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

ice. The milk froze in the bottles on the doorstep every night. Miss Wells didn’t like the cold. She would have hated the winter. Ha ha.

Mondays are the worst days for Joel.

Bern was taken out of school at Easter, when her bump started to show. We don’t know where she went. Joel has had to follow her progress in his head. “Now they’ll have put her in one of those mother and baby homes with the nuns. Now she’ll be in hospital, a public ward where the nurses look down their noses at you.” On and on.

And he reads me horror stories from the “News of the world” about back-street abortions. “Irish takeaways,” he calls them. That’s why Mondays are so grim for Joel, because he reads awful stuff in the Sunday papers.

The thing is, Bern should have had her baby by now. Or got rid of it. I think it’s driving Joel crazy not knowing, one way or the other.

I’ll take Joel down the Jive-O-Rama this afternoon.

No call from Dad today.

“Shillin’.” Little Jimmy’s grin was wide.

Joel ruffled his hair. Laura paid up, and added a threepenny bit as a tip.

Little Jimmy being brought back from his evacuation and reunited with his dad had been one of the happiest moments of the unravelling of the war panic. Little Jimmy just lapped it up. And he was making good money out of all the tips.

The Jive-O-Rama was back to normal, crowded with teenagers, noise belting out of the jukebox. But Jimmy had kept the nuclear fall-out shelter he’d built out of doors and mattresses. It was a feature now. It was painted in crazy colours, and there were floor cushions and lamps underneath the doors, where you could have a quiet ciggie. But he’d had to buy new doors to fill all the empty doorframes in his house.

Everybody dressed a bit differently now. The lads wore their hair brushed forward with a straight fringe, “Beatle haircuts,” and collarless jackets and Cuban-heeled boots, just like the “Fab Four.” It had all taken off for the Beatles since Christmas. Right now “From Me To You” was hammering out of the jukebox, their second number one. But the Beatles only rarely played the Cavern these days.

There was a buzz in the air, Laura thought. They’d been spared the war, and the sixties were going to be an exciting time.

They bought espressos. The girl who served them, with a small, pinched face under a towering beehive, wasn’t Agatha, who nobody had seen since October, though Laura looked for her every time she came here.

And here, sitting around a table, they found three Woodbines: Bert Muldoon the rhythm guitarist, Paul Gillespie the lead guitarist, and Mickey Poole the bass player.

“Well, well.” Mickey Poole grinned as he pulled up chairs. “We haven’t seen you two since we all got shot at in that underground lair.”

“We got shot at?” Bert Muldoon was still buried on his huge sheepskin jacket. “What underground lair?”

Paul, as ever, didn’t say a word.

Laura felt unreasonably glad to find them. “I never thought we’d see you lot again. You went off to London.”

“Everybody did,” Mickey Poole said. “All the record companies wanted groups from Liverpool.”

“And Cilla,” Bert said.

“Who?”

“You know, that girl who took the coats in the Cavern. She can sing. Good luck to her.”

“But,” Joel said carefully, “not you lot.”

Mickey sighed. “We had two problems.”

“Our lead singer is lost in time,” said Paul.

“And our drummer’s gone back to be a joiner in the bottle factory in Bootle,” Mickey said.

Bert snorted. “ ‘Joiner.’ That’s what he says. Billy’s just a can-lad.”

Mickey said, “We tried out others. Never the same. The Woodbines are going to be nothing but a glorious memory, I think.”

Laura asked, “So what will you do?”

Paul shrugged. “Look for a job.”

“Have a bath,” said Bert.

“Go into engineering,” Mickey said unexpectedly.

“Really?” Joel asked.

Mickey shrugged. “It’s a family tradition, with the Pooles. Always fancied it, even though I’d never admit it to my parents. I’m a year behind now, but I can do my A-levels at college next year. I’m going to stay with my brother Jack in Manchester.”

Bert sneered. “Once a Manc, always a Manc.”

“Better than the bottle factory,” Mickey said.

“Good luck,” said Laura.

“We all miss Nick though,” Mickey said.

Joel said, “I’m going to put a quid in a bank account for him. By the time he gets to 2007, thanks to compound interest it will be worth a fortune.”

“I wonder what 2007 will be like,” Mickey said. “Flying cars? Robots to do the hoovering?”

Bert said, “I’ll be happy if they’ve just filled in the bomb sites in Liverpool.”

Laura wondered what would happen to Nick. A 1963 teenager, lost in 2007! Maybe she’d find out when she got to the future herself, the long way around, one day at a time.

A car horn sounded, just audible over the music.

Big Jimmy came to find them. “Laura, your mum’s outside.”

“Mum?”

“Come to pick you up. Something to do with Saint Bernadette.”

Joel and Laura looked at each other, eyes wide.

“They found her,” Joel said.

“Mum doesn’t drive,” Laura said.

They said their goodbyes to the Woodbines, and raced out of the cellar.

At the top of the stairs, Mum and Dad were waiting.

Laura hadn’t seen Dad since November. He hadn’t even been home for Christmas. She just threw herself at him.

Mum said simply, “We found your friend.”

Chapter 30

They all piled into Dad’s car. It was his precious new Ford Cortina. Joel and Laura sat in the back. The car smelled of Mum’s perfume and hairspray, Dad’s aftershave, the sweet stuffy smell of their cigarettes.

Dad drove off towards the city centre. It was about five, rush hour, and the traffic was heavy.

Laura stared at the back of Dad’s neck, shaved down to the usual crisp stubble. She could hardly believe he was here, that they were all in the car together like this.

Joel was full of curiosity about Bernadette. But he tried to be polite. “Nice car, Mister Mann.”

“Thanks,” Dad said.

Laura said, “I thought you were going to