Mr Russell and his suspect colleagues were released on bail after several days of questioning. It was thought that a big cover-up had been attempted, but nevertheless police enquiries had at last built up a strong case against them.
After he returned home, the whole family withdrew into themselves and were hardly seen socially in the neighbourhood, although Mrs Russell was keeping up her war work. It was David and Doreen who faced the worst ordeal − that of having to turn up at school every day. Joan saw David cycling past their house a couple of times, but he failed to see her. Or, if so, he did not wave.
Then, one day, Joan bumped into him quite by accident. He was walking Raffles, the family dog, in the lane which led down beside the golf course to the shore. He was trudging along, head down, shoulders hunched, and didn’t see her until they were almost face to face.
Joan stopped, at a loss as to what to say. She began with a faltering greeting, but David cut her short straight away.
“Don’t worry about trying to say it – about my dad, I mean. I’ve had rather a lot of it at school, you see. Most of my friends have been very decent about it all. And your mum and all your family have been great.” He looked away, and whistled to the dog.
“Doreen’s been managing pretty well at school,” said Joan lamely.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot for sticking up for her.” He paused, and when he looked back at her, she could not help noticing how pinched and pale his face was. “Dad had big debts, you see,” he said at last. “We none of us knew, of course. If only he’d told us – or Mum, at least – how bad it was. But he always liked entertaining and stuff. We wouldn’t have minded doing without at all, like everyone else, if only he’d asked us to. It never occurred to us. I did think it was a bit weird, all that tinned stuff with American labels in our store cupboard, but I never did anything about it, and neither did Doreen or Mum. We just sort of took it for granted. But those others – the people he was involved with – were in it far deeper. They were a lot more crooked than he was, and a lot more ruthless. But I guess things got so tricky that he couldn’t get out, no matter how much he wanted to. What finally finished it − made him sort of collapse in on himself − was when Derek got run down by that lorry, out by the old mill. Dad knew that they were using it to store hot goods, of course. But he couldn’t bear to think that he was in with people who could sink so low as to run down a teenage boy on purpose.”
He picked up a stick and threw it, and Raffles duly obliged by joyfully retrieving it.
“We’ll have to move out of our house, of course,” he said at last. “Help pay our debts. Go somewhere cheaper, out of this district probably. I know Mum would like to get away. Avoid all the locals whispering about us every time we go out.”
“But what about school? Your Cambridge scholarship?”
“That doesn’t matter much any more. I’ve more or less decided to pack it in, anyway. Join up as soon as I’m old enough.”
“But…” Joan began, then stopped, realizing how painful any further discussion on the subject would be for him. Instead, she bent down and fondled Raffles’s ears. This revelation about them moving was such a blow that she needed time to digest it. The thought of losing Doreen was almost unbearable.
David put Raffles on his lead.
“Got to be getting back,” he said. “I’ve got lots of sorting out to do.”
“You will hang onto your record collection, whatever happens, won’t you?”
“Hope so.”
“And the piano?”
“Not so sure about that.”
She watched him walk away, then set off briskly in the opposite direction. She managed to put a good distance between them before she started to cry.
Saying goodbye to Doreen was far, far worse. The Russells’ move was planned for the spring. The “for sale” notice was already up outside their house, and they had found temporary rented accommodation on the other side of Liverpool, where they were more or less unknown – except, of course, to the police.
Doreen was somehow managing to put a brave face on things, at least in public.
“I only hope there’s a decent cinema somewhere near there,” she said to Joan. “But it won’t be much fun going on my own.”
“We can talk on the phone. I’ll give you a full rundown on what’s been showing at the Queensway,” Joan replied. “Although I don’t suppose I’ll be going there often either. It won’t be nearly so much fun without you.”
“Same here. The only really good thing about leaving is not having to see Angela Travis and her gang ever, ever again.”
“You could give her a stink bomb as a goodbye present.”
“Good idea. But there’s sure to be another Angela Travis at my new school. There’s always at least one of her type wherever you fetch up. Ania found that out all right.”
“Perhaps it’ll be nicer out there. Further away from the Blitz,” said Joan.
“Maybe. But I’ll miss this place. I’ve never lived anywhere else, you see. I’ll miss our house, and looking out at the muddy old estuary, and my bedroom, and, most of all, my friends – you and Ania and Ross and Derek. Especially you.”
“We’ll meet in Liverpool,” said Joan. “Go to a matinée at the big Odeon cinema, perhaps. They have a cafe there, and a cinema organ, and two feature films with an interval in between. And those usherettes in classy uniforms.”
“Sounds great,” said Doreen. But Joan could see that her bravery was beginning to crack, and there were tears in her eyes.
They had reached Joan’s house now, and hovered by the front gate, both completely lost for words. In the end, Doreen turned and walked away without saying anything, waving casually over her shoulder as she always did, but not looking back.
Brian and David had never been such good friends as Joan and Doreen were, but they had become much closer since the case against Mr Russell had become public knowledge.
“He doesn’t want to talk about it,” Brian told Joan while they were washing up. “And I don’t blame him. The one thing none of them can bear is all this local gossip. But there’s one weird thing I found out. You know when Ronnie was being investigated by the police for being the Mr Black Market? Well, it turns out that he was pretty small beer compared with Mr Russell. And David says that Ronnie never split on him, never told them anything that might incriminate him or any of the Russell family. In that respect, at least, he was a loyal friend. So perhaps the old blighter had a bit of good in him after all. Although,” he added, “that doesn’t rule him out as being the biggest creep in the Western hemisphere in all other respects!”