‘It won’t be easy, Tilly,’ Olive warned. ‘You’ve always been used to having your own room.’
‘I know, but I really want to, Mum. Can we?’
‘Very well. If you’re sure,’ Olive agreed.
‘I am sure.’ Tilly flung her arms round her mother and kissed her before running to the front door and pulling it open.
Agnes had almost reached the end of Article Row when she heard the sound of someone running behind her. She stopped and turned round, surprised to see Tilly, her black curls dancing in the early evening sunshine.
‘Agnes,’ Tilly called out breathlessly, ‘wait. I’ve got something to tell you.’
Silently Agnes waited.
‘I’ve spoken to my mother and, if you’re in agreement – that is, if you want to – you can share my room. There’s a spare bed, and it’s a good size. I know it won’t be the same as having your own room, but I thought that, well, for now, until you find somewhere better, it might do?’
Somewhere better than number 13 Article Row and Tilly and her mother? Could such a place exist? Agnes didn’t think so.
‘You really mean it?’ she asked, hardly daring to believe it. ‘You’d really share your room with me?’
‘Yes,’ Tilly assured her, taking her arm and leading her back.
* * *
Half an hour later, after another cup of tea in number 13’s kitchen, it was all arranged. Agnes would return to the orphanage to inform Matron that she was moving into Mrs Robbins’ house.
Her heart flooding with joy and gratitude, Agnes thanked her saviours, and this time when she headed back down Article Row she held her head high, her tears replaced by a smile.
Chapter Five
‘So you’re doing it then? You’re really going to go ahead and move out?’
Despite the fact that she could hear disbelief and censure in her brother’s voice, Dulcie tossed her head and demanded, ‘Yes I am, and so what?’
They were in the cramped shabby living room of their home, empty for once apart from the two of them.
‘So what?’ Rick repeated grimly. ‘Have you thought what this is going to do to Mum? We’re a family, Dulcie, and in case you’ve forgotten there just happens to be a war about to start. That’s a time when families should stick together.’
‘That’s easy for you to say when you’re leaving home to go and do six months’ military training. Have you thought about what that’s going to do to Mum?’ she challenged him, determined to fight her own corner.
‘I don’t have any choice. It’s the Government that’s said I’ve got to go,’ Rick pointed out.
‘And I don’t have any choice either, not with Edith treating my things like they belong to her and Mum backing her up.’ There was real bitterness in Dulcie’s voice now. ‘Mum always takes Edith’s side; she always has and she always will. All she wants me for is my wages.’
‘Aw, come on, Dulcie, that’s not true,’ Rick felt obliged to protest, but Dulcie could see that he was looking uncomfortable. Because he knew the truth!
‘Yes it is,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘Mum’s always favoured Edith, and you know it. It’s all very well for you to talk about families sticking together, but when has this family ever done anything for me? Mum hasn’t said a word to me about wanting me to stay. If you ask me she’s pleased to see me go. That way she can listen to Edith caterwauling all day long.’
There was just enough of a grain of truth – even though Dulcie had deliberately distorted and exaggerated it – in what she was saying for Rick to fall silent. During their childhood his sister had always been the one who seemed to get it in the neck and who had borne the brunt of their mother’s sometimes short temper, whilst Edith was indeed their mother’s favourite. Despite all that, though, he felt obliged, as the eldest of the family, to persist doggedly, ‘We’re family, Dulcie, and families like ours stick together.’
‘Fine, but they can stick together without me.’
‘You’ll regret leaving,’ Rick warned her, ‘and I’m only telling you that for your own good. Moving in with strangers – no good will come of it.’
‘Yes it will. I’ll not have a thieving sister helping herself to my clothes, nor a mother always having it in for me. Besides, it’s a really nice place I’m moving to, and you can see that for yourself ’cos I need you to give me a hand getting my stuff over there tonight.’
Rick sighed. He knew when he’d lost a fight, especially with Dulcie, who had her own ideas and opinions about everything, and who was as sharp as a tack when it came to making them plain.
‘All right, I will help you,’ he agreed, ‘provided you promise me that you’ll come home every Sunday to go to church with Mum.’
Dulcie was tempted to refuse, but she needed Rick’s help if she was to get her things to her new digs in one trip, and besides, something told her that her new landlady was the sort who thought things like families and going to church on Sunday were important. If she didn’t accept Rick’s terms she could end up finding herself dragged off to church by Olive. It would be worthwhile coming back once a week, if only to show off her new – unborrowable – clothes to Edith.
‘All right,’ she conceded.
‘Promise?’ Rick demanded.
‘Promise,’ Dulcie agreed.
Sally looked round her small Spartan room in the nurses’ home. The few possessions she had brought with her from Liverpool – apart from the photograph of her parents on their wedding day, in its silver frame – were packed in her case, ready for her to take to Article Row. As soon as she’d come off duty she’d changed out of her uniform, with its distinctive extra tall starched Barts’ cap, much taller than the caps worn by any nurses from any of the other London hospitals. Sisters’ caps were even taller, and even more stiffly starched, Sally guessed.
Workwise she’d fitted in quite well at Barts. She loved theatre work and had been welcomed by the other theatre staff, most of whom were down to be evacuated should Germany’s hostile advances into the territories of its neighbours continue and thus lead to a declaration of war by the British Government. Normally, of course, Sally would not have been allowed to ‘live out’ but these were not normal times.
Not normal times . . . Her life had ceased to be what she thought of as normal many months ago now.
She sat down on the edge of her narrow thin-mattressed bed, nowhere near as comfortable as the bed waiting for her in Article Row, and nowhere near as comfortable as the bed she had left behind her in Liverpool in the pretty semi-detached house that had always been her home. The house that she had refused to enter once she had known the truth, leaving Liverpool in the pale light of an early summer morning to catch the first train to London, with nothing but a recommendation to the matron at Barts from her own Hospital, and the trunk into which she had packed her belongings. Heavy though that trunk had been, it had been no heavier than the weight of her memories – both good and bad – on her heart.
She hadn’t told her father what she was planning to do. She’d known that he would plead with her and try to dissuade her, so instead she’d asked the taxi driver to take her first to her parents’ house, from her temporary room at the nurses’ home, where she’d put her letter to her father very quietly through the letter box, before going on to Lime Street station.
Her father would have read her letter over breakfast. She could picture him now, carefully pouring himself a cup of tea, sitting down at the blue-and-white-checked-oilcloth-covered table, with the paper propped up against the teapot, as he read the words that she had written telling him that she wanted