Home Front Girls

sausage rolls and that trifle yourself? They look quite delicious.’
    ‘Yes I did,’ Miranda said proudly. ‘And the cake.’
    ‘Then I suggest we all tuck in,’ the older woman said with a bright smile. ‘Just looking at it is making me feel hungry.’
    As Annabelle glanced at the table she scowled, thinking again of the birthday party she had envisaged. This was certainly a far cry from what she had wished for.
    ‘Come on, darling. You go first,’ her grandmother encouraged. ‘You are the birthday girl, after all.’ She held a plate out to Annabelle but she declined it.
    ‘No thanks,’ she muttered ungraciously. ‘I’ve never been that keen on meat paste. If Daddy was here we’d be in some big hotel somewhere celebrating properly! With decent food to eat.’
    ‘Yes, but he isn’t here, is he?’ Mrs Hamilton Gower was losing her patience now. ‘He’s away at war fighting to try and keep us all safe. I would have thought you would be more concerned about your father’s safety than celebrating your birthday.’
    ‘He chose to go,’ Annabelle said nastily. ‘He didn’t even wait to be called up – and why shouldn’t I celebrate my birthday? I won’t be twenty-one again, will I? What do you expect me to do? Wait until this damn war is over?’
    Her grandmother seemed to swell to twice her size at the girl’s blatant selfishness, and before she could stop to think she blurted out, ‘How could you be so unfeeling? Do you never think of anyone but yourself, girl? Your father could be killed. He might never come home again. But then I always feared that you would turn out like this. Your parents have ruined you since the day your father fetched you!’ She clapped her hands over her mouth then and the colour drained from her face.
    Annabelle frowned. ‘What do you mean, since the day my father fetched me? I don’t understand. Mummy, what’s she talking about?’
    Miranda and her mother exchanged a glance and to everyone’s horror, the older woman began to cry. ‘I’m so sorry, dear,’ she sobbed as she looked at Miranda imploringly. ‘I never meant to say it. It just sort of slipped out.’
    ‘Oh, for goodness sake! Will someone just tell me what’s going on here,’ Annabelle ranted.
    ‘I always warned you this day would come,’ Miranda’s mother told her now in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘Secrets like this are too hard to keep forever. But I never meant it to happen like this, I swear it, darling.’
    Annabelle was stamping her foot with impatience now, so with a resigned sigh her mother turned to her. The moment she had always dreaded had finally come.
    ‘Perhaps we should go into the kitchen where we can talk in private?’ she suggested, but Annabelle shook her head.
    ‘I don’t want to go into the kitchen,’ she spat. ‘You can say whatever you have to say right here. There’s only family here, and Dotty and Lucy are my friends. I don’t mind them hearing whatever it is you’re going to say.’
    ‘Very well then.’ Miranda drew a long shuddering breath as she chose her words carefully, but she feared that once they were said, things would never be the same again.
    ‘The thing is,’ she started hesitantly, ‘when your father and I got married we planned to have a big family. A huge family, in fact!’ She smiled nostalgically as she remembered how happy they had been, but then her eyes grew sad as she went on tremulously, ‘We tried for a baby from the second he put the ring on my finger, but time went by and each month I would cry with disappointment when I discovered that I wasn’t pregnant. Eventually we had to accept that it wasn’t going to happen for us and I sank into a depression. And then one night your father came home with a young girl. She was homeless and she had been hanging around his garage because he slipped her food and gave her a little money here and there. He felt sorry for her. But the thing is – she was heavily pregnant and she told your father that she didn’t want to keep the baby. So, he offered to buy the baby from her when it was born. She agreed, so then your father put her into a small hotel and paid a woman to go and deliver the baby when her time came. You were the result, and within hours of the girl giving birth he went and fetched you home and paid her. We haven’t seen or heard from her since.’
    Annabelle’s eyes were starting from her head. It was just too much to take in. ‘B-but who was she?’ she croaked.