‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’ said an unfamiliar woman’s voice.
My eyes didn’t want to open. I’d been dreaming that Dad was here. He was standing at the end of the bed, resting his elbows on the bedframe, about to wish me ‘Nighty night, old girl’ like he always did. I was desperate for him to stay so I could hear those words, because I was sure then I’d be able to sleep right through the night again.
‘Ssshh. You’ll scare Dad away,’ I said to the woman who was talking.
She was jolly insistent, though. ‘Come on, dearie, wake up.’
She shook me, just once, and suddenly everything hurt, from my toes all the way to my back teeth. The disinfectant smell was unmistakable. Uneasily, I opened one eye, then the other, taking in the white curtains half pulled around my bed, the white sheets and the whiter-than-white apron-clad nurse who hovered at my side. It was all so bright it hurt to look at. She’d called me ‘lucky’, but I didn’t see how.
‘You’re at St Leonard’s Hospital,’ the nurse said. ‘The ambulance picked you up last night. Come all across town you have.’
Which meant it was Saturday. A whole day later. I felt a wave of panic.
‘I’d better get home. My mum’ll wonder where I am,’ I said, trying to sit up in bed and failing miserably. ‘Is my brother here? Is he all right?’
‘Keep still or you’ll pull your dressings off,’ the nurse warned.
I began to cry.
She got cross with me, then. ‘For pity’s sake! You’ve only got concussion and cuts and bruises. There were plenty brought in last night who won’t walk again.’
I’d an egg-sized bump on my forehead, so she told me, a whopping great bruise on my left hip where the explosion had knocked me off my feet, a few minor cuts on my hands. No wonder everything hurt. My stupid eyes kept on filling too.
‘What about Cliff?’ I needed to know he was safe. ‘He was in the shelter, in the tube station. That wasn’t hit, was it? He’s called Cliff Bradshaw. He’s only eight and—’ I started sobbing again.
The nurse’s face softened. ‘The shelter wasn’t hit. Don’t worry, I’m sure your brother’s fine, though why you weren’t sensible enough to be in there with him, I don’t know.’
Nor did I. In a big stomach punch of guilt it came back to me that I was meant to be looking after him.
‘Don’t you remember what happened?’ the nurse asked.
‘Bits of it,’ I sniffed. ‘But not much after we left the cinema.’
Mum was working late. I’d been at home with Sukie and Cliff, hadn’t I? Eating something horrible for our tea, and we went to see a film which Sukie said we’d like, then the air-raid siren went off … and then … things started to get blurry.
As the nurse helped me sit up, I read the name badge pinned to her chest.
‘Nurse Spencer,’ I said, trying to stop crying. ‘Does my mum know I’m here? Or my sister Sukie? If no one’s home you could try next door.’ Gloria, our neighbour, was good in a crisis, and right now I needed to see a friendly face.
‘I’ll try to find out, though we’re rushed off our feet today. In the meantime, let’s get you a nice cup of tea.’
*
Nurse Spencer came back without tea. One look at her and I knew she had bad news.
‘Oh lord,’ she said, closing the curtain behind her. ‘Maybe you weren’t so lucky after all.’
I wanted to pull the covers up and hide, then she might go away and take her awful news with her. But I couldn’t bear not to know, either. ‘It’s not my brother? Or …’ I gulped. ‘My sister?’
‘It’s your mother. A bomb landed on the building where she was last night.’
The ringing sound was back in my ears; I wasn’t sure I’d heard her properly. ‘My mother?’
‘Yes, it was a direct hit. You mustn’t think that she suffered.’
She probably said this to every relative, every time, which I supposed was nice of her. The words, though, didn’t sink in.
‘The rescue crew found you in the street, holding on to a coat,’ she explained. ‘There was a name in the coat – Mrs Rachel Bradshaw. You told them it was your mother’s, but there was no sign of …’ She hesitated. ‘… Of anyone else with you.’
What coat? I couldn’t remember a coat. Or how I came to be holding it. In frustration, I began sobbing again.
Nurse Spencer patted my shoulder. ‘Let me get you that tea, shall I? We might even have a spot of sugar to put in it.’
She left me staring at the curtains.
My mother was dead?
I’d last seen her yesterday leaving for work with Gloria. They both did shifts at a printing works in Whitechapel, and it being nice weather, they’d decided to walk rather than catch the bus. It was the first time since Tuesday Mum had got out of bed, and even then Sukie and her managed to argue.
‘You should be resting,’ Sukie protested. ‘You’re not giving yourself a chance to get well.’
‘I rested for three days, didn’t I? Stop fussing,’ Mum snapped back.
Actually, what she’d mostly done was cry and stare at her bedroom ceiling which didn’t seem very restful to me.
‘You’re working too hard, Mum,’ Sukie kept on. ‘The doctor said you should—’
‘That doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ Mum never did believe in doctors, and had only gone to see ours last week to stop Sukie nagging.
‘Your mum needs to work, love,’ Gloria said, trying to keep the peace. ‘Don’t fret. She’ll be all right.’
‘I’ll be absolutely fine,’ Mum agreed, though she didn’t look it. She was pale as anything, and went out of the front door with her hat on the wrong way round. I couldn’t believe this would be my last memory of her.
‘Come on, drink this,’ Nurse Spencer said, reappearing with a cup of tea.
As I sipped, she knelt beside my bed, pulling out a box from underneath that smelled smoky and was full of damp clothes. The pleated skirt and Fair Isle sweater were mine. There was a hair clip – also mine – and my lace-up brown shoes, and my navy coat that was too short on the arms. It was a massive relief to see something I recognised.
Then Nurse Spencer held up my mum’s coat.
As the fog in my head started to clear, it was Sukie I was seeing: Sukie looking glamorous and grown-up as if she was making a special effort for someone … Sukie leaving us at the Picture Palace … Sukie disappearing off down a bombed-out street to meet a man I’d never seen before … the burst water main making everything wet … That was about all I could recall. The rest was still as dim as the cinema itself.
Further down the ward, a nurse had started shouting: ‘It’s not visiting hours! You can’t just barge in!’
Someone was running, their footsteps getting closer. The curtain round my bed swished back. A thin woman in a blue skirt and sweater rushed at me.
‘Olive! Oh, my darling! You’re all right!’
The cup of tea went everywhere – up the curtain, on the bedclothes, all over Nurse Spencer’s apron. A second nurse bustled into the fray.
‘That’s no way to carry on!’ she cried. ‘The poor kiddie’s injured!’
Yet the woman with her arms round me didn’t let go. She smelled so strongly of home, I thought I was dreaming again.
‘Are you a ghost?’ I said, staring up at her. ‘Or just someone who looks like my mum?’
The woman was crying and laughing at the same time. ‘You silly child!’
It was funny because she wrinkled her nose like Mum. And she had the same chipped front tooth.
‘What on earth were you playing at, going out in an air raid?’ She even sounded like Mum.
I glanced at Nurse Spencer, who raised her hands in disbelief. ‘The notes that came in with your daughter, Mrs Bradshaw … they must’ve made a mistake …’ She shook her head at the other nurse, who backed silently away.
So the woman who looked like Mum was Mum.
It was all a bit much. My head began to throb and I shut my eyes.
‘Olive,’ Mum said, stroking my fringe. ‘I need you to listen to me, and I need you to be brave.’
Opening my eyes again, I swallowed nervously. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Your sister didn’t arrive at work today.’
Sukie was a typist for an insurance company in Clerkenwell. She said it was the dullest job ever.
‘Isn’t today Saturday, though?’ I asked.
‘She was due in to do overtime. No one’s seen her since she was with you and Cliff last night. She’s missing.’
‘Missing?’ I didn’t understand.
Mum nodded.
The nurse added rather unhelpfully: ‘We’ve had casualties from all over London. It’s been chaos. All you can do is keep hoping for the best.’
It was obvious what she meant. I glanced at Mum, who always took the opposite view in any argument. But she stayed silent. Her hands, though, were trembling.
‘Missing isn’t the same as dead,’ I pointed out.
Mum grimaced. ‘That’s true, and I’ve spoken to the War Office: Sukie’s name isn’t on their list of dead or injured but—’
‘So she’s alive, then. She must be. I saw her in the street talking to a man,’ I said. ‘When she realised I’d followed her she was really furious about it.’
Mum looked at me, at the nurse, at the bump on my head. ‘Darling, you’re concussed. Don’t get overexcited now.’
‘But you can’t think she’s dead,’ I insisted. ‘There’s no proof, is there?’
‘Sometimes it’s difficult to identify someone after …’ Mum faltered.
I knew what she couldn’t say: sometimes if a body got blown apart there’d be nothing left to tie a name tag to. It was why we’d never buried Dad. Perhaps if there’d been a coffin and a headstone and a vicar saying nice things, it would’ve seemed more real.
This felt different, though. After a big air raid the telephones were often down, letters got delayed, roads blocked. It might be a day or two before we heard from Sukie, and worried though I was, I knew she could look after herself. I wondered if it was part of Mum being ill, this painting the world black when it was grey.
My head was hurting again so I lay back against the pillows. I was fed up with this stupid, horrid war. Eighteen months ago when it started, everyone said it’d be over before Christmas, but they were wrong. It was still going on, tearing great holes in people’s lives. We’d already lost Dad, and half the time these days it felt like Mum wasn’t quite here. And now Sukie – who knew where she was?
I didn’t realise I was crying again until Mum touched my cheek.
‘It’s not fair,’ I said weakly.
‘War isn’t fair, I’m afraid,’ Mum replied. ‘You only have to walk through this hospital to see we’re not the only ones suffering. Though that’s just the tip of the iceberg, believe me. There’s plenty worse going on in Europe.’
I remembered Sukie mentioning this too. She’d got really upset when she told me about the awful things happening to people Hitler didn’t like. She was in the kitchen chopping onions at the time so I wasn’t aware she was crying properly.
‘What sort of awful things?’ I’d asked her.
‘Food shortages, people being driven from their homes.’ Sukie took a deep breath, as if the list was really long. ‘People being attacked for no reason or sent no one knows where – Jewish people in particular. They’re made to wear yellow stars so everyone knows they’re Jews, and then barred from shops and schools and even parts of the towns where they live. It’s heartbreaking to think we can’t do anything about it.’
People threatened by soldiers. People queuing for food with stars on their coats. It was what I’d seen on last night’s newsreel at the cinema. My murky brain could just about remember those dismal scenes, and it made me even more angry. How I hated this lousy war.
I didn’t know what I could do about it, a thirteen-year-old girl with a bump on her head. Yet thinking there might be something made me feel a tiny bit better.
My mind drifted back to my sister and how I’d seen her with a strange man.
‘Does Sukie have a boyfriend?’ I asked.
‘How should I know?’ Mum answered irritably. ‘She never tells me anything.’