Beside her she could hear coughing, which soon gave way to screams. There was a horrible crunching sound and she could feel something heavier now dropping onto her back, as if she was being pelted with pebbles.
This is it, she thought, the station’s collapsing. I’m going to die.
Lilian tried to tuck her head even closer into her body, protecting her neck from the onslaught as well. She had lost Lily’s hand but didn’t dare reach out for it again. After a while she couldn’t feel the debris hitting her body directly any more, but the mass on top of her grew heavier and heavier. Her mouth was on the arm of her cardigan and she tried to suck air through it to avoid breathing in more dust. Time seemed to stand still, and in her mind Lilian could see her parents’ faces, dropping in despair as they were told they had lost another child, while behind them someone cried ‘Lilian … Lilian … Lilian.’
Suddenly the faces disappeared and the sound of her name being called rushed to the fore. It wasn’t in her head now but above her, and it was accompanied by a raking sound. She felt hands reaching through the debris and encircling her upper body, and she was lifted out of the rubble, dust and stones streaming off her. Lily Middleditch was there, and Lilian realised it was her voice she had heard. She grabbed her friend’s hand and they followed the other people, stumbling and gasping, out into the sunlight.
Although she was outside, Lilian found it was still impossible to breathe through her nose because her nostrils were completely blocked with dirt and dust. It was in her ears too, and in her eyes, which were itchy and sore. Her fair hair was coated in grey, and everyone’s faces and clothes were grey too, as if the colour had been drained out of them.
She and Lily hugged each other and then without a word began to run down Manor Road back towards her block of flats. All around lay the wreckage of other buildings destroyed in the raid, and dirty, bloodied people were everywhere, some of them desperately pulling at piles of bricks, others simply standing around in shock. But Lilian didn’t have time to think about anyone else. All she wanted to know was whether her brother and father – who would have finished his Saturday shift around the same time as her – were all right.
As they turned the corner, Lilian’s heart sank. The block of flats had been hit and her mother’s beloved apartment, with its bathroom and separate bedrooms, had been blown to smithereens.
Panic-stricken, she ran towards the remains of the building shouting, ‘Dad! Harry!’ Her throat was so dry from breathing in the dust that it came out as a rasping noise.
She had lost Lily Middleditch in the chaos but as she scoured the scene her eyes landed on a familiar face – that of their neighbour, Mrs Draycock. Seeing Lilian distressed and dirty she hurried over.
‘Lil, don’t worry, there was nobody in,’ she said. ‘You all right?’
‘Yes, I’m – all covered in dust,’ Lilian blurted out. For the first time, she realised she was shaking.
Mrs Draycock put her arm around her. ‘Never mind about that now, love. You come with us – we’re going to the country to get away from all of this.’
Lilian could do nothing but nod mutely. She followed Mrs Draycock, her daughter Rosie and son Bobby, and boarded a bus heading out to Essex.
A short time later, they arrived at the village of Dunmow and were assigned a condemned cottage to stay in. Lilian was still covered in dust and had nothing to change into, but the local church was handing out old clothes and she gratefully took a bundle. When she unfolded it later back at the cottage, out fell the most beautiful thing she had ever seen: a man’s dressing gown in hand-embroidered satin. She had never owned a dressing gown before.
While Lilian was safe in Dunmow, her father and Harry Jnr had returned to the flats to find them destroyed, and no sign of Lilian anywhere. They went all round the area asking those neighbours and friends who were still left there, but nobody had seen her.
Over the next few days, Harry Tull switched his search for a living, breathing daughter to one for her remains, fearing that the family curse had struck again. He went to the nearest mortuary, where he was told the corpse of a young blonde woman had been brought in and, convinced that it must be Lilian, asked to see it. He watched, trembling, as the body was uncovered – but to his relief it wasn’t her.
He went to another mortuary, and then another, always filled with a sickening certainty that this time he would find his daughter. Each time, he would breathe a sigh of relief when he discovered she wasn’t there, before the creeping dread set in again and he continued his search.
After a week, Mrs Draycock thought it safe to send her son, Bobby, back to London to let Lilian’s family know where she was. He returned the same day with Lilian’s father, who clasped his daughter so tightly in his arms that she could hardly breathe.
Then he straightened himself up and assumed his usual, Victorian manner. ‘You’re going to Oxfordshire to be with your mum from now on,’ he said, briskly. ‘You’ll be safer there.’ Mr Tull was right that his daughters were safe from the bombs in the countryside, but little did he know what other perils lay in wait for them there.
Without their father’s strict discipline and sobering presence, the younger Tulls and their mother were having the time of their lives. They were one of two evacuee families put up in the gamekeeper’s cottage on the estate of Kirtlington Park, a grand country house a few miles north of Oxford with 50 acres of parks and gardens designed by Capability Brown. An area of the park that was normally a polo ground had been cultivated by the Dig for Victory campaign, while a farm had been turned into an RAF airfield. Hundreds of evacuees and land girls were living in the great house itself.
Coming from the bombed-out East End, Lilian thought her new home was a paradise, and without her father around she felt freer than she had for a long time. One of the first notable effects of this new freedom was the possibility of fraternising with the opposite sex.
At home, Lilian’s father had kept a close watch over his daughters, making it nigh on impossible for boys to get anywhere near them. A few months earlier, Lilian and Lily Middleditch had met some boys at Memorial Avenue Park, and as they were walking back towards the flats one of the boys, who had taken a shine to Lilian, flirtatiously pulled the scarf she was wearing off her neck. Up on the top floor, Harry Tull was leaning out of the window, intently watching the proceedings through a sixpenny toy telescope belonging to his youngest son, Leslie. As soon as he saw the scarf slipping from his daughter’s neck his head popped back into the house, the telescope dropped to the floor and he rushed as fast as he could down the stairs and out of the flats. He marched up to the group of terrified teenagers, clamped his hand on Lilian’s shoulder and commanded: ‘Home!’
In Oxfordshire, far away from the long arm of Harry Tull, Lilian and her sister Edie – who was just a year her junior – were brave enough to venture into the village alone in the evenings. There they attended the Kirtlington village hall, which was becoming quite a hub for dances at the time, what with all the land girls looking for some distraction in the countryside. Unfortunately there were never enough men to go around, which left many of the girls standing at the side of the room or resorting to dancing with each other for most of the evening. Lilian didn’t mind – her natural shyness meant she was happy just watching the spectacle.
One night, however, as the band was striking up a waltz, she saw a handsome, dark-haired young man walking across the room towards her. Instinctively, Lilian glanced over her shoulder to see who he was looking for, but Edie and all the girls behind her had moved away to get drinks.
‘Would you like to dance?’ he asked, holding out his hand. Lilian was gobsmacked. He sounded so gentlemanly and grown-up, and must be at least ten years her senior. Why on earth would he want to dance with a lanky teenager like her?
She gave him a shy smile. ‘I don’t know how to waltz,’ she said.
‘Never mind, just follow me,’ he replied, taking her hand and leading her onto the dance floor.
To begin with, Lilian