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

“Get in the car, Laura.”

“Why don’t I get the bus? I know the way.” Dad had driven her to the school yesterday, to show her around. She had met the headmistress, and her form teacher, a cold woman called Miss Wells. The school was only a mile away. It was early. She could even walk.

But Dad said, “Get in the car.” Even in shirt and slacks, what he called “civvies,” Dad was just as military as Mort, just as upright, his hair cropped just as close, although he was shorter, thinner, more refined looking.

Laura felt like a fight. “If you drive me in they’ll all think I’m some stupid kid.”

“Get in the car.”

“I’m fourteen years old.”

“I know how old you are. Get in the car.”

Mum looked around. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Harry, you can’t talk to her as if she’s one of the soldiers you order about.”

“Airmen,” he said without emotion. “I order airmen about, not soldiers. Laura, get in the car.”

Laura knew he could keep up this repeating game all day. She got in the car.

Dad slammed the door behind her and got in the driver’s seat. But he didn’t start the car. “Laura. Are you wearing your Key?”

“What Key?”

“You know what Key. Don’t be childish. Are you wearing it?”

“I didn’t feel like it.”

Mum shouted, “Oogh! Will you two stop this? You’ll drive me into a home, I swear you will.”

“Laura, are you wearing your Key?”

“Yes!” Dad had given it to her. The Key was a heavy piece of cold metal, like a door key but with a more complicated shape, that Laura was supposed to wear around her neck on a chain. She pulled it out of her blouse and held it up. “See? Are you happy?”

Dad didn’t rise to that. “Just wear it. And don’t tell anybody about it at school.”

“Why not? What if I do?”

But Dad just started the car and pulled away.

Dad turned the wireless on. A news programme on the BBC Home Service droned on about the Russians and the Americans, President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev, and tension in a place called Cuba.

They were in a suburb of Liverpool called West Derby, a few miles east of the city centre. Laura’s school was nearby. But Dad surprised her by driving south a little way, to the main West Derby Road, and then west towards the city. She didn’t know why Dad was coming this way, and she knew better than to ask.

The car quickly filled up with the sweet, stale smell of their cigarettes. Laura looked at the back of their heads, Dad’s stiff shaven neck, Mum’s soft, slightly old-fashioned hairstyle with the loose bob at the back. She could almost imagine she was little again, that they were driving off into the Chilterns on a family day out.

But those days were gone for good. This was the Separation, the fag-end of her parents’ marriage. Sitting here all she saw was their differences. They didn’t even speak the same way, Mum with her soft, slightly Liverpudlian brogue, Dad with his clipped RAF lingo.

West Derby was quite leafy, with some good houses, a lot of them bigger and smarter than Laura’s new home. But as they headed towards the city centre the houses got smaller, packed into rows of grimy terraces, where washing flapped in back gardens and smoke curled up from chimneys. Everything looked mucky to Laura, black from soot. And here and there she saw gaps, like missing teeth, holes made by Hitler’s bombs and not yet fixed.

Liverpool was Mum’s home town. That was why she had brought Laura back here. Now she pointed out a few sights. “I used to go swimming in those baths. I used to play in that park. Before the war you could buy an ice cream for a penny.” But neither Dad nor Laura responded, and she soon shut up.

They drove around the centre of the city. There was a lot of traffic, Morris Minors and Austin Sevens, a few Minis. They passed some big stores, their windows stocked with washing machines and posh frocks. Right at the centre, near the main train station at Lime Street, they drove past some grand old buildings like Greek temples, jet-black from the soot. Laura stared. High Wycombe was only a small town in Buckinghamshire, with nothing on this scale.

They got through the centre in minutes, and, still heading west, drove through an area crowded with grubby warehouses. Soon they were going to reach the river, Laura realised.

She spoke up at last. “Dad, where are we going? This isn’t the way to school.”

“We’ve got a bit of time. I wanted to show you Liverpool.”

“Why?”

“Because this is where you’re going to live now.” He drove the car steadily, not looking around. “I spoke to your headmistress yesterday, and that form teacher.”

“Miss Wells.”

“She said you looked sullen. That very word.”

“I only just met her!”

Mum said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Harry.”

“The only jobs here are on the docks, and they’re running down.” He slowed and pointed at a Woolworths. “If you don’t buckle down p.d.q. you’ll end up working in Woolies for a few quid a week, and don’t expect me to bail you out.”

Mum said bitterly, “Oh, listen to yourself, Harry. ‘Bail you out’? ‘P.d.q.’? And I’m a Liverpool girl. You’re saying you don’t want her to end up like me, aren’t you?”

He shrugged, the smallest movement. “Not you. Some of your family, maybe. Doreen. Marjorie.”

“I’m not going to listen to you any more.”

“Eileen, with her four kids by three fathers, and still living over the brush.”

“You never did like my sisters.”

They bickered on. Laura stared out of the window.

As they neared the river the roads funnelled towards a place called the Pier Head. Big blocky buildings lined the waterfront. On one of them, two exotic metal birds perched on twin clock towers. That was the Liver Building.

Beyond the shoulders of the buildings Laura glimpsed the water, and huge ships passing like clouds. She knew that Liverpool, on the west coast