Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) by Jill Dawson

sweaty feet because some of the boys have taken their shoes off. When we first got here we sounded just like a big hive of bees, or like being at the swimming baths, it was deafening. But now it’s just us and the noise is down to a trickle.
    There are some tiny candles lit and they splutter as a new group of people come in, and go over to the billeting lady, and look over at us. Right now I’m staring up at the ceiling, at the colored glass above us with the nudie figures, showing Bobby, trying to stop him from being bored. To stop him whispering about Nan, where’s Nan, when are we going back to Nan?
    And wondering, what is it about us, why are we among the last to be picked?
    Bobby’s playing with some conkers he picked up on the way over here, jiggling them in his pockets and rolling them in his palm like shiny wooden marbles and then suddenly leaping on Archie and wrestling him to the floor, accusing him of nicking one.
    We haven’t eaten since the sandwiches on the station and as ever we’re hungry and tired, and a little picture of Nan pops into my head, back home taping up that blackout curtain like yesterday, and sighing and showing her nylon slip as she stretches up to pin it with pegs to the top of the curtain rail. And she would at least have bought us some tea and the kettle would be whistling and she’d be getting out The Review and settling down with a mug, having made me and Bobby a half cup each, with lots of sugar.
    I screw up my eyes tight because I don’t like the leaky feeling in them, when I think of Nan, and imagine sleeping in bed beside her with her rustling hairnet that she wears at night, with little wisps of white hair poking out like the grandmother in Red Riding Hood (only our grandmother smells of paregorics and parma-violets, not apples). Her pink dentures are always beside the bed in the glass and her mouth closes down into this strange gummy line, and sometimes when she’s asleep and I’m not, I stare at it, and want to open her mouth, and look inside at the place where all the teeth used to be.
    A lady’s voice suddenly.
    â€œBut he looks puny. What d’you think, Bert? The one with the ears. What’s your name, boy?”
    A man and a woman. The man silent, like a tree, and with so much black hair and big red hands. They stand in front of us, staring at us.
    â€œBit of a rum lot left, isn’t it,” says the man. I get a sniff of pipe tobacco as he steps over to us; he’s slipping the pipe into the pocket of his jacket but it still peeps out, like a snake’s head.
    â€œAt least they’re not Jews! I wouldn’t know what to do with a Jew,” the lady says.
    Then to me she says, “What’s your name?” She’s wearing a thick coat, that Nan would call a “camel coat” for the color, and the way it looks like an animal’s skin, and men’s shoes, and her skin has a rough coating on each cheek, like the skin of some apples. I’m wondering what she might be like underneath, if you peeled her with a knife, like an apple?
    â€œQueenie,” I answer.
    Bobby stares at me. He opens his mouth a little, like a big fish.
    â€œI don’t think there’s any Queenie left . . . only Beryl, Mary, Robert, Archibald . . .” says the billeting lady, coming over to us. She has a clipboard, a pen parked above her ear, the way Dad does with a cigarette.
    â€œIt’s my nickname. Everyone calls me Queenie.” I point to the place on her list where my real name is. Bobby closes his mouth tight.
    â€œAnd we have to stay together,” I add. “My nan said.”
    â€œIt’s the start of the Campaign,” the man says to Bobby. “You’re little . . . skin and bone. Can you work hard?” This man’s hair is long for a grown-up. It sticks up from his head like a brush you use to sweep the hearth. His cheeks have these puffs of hair sprouting