Home Front Girls

be all right on yer own? You could always come an’ stay wi’ me an’ Fred tonight?’
    ‘Thanks, but I’d rather be on my own for now if you don’t mind.’
    Mrs P slipped quietly away and soon she was back in her own four walls.
    ‘You ain’t never gonna believe what I’m about to tell yer,’ she told Fred, and when she went on to do just that, his mouth gaped in amazement.
    ‘But she never breathed a word about her mam still bein’ alive. Do yer think she were ashamed of her?’ he asked.
    ‘No, it don’t sound like she were,’ his wife said. ‘In fact, she’s broken-hearted an’ you ain’t like that if you’ve been ashamed o’ someone. It appears she really loved her mam, so I can’t make head nor tail of it. An’ what makes it worse is the fact that she can’t even let Joel know. He could be anywhere, God bless him.’ The same as my Freddy, she thought, and the pain was there again, as sharp and acute as the day she had received the telegram telling her that he was missing. Life could be bloody cruel at times, there was no doubt about it.
     
    Lucy didn’t go into work the next day and Dotty and even Annabelle were concerned about her.
    ‘It isn’t like her not to turn in,’ Dotty fretted when they met in the lift on their way to the staff dining room. ‘I’ve never known Lucy miss a day; even when Mary was evacuated she came in late, and if she’d had anything planned she would have mentioned it to us.’
    ‘We could always pop round after work if you haven’t got anything planned,’ Annabelle suggested. ‘Mother won’t be in until later anyway so she wouldn’t miss me.’
    ‘We’ll do that then,’ Dotty answered with quiet determination. ‘Unless she decides to come in late, and then we can stop worrying.’
    But Lucy didn’t come in, so straight after work the girls headed for the bus station and boarded a bus to the end of Lucy’s street in Tile Hill.
    ‘Crikey, her curtains are all drawn,’ Dotty said worriedly as they approached the house. ‘You don’t think she’s had bad news about Joel, do you?’
    Annabelle’s stomach lurched at the very thought of it but she hid her feelings well as they turned up the whitewashed entry that led to Lucy and Mrs P’s shared back yard. Mrs P was at her kitchen window when Dotty opened the gate and she hurried out to them looking upset.
    ‘Young Lucy’s had some bad news,’ she confided in a hushed voice. ‘In a right two an’ eight she is, bless her soul.’
    ‘It’s not about Joel, is it?’ Annabelle’s eyes were stretched with fear, and relief flooded through her when Mrs P shook her head.
    ‘No, it ain’t about him,’ she whispered. ‘But happen she’ll want to tell yer about it herself. Go on in, the door’s open. I’ve only just checked on her not half an hour since.’
    Dotty nodded, then after tapping lightly on Lucy’s door the girls entered the small kitchen. Lucy appeared in the doorway almost instantly and they saw at a glance that her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen from crying.
    ‘Oh Lucy, whatever’s happened? You look awful.’ Dotty dropped her bag onto the table and seconds later Lucy was in her arms sobbing her heart out again, which was funny when she came to think of it because she’d been sure that she didn’t have a single tear left in her whole body.
    When she finally stopped crying and pulled herself together, she seemed to be struggling to come to a decision. She then gave a loud sigh and after motioning for them to sit down, she sat opposite them and began twisting her fingers together.
    ‘You may as well know, my mother died yesterday,’ she said quietly, and for a while the silence was all-consuming as her friends stared at her in shocked disbelief.
    It was Dotty who broke it eventually when she said, ‘B-but I thought you lost both your parents a few years ago.’
    ‘It was easier to tell everyone that,’ Lucy said, ‘but in actual fact my mum was in a mental asylum.’
    ‘Is that where you disappeared off to every Sunday afternoon?’ Dotty asked gently, and Lucy nodded.
    ‘You should have told us,’ Annabelle said. ‘We’re supposed to be friends, aren’t we? We wouldn’t have thought any less of you.’
    ‘Well, you know now,’ Lucy answered. But not all of it, she thought, never all of it!
    ‘We thought something must be wrong when you didn’t turn in to work,’ Dotty told her. ‘Is there anything we can do to help – with the funeral