Bea pulled back the blackout blinds. It was 7:30 a.m. on New Year’s Eve and a pale winter sun was struggling to rise. A delicate lace of frost embroidered the inside of the kitchen window. It was so cold the iron railings along the seafront glittered with icy diamonds. Bea turned on the tap and as it spluttered to life she offered up a silent prayer of thanks that the old lead pipes hadn’t frozen.
The door opened, bringing a freezing blast of air and her mother walked in clutching a large parcel. “Blimey, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out there. Stick the kettle on, ducks.”
Bea shook her head as she lit a flame under the kettle. Cockneys had a rich and spirited vernacular; she suspected it was one of the reasons her father had loved her.
“Where have you been at this hour, you old scoundrel?” She laughed. “You’ve even painted on your eyebrows.”
“Early bird catches the worm. I’ve been up since 4 a.m. pulling the bleedin’ lavatory chain and running taps to stop the pipes freezing up so my darlin’ girls can have a wash and a cuppa.” She planted a big sloppy kiss on Bea’s cheek. “Then I paid a visit to old Mr. Rossi who used to run the café up the road. He was trying to get rid of this old ham slicer,” she said, setting it down on the table with a thump. “He’s no need of it since they’ve shut up shop so I swapped it for a pair of your father’s old shoes. Fair exchange is no robbery!”
“And what exactly are you going to do with a ham slicer seeing as you ain’t got no ham to slice?”
“Necessity is the mother of invention, sweetheart. I’ve been growing tobacco down my allotment and I can use this to slice it and package it up to sell.”
She sat down with a groan then a grin. “Sweet as a nut!”
“How do you do it, Mum? Always manage to stay so relentlessly upbeat?” Bea yawned as she set about preparing cups and the coffee pot.
“It’s in the genes, love. I’ve been making do and mending since I fell out the cradle. A few bloody Jerries on my doorstep ain’t going to change me now. Mind you, having lived through the Depression, I never thought I’d see the day we’d be queuing up at communal kitchens again, or see fascists marching in the streets. And yet, here we are again.”
She sniffed and raked about in her old leather pouch for her tobacco. “You forget, I was bombed in the first show. They didn’t get Queenie Gold then, they ain’t gonna now.”
It was true. Queenie had been 15 when a German Gotha airplane bombed her school in Poplar, East London during the Great War. Queenie had clawed her way out from under her school desk and walked home. The story was a family legend now.
Bea was proud of her mother’s stoicism, but she worried that she was so busy getting on with it that she hadn’t allowed herself the space to grieve properly.
Bea kissed her mum on the head, gently kneading her shoulders.
“Ooh, that’s hit the spot, love. Don’t stop.”
“I love you all the money in the world and two bob,” Bea said softly, repeating their favorite saying.
She felt her mum relax as she worked into the knotted muscles cording her neck.
“I miss Dad. He used to love New Year’s Eve, didn’t he.”
Every New Year’s Eve Bea’s father had thrown a party and invited the whole street, setting off fireworks and mixing cocktails so strong they’d blow the roof of your mouth off. It had been three and a half years since he’d been machine-gunned by the harbor, but Bea could still summon the warm comforting feel of his barrel chest, the deep rumble of his laughter.
“Do you miss him, Mum? Only you never talk about him.”
Her mother tensed under her touch and she turned to face her.
“Oh, love, you have no idea. We were married for so many years. I uprooted my whole life to move here away from my people. But your father helped me to form new roots.” She rubbed her work-worn hands down her apron. “I don’t need to talk about him to remember him.”
“But talking is good, Mum, surely? Grace reckons that if you don’t talk about the dead, they’ll never leave you alone.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“Does she now? Talking won’t bring your dad back though, will it?” she said bluntly. “We’re all gonna die. That’s a fact, darlin’. It’s what you make of life that counts.”
She reached up and caught the tear that trickled down Bea’s cheek with her thumb.
“If there’s anything you need to tell me, love, I’m good at fixing things.” Her perceptive gaze roamed over Bea’s face.
Bea was so close to articulating her fears, but speaking them aloud might make them true. And if she was honest, if she started to talk about Jimmy, of the grief which swelled inside her, wild and frightening, unfathomable and seemingly without end, she might never stop.
The absolute truth of it she was shattered, her heart shredded. Crawling through the days. She remembered his death, the blood pumping through the hole in his cheek, so viscerally. She could still smell the blood mingling with the salt, the look of utter astonishment on his face. In many ways she had never really left that blood-soaked beach. The woman who had run for her life up a cliff path was someone quite different. She had been carved into a sharper, more cynical version of herself. Grief had changed her mentally and physically. Her mother’s words hung between them.
Anything you need to tell me, love?
But how could she tell her she had missed three, or was it four, monthly bleeds? No. No. No. She battened down the thought. She had read once in one of the women’s magazines in the library that shock and stress can do strange thing to a person’s body. That was it. Grief had stopped the curse.
“I’m fine, Mum,” she said instead. “Best to live with memories than speak of regrets.”
“Good. Now what say we have a few drinks this evening? See in the New Year? I’ve a drop of brandy I’ve been saving. Invite your Grace too.”
Bea wanted to continue the conversation but her sister had come into the kitchen, looking irritatingly as fresh as a daisy. She looked at Nancy, with her silk stockings and lavender scented silk scarf, and in that moment she hated her.
“Morning, love. Sleep all right?”
“Like a log, thanks, Mum.”
“I don’t know how you sleep at night at all,” Bea snapped.
Nancy rolled her eyes.
“Not this again. Mum, tell her to give it a rest, will you.”
Queenie shot Bea a warning look.
“Don’t needle her.”
She turned back to her youngest daughter.
“You look nice, love. Where you off to?”
“I’ve got a job interview, just a bit of waitressing up at Fort d’Auvergne.”
“It’s not bad enough you’re sleeping with the enemy, now you’ve got to work for them?” Bea exploded.
“Well, what choice have I got? It was thanks to you I lost my job at Boots, don’t forget. The manager said he didn’t want no trouble.”
“Well, if you work for them, you realize you’ll be in contradiction of the Hague Convention.”
“Serving coffee hardly constitutes military work.”
“You’re still taking their dirty Reichsmarks. I hate all those pigs getting rich working for the Germans. There are many on this island significantly better off than they were before the occupation. Judgment day is coming for the lot of you.”
“God, you’re so holier than thou,” Nancy retorted. “It’s all academic anyway as three-quarters of the population are working for them directly and indirectly anyway.”
“How?”
“Every gallon of water, every pint of milk is of benefit to the garrison. A lot of islanders are working for the Germans whether they realize it or not.”
“Not me,” Bea said proudly. “I work for His Majesty’s Post Office. The Germans have their own post office, so the way I see it, nothing I do benefits the Germans. Unlike you. You seem to be servicing them on all levels, Nancy.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning when you’re done frothing their milk, perhaps you’re keeping them happy in the sack? You could end up servicing the whole bloody hotel for all we know.”
Nancy slapped her so fast she didn’t even see it coming.
“I love one man,” she said, shaking with anger.
Bea stood in shock, clutching her cheek.
“Stop this,” Queenie ordered. “What’s become of us?”
“So-Sorry, Mum,” Nancy stammered, before grabbing her bag and running out of the door. “I won’t be home later. I’m out with Heinz.”
Queenie looked wearily at Bea and without a word, left the room, disappointment clouding her face, mouth as tight as a white-knuckle fist.
Bea walked to her shift at the post office feeling wretched, not because of rowing with Nancy, but because of upsetting her mother. The truth of it was she and Nancy had never been close. They were very different people and the gulf between them had widened since their father’s death. Grace had always felt more of a sister to her.
Bea walked past the Pomme d’Or Hotel, the headquarters of the German Naval Command, under its fluttering swastika and slipped in the back door of the Broad Street post office.
“Sorry I’m late,” she called.
The facing tables were full, all the posties already hard at work sorting their individual rounds in the freezing sorting room.
“Last one in makes the tea,” Nobby Clark called out, his breath hanging like smoke in the cold air.
Bea hadn’t been sure about working in such a male environment, but now she’d rather come to like it. These weather-beaten old men were relentless in their teasing and prolific demands for tea and they never discussed “feelings,” which right now suited Bea nicely.
She made a round of nettle tea, marginally more drinkable than carrot or parsnip, and brought the tray through to find them all assembled around Billy Matson’s facing table.
“Come here, girlie. Summat to show you,” Ronnie Richards yelled. Ron was renowned for having the largest stride of any postman. It took Ron just 15 minutes to reach the top of Mount Bingham and he was always first back from his round.
“You must think I was born yesterday, Ron,” she laughed. Last week one of them, she suspected Ron, thought leaving a dead seagull in her postal bag would be a terrific wheeze.
“No, really. Come and take a look at the new stamp that’s been issued.”
She ventured over to find them all chuckling like a gang of schoolboys.
“What’s so funny? It’s an improvement on a swastika over the king’s head surely?”
“Major Rybot, the fella who designed it, is a brave man.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Look closer,” Nobby urged. “See the four As at the top corner? Ad Avernam Adolf Atrox. To hell with you, Atrocious Adolf, I reckon.”
Ron roared with laughter. “He’s chancing it.”
“Aren’t we all in some way,” Bea said, casting a knowing look round the group.
She picked up the pile of mail Billy Matson had brought in from the rural regions that morning.
“Your round’s a bit light today, isn’t it, Billy?”
“It’s tomato paper, ain’t it,” he replied. “Paper shortages mean folk are having to improvise and produce their own envelopes. They barely weigh a thing.”
“I didn’t mean that, Billy, and you know it. I mean you’ve clearly had a lot of poison-pen letters you’ve already disposed of. Where are they? In the boiler-room fire?”
Billy’s smile slipped.
“Please let me help,” she begged the group of older posties. “I’m not the only one surely to have noticed there are more informers’ letters than ever! If we work together, we can become more efficient.”
“Look, love,” said Arthur, “you’ve narrowly avoided arrest once after that scrape with the van.”
“He’s right, ducks,” said Harold, his voice low and gravelly. “You leave it to us, young ’un. We’re old men now. We’ve lived our lives. It don’t matter if we get caught, but a fresh young thing like you, all your life still ahead of you…”
He tugged at his beard. “And I don’t know about you, lads, but I don’t fancy taking on the Guv’nor.”
The group all hooted, until Nobby coughed. “The boss is coming, look lively.”
They dispersed back to the station at the facing table.
“Take my advice, girlie,” Billy murmured. “Hear nothing, say nothing, see nothing.”
Bea returned to work and one by one the chatter of the sorting room died down as the posties bagged up their mail and drifted out on their morning deliveries. Frustration beat in her chest.
Bea scooped up the last letter and the breath caught in her throat.
THE COMMANDANT. COLLEGE HOUSE. ST. SAVIOUR. JERSEY.
The scrawled capitals were written in crayon. Glancing about she slipped it into her waistband and casually walked out.
“Just nipping to the girls’ room, boss, before I start my round,” she called to Oscar Mourant, Acting Head Postmaster, busy on the other side of the large room. He waved her on distractedly.
In the toilet her hands tremored a little as she eased open the envelope.
The envelope ripped. “Bugger.”
“You all right, Bea, my love?” called out a voice in the next cubicle. It was Winnie from the front desk.
She waited a beat, trying to calm her voice before replying.
“Fine, just started my curse is all.”
“Poor you. Let me know if you need a pad.”
“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” she lied.
Silently she unfolded the letter and Bea realized she was a long way from fine.
SEARCH THE ALLOTMENT SHED OF WIDOW QUEENIE GOLD, BAY VIEW BOARDING HOUSE. I HAVE GOOD REASON TO BELIEVE SHE IS GROWING TOBACCO TO SELL ON THE BLACK MARKET AND LISTENS TO THE BBC FROM A WIRELESS HIDDEN IN HER SHED. FOLLOW HER AND YOU’LL SEE. YOURS HELPFULLY. PS. POSSIBLY JEWISH? HER PEOPLE ARE FROM WHITECHAPEL.
Bea leaned forward and rested her head against the cubicle door as the room spun. She knew her mum had been too trusting.
“Get a grip,” she told herself. “You have the advantage.”
The letter was unsigned, written in childish handwriting so as not to reveal the sender. Breathing out slowly, she flushed the toilet, stuffed the letter back under her waistband and opened the door.
Winnie was still there, drying her hands on the roller towel, as Bea splashed her wrists under icy cold water.
“You sure you’re all right? You look ever so peaky, love.”
“Thanks, Win. Bleedin’ monthlies. You know what it’s like.”
“I’m a long time over that, thank goodness,” she chuckled. Winnie patted her on the shoulder and glanced down. “Be safe, dear,” she said softly. The letter was poking out of her waistband.
“Fuck it!” she muttered as Winnie left. She really had to get a hold of herself.
Somehow Bea managed her morning round, her knuckles as white as wax on the bike handles, as she peddled through clouds of freezing fog to deliver the town’s last postal round of 1943. Fog like this was a postwoman’s worst nightmare, lacing toes with chilblains and welding frozen fingers to bike handles. When she finished she took a detour past the Royal Square and hopped off her postal bike.
“Here, sonny, guard that bike with your life.” She handed the delighted boy an old toffee she had found at the bottom of a jacket pocket and went in to seek Grace’s counsel.
Her friend was diligently shelving books in the furthest corner, her face lighting up when she spotted Bea.
“Hello, you. You can’t believe what a rush I’ve just had on. I reckon most folk plan to see in the New Year with a good read.” Her smile slipped.
“Bea…?”
“What’ll I do?” she whimpered, shoving the letter at Grace.
Grace put on a pair of reading spectacles and read.
“Follow me.”
In the safety of her small office, Bea’s bottled-up fear found its release.
“Mum’s been denounced. Do you recognize this handwriting from any of the library tickets?”
“Bea, calm down,” Grace urged. “Hold it back forty-eight hours. That should buy her enough time to clear out her shed.”
“This might buy her even more time.” Bea ripped the letter in half, then ripped it again, and carried on until it was nothing but confetti.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” Grace gasped.
“It’s my mum, Grace. What else am I to do?”
“Let them search the house and the allotment, see she’s innocent and then leave her alone?”
“But it’s not that simple, is it? Once he works out she’s my mother, she’ll be guilty by association.”
“Yes, you might well have tarnished me with that same brush.” Grace looked stricken. “I wasn’t going to tell you so as not to alarm you, but the Wolf visited the library on Christmas Eve, when I was out visiting Mrs. Noble. Said he’d be back. I’m waiting for his visit, Bea.”
The silence stretched out between them, no sound but the ticking of the old clock on the wall, counting down the seconds of this agonizing occupation.
“Oh, Grace. How can he know?”
“We don’t know that he does, but he’s watching you and everyone associated with you.” She laid her palm down on the desk. “I understand about wanting to protect your mum, but it… it’s just so dangerous! I’m a librarian and you’re a postal worker. I just want to survive this occupation and keep this library going. That’s what I care about, Bea—this place.”
She looked at the piles of old books which had been donated by grateful islanders, crammed into every corner, awaiting cataloging.
“This library speaks its truth and I am answerable to it.”
“But what about helping human beings? They’re what count, surely, not dusty old books?”
Grace’s face softened. “Books are what get me out of bed each day, Bea. It’s how I continue the fight, because they are the last bastion of democracy.”
“But it’s so wrong! How could anyone denounce their neighbor? It’s repugnant.”
“Not everyone has your scruples, Bea,” Grace said wearily. “Starvation makes animals of us all. It’s complicated.”
Bea shook her head “Well, it’s simple to me. You don’t sell out your own. Jimmy shared my beliefs.”
Grace touched her face, her beautiful green eyes shining in the dim light of the office. “Maybe but doing this won’t bring him back. You can’t save everyone. It has to stop.” Her eyes filled with tears and Bea saw herself reflected in them. She felt a sudden shame for dragging Grace and her library sanctuary into this tawdry mess.
Bea nodded and Grace hugged her tightly.
“Thank you. You’re a total nit at times, but I do love you.”
Bea felt her tears soak into the cotton of her friend’s blouse. “I love you too.”
“I’ll come to yours after work. Stay out of trouble until then.”
“I’ll try.”
“Oh and by the way, do you mind me bringing two friends this evening?”
Something about her friend was different today.
“Why, Grace La Mottée, are you wearing lipstick?”
Grace touched her mouth and flushed. “Just a little. Beauty is your duty—that’s what Churchill said on the wireless, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, you’re making an effort for Churchill, are you?” she teased. “Come on. Spill the beans.”
“There’s nothing to spill. They’re just a couple of bibliophiles. I trust them.”
“Very well.” She popped a kiss on Grace’s cheek. “You know, I’ve not said this, but one of the saddest things about Jimmy’s death was that it stole the chance to call you sister.”
Grace smiled sadly before reaching for Bea’s hand and placing it on the space over her heart. “You’re my sister in here. Now off you go. I’ve a library to run.”
Grace’s words echoed in her head as her threadbare bike tires bounced and slithered up St. Helier’s narrow streets. I trust them.
Before this, Bea trusted most of her neighbors. She’d have staked her life on some of them, but not now. War, she realized sadly, was the greatest killer of trust in the world.
Bea was halfway down Beresford Street, drawing level with the German Field Post Office, when something caught her attention. One of the German postal workers had left his bike outside, complete with a pile of bundled-up mail inside the wicker basket at the front.
She dismounted and walked toward it. Jersey Post Office had nothing whatsoever to do with the Germans’ mail, thank goodness. She’d have to have been court-martialed before she delivered the Jerries’ post. Their post was delivered by Junkers 52 aircraft to the island’s airport then transported to Victoria College House, from where it was delivered to Beresford Street.
“What an imbecile,” Bea muttered. “Leaving letters unattended like that. Anyone could come and nick them.”
She listened. From deep inside the post office she heard the German love song “Lili Marleen” being sung with guttural gusto. They must have started on the sauce early. She glanced at the letter on the top of the pile.
Engelbert Bergmann, Feldpost, Kanalinseln.
A strange sensation crept over her. Rage. Curiosity. Jealousy. She couldn’t put a name to it. She pictured Engelbert’s wife, some fat frau, well-fed and sitting pretty in her German farmhouse no doubt, wishing her victorious husband a Happy Christmas in his cushy Channel Island posting. Maybe Engelbert was the one who’d squeezed the trigger, or hunted her down on the beach? In that moment, she hated this faceless soldier and all he stood for with her whole being. Why should he get news from home, when her home had been torn apart and trampled under the jackboot?
She glanced about. Skeins of fog drifted up the empty street. Somewhere further up the road she heard the clopping of hooves on stone. Long angry fingers unfurled inside her, a vengeful voice muttered in her ear.
They took something precious from you. Now it’s your turn.
The bundle of letters was in her own postal bag before she could help herself. It was so easy, nothing more than a sleight of hand. An incredible feeling of liberation burst inside her, so she grabbed the second bundle. What the hell! She might as well take the lot.
She chalked a V for victory on the seat of the bicycle for good measure. Given that most men’s brains were in their pants, she reasoned the German postman might stop to consider the symbolic sign of resistance.
Bea cycled up the street with 90 pieces of stolen mail in her postal bag, her heart doing cartwheels in her chest. The fog consumed her by the time she reached the end of the street. All those soldiers who wouldn’t receive news from home this festive season. Good. The damage to morale would be as insidious as the fog shrouding the windowpanes.
Thankfully her mum was out when she got home. Bea safely stowed the stolen letters in a box in the attic, next to Jimmy’s stolen gun and the other letters. In the musty gloom Grace’s words hurtled back to haunt her. You can’t save everyone. It has to stop. It was a little too late for that.
Sadly the letter denouncing her mother had been far from an isolated incident. Since she’d intercepted the poison-pen letter about Mrs. Noble on Christmas Eve she’d opened a dozen more addressed to the commandant. In one week! Each day more had turned up on her facing table, sprouting like bindweed and trickling venom. In an occupation, the Christmas period had become the season of ill-will. She understood that people were starving and desperate, sick of heart at having no food to put on the table or presents in their children’s stockings, but it was no excuse. Spite was spreading like gangrene through the guts of Jersey.
There simply hadn’t been the opportunity to warn everyone, and she couldn’t expect Grace to help her every single time, so it had seemed easier all round to just not deliver them at all, and hide them instead. Admittedly it flew in the face of everything a postal worker was entrusted to do, but she simply would not allow herself to view it as theft. How could she in all consciousness allow those letters to go to their intended recipients knowing the consequences of such an action? How many lives would be left in ruins by their delivery?
Surely, as a postal worker, that would make her complicit. To Grace it was a moral quagmire, but to Bea it seemed straightforward. She hated the subterfuge and lying to her best friend, but she had begun now. There was no choice but to see it through to the bitter end—alone!
Downstairs she heard a bang and Bea jumped, cracking her head on the low attic beam. “Bugger,” she cursed, rubbing her head.
“Mum, you home?” Nancy’s voice called up the stairs. “I got the job.”
Bea heard the jangle of her sister’s keys land on the hall table.
Head throbbing, she covered the letters over with a cuddly toy her father had won for her at a summer fair what felt like a hundred years ago. Kicking the box to the furthest reaches of the attic, she clambered down the thin wooden ladder and managed to replace it back in the loft hatch, just as her sister emerged onto the landing.
“Bea.” Nancy paled and stepped back. “I thought it was Mum. What are you up to?”
Bea’s nerve endings were screaming. Up above their heads was enough evidence to get her sent to a German prison camp for years. And all it would take was a few well-chosen words from Nancy in her boyfriend’s ear.
“Fetching some old clothes out of the attic.”
“So where are they then?” Nancy asked, gesturing to her empty arms.
“Mum must have taken them down already,” she snapped. “Not all of us resort to sleeping with the enemy to get new clobber.”
She wiped the dust off her postal jacket, her fingers stained with ink. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, some of us have decent work to do.”
Bea swept from the house and cycled back to the post office, blinking back angry tears. What a bloody mess. She would need to move those letters to a safer place and soon.
At Broad Street, the postmen were gathered in the sorting room, having a drink of toxic homebrew. The air was filled with the smell of homegrown tobacco and spicy apple brandy. Bea swallowed sharply as she felt her meager dinner of boiled turnip threaten to make a sudden reappearance.
“There you are, girlie,” called Ron. “Come and have a drink with us to see out the year.”
“Go on then,” she laughed, ignoring the acid churn of her stomach as she took a gulp.
Billy slid his arm around her shoulder. “Sorry about earlier, Bea, but you understand—all we want is to keep you safe. It’s what your dad would’ve wanted. He loved the bones of you.”
Bea looked up into his kind, craggy old face and nodded, blinking back tears.
“I understand. Thanks, Billy.”
“That’s my girl.”
“Oi, this isn’t a Mother’s Union meeting,” yelled Nobby, raising his glass. “Time for a singsong. I’ll start us off…
“Underneath an air raid, somewhere over there. Adolf in his bunker…” His big voice filled the sorting room.
“We’ve got the Reich on the run, so stick your bloomin’ searchlight up your bum,” Bea finished and the lads fell about.
After one more drink and a couple more patriotic songs Bea managed to extract herself and head for home, the freezing air sobering her up. She paused outside her home and stared out over the vast inky tract of moon-polished water, over to occupied Europe. Far behind her stood England.
Compared to Fortress Europe, the Channel Islands were like pebbles scattered in the ocean. Never had Bea felt so isolated on this tiny island. They were nothing but a pimple on the backside of the British Empire. She knew her view on the world had changed since Jimmy’s death, shattering her innocence. Her grief sat like a hot lump in her chest, spawning a terrible anger which bloomed and unfurled inside her. She regretted getting Grace involved, of course she did, but somehow, she was entirely powerless to stop herself either. The danger was creeping closer to home, all her secrets coming home to roost. Bea pictured the stolen letters in the attic, sitting there festering like an unexploded bomb. She rested her hand lightly on her tummy and stared at the incoming tide. Breathe, Bea. Breathe.
Inside, her mum had been hard at work. The table had been dressed with a fine tablecloth Queenie had crocheted herself. A bean crock (minus juicy pork) was warmed through, and a milk blancmange made with potato flour for afters.
“Smells lovely, Mum,” she said, shrugging off her tatty coat.
“It ain’t much, but it’s made with love,” Queenie remarked, surveying the table.
“God, I’m sick of this,” Bea remarked.
“Sick of what?”
“This. How are we supposed to get by on four ounces of meat a week, four of butter and three of sugar?”
Queenie rolled her eyes.
“Behave. You don’t know the meaning of poor. When I was growing up, me mum couldn’t take the curtains down until me dad had read ’em.”
“Huh?”
“Newspaper, darlin’.” Queenie laughed at her daughter’s confused expression. “We couldn’t afford curtains so every night Mum had to hang the East London Advertiser up at the windows instead.”
She flicked her on the bum with a tea towel.
“Your generation ain’t got a clue. Now shut your cakehole and go and get the door. That’ll be the library contingent.”
Chastised, Bea opened the door.
“Happy New Year—”
Her words caught in her throat when she flung open the door and surveyed the group on her doorstep. “Grace,” she said cagily. “Who’s this?”