Home Front Girls

to hold back her tears.
    ‘Now, now,’ the woman scolded. ‘We don’t want to set the children off, do we?’ She took Mary’s gas mask from Lucy and hung it about the child’s neck, then before Lucy could say another word she helped Mary up the steps, where another Red Cross worker settled her into a seat. All the other children were waving and shouting but Mary sat down and stared straight ahead with no sign of emotion whatsoever.
    Lucy stood as if she had been rooted to the spot, feeling so bereft that she was incapable of speech. Then the final two children were put aboard and the Red Cross woman clambered up behind them and closed the door firmly.
    ‘Do you have any idea at all where the children might be going?’ Lucy managed to ask the man who had loaded the luggage, and hearing the note of desperation in her voice he smiled at her kindly.
    ‘Well, I can’t be sure but I reckon I heard them mention Folkestone.’
    ‘But that’s only across the Channel from where all the fighting’s going on,’ she said faintly.
    He patted her hand. ‘So it is, but it isn’t a target like the industrial cities, is it? Your little ’un will be just fine, I’m sure. And now if you’ll excuse me I’d best get them off to the station. I’m the driver, see.’
    She watched him climb into the driver’s seat and seconds later the bus rumbled into life and began to pull away. Lucy ran alongside it waving frantically, but Mary didn’t even glance in her direction and within minutes she was gone. Lucy stood there feeling utterly devastated. She had meant to tell Mary how very much she loved her and how much she would miss her, before she boarded the bus, even though she had told her the same thing at least a dozen times that morning, but everything had happened so fast that she hadn’t had time to say anything. And now she could only pray that Mary knew.
    The mothers began to trickle away then, most of them openly crying now, and Lucy trailed behind them. She had to get to work, which she supposed was no bad thing. There seemed little to go home for now that Joel and Mary were gone.

Chapter Fifteen
     
    ‘Look, here it is!’ Dotty excitedly held up a copy of Woman’s Heart magazine. ‘ A Wartime Romance by Dorothy Kent. It feels really strange to think that this is my story. And Robert has already chosen the one they want to publish next month.’
    ‘You must feel very proud,’ Annabelle said with a trace of envy in her voice. After all, it was quite an achievement to see your name in print and to know that your work was going to be read by hundreds if not thousands of people. ‘And I’m sure the next one will wonderful too, if Robert has chosen it.’
    Dotty blushed furiously. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? He asked me to call him Robert because it’s friendlier than a surname, that’s all.’
    ‘And of course you don’t fancy him a bit, do you? And you’re not looking forward to going to London again at all,’ Annabelle teased.
    Lucy just smiled but she didn’t comment. Since Mary had gone she had been very withdrawn and quiet, and the other two girls were making allowances for her. She had practically brought Mary up so they supposed she was bound to be missing her badly.
    ‘Of course I’m looking forward to going to London again,’ Dotty said. ‘But it’s only business. I’ve told you, I think Robert already has a ladyfriend – Laura, who he works with.’
    Annabelle rolled her eyes but wisely held her tongue. She was sure that Dotty must have mentioned Robert Brabinger at least a dozen times a day since their meeting, and she had a sneaking suspicion that Dotty was more than a little smitten with him, even if she hadn’t admitted it yet. But time would tell. Meantime, she and Dotty were doing all they could to cheer Lucy up, sadly without much success up to now. But they had persuaded her to go to a dance with them at the Locarno in the city centre that night, and Annabelle was looking forward to it. She was fed up of being stuck at home in Leaf Lane all the time.
    They were now into May and the war bulletins were not good. On the first of the month the papers had reported that a German mine-carrying bomber plane had crashed in Clacton injuring 156 people and killing four Germans and two civilians. But then the following week even worse news had reached them. The Allies who had landed in Norway only two weeks before, had departed; the German army had been too powerful for