The air raid lasted a total of one hour and twenty-five minutes. Not as long as most air raids, but long enough to do more damage than any bombing the town had suffered so far in the course of the war.
‘What are you doing?’ Mrs Perkins looked at her daughter as she came back down the stairs dressed in her air raid protection overalls and boots.
‘I’m going to help.’ Martha looked at her mother as though she was senile.
‘But you’re not meant to be on duty tonight?’
‘I’m needed out there, Mam, you know that. You heard what the warden said on the way back from the shelter. It’s pandemonium out there. They need all the help they can get.’
Mrs Perkins wanted to cry.
Didn’t Martha understand? She just wanted her safe. Out of harm’s way.
‘Martha.’ She grabbed hold of her daughter’s arm. ‘Just promise me you’ll be careful. That you won’t go and do anything daft.’ She looked up at her strapping girl. ‘Like walk into a collapsing building or anything like that?’
Martha saw the worry in her mother’s eyes.
‘Of course I won’t, Mam,’ she lied, bending down and wrapping her arms around her mother, giving her a bear hug.
‘And just so you know,’ Mrs Perkins said, ‘I’m putting my foot down about you going to work in the morning. When you come back here, you’ll have a good feed and rest, you hear me?’
Martha smiled at her mam and at her dad.
‘Agreed.’
She knew it would take her mother all of thirty seconds to realise that it was Sunday – and that she wasn’t due to work anyway.
When Martha left, Mr Perkins walked over to his wife, still standing in the hallway, and held her in his arms.
She spoke into his chest. ‘Do you think Martha wants to be a hero, to save people’s lives, as a way of making up for what her real mother did?’ It still horrified her that a mother, one who had given birth several times over – who had carried life in her belly for months on end – could then kill a child. Children. Poison them.
‘I sometimes wish we’d never told her about her real mam.’ Mrs Perkins rested her head on her husband’s shoulder, not wanting to break free of his embrace.
‘I don’t know, my dear.’ He stood and continued to hold the wife he loved. ‘Perhaps she does think that – that she has to make amends for her mother’s actions … Perhaps she doesn’t.’
He thought.
‘I really don’t know. Perhaps she’s simply a good person who knows she can help others, so that’s what she does.’
When Martha stepped out into the street, she saw an army truck and waved it down.
It stopped just long enough for Martha to haul herself into the passenger seat.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
‘Barrack Street,’ came the reply.’
‘How bad?’ Martha asked.
‘Two big ones,’ the Home Guard soldier said, ‘took out five houses and two pubs.’
‘Any casualties?’ asked Martha.
‘Dozens injured … At least four dead.’