THE H-BOMB GIRL by Stephen Baxter (beach books txt) 📕

I didn’t know you were in. Come and sit with your mum.” She patted the settee.

Laura turned down the volume on the Dansette, and sat down. Mum sighed and rested her head on Laura’s shoulder. Laura had to take her weight. Mum was behaving like a child, not a mother. Laura smelled perfume, hair spray—and maybe just a hint of Mort’s iron-tinged aftershave.

“I’ve had a lovely afternoon,” Mum said.

“I can tell. With Mort.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“All that old wartime music. Dad hates it, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, well, your father isn’t here.” Mum straightened up, pulling away from Laura, and primped her hair. “You might try to understand, Laura. You’re so—ooh, you’re so judgemental sometimes. Like a little old woman sitting there looking at me. Life isn’t easy for me just now, you know. I like to think about good times.”

“Like the war.”

“Yes, the war. In the beginning it was quite fun, you know. I was ten when it all kicked off. The ration cards, and your own little gas mask, and blackouts, and running to the air-raid shelter in the back garden. Of course it all got a bit difficult with the bombing.”

Laura had heard the story before. Liverpool had had it hard. The docks were the main way food and supplies from overseas got into the country. In the worst of the Blitz, there were so many ships sunk in the Mersey there wasn’t a single berth free for docking.

Mum, younger than Laura was now, was evacuated, along with thousands of other inner-city kids. She was sent on a train to North Wales, and lodged with a family in Rhyl. But Mum had hated it. “I always was a city girl,” she would say breezily.

Laura had heard hints that things had been more difficult than that. Somebody had harmed Mum in some way. It happened, to vulnerable kids, lodged with strangers far from home. And Mum had always been pretty.

Anyhow she was taken back from Wales, and sent from one city to another: down to London, to be with a cousin of her father’s. Peggy, a twenty-something girl, had a flat in the West End, tiny but big enough for two girls to share. Of course London had its share of bombing, but the East End and the docks had it worst, and the West End was safer than Liverpool. And at least now Mum was with family.

“London was a fairyland, as long as a bomb didn’t actually fall on you,” Mum said. “The searchlights waving across the sky like wands. The barrage balloons like great whales in the air. Star flares like fireworks. I was just about your age then, Laura.

“Even when the bombs fell it could be, well, marvellous. Sometimes a building would just jump up and settle back, unharmed, in a great cloud of dust. Or you would see waves passing through brickwork, like shaking a sheet. After a big raid Peggy and I would walk around Piccadilly or Trafalgar Square or along the Strand, just looking. Dust covered everything, making it all pink or grey.

“And whenever there wasn’t a raid, in the dark—the blackout, you know—we’d go crazy. No rules! We’d dance and dance.”

“You danced with Mort.”

“Oh, yes, with Mort. The Americans in town, you know, with their chocolate and cigarettes and stockings. No rationing for them! It was all terribly glamorous, really… Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just thinking that if I went with soldiers like that you’d murder me.”

“Yes, well, you’re you and I’m me, you’re just a little prig and I was mature for my age. You know what I think? I think you’re jealous. Jealous because you live in this drab time, when everything is boring and rubbish. Jealous, because you were born too late.”

Maybe, Laura thought. For sure, if war came again, there wouldn’t be much dancing.

She faced facts. She wasn’t going to get any help from Mum with Mort, or Miss Wells, or any of the problems in her life. She felt resentful. She even resented the way Mum was leaning on her now.

But maybe it was just the way things were. Bernadette had to look out for her mother. If it was going to be the same for Laura, well, she’d just have to put up with it.

She stood up. “What’s for tea?”

“Oh, I don’t care. Go and get some fish and chips. My purse is in the kitchen.” She settled back on the settee, her party dress splayed around her. “And put my record back on, will you?”

Chapter 9

That evening Laura crept out of the house without her mother noticing.

She met Bernadette and Joel at the railings at the back of the school grounds. It was eight o’clock, dark, cold. They were all wearing black, at Bernadette’s suggestion.

Joel looked subdued.

Laura asked, “Did they give you a tough time after assembly?”

Joel shrugged. “That cow Miss Wells tore into me. Mr Britten told me he approved of my ‘enquiring mind.’ I just had to channel it in the right direction.” He tried to sound casual, but Laura could see how wide his eyes were. He was no tougher than she was, really. “He isn’t so bad, old Bulldog Britten. Even if he did give me one thousand lines.”

Bernadette whistled softly. “One thousand. That’s an all-time record, pal. They ought to engrave your name on the gateposts. Anyway, let’s get on with it.”

“Get on with what?”

“Just follow me.”

It didn’t take long for Laura to realise they were going to break into the school.

First they had to get over the railings, which were eight feet tall with spikes on the top. Bernadette was wearing a long black scarf. “Not by accident,” she said. She threw the scarf up so it caught over a spike. Then she hauled herself up, hands on the scarf, feet walking up the railings. At the top she easily climbed over the spikes and let herself down.

Laura followed. The physical exercise, and the sense of breaking the rules, got her blood pumping.

When