EMMA SEARCHED THE surrounding streets at a frantic pace, hoping to find Olivia. Hoping that perhaps she had decided to play with some of the neighborhood children. With so many having returned home from the evacuation and school only being on for half the day, they’d taken to roaming the street.
Maybe Olivia had been persuaded to join them.
But Emma’s gut reminded her how entirely atypical it would be of Olivia to do so.
After an hour of Emma’s fruitless search and desperation settling in like a dark, ominous cloud, she hastened back to the tenement house to see if Mrs. Pickering had returned home to enlist for help. And possibly Mr. Sanderson.
She might even implore Mrs. Mott for assistance.
Emma’s heart thumped harder with resolve.
She would ask the very devil himself if he would help her find Olivia.
As Emma tugged open the door to their building, the sound of voices echoed down the stairwell.
“When do you think she’ll be back?” a woman asked, her voice saccharine with barely concealed impatience as adults sometimes do when speaking with children.
“Soon.” The uncertain reply was Olivia’s.
Emma launched herself up the stairs. Her daughter stood by the door to their flat, her shoulders hunched forward, clearly displaying her discomfort. An older woman Emma had never seen before leaned over her daughter.
“Mum!” Olivia raced toward Emma, the echo of her clattering feet resounding through the narrow space.
Was it fear?
Emma hugged her daughter protectively to her and regarded the woman. “What’s happened?”
“What’s happened?” The woman had a slight underbite, causing her chin to thrust out with apparent disapproval. “You brought your child home from the country against the wishes of our government, and you cannot even properly care for her. I found this nipper wandering about the lace district, eyes as big as saucers and brimming with tears. Near broke my heart, it did. I had no choice but to take her in and try to find where her mam was. And here you are, just now returning home.”
Emma’s cheeks blazed. “I was out looking for her.”
“I’m surprised she wasn’t running about with the others whose neglectful parents kept them in Nottingham. Those wild packs of children.” The woman fisted her hands on her hips. “Why weren’t you at the school to collect her like a good mother ought to?”
Like a good mother ought to.
The words sliced deeper than Emma cared to admit.
“Instead you left this little one to roam about the streets, lost and alone,” the woman continued. “Anything might’ve happened to her. Anything. Haven’t you a care for her safety?”
Emma opened her mouth, but the words to defend herself stuck in her throat.
What was her excuse? That she’d been working? Mothers weren’t supposed to work. They were supposed to stay home with their children.
To protect them.
“What’s all this?” a gruff male voice demanded.
Mr. Sanderson strode stiffly down the last several stairs to the second landing.
Whatever had been roaring in Emma’s ears had clearly blocked out the sound of his descent.
“This.” The woman pointed a finger at Emma. “Is an inept mother.”
Emma sucked in a breath. The woman had gone too far.
Mr. Sanderson took a step toward the woman. “Is that what this nattering on is about? Your bloody judgment?”
Color rose in the woman’s cheeks and her underbite jutted out in stubborn defiance. “She shouldn’t have her daughter here, not when the children are supposed to be sent away. It’s unpatriotic.”
Mr. Sanderson took another step closer. Despite his age, he cut an intimidating figure with his height well over a head above the woman and his face as ruddy as a rugby player’s. “Your lack of support for a fellow neighbor in a time of war is unpatriotic. Now get out.”
The woman opened her mouth to protest.
“Get out,” Mr. Sanderson bellowed. “Or I’ll call the constable to force you out.”
“Some thank you.” The woman drew herself up with a harrumph and glared at Emma as she passed. “And some mother.”
Emma kept her stare level on the woman, refusing to drop her gaze. But she wanted to. With hurt. With shame.
Mr. Sanderson waited until the door to the tenement house swung open and slammed shut.
“Good riddance to that old pigeon.” The brutish stance bled out of him, and he sagged forward, his shoulders wilting. He suddenly appeared a tired old man, defeated by whatever life had thrown his way.
“Thank you, Mr. Sanderson.” Emma offered him a smile that seemed to wobble on her lips. “I—”
Mr. Sanderson waved a hand in the air and grunted, cutting her off. “I’m off to finish my nap.”
Emma knew better than to argue or try to cajole him back. Instead, she shepherded her daughter into the flat and hugged her one more time, reassuring herself that Olivia was really there. Home and safe.
“Why did that woman say those horrible things to you, Mum?” Olivia blue eyes were sad with a wounded hurt that tugged at Emma’s heart.
She knelt to be eye level with her daughter. “Some people have very strong opinions about what others should do with their children. And they’re not always kind about what they say.”
Olivia nodded, though Emma could tell she didn’t understand.
And how could Emma explain what she herself could not fully comprehend how someone might so cruelly judge another without realizing their circumstances?
Emma was doing her best.
But what if her best wasn’t good enough? What if she wasn’t good enough?
“How was school?” she asked, desperate for a distraction.
“Edmund wasn’t there, so I liked that.” Olivia shrugged.
Edmund.
The very name made Emma clamp down her back teeth. Mrs. Mott’s boy. The blight of Olivia’s existence at school. There had been far too many days that she sobbed over things that boy had done. But every time Emma resolved to go next door and speak to Mrs. Mott, Olivia had blanched and begged her not to go.
Kids could be so brutally nasty to one another, and the inability to stop her daughter’s bullying was a horrible, helpless feeling.
There had been far too many times Emma had seen Edmund playing in the street, kicking the ball too hard at other children and laughing when they fell, that she’d been sorely tempted to rush out and upbraid him for his boorish behavior. That was yet another thing Emma had never felt fully prepared for as a mother—how to handle those who hurt her child.
“What did you do today?” Emma carefully picked up Olivia’s coat from where she’d dropped it next to the sofa and hung it on the hook by the door.
Olivia brightened. “We ran from the school.”
“Ran from the school?” Emma paused as she bent to straighten Olivia’s shoes.
“If a bomb comes, we don’t have a basement to go into and there’s no shelter near us, so we have to run.”
Emma stood, giving her daughter her full attention. “I beg your pardon?”
Olivia pulled a glass from the drying rack next to the sink and went to the larder. “We’re supposed to run to a house that has a basement. The teachers shout ‘scatter’ real loud and we all go, scattering about like ants.”
Delight shone in Olivia’s eyes as she spoke, but dread coursed through Emma. They were making a game of war.
If a bomb truly did come, what if there wasn’t enough time for the children to properly “scatter”? And what of their safety once they were in a shelter or someone’s home, away from a teacher’s supervision?
“I’m glad it was so fun.” Emma tried to mask the worry in her tone with a forced brightness as she opened the cabinet to withdraw a pan. They’d be having cottage pie with the meat she’d obtained the day before.
Not only was it Olivia’s favorite dinner, the recipe was the first Emma had ever learned to cook and one of the three her father had known how to make. After over a decade of cottage pie, bangers and mash, and grabbing fish and chips from a corner stand—her father insisted that counted as a cooked meal—Emma had assumed the cooking duties for the household.
But even as Emma went through the motions of preparing a meal she could make in her sleep, the woman’s words from that afternoon tumbled through her mind. They blended with the disdainful glares of other women and the appalling “scatter” method of the children running for safety in a school that was not prepared for an air raid.
And for the first time since bringing Olivia home, Emma’s stomach twisted into a hard knot of regret.