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

her, and she was rocking backwards and forwards.

“Mum.”

“I know what you want.” Her voice was shrill. “Looters. Mr Churchill warned us about you. Take what you want. Just get out.”

“Mum, it’s me. Laura.”

Mum stood and whirled around. “Laura? Oh, God.” She ran to Laura and grabbed her. “Where have you been?”

“Is Mort here?”

Mum ran her fingers through Laura’s hair. “You’re such a mess. I thought you were dead!”

“Mum—Mort—”

“He hasn’t been home. I tried to phone the police but the phone is off. Then the police came anyway, and said you were breaking the curfew, and I’d be breaking the law too if I tried to protect you. I don’t think they believed me when I said I didn’t know where you were. And then—”

“Mum. It’s OK.”

Mum looked at the others. Joel and Bernadette, two scruffy schoolkids. Nick, a battered wreck in a Teddy Boy jacket. Weird Agatha, hanging at the back. “And who,” she snapped, “are this lot?”

“They’re friends, Mum.”

“Friends?”

“We came to get you. You’ll be safer with us. You have to come, right now.”

“She’s right.” Agatha came forward and stood beside Laura.

Mum stared at her, and at Laura, at their similar faces—two faces like her own.

Agatha swallowed. “Come with us. Grandma.”

Mum gave a little cry. Then she collapsed into Laura’s arms, in a dead faint. Agatha helped lower her to the floor.

Joel turned to Agatha. “Grandma?”

“Long story,” Agatha said. She grinned at him unexpectedly. “But you’re in it, Uncle Joel.”

He just stared.

“Let’s get her out of here,” Agatha said. “Laura, go pack her a bag. Bring sensible clothes. Slacks, shoes.”

Laura ran off to Mum’s room. The others went to grab food from the kitchen.

Chapter 20

They returned to the hole in the ground. To Mum’s credit, she didn’t complain about the dirt or the damp or the cold.

They had stolen a little camping stove and were able to brew mugs of tea. Joel and Bernadette tended to Nick, who was having a headache so bad, he said, he couldn’t even see.

Laura, Mum and Agatha sat together, blankets over their shoulders, cradling their mugs. Laura thought how strange they must look, the three of them, their similar faces in the candlelight.

“Dad phoned once since you left,” Mum said. “Yesterday. He asked for you.”

“What did he say?”

“He’s safe. He still hopes the crisis is going to end peacefully. Something about a deal they’re cooking up. The Americans have got a missile base in Turkey, near Russia. If the Russians give up their missiles on Cuba, America will give up Turkey in return. But it’s all hush hush.” She shrugged. “Nothing we can do about it either way, I suppose.”

Laura said, “Mum. I think we’ve got some talking to do.”

“All right,” Mum said.

“What’s Mort doing in our home?”

“He’s an old friend. I knew him in the war. I told you.”

“Yes. But, I mean, how did you know him, Mum?” She’d never had a conversation like this with Mum before.

Mum faced her. Her eyes were wide, her make-up bold and girlish, the lines around her mouth drawn tight. “I’m not ashamed of it,” she said. “Not even in front of you. Why should I be? It was wartime. We were adults. And we were in love.”

“Mum, you weren’t an adult. You were, what, fourteen when you met him? My age!”

“But I looked older,” she said. “I was always mature, you know. More than you. You had to be, in those days. There was a war on. You grew up fast.” Her eyes softened. “He took me dancing. He didn’t know how old I was, when we met. When he found out, he saw my identity card one day, he said he didn’t mind, although we had to keep it hush hush. He called me his little bobbysoxer.” She giggled.

“Grandma and granddad never knew.”

“They were two hundred miles away.”

“You were living with Cousin Peggy—”

“Oh, that frumpy old bat. She tried to ground me in her flat, but she didn’t have a clue… We danced away the whole war, it felt like. But then after VE Day he was assigned to a post back in the States. He said he’d send for me.”

“But he never did.”

Mum didn’t try to deny that.

“And then you met Dad.”

Dad had flown Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. After the war he stayed in the air force, gradually working his way up the command ladder. In 1946 he was a hero, still young, and lonely. And, in London, just a year after the end of the war, he met Veronica Lynch.

“I was only seventeen, and gorgeous,” Mum said. “He was terribly shy, but when he plucked up the courage to ask me to go dancing, we got on fine. Next thing you know, we’d fallen in love. A year later we got married, and a year after that—” She patted Laura’s cheek. “You! Nothing but trouble.”

“What about Mort?”

“We always kept in touch, Christmas cards, you know.”

“You forgave him for not sending for you to go to America.”

“Oh, yes. You’ve met him. You can’t be mad at a man like that for long! Then, just a few weeks ago, he phoned and said he was to be stationed for a bit at Burtonwood, you know, the big RAF base on the road to Manchester. And when he heard I was coming back to Liverpool he asked to visit. Well, I said, why just visit? We would have room for him to stay. He said it would be a help; the barracks at Burtonwood are full.”

“Does Dad know about you and Mort? What you got up to in the war?”

“Oh, of course he does, he’s not a fool.”

“And he doesn’t mind Mort moving in?”

“It’s nothing to do with him, is it? We’re separated.”

Laura had another hard question. “Mum—is Mort your lover now?”

“No!” That was another angry word. Then she said, more quietly, “No. Oh, maybe in the back of my mind I wondered if, you know… But I don’t think we ever will, not again. He doesn’t want me, you see.