The Heart of the Family (32 page)

Jean may not have said anything directly to her but Katie had guessed that Jean was worrying about the twins and the way they were growing apart.

‘Are you and Carole going to the Christmas Eve
Dance at the Grafton, Katie?’ Sasha asked eagerly. ‘Only I don’t think that Mum and Dad will let us go on our own, and we’re longing to go. It will be our first proper grown-up Christmas dance, after all.’

‘You speak for yourself,’ Lou cut in curtly. ‘I’m not longing to go at all. It’s you that wants to go, not me, and you only want to go because Bobby will be there.’

Katie felt a sharp tug of sympathy – for Sasha, who quite plainly was becoming keen on the very nice and respectable young bomb disposal sapper, who had helped to save her life when she had been trapped beneath an unexploded bomb, and also for Lou, who equally plainly was horrified and miserable at the thought of losing her twin to a proper grown-up relationship.

Jean herself had said that whilst she worried that Sasha was still too young to be going steady properly, if one of the twins had to start walking out with someone she would prefer it to be Sasha because she was so much steadier than Lou. They had all seen how her near-tragedy had matured Sasha, and there was no denying that Bobby was a sensible and trustworthy young man.

‘If you both really want to go to the Grafton on Christmas Eve and your mother is willing to give her permission then I’m happy to go with you,’ Katie told them half truthfully. She was happy to go with them, but she was not happy at all to go and then be forced to sit at a table with Liam and Danny. She hesitated and then decided that as the twins were growing up and bound to notice anyway, she might as well mention something to them about the fact that she and Carole would not be going to the Grafton together – and why.

‘You’ll both have to put up with me all evening, though,’ she warned them, ‘seeing as it looks as though Carole will be going with a … a friend.’

‘You mean that Irishman she’s always talking with,’ Sasha guessed straight off.

‘Liam. Yes, that’s right.’

‘What about the other one? Did he ask you to go with him?’

‘Well, not exactly. They do both know that I’m engaged to Luke, and that Carole is going steady with Andy,’ Katie felt she had to point out. ‘And Liam has only asked Carole if he and Danny could join us at a table, but, well, I don’t feel right about it so I’ve said no. Now,’ she told them both more briskly, ‘you’d better get your skates off otherwise we’ll be late back for tea, and your mum won’t like that.’

‘I think Katie was right not to agree to sit with those Irish boys,’ Sasha told Lou as they sat down on one of the benches several yards away from where Katie was waiting for them, to remove their skates. ‘After all, when a girl’s given her promise to a boy and they’re engaged—’

‘Oh, stop going on about people being engaged, will you?’ Lou interrupted her twin angrily. ‘It’s all you ever talk and think about these days.’

‘No it is not.’

‘Yes it is. You were all over Sandra Willis at work the other day when she was showing off her ring, oohing and aahhing and acting all daft and soppy.’

‘I was just being polite. That’s what you have to do when you’re working with other girls. That’s what
Mrs Noakes, the new supervisor, told us all when she held that meeting that you missed because you’d stayed at home with a bad headache. She said that it was important that we all got on with one another and that we worked as a team and helped one another, just like our men do when they are in uniform. She said that our role in the war effort was a really vital link in the chain of communication and that—’

‘Did she say anything about the work being so boring that it makes you want to fall asleep and that all you’ll ever hear is dozens of stupid rules?’ Lou interrupted her twin angrily.

Sasha’s face went bright pink.

‘No she didn’t, because it’s not like that at all, and you’re not being fair. You’ve been determined to not like the exchange ever since we started and you’ve done everything you can to put me off. Well, I haven’t been put off and I like working there.’

‘And I don’t.’

‘Everyone can see that, Lou. I dare say it would have been different if it had been your idea that we applied to work there. Then you’d have loved it. But because it was my idea and not yours you were determined not to like it right from the start.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes it is.’

They glowered at one another, Sasha’s expression one of righteous indignation whilst Lou’s was more sullen and obstinate. But inside Lou was the one battling shocked tears of rejection and the recognition that it wasn’t just a lad that that was coming between them and was now more important to her twin than she was, it was the exchange as well.

‘Oh, Lou, please don’t let’s fall out with one
another,’ Sasha suddenly begged, putting down her skates to give her twin a fierce hug that brought fresh tears to burn the backs of Lou’s eyes. ‘I so much want us both to be asked to stay on at the exchange when our probationary period ends next week. You could work everything much better than me if you wanted to – you know you could. I do wish you hadn’t gone and deliberately got the supervisors’ backs up like you have. Mum is going to be ever so upset if they don’t keep us both on, and so am I. You can still do it.’ Sasha reached for Lou’s hand and gripped it tightly. ‘Please will you, Lou, just for me? I don’t want us to have to work at different places. I want us to be together.’

Sasha’s words were a balm to Lou’s sore heart, but it wasn’t in her nature to simply give in without claiming her own personal victory.

‘All right then,’ she told Sasha. ‘But you’ve got to promise me first that you’ll stop seeing that daft UXB lad that’s always hanging around wherever we go.’

‘You want me to stop seeing Bobby?’ Sasha’s voice as well as her expression betrayed how shocked and how upset Lou’s demand made her. She couldn’t understand why Lou would ask her to do such a thing. This wasn’t like it had been with Kieran, when they had each believed that he preferred her to her twin because he was buttering them both up behind each other’s back. Bobby had made it plain right from the start that it was her he liked, and she liked him too.

‘Don’t be silly, Lou. You know I can’t do that,’ Sasha protested. ‘I owe him so much, after all. He did save my life, remember.’

Lou’s mouth tightened. Hadn’t she also helped to
save Sasha’s life? But that obviously didn’t matter any more, just like she didn’t matter any more.

‘Come on,’ she told Sasha unceremoniously. ‘Katie’s waiting.’

Sasha gave her twin a worried look as Lou walked off ahead of her without turning round. Why was Lou sometimes so awkward and difficult? She had been inclined to be like that all the time they had been growing up, but then it hadn’t mattered like it did now. Sasha could remember how Lou had always been the one to choose who they would be friends with and who they wouldn’t, even though she, Sasha, was actually the elder. Well, she wasn’t going to stop being friends with Bobby just because Lou was being a bit scratchy about him. She did wish though that Lou would pull her socks up a bit at the exchange. She had had several tellings-off in Sasha’s hearing, and Sasha knew – because Lou had told her so herself – that she had been warned that she would not be kept on if she didn’t make more of an effort.

It was unthinkable that they might be separated and have to work in different places, and all because Lou was being stubborn and awkward. Lou might go on about the exchange being boring but what else was there that suited them so well and was so convenient for home? There wasn’t anywhere. They were getting ever such a good training and they’d still be able to work at an exchange even if the war ended tomorrow.

There was a horrible, miserable feeling burning Lou’s insides, like a tight ball that somehow made her throat and her chest hurt. Sasha obviously expected her to do what she wanted them to do, but when it came to Lou asking Sasha to do something
for her, she wouldn’t. She, Lou, would never ever, she just knew, put some stupid boy before her twin, and if their positions had been reversed and Sasha had asked her to give up seeing a boy for her sake then she would have done so gladly.

Sasha looked at Lou, who was hanging back from her and Katie, suddenly feeling conscience-stricken and guilty when she saw that Lou had her head down and was dragging the side of her shoe on the ground just as she always did when she was upset about something. Hadn’t she and Lou promised themselves after all that business with Kieran Mallory that they would never ever fall out over a lad again?

But Bobby wasn’t just any lad, he was the person who had saved her life, and he was stuck here in Liverpool all on his own with his family far away in the Northeast, whilst he was doing a horribly dangerous job. So dangerous, in fact, that the men who worked in the UXB units had the shortest life expectancy of all the men in uniform.

Sasha hung back too, waiting until Lou had caught up with them to touch her arm and say, ‘Don’t let’s fall out over Bobby, please, Lou.’

Lou nodded as though in acceptance of Sasha’s plea, but inwardly she didn’t and couldn’t accept it. Her twin was just trying to trick her into doing what she wanted and get her back in their supervisor’s good books so that she’d end up spending the rest of her life working in the exchange, because that was what Sasha wanted. Well, it wasn’t what she wanted, and she wasn’t going to do it.

‘There’s someone here to see you.’

Bella, who had been leaning down to retrieve a file that had slipped off her desk and so had her back to her open office door, suppressed a small sigh as she smiled in acknowledgement of the announcement from the harassed young nursery nurse. Her somewhat unprofessional style wasn’t the nurse’s fault, after all. What Bella really needed was a properly trained deputy but she was loath to spend any of her precious budget on clerical staff when they were so desperate for more trained nursery nurses for the children.

The nurse had gone back to her duties. Jan’s heart-joltingly familiar male hand reached over her own to pick up the file, and his even more heart-tearingly familiar male voice announced, ‘I just wanted to call and say hello before I set off back for camp. I did call round at the house but your young protégée told me that you’d gone to see your mother.’

How had it happened that her eyes and her ears had registered and remembered these things about him without her even knowing, and certainly without her wanting them to do so?

‘I can’t imagine why you’d want to bother to call and see me,’ Bella told him abruptly, as she snatched back the file and put it on her desk. ‘Unless it was just so that you could tell me all over again how worthless I am and how much you despise me.’

Ignoring the challenge in Bella’s voice, Jan told her quietly, ‘Lena introduced herself to me when I called round. She thinks the world of you, Bella. She couldn’t stop singing your praises to me.’

‘But you, of course, know me better than she does? Yes, I do know that, Jan, and if you’ve come here to remind me of all my faults and failings, then—’

‘No, I haven’t come here to do that.’

Now that the shock of seeing him so unexpectedly was over and she could look at him properly, Bella saw what she had not seen before and that was that his face was thinner and drawn, and that he looked almost haggard, a look of pain and defeat darkening his eyes. Against her will she was curious, and worse, anxious about the cause of the change she could see in him.

‘How are Bettina and Maria?’ she asked him reluctantly.

The smile illuminating his face told her that whatever he was worrying about it was not his mother or sister.

‘They are very well. Bettina loves her work here in Wallasey, and she and my mother are now renting a house large enough for them to take in refugee billetees themselves. They are both very happy. Bettina is walking out with my friend from the Polish Air Force.’

‘How nice.’ The tone of Bella’s voice was decidedly brittle. ‘Your mother must be feeling very pleased that
you could both end up married to fellow Poles … Why have you come here, Jan?’ she asked him abruptly. ‘What do you want? She didn’t have the stomach or the stamina for playing a who dares wins game with him that she knew she was bound to lose.

‘What do I want?’ His mouth twisted in a painful smile, the look he gave her bleak with an expression she could not analyse.

‘What I want is what I have wanted for a very long time and what I know I cannot have. Come and walk with me, Bella. I can’t talk properly to you in here.’

Walk with him? Bella looked towards the window. Outside, the December sky was heavy and sullen with the threat of rain. She took her responsibilities very seriously and she never left her desk on a whim. But she hadn’t taken a lunch hour for weeks, eating at her desk instead, and she knew that if she refused and let him go without finding out what was wrong she would end up wishing that she had not done so.

Walk with me, he had said, and her stomach was a mass of wing-flapping butterflies more suited as a response to an invitation to a wonderful evening out – with a man who was free to make her such an invitation, rather than a cold walk with a man who despised her. It was just curiosity that was motivating her, nothing more. After all, she was hardly stupid enough either to think that Jan could possibly want to talk to her for any personal reasons or to want him to do so. Her whole body still burned with shame every time she recalled the humiliation she had suffered when she had thrown herself at him and
been rejected. That horrible experience had taught her a lesson she would never ever forget.

‘I can’t be out for very long,’ she warned him, reaching for her coat, and then tensing as somehow he had managed to remove it from its peg before she could do so and was holding it open for her. How had he managed to move so quickly? Normally she liked men to be polite, but now the lack of space in her office and the fact that Jan was holding her coat forced them into a proximity she would have preferred them not to have had. Just the act of standing close to him whilst he slipped on her coat for her somehow had become an act of almost shocking intimacy that made her tremble so much inside she was afraid that he would notice. She could feel his warmth behind her, but the old Bella, who would have been so convinced of her own female power and so used to using it that she would have thought nothing of turning round and smiling seductively up at a man she wanted to tease and torment, had died savagely and painfully when Jan himself had rejected her, and now the last thing she wanted to do was to be anywhere near him or any other man. Now the mere fact that she was aware of his body heat, the smell of his cologne, the male pressure of his hands on her shoulders as he helped her into her coat, made her feel so acutely vulnerable that she almost wanted to bolt out of the room. Not that she would do that, of course. It simply would not be fitting, given her professional status, so instead she thanked him brusquely without turning round, and then marched through the open door, telling the first nursery nurse she saw that she was going out for an hour if anyone should ask for her.

Lena, who had seen Jan arrive, watched as they left together, thinking what a handsome and well-suited couple they made. What a pity it was that he was married to someone else. She had thought him so nice and just perfect for Bella.

The raw December weather with its east wind whipped up Bella’s blonde curls round the brim of her pretty fur-trimmed hat – a prewar buy that these days she wore for warmth rather than for admiring glances – causing her to lift her hand to keep her hat secure.

Watching her, Jan thought how beautiful she looked, all the more so in his eyes because now the true beauty – a beauty of spirit and soul he had always known she possessed – shone so clearly from her. Just watching her made his heart ache with pride, and with love and regret.

She really had no idea why she had agreed to come out in this bitingly cold wind. Bella tried to make herself feel cross but only succeeded in increasing her nervousness. She had felt much safer – from herself – inside the school than she did out here where she was alone with Jan and her own secret and shameful vulnerabilities.

‘It’s far too cold to walk about aimlessly,’ she announced, turning round, intending to go back inside.

But to her dismay Jan simply took hold of her arm insisting, ‘Then let’s go to your house. We can talk properly there, and knowing you I dare say you have a nice warm fire banked down.’

‘I have to keep the house warm for Lena,’ Bella defended herself. ‘Her baby’s due in a few weeks and
the circumstances of the early weeks of her pregnancy mean that she needs cosseting.’

‘Something that, according to what my mother and sister have heard, you are excelling at doing for her.’

Was that really an almost indulgent gentleness she could hear in Jan’s voice? Bella turned to look at him and then wished that she had not done so. He was so very handsome, and so very married, she reminded herself sharply. And even if he had not been married, he had made it plain what he thought of her.

‘That was a very courageous thing for you to do, Bella, taking her in like you did.’

Praise for her and from Jan. Bella tussled with both pride and her new-found realism.

When realism won she told him firmly, ‘Helping a young woman in difficult circumstances is hardly courageous, Jan. It is men like you – all those men who are risking their lives to save this country and its people – who deserve that accolade. Had I truly been courageous she would not have been in such a dire situation. In the circumstances I could do nothing other than help her. I would not say this to anyone else and I must ask you to respect this confidence. The father of Lena’s child is Charlie. He has behaved appallingly towards her and so have my parents. I should have helped Lena when she first came asking for help.’ Bella bent her head, her voice so low that Jan had to bend his to catch what she was saying.

‘Lena tells me every day how lucky she believes she is because I have helped her but she is wrong. I am the one who is lucky, because I was given a second chance to do the right thing by her. If I had not been given that second chance, and something had
happened to her and her baby, then that would in part have been my fault. After … after what happened to me with … well, when I …’ Jan’s small squeeze of her hand told Bella that he knew exactly what she was trying to say about her own lost baby, and somehow or other she was now allowing her hand to rest in the comforting warmth of his.

‘You were so kind to me then and I felt … that is … I wanted to pass on that kindness,’ she told him with great dignity. ‘I wanted to be better than I was, and better than everyone thought me, and Lena has helped me to do that. Do you know, Jan, never once has she said anything bad or unkind about Charlie, and never once has she shown me anything but love. She has taught me so much, made me feel that I must try to be the person she seems to think I am and that you more than most know that I am not.’

‘You must not say that, because it is not true.’

As always when his emotions were aroused his accent had become more noticeable. He had stopped walking so that Bella was obliged to do the same.

‘Of course it is true. And you were the one, who said … You were the one who made me see that …’

Jan was walking again, and so fast that Bella was almost having to run to keep up with his long strides, and was out of breath by the time they were standing inside her nice warm hall with the front door shut, the house cocooning them in its warmth and privacy.

‘I’ll put on the kettle,’ Bella announced.

‘What, with your coat and hat still on?’ Jan teased her gently.

‘Oh … yes …’ Bella reached up to remove her hat and put it on the shelf above the coat stand, and
then began to unbutton her coat, her fingers trembling because she was so conscious of Jan standing behind her waiting to take her coat from her.

His, ‘Why are you trembling?’ was both ungentlemanly and a reminder of how much he had already hurt her, Bella acknowledged.

‘Probably because I am cold,’ she had been going to say, but somehow the lie would not be spoken and to her horror she could feel her eyes filling with tears so that all she could do was shake her head and make to dart past Jan so that she could take refuge in the kitchen. Only he stopped her and caught her up in his arms and then kissed her with such longing and passion that everything she should have done and said meant nothing, and all that mattered was clinging to him whilst her body trembled and her heart sang, and against his lips she whispered his name over and over again.

‘Thank you for marrying me, France. It means so much to me – everything, in fact – knowing that I’ll have you – someone of my own – to be there with me, right to the end.’

Brandon’s voice was gruff as he covered her hand with his own. Francine smiled tenderly at him. Was it her imagination or could she see a change in him already, a thinness to his face that had not been there this time last week, an unsteadiness in his step? Poor, poor boy. She had been with him now to see the eminent Harley Street specialist who was treating him and had heard from Professor Whiteford’s own lips the exact prognosis that Brandon had already given her. She had tried to persuade him to contact his parents and discuss the situation with them but he
had flatly refused and, even worse, he had become so agitated and upset that Fran had felt she had to drop the subject. She rather suspected that the American Ambassador did not entirely approve of their marriage, but Brandon had shrugged aside her concern, saying that there was nothing that either he or anyone else could do, and that his marriage was his own business and
he
very much approved of it.

What Fran was trying to do, having spoken at length with the professor, who had told them both of the suffering experienced by other families who had often young children who were afflicted with the same condition as Brandon, was to urge Brandon to use some of his money to set up a charity – a foundation, as Brandon called it – to help other sufferers, and she felt that the work involved in establishing his foundation was giving him something to hold on to: a purpose that he could cling to during these last remaining months – or weeks – of his life.

‘I have to go to my niece’s wedding, Brandon. My sister will be hurt if I don’t.’

‘Of course we must go.’

Fran smiled at him. ‘There is no need for you to come with me. I don’t expect that of you.’

‘Then you should,’ he told her robustly. ‘I am your husband, after all, and your family will expect it – unless you haven’t told them about our marriage.’

‘I have told them but I wasn’t sure that you’d want to meet them.’

‘I’m proud to have married you, Fran, and I shall be proud to meet your family.’

Fran knew that what he was really saying was that he didn’t want her to leave him behind in London on his own. Her sister Jean would be rather shocked
to discover that she had married a man so much younger than she was herself, Fran suspected, but Jean had only ever wanted her happiness, and provided she was able to convince her that she was happy then Jean would accept her marriage and be pleased for her. Jean, bless her, made allowances for her because ‘she had been to Hollywood’, Fran knew. And because she had lost Jack. Now she was going to mother and lose another ‘boy’ – was that always to be her role in life?