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

It was Dad. I asked him to give me a number to call him back. I want to be able to talk to him without anybody else listening in. After all, it’s his Key. He didn’t argue. I wrote the number on my hand. Then he rang off. It can’t have been more than a ten-second call.

At breakfast Mum asked me who rang. Wrong number, I said.

Mort came in from the parlour wearing a crisp white shirt. Who rang? Wrong number. He stared at me.

He knows I’m lying. And I know the truth about him. Some of it anyway. And he knows I know.

All these secrets, all these lies, in my head, and in Mort’s. I hate it. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a spy.

Mort hasn’t read this diary yet. Well, I don’t think so. After I found he’d been searching my room I put the diary at the back of my chest of drawers, and used the Boy Scout hair trick again. Of course Mort could have stuck the hair back to fool me. But he was stupid about the dust on the bookshelf. I’m keeping the diary with me from now on, in my satchel or a coat pocket. Mort can rummage through my grubby socks all he likes.

I don’t think Mum has a clue what’s going on. She’s stuck in some fantasy about 1944. She’s no help.

This morning I’m meeting Bern and Joel in town. The longer I can stay out of this house the better.

She got off the bus outside Saint George’s Hall, the great black acropolis near Lime Street Station.

She stopped at the first free phone box she found. Feeding the slot with coins, she called Dad with the number written on her palm.

Dad got straight to news about Cuba, where things were getting tight. The Americans were preparing for an invasion, which would mean war with the Russians. But the good news was that it might not come to that. President Kennedy had come up with a plan.

Dad said, “He’s sending out his navy to stop more Russian ships coming to Cuba. They’re calling it a ‘quarantine.’ It sounds less aggressive than a blockade.”

“Do the Russians know about it?”

“Not yet. Kennedy will go public in a day or two.”

“Dad, I don’t see how this is good news.”

“Because it’s a middle way. Kennedy hasn’t just given up. On the other hand he hasn’t started shooting. He’s talking, really. ‘Look here, Khrushchev old bean, that’s far enough with your ships and what-not. Now let’s talk this over like sensible chaps.’”

“Why not just phone?”

“Well, there’s no way to do that,” Dad said. “No direct line between Washington and Moscow. But while the ships are facing each other out in the ocean, the politicians and ambassadors are at it behind the scenes.”

“But it could still go wrong.”

“Oh, yes. It’s the other side of the world from Russia. Communications aren’t always very good. If some hothead on either side decides it would be wizard to take a pot-shot—well, the balloon could well and truly go up. But I’m hopeful, Laura. There are still ways to back out of this without anybody getting killed. Still time, too.

“Look, Laura, you understand I’m only telling you this because, you know, if the worst comes to the worst you might have to get along without me. But you must try not to worry.”

“I’ll try.”

There was a silence, except for crackles on the line. “Are you sure everything’s all right, chicken? You sound a bit down.”

She longed to tell him the truth. Or what she believed was the truth. About Miss Wells and Mort and the Minuteman. “It’s just that things are a little spooky, Dad. And Mum—”

“I know. She has her own issues. Look, Laura. The situation with Mort is—well, it’s complicated. But he’s a soldier and he’s a decent man, and if the worst comes to the worst he will do the right thing by the two of you. That’s one reason I was willing to let him lodge with you. So you must try not to be anxious, even though I’m not there. And you always have the Key.”

But the Key, she thought, was the source of all her problems.

She found herself saying, “Yes, Dad, I’m fine, I’m not worried.” There was a corner of her mind that said, I shouldn’t have to be doing this. The adults are supposed to reassure me. But this was the way things were, and she just had to get on with it.

They talked a little more, about school and Mum and telly shows. Then he was called away.

She hung up the phone handset. She rubbed her hands to get the number off her palm. But she memorised it first.

She walked down Whitechapel towards Church Street.

It was a bright, sunny Saturday morning, and the city centre pavements were swarming. There were fashion stores with windows full of slim plaster dummies modelling leather coats and finely stitched blue jeans. There were Italian cafes and espresso bars, full of gleaming coffee machines and chatting teenagers. And there were record stores like NEMS, the giant three-floor store on Whitechapel run by the man who, it was said, managed the Beatles, the most popular beat group in the city.

Laura felt distant from all this. Since finding out who Miss Wells really was, she had felt differently about things. Now it was as if she saw these shopping streets through Miss Wells’s eyes. As if she was remembering this day, when she was nearly sixty years old, off in the year 2007.

To the shoppers, it was as if this sunny Saturday morning, with money in your pocket and stores piled high with goods, was the way the world had always been, and always would be. But the last war was only seventeen years ago. And the next war might only be a week away. That was reality. All this stuff, the shops and the laughing crowds, was