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

OK, for you and your mother. There are places I can take you. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” He smiled, but his small eyes were blank. “You’re going to have to learn to trust me.”

Laura felt cold, deep inside. There was nowhere safe, she thought, nowhere in a dangerous world, not even in her home.

She walked out.

Mum called after her, “Put the kettle on, would you, love?”

Chapter 16

Wednesday 24th October. 8 a.m.

I keep expecting Mort to just grab me, to drop the game-playing. He’s still holding off. How much longer?

Dad called this morning.

“It’s getting a lot harder to make these calls,” he said.

I could hear wind and birdsong. “Where are you?”

“In a phone box. I tiptoed out of the base. I told them I needed a packet of fags.”

“You’re giving up smoking.”

“They’ll see through that, then. Not much of a spy, am I? It’ll get better before it gets worse, Laura. The next few days are critical. In the crisis. Everything depends on how the Russians accept Kennedy’s blockade of their ships. And—” Beep beep beep. “Oh, damn—”

That was it.

Trust Dad not to have any coppers. No threepenny bit in his sock. He might win the Cold War but he’s not very smart sometimes.

I still don’t know what to tell him about Miss Wells, and Agatha. I haven’t even spoken to him properly about Mort.

It’s all about the Key. He gave it to me to make me feel safe, but it’s doing the opposite. A bit of me doesn’t want to tell him about any of that, doesn’t want to worry him.

Another bit wants to sit on his knee and curl up, as if I was five years old.

I wonder when I’ll speak to him again.

“Morning, love!”

The wireless was on. Vera Lynn introducing wartime favourites. Mum was singing along as she set out breakfast dishes on the dinner table in the parlour. She looked happy as a bird. War was evidently good for her.

The newspaper was on the coffee table. But it wasn’t the Liverpool Echo as usual. It was called Britain Today: A Publication of the Central Office of Information. It was only four pages. On the front was a photograph of the Queen and her children getting on a plane for Canada. “Her Majesty’s thoughts are with us!” Another photo showed London Zoo animals being led out of their cages, to somewhere safer. And in art galleries, precious paintings and sculptures were being boxed up and put in cellars.

There was an item on sport, which had all been cancelled, including Joel’s precious football. The whole of the back page was given over to a big full-page feature called “Dig for Victory.” It showed how you could dig up your back garden and grow your own vegetables and keep chickens, just like in the war.

It wasn’t much of a newspaper. No entertainment news, no cartoons, not even a crossword. And there wasn’t a shred of real news about what was happening on the other side of the world, in Cuba.

Mum said, “Oh, look what came in the post.”

There was a stern-looking brown envelope on the coffee table. Mum drew out two bits of grey card, both stamped with serial numbers. One was from the Department of Pensions and National Insurance.

Mum said, “It’s your identity card, dear. Just like during the war.”

It had spaces for a small photo, a name, address, and a National Insurance number. Mum had stuck a photo in the space, and filled in Laura’s details: MANN, L. There was her birth date, 6th September 1948.

Just as on Miss Wells’s driving licence.

“I got the photo from your passport. And look at this.”

The other item was a little book from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. RATION BOOK: If Found Please Return to Any Food Office. Laura’s name and address had been filled in on the cover. Inside was a dreary list of allowances. Thirteen ounces of meat a week, six ounces of marge, two pints of milk.

Mum took that back. “I’ll go shopping later.” She went on with the breakfast, humming to Vera Lynn. She didn’t seem at all bothered by the idea of having to queue for hours for bits of scrag end.

Laura tucked the identity card in her blazer breast pocket. It still smelled of gum where Mum had stuck on the photo. Then she grabbed a piece of toast and left the house, managing to avoid Mort again.

She didn’t bother waiting for a bus. She just walked.

In fact she only saw two buses this Wednesday morning. One had soldiers in it. The other was full of little kids, who peered out of the windows sadly. She wondered where they were being taken.

Everything was different, even compared with the urgent mood yesterday.

There were queues at all the shops she passed, especially the food shops, the butcher’s and baker’s and grocer’s, even the ones that weren’t open yet. Laura supposed all the old stock would soon run out, as people grabbed what they could. Panic buying.

There were long queues at the petrol stations too. LAST PRE-RATION SUPPLIES, said a sign. FIRST COME FIRST SERVED. Another sign made her smile uneasily. It had read, LAST CHANCE TO FILL UP BEFORE THE A-ROAD. Some wag had crossed out ROAD and written in BOMB.

There seemed to be a lot of ambulances about. But they were calling at homes and delivering people, not collecting them. Sickly little kids with tubes in their noses, old people like shapeless grey lumps in wheelchairs. Nick was right. They were clearing the hospitals, for the war casualties to come.

There were road blocks on the main roads. Checkpoints. She saw one car being impounded, a fat salesman type complaining as two scuffers prepared to take it away.

And, nailed to telephone posts, there were signs directing you to bomb shelters, in pub cellars, and old air-raid shelters in the parks.

School looked as if it had been vandalised, with its windows clumsily splashed with whitewash.

She hung around by