The 9 by Madalyn Morgan (tools of titans ebook .txt) 📕

a couple of Binkie’s friends I’d come down early and do their hair. That’s why I was late just now. I was chatting with them and lost track of time.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After signing the hotel register, Ena was given her key. ‘Room seven. Top of the stairs, turn right,’ the receptionist said, pointing to a flight of stairs on the left. Ena thanked her, picked up her case and made her way up the narrow staircase. Passing room five on one side of the corridor and room six and the bathroom on the other, she opened the door of room seven.

The room smelled of stale tobacco, so dropping her overnight case by the side of the bed, Ena locked the door and ran over to the window. Reaching up, she turned the brass catch between the top and bottom windows. Seeing the edges of the bottom window had been painted over, she pulled down the top half.

Looking out, Ena watched a man walking a dog along a strip of grass that bordered roped-off plots of dry brown earth that men – and some women – were digging over to make allotments. To her right was the Coffee Tavern, the columned entrance to the station, and beyond that the Post Office. A faint smell of trains drifted in through the open window. Ena pushed it up, leaving an inch gap at the top.

She threw herself onto the bed. It was only a single but it was wider than her bed at home. She sank into it. It was soft and springy, and covered with a dusky pink candlewick bedspread and matching eiderdown. It had been turned down, showing clean white sheets and a plump pillow. Ena propped it up against the headboard, leaned back, and looked round the room. On one side of the window was a narrow chest of drawers and a man’s wardrobe, which Ena thought was plenty big enough for one person’s clothes. On the other side of the window was a dressing table, and hand-basin with a cream towel draped over it.

 She wriggled down and made herself comfortable. She hadn’t stayed in a hotel for years, not since before the war when she’d been a nanny to two children. Every summer, the family she’d worked for had taken her on holiday to the seaside to look after the children, but she’d not had a room of her own. She’d slept in the same room as her two charges.

A warm feeling washed over her, remembering those days, and she closed her eyes. What innocent times they’d been. She and the children in her care spent their days on the beach building sandcastles, collecting shells, and paddling in the sea. At least once during the week, Ena took her wards to the pleasure park or the fair. And at night, after washing them and putting them to bed, she would read to them before falling into her own bed, exhausted. Now she had a room to herself. And however small, it was all hers, until tomorrow.

Sensing the rumble of a train, Ena opened her eyes. Her heart almost stopped when she realised she had closed them for a second and fallen asleep. Looking at her watch, Ena swung her legs over the bed and stood up. She needed to get a move on if she didn’t want to keep Binkie and her friends in Hut 23 waiting.

Flinging open her suitcase, Ena took out her dress and hung it on the outside of the wardrobe. It was hardly creased. Anyway, there was an iron in Hut 23 that she could use if she needed to. Grabbing the skirt and blouse that she’d brought to go home in the next day, she hung them up in the wardrobe. Her clean underclothes she put in the top drawer of the small chest of drawers, and her night clothes she put under the pillow on the bed.

Leaving her evening shoes, handbag, washbag – with flannel and soap rolled up in a small towel – and her vanity case containing her makeup in the suitcase, Ena took down her dress, folded it, and put it back in the case. Before leaving, she pulled up the crumpled top sheet and straightened the bedspread and eiderdown. Why she wasted time doing that she didn’t know, and sighed.

Putting on her coat, she picked up the small case and left. Before closing and locking the door, she glanced back into the room. It looked much the same as when she’d arrived. I’m staying in a hotel, she thought and laughed out loud. Whatever next?

As she approached Hut 23, Ena could hear Binkie laughing. She knocked on the door and went in to cheers of, ‘She’s here,’ from Dibbs, and ‘Hooray,’ from Binkie. Binkie’s hair, which Ena had dressed the day before, looked almost perfect. Dibbs however, was wearing a silk scarf tied round her head in the style of a turban. When she took the scarf off, Ena could see why she had worn it.

‘I didn’t think you’d have time to do more than set my hair before the dance tonight, so I got one of the girls in my digs to put a dab of peroxide on it earlier. Brighten it up, eh?’

A dab? Dibbs’ hair looked as if she’d had the bottle poured over it. ‘Yes, I’m sure it has,’ Ena said, unable to hide the doubt in her voice. Dibbs sat down at the sink, her hair still damp from rinsing off the peroxide, looked across the room at Ena, and pulled a face.

‘Don’t worry,’ Ena said. Stowing her case behind the clothes rail, she went over to Dibbs. ‘It’ll be fine if we wash it very carefully and put tons of conditioning cream on it.’ She looked at Binkie. ‘I saw some conditioner here yesterday.’

‘Will this do?’ Binkie said, passing Ena two bottles: one yellow and