Home Front Girls

Thankfully they still appeared to have running water, which was more than the majority of Coventry had.
    ‘That was Robert on the phone, checking that Dotty was safe and sound,’ Miranda went on, and at the thought of her friends, Annabelle sat up straight.
    ‘After I’ve had a rest I’ll go and see them,’ she decided. ‘Although I don’t know how I’m going to manage it. I heard the Army chaps saying that the majority of the trams and buses have been destroyed. I suppose I could go on my bike though. In fact, it might be easier that way.’
    ‘Just so long as you have a rest first,’ her mother told her. ‘You look all in, and if you don’t get some sleep soon you’ll make yourself ill. I’m sure that Dotty and Lucy will be fine.’
     
    As it happened, in fact, before Annabelle got a chance to go out, just after lunchtime Lucy arrived on her bicycle looking pale and worried.
    Miranda had managed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep by then and have a wash and change of clothes, and felt slightly better.
    ‘Ah, Lucy, Annabelle was going to come and check on you and Dotty later when she’d had a rest. Are you all right, sweetheart?’
    ‘I’m fine, but I can’t get through to Dotty,’ Lucy told her. ‘And I was just talking to some soldiers on the way over here who told me that her side of the city had taken a lot of hits. You don’t think Miss Timms’s house has been bombed, do you?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Miranda said. ‘But Robert rang earlier on, and he was worried because he couldn’t get through to her either.’
    ‘That’s it then,’ Lucy said as she strode purposefully back towards the door. ‘I’m going over there to see what’s happening. Oh, and could you tell Annabelle not to bother going in to work tomorrow? Owen Owen is flattened apparently, and the police and the Army have had to clear off looters who were sifting through the rubble for undamaged stock.’
    ‘Oh dear.’ Another shock. Miranda placed her hand over her mouth. That meant that all three girls were out of work now, but then that seemed unimportant after what she had been forced to see the night before, like the tiny baby who had died in her arms. He would never grow up now to ever have a job. It all seemed so utterly pointless – and all because of one wicked man’s greed for power. Adolf Hitler had a lot to answer for!
    ‘I’ll tell her,’ she promised. ‘But don’t get fretting about that for now. That’s the least of our worries. At least we still have a roof over our heads and we’re still alive.’
    Lucy hurried outside and clambered onto her bicycle. She just needed to know that Dotty was safe now and then she could go home and get some blessed sleep. She had left Mrs P to watch Harry and Mr P covering her windows with sheets of plywood, and with any luck he would be done by the time she got back.
    As she rode along she tried to avert her eyes from the scenes of devastation all around her, but she often had to get off her bike and pick her way across rubble and smouldering piles of bricks. People were sitting dejectedly on the kerb-stones with the few possessions they had managed to salvage from their ruined homes scattered around them, and the sound of children crying and ambulance and fire-engine bells filled the air. But then at last she came to the Kenilworth Road and she stared in horror at the scene before her. She was covered from head to foot in the ash that was floating in the air from the numerous fires by now, and her lungs felt as if they were on fire too. But even so she spurred herself on until she came to Miss Timms’s house. The roof was completely gone and half of the house was flattened. Lucy’s stomach sank. Dotty had told her quite clearly that she and Miss Timms always sheltered in the cellar if the air-raid sirens sounded, and there was no reason why last night should have been any different. So could it be that they were still trapped down there?
    Throwing her bike to the ground, she raced towards a number of soldiers who were digging through the rubble of the house next door and told them breathlessly, ‘Please, you have to help – my friend must be trapped down in the cellar next door.’
    A young soldier whose eyes looked immeasurably weary shrugged as he covered the bodies of an old lady and an old man they had dragged from the ruins.
    ‘We may as well come and have a look then,’ he answered with a nod towards his colleagues. ‘The neighbours the other