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

if I have kids. I can’t have kids. Bernadette doesn’t want her kid, and I can’t have them. Funny that.”

Laura didn’t know what to say to this forty-year-old woman, holding her hand like a little girl. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be happy in this age,” Agatha whispered to Laura. “This year. All of you. You have so much, your health, all the stuff. This time you’ve been given. It’s different after the war.”

Nick asked, “You mean Hitler’s war?”

“No,” said Agatha, “the Sunday War. The war to come.”

There was a long silence.

Bert Muldoon said, “Am I the only one who’s confused here?”

Somebody tapped on the hardboard cover over the hole. Big Jimmy called, “They’ve gone. Come on out.”

“Good,” Bert said. “I’m dying for a burst.”

They all started to move, with relief.

Agatha held Laura’s hand for one second longer. She whispered, “I’m sorry, Mum.”

Then she climbed out through the hole.

Laura sat watching her, stunned.

Chapter 12

Monday 22nd October. 7:45 a.m.

No phone call from Dad this morning.

Stayed in yesterday. All that stuff on Saturday was just too strange.

Especially Agatha. I don’t want to think about her.

Bert was sort of right on Saturday, when he guessed it was a drugs bust. The official story was that the raid on the Jive-O-Rama was a drugs raid by plain-clothes scuffers.

I think they want the Key, and I suppose the code numbers in my head. But they have to sneak around to get it, rather than just take it. Why, I don’t know. For now it’s helping me.

But Black Saturday’s only five days away. This kid-glove stuff can’t last for ever.

Nice surprise this morning (sarcasm). Mort has hired us a new telly. It was delivered early. Nineteen-inch screen. He said he wanted to help make the house a home.

We all sat in the parlour and looked at the test card. I hate being in that room first thing in the morning because it smells of Mort and his aftershave, where he’s been sleeping.

If he thinks he can buy me off with a nine-bob-a-week Red Arrow Rentals telly he’s got another think coming. Stuff him.

Good picture though.

It was a damp, cold Monday morning.

At school everybody seemed in a bad mood.

In the break the three of them, Joel, Bernadette and Laura, huddled together in the yard, arms around their chests. The sky was a solid lid of cloud, and everything seemed washed out, colourless. Very Monday morning, Laura thought.

“I thought of coming over yesterday,” she said to Bernadette.

“What for?”

“To see how you were.”

“Well, I’m still up the duff.”

“Saturday was very weird.”

Joel said, “Perhaps we all needed a day off from each other. It only all kicks off when we’re together, doesn’t it?”

“It kicks off,” Bernadette said viciously, “when we’re around Miss H-Bomb 1962.”

Laura shot back, “It’s not my fault you’re pregnant.”

“I don’t need you, or anybody.”

Joel said, “Bern, you’ve got a lot of anger to get rid of. But—”

“Oh, what do you know? You’re always sniffing around me. Get your own life.”

Joel looked devastated.

And Laura suddenly saw that he had feelings for Bernadette himself. Well, why not? Laura thought of Joel as reserved, a swot, a bit too earnest. But he had the same juices flowing as any other fourteen-year-old.

In that case, this whole business about Billy Waddle and the baby must be hurting him hugely.

It wasn’t the right time to mention how she was fretting about Agatha, a forty-year-old woman who had called Laura “Mum.”

Miss Wells approached them. She wore a huge quilted overcoat and a woollen hat. It wasn’t that cold. Maybe where she came from, Laura thought, where or when, the world had got warmer, and 1962 seemed cold to her.

“So,” Miss Wells said.

“Miss?”

She looked them in the face, one after the other. “We all have secrets, don’t we?”

“Don’t know what you mean, Miss,” Bernadette said brazenly.

“I think you do, O’Brien. How’s the morning sickness? Your condition’s pretty obvious, you know. Oh, don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m all right on my own.”

“No, you’re not. You don’t need to talk to me. See Mrs Sweetman.” The deputy head. “She’ll sort you out. And she won’t judge you. You’re not the first gymslip mum, you know.” Miss Wells looked directly at Laura. “We all operate under constraints. But we’re here to help you. I am.”

Then just tell me the truth, Laura thought. If you’re me, if there is any of me left in you, then show some compassion, and tell me the truth, about who you are, and what you want.

But Miss Wells just looked back at her, with eyes that were her own and yet weren’t, and said nothing.

The bell rang.

When Miss Wells was out of earshot, Laura asked, “So will you talk to old Sweetcheeks?”

Bernadette grunted. “What do you think? Listen. Cavern. Tonight. I’ve got tickets. Nick’s playing, and the Beatles. Stuff the rest of it.”

Monday 22nd October. 6 p.m.

Mort came after me as soon as I walked in the door.

Keeps trying to get me alone, in the sitting room, on the stairs. I’ve stuck to Mum, or I’ve run to the bathroom, or hid in my bedroom with the door closed.

He seems to want to keep it all a secret from Mum, for now, and that’s saving me. But I can see he’s getting mad. I don’t know what he’ll do then.

Later, as Mort and Mum sat watching Z-Cars on the big new telly, Laura put on her best black dress and a bit of make-up. Mum didn’t even know she’d blown her savings from her pocket money on creams, compacts, mascara and lipstick.

She slipped out of the house without asking, or waiting for her tea.

She took a bus to the Pier Head and walked up from there.

In town, she felt as if everybody was staring at her. Especially the men. But it was a different sort of stare. Less threatening, somehow. Maybe the make-up made her look older.

The Cavern was in Mathew Street, a narrow lane just around the corner from the shopping street called Whitechapel. This area, a