and safe and somehow very grown up to be this close to him in this kind of situation. The intimacy between their bodies was that of a couple bonded together by their need to protect the young lives of Ted’s sisters, just as one day they would protect their own children.
‘In you go, all of you,’ Ted told them once he’d got the door open just enough for them to slip in.
‘It’s dark inside, and I don’t like the dark,’ little Sonia piped up unhappily.
‘There’s a light inside, love, but I don’t want to switch it on until you’re all safely in there,’ Ted tried to reassure her.
Agnes guessed that he didn’t want to put the light on straight away and alert others to the existence of the small hideaway, so she smiled at the little girl and told her, ‘I’ve got my torch, look . . .’ She flashed it briefly ahead of her so that she could see inside what was little more than a large cupboard. About six feet square, with a washbasin inside, it had some hooks on the wall and three battered-looking bentwood chairs.
‘Come on, you two.’ Taking charge, Ted’s mother went into the storeroom, dragging her daughters with her, but still ignoring Agnes.
‘I’d better get back to the office,’ Agnes told Ted. ‘They’ll be expecting me there, seeing as I’m supposed to be volunteering to help out.’
‘I’ll walk you back there,’ Ted told her.
But as he reached for her hand his mother said sharply, ‘Ted, the girls are getting upset. You’d better get in here and help me calm them down.’
Agnes could see how torn he was, so she touched his arm and smiled reassuringly. ‘I’ll be all right You stay here.’
She could tell that he didn’t like letting her go on her own, so she added firmly, ‘When people see that I’m in uniform they’ll let me through.’
‘Ted, your sisters need you,’ Mrs Jackson announced in an even sharper tone.
‘Mum’s a bit on edge and not herself with all this bombing going on,’ Ted whispered apologetically to Agnes, giving her hand a little squeeze.
Agnes nodded. She hoped so much that he was right, she thought, as she made her way slowly and with great difficulty through the mass of people filling the platform and back towards the ticket office. She hoped so much that it was only because Ted’s mother was worried for her children that she had been so off with her, and not because she didn’t like her.
Sergeant Dawson and Dulcie were four houses away from number 13 when they heard the air-raid siren. Without a word the policeman took Dulcie’s crutches from her and, wrapping one strong arm around her waist half carried and half dragged her as he ran with her in the direction of her landlady’s front door.
Dulcie wasn’t the sort to show fear – of anything or anyone – not even to herself. It was a matter of pride, something she had set out to teach herself from the very first minute she had seen her mother gazing into the basket that contained her new baby sister, Edith, with a look of such love in her eyes. So she told herself now that the hammering of her heart was caused by her exertion and not by anything else.
‘I hope that they aren’t in their Anderson already,’ Sergeant Dawson muttered half under his breath as he made to knock on the door, but Dulcie shook her head.
‘It’s all right, I’ve got a key.’
However, the door was already being opened by Olive, who exclaimed, ‘Thank heavens! I was beginning to worry that you’d be caught out in the open somewhere.’
‘Not twice in less than seven days I’m not going to be,’ Dulcie grimaced as she took her crutches from Sergeant Dawson, thanked him and hobbled inside. She had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the sound of the sirens, yelling as though in warning to the oncoming bombers: ‘You aren’t getting a second chance to get me.’
‘Come on. I’ll help you both down to the Anderson,’ Sergeant Dawson told them, also raising his voice, as the
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