one day end his life, nipped at the edges of Elsie’s heart. Tears formed in her eyes as played-out images of Laurie being slaughtered on a French beach projected in her mind. Killed by what? A gunshot? An explosion? Was it quick or had he suffered? She had no idea. The tears ran down her cheeks now as her mind rehearsed Laurie’s end in a series of horrible mini clips. It was the not knowing that upset her the most—whether he might have suffered or died alone.
‘Elsie,’ a quiet voice said, startling her.
She turned to see Laurie’s sister, Kath. Her usually slight, diminutive figure was changed and it took Elsie a moment to see the cause: a large swelling in her belly. She stared—a little longer than she ought to have done, perhaps.
‘You’ve noticed, then,’ Kath said softly. ‘My little secret.’
Elsie blushed and looked up. ‘Sorry…I…I didn’t realise. But you’re not…’
‘Married?’ Kath cut in. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so terribly Victorian. It just took me by surprise, is all. I had no idea, you see. When are you due?’
‘Next month—and not a moment too soon with this heat.’ Kath touched Elsie’s arm and cast a glance over the room. ‘It’s a bit of a shrine,’ she whispered. ‘Poor mother will never get over it, I’m sure. Laurie was everything to her—and to you, I know.’
Elsie couldn’t hold the look in Kath’s sullen eyes and glanced back to the telescope, hoping that she hadn’t spotted the truth about her feelings for Laurie.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here. Dinner’s ready and there’s someone downstairs whom I want you to meet.’
‘Oh,’ Elsie replied, intrigued. The father of the baby, she guessed, slightly surprised that Agnes was so willing to accept her daughter in such a condition.
The sounds and smells from the kitchen increased their assault on Elsie’s senses as they made their way to the dining room. The mysterious guest, briefly obscured by Kath as they entered the room, stood from the dining table. It was a woman. A heavily pregnant woman.
Elsie smiled and extended her hand; she wasn’t about to look like a pious grandmother again. ‘Elsie,’ she introduced.
The girl—for she could not have been older than seventeen—stood and took Elsie’s hand. It was a rough, worker’s hand with nails snagged and torn. ‘Gwendoline—Gwen.’ She had feisty distrustful eyes that conveyed little cordiality.
Elsie stood uncomfortably, waiting for some kind of an explanation as to who the girl was, but none was forthcoming. Kath sat down beside Gwen and motioned for Elsie to sit opposite her.
‘How was the journey here?’ Kath asked.
‘The train was jam-packed the whole way—it was as though every soldier and his wife were coming to Folkestone.’
‘They probably were—it’s a busy place at the moment,’ Gwen said, ‘what with the fall of France. Dunkirk and all that.’
Elsie was aware of the sideways look that Kath gave to Gwen, but she was distracted by a low reverberation that began to rattle the house. She turned towards the large window that overlooked the cliff top as the noise crescendoed ferociously, taking the breath from her lungs and the words from her mouth. Three weeks of training had heightened her senses and she dived under the table. The roar continued, shaking the house violently. Elsie covered her ears, waiting for the imminent explosion. But it never came. As quickly as it had arrived, the sound faded to silence. Above her, Kath and Gwen were in fits of laughter.
‘You can come out now,’ Kath laughed.
‘Oh dear, you’re not going to last long working near an aerodrome!’ Gwen teased.
Elsie appeared from under the table, doing her damnedest to hide her embarrassment. ‘What was that?’ she stammered, glancing across at the empty window.
‘Just a couple of seagulls,’ Kath mocked. ‘They’re very noisy in Kent, you know.’
Elsie ran to the window and stifled a gasp. ‘German planes,’ she spluttered. ‘Four of them.’ She squinted at their fading outline, trying to recall aircraft identification from her training. ‘Messerschmitts!’
‘Oh, golly, you’d best sound the air raid siren, then!’ Gwen said, leaping up in her seat. Kath joined her, looking horrified.
Elsie stood uneasily, shifting her gaze between the two girls. Then they laughed an empty scornful laugh that left Elsie feeling foolish.
‘They’re just on their way back to Germany or France or wherever they’re based,’ Gwen explained. ‘They don’t usually cause a fuss on their way home. If you go and look out of one of the front windows, you’ll likely
