Foxden Hotel (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 5) by Madalyn Morgan (ebook reader ink txt) 📕

on,’ Claire said again, ‘it’ll be fun.’ She looked disparagingly at the settee. ‘This thing can’t be comfortable to sleep on, it isn’t big enough.’

‘You’re right,’ Bess said. ‘I’ll be with you in a second.’ Creeping into the bedroom, Bess took her dressing gown from the back of the door and a clean blouse from the wardrobe. The nightdress she would have worn was under Aimee’s pillow, so she took a clean one from the chest of drawers along with knickers and stockings, and slipped out of the room without disturbing her niece or her husband.

By the time Bess had collected toothbrush, hairbrush, and other toiletries that she’d need in the morning and made her way to Claire’s room, her sister was in bed.

‘How’s Mitch?’ Bess asked, cleaning her teeth.

‘The same. He doesn’t sleep much, so he’s often irritable. When he does drop off he has awful nightmares, which wake him up, so he’s more irritable. He’s jumpy and nervous. The slightest things upset him, and he worries all the time about mine and Aimee’s safety. It’s like living with an unexploded bomb, never knowing when it’s going to go off. The doctor said he’s suffering from nerves.’

‘Same as Dad was when he came home from the Great War,’ Bess said, taking a glass from the shelf above the hand-basin, filling it with water and rinsing the toothpaste out of her mouth. ‘Some of the lads who came back from Dunkirk had the same symptoms. They had a hell of a time, saw some terrible things, and some of them couldn’t shake off the experience. They probably still haven’t.’ She took off her clothes, pulled on her nightdress, and jumped into bed next to her sister.

‘Mam said our Tom was like it when he came back.’

‘He was,’ Bess said, leaning on her elbows. ‘Meeting Annabel and spending time with the lads in the hospital wing helped for a while, but then he started to drink.’

‘He always liked a pint,’ Claire said.

‘He did, but this was different. He was getting drunk every night and offending people he cared about. It was as if he was on a merry-go-round and didn’t know how to get off.’

‘But he’s all right now, so what changed?’

‘He did. He had to. Mr Hands from The Crown in Woodcote telephoned me and said Tom was drunk and crying, and telling everyone that he had killed his best friend at Dunkirk. He asked me to go down and pick him up. He was frightened Tom would harm himself.’

‘Had he killed his best friend?’

‘No. The two of them had found a motorboat and Tom got it going. They were waiting for it to get dark, and then Tom, his best friend, and half a dozen other soldiers were going to escape. The boat was full when a couple of lads, carrying their injured mate, asked Tom’s friend to take him. There wasn’t any room, so Tom’s friend got out of the boat and put the injured lad in his place. Not long after they’d left the harbour it was blown up. Tom couldn’t forgive himself for being alive when his brave friend was dead.’

Bess and Claire sat in silence. It was Claire who spoke first. ‘How did Tom get over it?’

‘As I said, it was a combination of things - falling for Annabel and helping in the hospital wing. But the turning point was that night Mr Hands asked me to take him home. Tom was so drunk he couldn’t speak. I made him strong coffee and literally poured it down his throat until he was sick.’ Bess wrinkled her nose at the memory. ‘When he stopped being sick, he began to talk. He talked about his friend, how selfless and brave he was. Jock!’ Bess said, his name suddenly coming to her. ‘That was his name, Jock.

‘He talked about how scared he’d been, about the horror of seeing men his own age wounded and dying on the beach, and dead bodies floating in the sea.’ Bess stopped speaking and took a deep breath. ‘I think talking it out with someone he trusted helped, I really do. I happened to be there for Tom at a crucial time,’ Bess said. ‘Can you think of anyone Mitch trusts; who he could talk to without feeling inadequate or embarrassed?’

Claire thought for a moment. ‘The only people we know are in the military, and he’d never talk to any of them, he’d worry that they’d see him as weak.’

‘What about his father?’

‘He hasn’t seen him for years,’ Claire said. ‘No, not his father, but our friend Edith Belland, the woman we lived with in France. Edith is the only person in the world Mitch would trust with his fears - and she is the only one I can think of who would understand what he’s going through.’

The following morning Bess and Claire looked in on Frank and Aimee. They weren’t there, which meant they had already gone down to breakfast. Aimee’s old French teddy was propped up between two pillows on the bed. And on the table in the sitting room, in place of the pile of receipts Frank had brought up to work on the night before, was a note. “Good morning lazy Auntie Bess. Uncle Frank and me have been up for ages. We’ve collected the eggs and are now having breakfast.” The note was signed “Aimee.” Bess laughed. Her niece’s handwriting had developed quite a sophisticated style overnight.

Maeve was on the telephone. She lifted her hand in a welcoming gesture as Bess passed. There were no newspapers on the reception desk, so they had either not arrived, or Frank had dealt with them. No post either, which Bess assumed her husband had taken to the office. She popped in and skimmed through half-a-dozen open envelopes. There was nothing urgent, so she dropped them back onto the desk and