Rosie Goes to War by Alison Knight Page A

in. The next thing out of the case is the cotton nightdress.
    â€˜Ah, that’s lovely,’ says May, ‘and cosy too. A nice long nightie’s just the thing to keep your bum from freezing.’
    She said it in my day too, and she’s right. It’s flipping cold in here. The nightie and the hot-water bottle should keep me warm. I wonder when Gran had central heating installed. Probably not for decades yet.
    â€˜Are you two still up?’ Nelly is standing in the doorway. ‘Come on, it’s nearly three o’clock. We’ve got to be up at six. Get to bed.’ She turns and heads for the door of what I know as Gran’s bedroom.
    â€˜â€™Night, Nelly,’ May calls after her. ‘Sleep tight.’
    Nelly ignored her and shut the door.
    â€˜Is she always this rude?’ I ask, feeling bad for May.
    â€˜She gets a bit grumpy when she’s tired, that’s all.’
    â€˜Have we really got to get up at six?’
    â€˜Yeah, so we’d better do like Nelly says and get some sleep.’ She stands up, stretching her arms above her head and yawning. ‘I’m just next door if you need anything, Queenie.’
    I realise that ‘next door’ is where Gran’s bathroom is. I wonder where the bath is in 1940, but I’m too tired to care.
    â€˜Thanks,’ I say. ‘Goodnight.’
    â€˜Night, night,’ she says as she leaves, shutting the door behind her.
    I turn and look at the open case. I start to empty it and put everything away, but then wonder whether I should leave it. After all, I might not be here long. With any luck I’ll wake up at Gran’s, when I should be. I just hope I don’t wake up sharing a bed with Great-aunt Eleanor!
    I think about sneaking down to the hall mirror to see if I can get it to send me back, but the stairs are creaky and they’ll know I’m there and think I’m trying to do a runner – which I am, really. But I’m so tired and it’s freezing, so I leave half the stuff in the case, move it onto the floor, turn off the light and crawl into bed with the hot-water bottle.
    Even that’s a weird experience. There’s no big fluffy duvet like I’m used to. Instead, the sheets are freezing and the couple of thin, scratchy blankets don’t seem to help at all. I lie there shivering, hugging the hot-water bottle.
    When May brought me in here, for a second – just a second – I saw the lemon-painted walls and cream carpet from Gran’s. I tried to sneeze, to see if it would get me back there. But I just went dizzy again and here I am, stuck in a freezing bedroom with more of that awful brown lino on the floor. It’s funny, I never liked that lemon colour scheme, but I really miss it now.
    I roll over and punch the pillow. I’m still not sure how I got here, but I’m beginning to realise this is definitely more than just a dream. But there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is wait and see, and hope like mad I can get back to real life soon.
    I wonder if I’m dead but haven’t realised. I know it sounds really stupid, but maybe I really died when I got knocked out, and that’s why I woke up in this weird place. I hope not. I don’t want to be stuck here for ever and ever.

CHAPTER SIX
    I swear Nelly enjoys seeing people suffer. I barely slept anyway, and I’d just dozed off when she was shaking me awake.
    This morning has been dead embarrassing actually. I got stroppy with Nelly for waking me up, because I was dreaming I was back at home. So when she woke me up it was like she’d dragged me back to the past again, and I was so upset I told her to ‘eff off’ – only I used the full word, which I don’t usually. But I couldn’t help myself.
    â€˜Don’t you use that language in this house,’ she’d said, ‘or I’ll wash your filthy mouth out with carbolic.’
    I could see she