PATRICIA BURNS is an Essex girl born and bred and proud of it. She spent her childhood messing about in boats, then tried a number of jobs before training to be a teacher. She married and had three children, all of whom are now grown up, and she recently became a grandmother. She is now married for the second time and is doing all the things she never had time for earlier in life.

When not busy writing, Patricia enjoys travelling and socialising, walking in the countryside round the village where she now lives, belly dancing and making exotic costumes to dance in.

Find out more about Patricia at www.mirabooks.co.uk/patriciaburns

Patricia Burns

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Dorothy Lumley,

who never stopped believing in this book

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

January 1953

IT SEEMED to be a day like any other. Windy, certainly, but at Marsh Edge Farm they were used to almost constant wind, exposed as they were. It swept over the Essex flatlands with increasing power that day, the last day of January in the year of the new Queen’s coronation. It came howling across the low grasslands that had once been part of the sea, raced over the snaking sea wall and buffeted the grey North Sea into angry white-topped waves.

It whipped the skirts of Annie Cross’s old grey mac round her frozen legs as she brought the dairy cows in for evening milking. She pulled her muffler more snugly round her neck and looked round anxiously at her small son. Bobby was plodding behind the last animal, stick in hand, the clinging mud nearly to the top of his wellingtons. His small face was pinched and his nose was streaming. In the gap between his raincoat and his boots, his bare knees were bright red with cold. Annie forced an encouraging smile.

‘Nearly there, darling! Grandma’s making us some scones for tea. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’

Bobby nodded and sneezed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Annie’s heart contracted. He shouldn’t be out here in the wind and the cold. He should be indoors in front of the kitchen range, being cosseted by his grandma. But cosseting was out of the question at Marsh Edge Farm.

Her father was waiting for them in the yard. A small man, Walter Cross watched their arrival from beneath the peak of his cloth cap, his eyes hard in his narrow face.

‘You took your time. What’s the matter with you? Having a holiday?’

Annie shook her head. It wasn’t a question that required answering.

‘You’ll have to do the milking. I still haven’t got that blasted tractor to work. Don’t know what you’ve gone and done to it,’ her father said.

‘Right,’ Annie said.

It was no use pointing out that the tractor had failed while he’d been driving it. After all, everything that went wrong round here was her fault. Hers or Bobby’s.

‘And make sure that brat of yours helps. Cold, indeed! I never heard the like. Never got colds in my day. Get the little bastard working. That’ll soon cure him.’

Walter glared in the direction of the child, who stood in the yard entrance, his frightened eyes flicking from his mother to his grandfather. Walter grunted.

‘Bad blood,’ he muttered.

Annie’s self-control snapped. ‘He’s your grandson!’

Her father’s mouth stretched into a grim smile. He had provoked her. Satisfied, he turned to trudge across the yard to where the tractor stood under an open-sided shelter.

‘Make sure it’s all scrubbed down proper after. No skiving off early. I’ll be checking to see you’ve done it right, mind,’ he warned over his shoulder.

Annie said nothing. Walter stopped and slowly looked back at her. Behind her, Annie heard Bobby give a small whimper of fear.

‘You heard what I said?’ he demanded.

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘Good.’

His absolute authority assured, Walter walked on.

‘Pig,’ Annie muttered under her breath. ‘Bully. Schweinhund.’

She had learnt that one from the pictures. It gave her particular pleasure. She repeated it with as guttural a German accent as she could manage.

At least the milking was inside. Annie and Bobby went about the well-worn routine—feeding, washing udders, fixing on the cups. Without Walter there criticising their every move, they could almost enjoy it. Bobby sniffed and sneezed but worked manfully. He was only seven, but he was a well-seasoned assistant.

‘When I was little,’ Annie told him, ‘we did all this by hand. It took ages, even though we didn’t have so many cows then.’

Like Bobby, she had had to help from an early age. She could hardly remember a time when she hadn’t laboured on the farm.

‘Did they like you doing it by hand?’ Bobby asked. ‘The cows?’

Annie thought about it.

‘Yes. I think so. But you had to do it properly, or they’d kick you, or knock the bucket over.’

‘I bet he didn’t like that.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

The long day wasn’t yet over. The cows had to be turned into their pens and the dairy scrubbed down. Then there were the pigs to feed and hens to shut up for the night. By the time they had finished, Bobby’s teeth were chattering. Annie fished a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it over his nose.

‘Blow,’ she told him.

He blew.

‘That feel better?’

He nodded.

Annie put an arm round his shoulders and gathered him to her. He hugged her hips, nestling his balaclaved head against her. She glanced over to where her father was still leaning over the tractor engine with a spanner in his hand. She knew better than to go in without clearing it with him.

‘We’re finished, Dad,’ she called across the yard.

He didn’t let them go in straight away, but that was normal. Instead he found fault in their cleaning of the milking parlour. But when that was finally done to his satisfaction, they all went inside.

Marsh Edge farmhouse was a square plain brick building with a parlour, large kitchen, a scullery and an outside toilet downstairs and two large and two small bedrooms upstairs. The only room in the house that was heated was the kitchen, and it was there that they lived. It was hardly a model of comfort. The floors were stone-flagged, the walls whitewashed. A wooden sink and some shelves were built under the window, a green-painted dresser and some deal cupboards stood against one of the walls, a plain scrubbed table occupied the middle of the room with four stick-back chairs round it, while two Windsor carver chairs and a settle were set round the rag rug in front of the blackleaded range. The only clues that this was 1953 rather than 1903 were the big brown wireless on top of one of the cupboards, and the single electric light bulb under its red shade in the centre of the room.

Plain as it was, the kitchen seemed a haven of light and warmth after the raw cold of the yard. Annie and Bobby left their macs and wellingtons in the porch and washed their hands in the scullery. Edna Cross welcomed them in.

‘You poor things; you must be frozen. How’s my poor boy? That cold any better? Here, come and get warm by the range. I’ll open the front up …’

Edna was an older version of her daughter, small and round-faced with a turned-up nose, but years of hard work, poor health and marriage to Walter had etched lines into her pretty face, and made her painfully thin rather than slender. Her narrow hands were red and rough and the hair that had once been fair and naturally wavy was limp and colourless. She had long ago given up any idea of being anything but a drudge.

‘Is he coming?’ she asked Annie, with a motion of her head towards the yard.

‘I think so.’

‘I’ll do the toast, then. Can you make the tea, love?’

Annie shifted the big black kettle from where it was simmering on the side of the range to the hot spot in the middle, while her mother threaded a thick slice of bread on to the toasting fork. Bobby crouched on the rug, warming himself like a cat.

‘He got that tractor fixed?’ Edna asked.

‘Not yet.’

Neither of them made any further comment. It went without saying that his failure would not improve Walter’s temper. Edna’s hand shook a little as she held the toasting fork. Walter came in and the meal was put on the table—toast and dripping followed by scones and gooseberry jam, washed down by plenty of tea. The lack of conversation was disguised by the measured voices of the BBC announcers on the Home Service.

The evening passed like a hundred others. Annie put Bobby to bed and then sat by the range knitting him some socks. Walter read the local paper with the odd comment on the stupidity of one person or another while Edna hand-worked buttonholes in a rayon blouse for one of her customers. They listened to Saturday Night Theatre on the wireless. The weather forecast warned of continuing gales.

‘There’s a spring tide tonight and all,’ Walter said.

Edna looked fearful.

‘Spring tide and a gale? Will we be safe?’

‘Don’t talk daft, woman,’ Walter scoffed. ‘Wind’s offshore. If anyone gets it, it’ll be them Dutchies. Very low-lying, Holland is. Much more’n here.’

Annie made cocoa and put the porridge pot to simmer on the range, then there was the ritual of locking up before they went upstairs. Annie undressed as quickly as possible in her freezing bedroom and put on a flannelette nightie that came up to her neck and down to her ankles while on her feet she wore woolly socks.

Before getting into bed, she held back the curtain and took a quick peep outside. Way across the fields was the dark line of the sea wall, the place where she had met Tom, all those years ago when they had both been hardly more than kids. She pulled her mind away. It was no use dwelling on Tom. Under the sea wall, a light shone in a window, bringing a smile to her face. The light meant love and cheerfulness and hope. It came from Silver Sands, the little wooden chalet where her dear friends Reggie and Gwen lived, surrounded by the half dozen caravans that they insisted were going to make their fortune one day soon. While Reggie and Gwen were there, her life had a bright spot in it. She sent them a goodnight blessing. Then she climbed into the iron bedstead with its lumpy mattress and curled into a ball round her stone hot water bottle, gradually extending her feet down the bed as it warmed up.

Tired out from a long day working in the cold wind, she fell deeply asleep, only to be woken some time later out of a confused dream. Somewhere out in the yard, a door was banging. It was still a wild night out there. Wide awake and anxious about her friends, Annie slid out of bed and padded across the dark room to the window. Gwen was expecting a baby any day now. What if it had chosen tonight to arrive? What if Reggie’s car, never very reliable, refused to start? She drew back the thin curtain and looked out once more. The sky had cleared and a bright moon shone down, silvering the marshes, glinting off—water! Annie caught her breath, not wanting to believe her eyes. There was a lake where the lower meadows should be. The fields were flooding.

She stared through the night, trying to make out what was happening, trying to distinguish the solid bulk of the wall, their only protection from the North Sea. She could see the pale glimmer of Reggie and Gwen’s caravans crouching under where it should be.

‘My God! Gwen!’ she cried out loud.

If the water was coming over the wall, Reggie and Gwen were right in its path.

She blundered for the door, feeling for the light switch. Nothing happened. She flicked it up and down. Still nothing.

‘Damn, damn.’

She stumbled across the landing and banged on her parents’ bedroom door.

‘Dad, Mum! Wake up! The water’s coming over the wall! There’s a flood!’

It took a few minutes to get her father awake and to make him understand what was happening. Once he did, his thoughts were for the stock.

‘Get dressed. We got to get the store cattle in. The dairy herd’ll be all right. The water won’t reach as far as here.’

‘But, Dad, it’s already over the lower meadows—’

Her head rocked sideways as his heavy hand caught her round the ear. Through the ringing, she heard him shouting at her.

‘Don’t argue with me, girl. Get some clothes on. Quick.’

Annie knew better than to say any more. As she hurried into sweaters and trousers and felt her way downstairs in the dark, anxiety about her friends gnawed at her. How could she warn them? If only they had a telephone. Her father was in the kitchen, cursing as he lit the hurricane lamps that they kept for emergencies. The warm glow only made the shadows in the corners of the kitchen look darker. He thrust one into her hand.

‘Come on.’

Annie hurried after him into the night. Once out of the protection of the farmyard, the full force of the gale hit her, nearly knocking her off her feet.

‘Shift y’self, you useless mare, it’s not even high tide yet. It’ll get worse,’ her father yelled.

‘Who said it was all right because the wind was offshore?’ Annie muttered, but she did not dare say it out loud.

They struck out across the fields, leaving the gates open as they went, Annie almost running to keep up with her father as he strode ahead. The wind was pulling at her raincoat, buffeting her face, making her ears ache and her eyes water. She did not look ahead, just kept her eyes on her father, a darker shape in the surrounding night. When they got close to the drainage ditches, where the water usually flowed sluggishly along the bottom, she could see by the moonlight that it was lapping over the edges. And there was another thing—something wrong. She could not put her finger on it at first, what with the wind and the dark and the effort of keeping up with her father, but then it came to her. The water in the ditches was running the wrong way. It was not draining away to the sea, it was coming in. Soon it was spreading out into wide puddles. She slid and floundered on the waterlogged ground. She fell on her knees and staggered up again. The journey took on the quality of a nightmare, going on and on, with her father looking back occasionally and cursing her for not keeping up.

Then at last they were at the field nearest to the sea wall. The young cattle were huddled at the gate, already up to their hocks in floodwater.

‘Get round behind them, you stupid slut!’ her father bawled.

She tried to obey, wading round the uneasy herd, moving with difficulty as the floodwater came over the tops of her wellingtons and filled them up. She started yelling at them. The wind tore the sounds from her mouth. She thumped and pushed the animals’ rumps, her feet sliding and squelching in the thick mud. Already upset by the storm, they started lowing and milling about. She could only hope that one would have the sense to get going, and then the others would follow it. To her relief, some instinct for survival seemed to get hold of them. One went through the gate, then another. Knowing where to go now, they went plodding into the next field. Already that was awash as well, the gale whipping it into miniature waves. Over the next field and the next they went, gathering up more stock, herding the frightened animals towards each gate, forcing them through. The water seemed to be racing ahead of them, turning each field into a lake before they reached it. Annie’s throat was raw with yelling at the beasts, every muscle in her body ached, her legs felt like weights, dragging her back, slowing her down. But ahead was the farmhouse, silvered in the moonlight. They were in the home field.

She paused in her own battle to spare a thought for her friends, staring through the night towards Silver Sands. With the electricity out, there were no lights showing, no way of knowing whether Reggie and Gwen were awake and saving themselves.

‘Don’t stop now! Get on!’ her father shouted.

‘Reggie and Gwen—’ she yelled.

‘What? What now?’

‘Reggie and Gwen. At Silver Sands—’

‘Too late. Get on.’

If only they had a telephone. Or a boat. If only the tractor were working. If she could just know what was happening. How deep was it down by the sea wall now?

Then, above the howl of the storm, she heard, or rather felt, a rumbling roar, and there, coming towards her across the flooded fields, was a wall of water that seemed as high as a double-decker bus. Terrified, she turned and tried to run.

She staggered forward, fear giving her a new desperate energy. Ahead of her the farm buildings loomed, blacker in the surrounding darkness, promising safety, but her way was blocked by a solid rank of frightened, bewildered cattle. She shrieked and beat at them, trying to get through. She glanced over her shoulder. The wave was getting nearer.

The first cows reached the farmyard and waded inside, fanning out into the wider space. Annie lashed out at the ones behind, swinging the hurricane lamp at them, screaming. Then the water hit her.

Icy and black, the whole weight of the North Sea behind it, it knocked her off her feet. Helpless, she was carried along, her arms and legs thrashing uselessly in the swirling current, knocking into bony rumps and sharp horns. There was a roaring in her ears. Her lungs were bursting. Then, just as she thought she could not hold her breath any longer, she crashed into something solid and held on with both arms and all her strength. She found her feet and dragged herself upright. Her head surfaced. Choking and gasping, she sucked in the blessed air.

She had fetched up against a tree. For several moments she just clung on to the slender trunk, shaking, gasping, thankful simply to be alive. Around her she could hear the cattle still lowing in fear, but now her only thought was for herself. She had to get to the house. The water was up to her shoulders and still rising.

‘Ann!’

A croak in the darkness. Her father. At first she couldn’t see him in the swirling confusion.

‘Ann! Help me!’

The moonlight caught his head. His hat was gone, his face was twisted in fear. He was being washed towards her, the tyrant reduced to a helpless rag doll by the raging force of the flood. Annie could see him trying and failing to get his feet to the ground, his arms flailing. An odd disconnected thought slid into her head. He hadn’t called her by her name in years.

A chance eddy brought him near to her, nearer—

‘Ann!’

There was terror in his voice, desperation in his face. His hand stretched out to her. He was three yards away, two. The events of her life seemed to whirl before her. She was six years old again, was cowering before him as he grasped her arm, his heavy hand beating her again and again. She was eleven. Her teacher said that if she worked hard, she could pass the exam for the grammar school. But her father sneered at the very idea. Grammar school was not for the likes of her. She was needed on the farm.

‘Please, Ann—!’

He was her father. He couldn’t swim.

‘Dad?’ she croaked.

She had only to let go of the tree with one hand and reach out to him.

She saw Bobby cowering, Bobby terrified at having failed to do some task way beyond his years and strength, Bobby called nothing but ‘that boy’ and forced to call his own grandfather ‘Mr Cross’.

‘Ann, for God’s sake—’

He was close enough for her to touch his fingertips. But she did not. And a moment later he was gone, swallowed up into the black water.

‘Dad!’ she screamed.

She let go with one arm and strained after him. The hungry current got her in its grip, tugged and sucked at her.

‘Dad!’

Frantically, she flailed about, trying to find him, to catch hold of him.

But it was too late.

CHAPTER TWO

July 1940

‘No MORE school, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks!’ Annie’s friend Gwen chanted as she danced along the road.

Annie followed with a heavy heart. This was her last day of freedom, the last day she would walk towards home with Gwen, the last day of laughing and chatting to her friends at break time, the last—

‘Let’s go and look at the beach!’ Gwen called over her shoulder. Her freckled face was pink with excitement, her girlish plaits and her white ankle socks contrasting oddly with the woman’s figure beneath her cotton frock.

Annie glanced down at her own woefully small breasts. That was something else that Gwen had more of than her. It wasn’t fair.

‘All right,’ she agreed.

Anything to put off going home.

Gwen waited for her to catch up and threaded an arm through hers.

‘I’m never going to open another book again,’ she vowed.

Annie sighed. ‘I probably won’t be allowed to.’

‘Oh, you—’ Gwen pushed her away and pulled her in again. ‘You’re such an old swot. Mr Clifton’s favourite! Teacher’s pet! What did he say to you, when he called you up to his desk?’

‘He wished me luck and told me to keep going to the public library,’ Annie admitted.

She was going to miss Mr Clifton, Annie decided. He had stuck up for her when her dad had refused to let her take up her scholarship to the grammar school. He’d offered to go and speak to her dad about it. Not that it had done any good, but at least he had tried. And he’d always been kind to her and encouraged her reading, getting her to try new authors and discuss what she had read.

‘No need to tell you that,’ Gwen said. ‘Oh, isn’t it lovely? We’re grown-ups now. We’re not kids any more.’

‘It’s all right for you; you’re going out to work. You’ll have money of your own. I’ll just be stuck on the farm, day in, day out,’ Annie said.

School had been her escape. Her father didn’t see the point of her going, but it was the law that children had to attend until they were fourteen, and even he had to obey that. He flouted it as much as he could, keeping her back when they were busy on the farm, but still Annie had been able to get away most of the time. But from now on, she was going to be tied. It was like a prison sentence, stretching away ahead of her, with no let-off for good behaviour. Already, her father had given notice to the elderly man who had worked for them for the last ten years. She was cheaper, and available seven days a week.

‘But you’ll get time off, surely?’ Gwen said. ‘He won’t have you working in the evenings. We can go to the pictures together.’

‘Yes—’ Annie tried to be optimistic. ‘He can’t keep me in all the time, can he? We’ll go to the pictures Friday nights.’

‘Cary Grant …’ Gwen sighed. ‘Humphrey Bogart …’

‘Clark Gable …’ Annie responded.

‘Who would you like to be, if you was a film star?’ Gwen asked.

‘Judy Garland.’

How wonderful to be Dorothy and meet the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion … how wonderful to escape from your farm and land in Oz. But of course you had to live in Kansas for that to happen to you. Whirlwinds didn’t tear across Essex.

‘Judy Garland? Oh, no. I want to be glamorous. I want to be Vivien Leigh.’

And meet Rhett Butler.

‘Oh, yes …’ Annie sighed.

Both happy now in their fantasy world, the girls marched arm in arm along the dusty summer streets of Wittlesham-on-Sea. The neat terraces of guest houses leading to the sea front still had ‘Vacancies’ notices hopefully displayed in their front windows, but many of the gardens had their roses and geraniums replaced by lettuces and peas as people answered the call to dig for victory.

When they reached the sea front, they stopped automatically and looked towards the pier.

‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ Gwen said. ‘My mum says it’s hardly worth keeping open.’

Gwen’s mum ran The Singing Kettle, a tearoom fifty yards from the pier entrance. The previous summer, the last summer of peace, it had been a little gold-mine, and Gwen had been kept as busy as Annie, running from kitchen to table with trays of teas and cakes and sandwiches, and back again with piles of dirty crockery. This year the visitors were few and far between. People were reluctant to go on holiday when invasion forces were threatening just across the Channel.

‘Blooming Hitler,’ Gwen grumbled as they surveyed the sprinkling of holiday-makers and the barbed wire entanglements running the length of the beach. ‘Gone and ruined everything, he has. That’s what my mum says.’

‘Yes,’ Annie agreed. ‘We’ve had to plough up the fields by the road because of him.’

Digging for Victory had meant that her father had had to change some of his farming practices. He hadn’t liked that at all, and she and her mother had been the ones to bear the brunt of it.

The girls turned away from the pier and strolled along together towards the southern end of the promenade. Even fewer businesses were open here, and the locked doors and boarded-up windows gave the prom a forlorn air.

‘D’you really want to go and work at Sutton’s Bakelite?’ Annie asked.

Gwen shrugged. ‘It’s good money, and it’s all year round,’ she pointed out.

Year-round jobs were at a premium in Wittlesham, where seasonal work was the norm.

‘Yes, but Sutton’s—Beryl’s dad,’ Annie persisted.

‘I know—’ Gwen said.

Both of them thought of Beryl Sutton, their sworn enemy.

‘—but it is war work. I’ll be making parts for aeroplanes and stuff. Wirelesses, that sort of thing,’ Gwen said.

‘I s’pose so. But Toffee-nose Beryl—’

‘Swanky knickers—’

‘Posh pants—’

They giggled happily, dragging up every insult they’d ever thrown at Beryl. But it still didn’t help with the deep jealousy Annie harboured, swilling like poison in her gut. Beryl had been allowed to go to the grammar school, when Annie had always beaten her in every school test they ever did. On top of that, they shared a birthday. Somehow, that made it much worse.

‘She won’t be there,’ Gwen pointed out.

No, Annie thought. She’ll be at school, for another two years. Lucky cow.

‘And her dad’s all right.’

‘Yes.’

That was another thing. Beryl’s dad was all right. He was nice. He was big and cheerful and adored Beryl. But then Gwen’s dad adored her, too. He called her his little princess and slipped her money for treats with a wink and a ‘Don’t tell your mother.’ Annie sighed. It wasn’t fair.

The closed up souvenir shops and cafés dwindled into bungalows as the cliff ran down towards the marsh at the edge of the town. As the sea wall joined the end of the prom, there was a no man’s land of nettle-infested building plots and little wooden holiday chalets on legs that was not quite town but not country either. The roads here were just tracks and there was a temporary feel about the place. On the very last plot, a field under the sea wall that took a corner out of Annie’s father’s land, was a holiday chalet called Silver Sands. It belonged to the Suttons, who let it out to summer visitors.

‘Looks like they’re opening it up,’ Annie said.

She was right. The windows and doors were open and the net curtains were blowing in the breeze. Rugs hung over the veranda rails. From inside came the sound of someone banging around with a broom.

‘Trust the Suttons to get lets when no one else can,’ said Gwen. ‘There’s a lot of people in this town don’t know what they’re going to do if this war goes on much longer. My aunty May’s desperate. She’s only had two families so far this summer, and lots of her regulars have cancelled. And my uncle Percy, he can’t work, not with his chest. And, like she says, rates’ve still got to be paid, and the gas and electric and everything, and the rooms kept nice, whether there’s visitors or not. She was talking to my mum about it the other day. Went on about it for hours, she did.’

‘Yes,’ Annie said.

Her eyes were on Silver Sands. It was a trim little place, painted green and cream with sunray-effect woodwork on the veranda rails. Around it was about half an acre of wild ground with roughly cut grass, a few tough flowering plants and a swing. Positioned as it was, right next to Marsh Edge Farm, it had always held a special place in her imagination. When she was little, she liked to picture herself creeping in and living there, safely out of the way of her father, her own small palace where she could order everything the way she wanted.

‘I wish it was mine,’ she said, without really meaning to let it out.

‘It’s only a holiday chalet like all the rest,’ Gwen said. ‘I dunno why you make such a fuss about it. You wasn’t half mad when the Suttons bought it! I thought you was going to burst a blood vessel!’

‘Well, why should they have it? Them, of all people? That Beryl …’

Annie’s voice trailed off. There, on the track leading to the chalet, was Beryl. It was as if she had been summoned like a bad genie by Annie’s speaking her name. Annie took in her grammar school uniform, the green and white checked dress, the green blazer, the straw hat with its green ribbon and green and yellow badge. Her guts churned with jealousy.

‘Ooh—’ she jeered. ‘It’s the posh girl. Look at her soppy hat! What’re you wearing that hat for, posh pants? Looks like a soup plate!’

‘Soup plate on her head!’ chimed the faithful Gwen.

Beryl glared at them. She was a solid girl with brown hair cut in a straight fringe across her broad face and thick calves rising from her white ankle socks. The school uniform that Annie envied so much did nothing for her looks.

‘Common little council school brats,’ she countered, her lip curling into a full, cartoon-sized sneer. She glanced behind her. ‘Come on, Jeffrey. Mummy doesn’t like us talking to nasty little guttersnipes. They might have nits.’

It was only then that Annie noticed Jeffrey Sutton, Beryl’s younger brother by a year, sloping up along the track towards them. He was also in grammar school uniform, his leather satchel over his shoulders, his green and black striped cap pushed to the back of his head. It was unfortunate for Beryl that she took after her mother while her three brothers favoured their father, for the boys had the better share of the looks. Jeffrey caught up with his sister and threw Annie and Gwen a conciliatory grin. You never knew which way Jeffrey might jump. His loyalties depended upon the situation.

‘Wotcha!’ he said.

Beryl rounded on him. ‘Jeffrey! Ignore them.’

Jeffrey shrugged and walked on, opting out of the situation. As he went, he said, ‘Bye!’

It was difficult to know who he was speaking to, but Annie leapt on the one word and appropriated it.

‘Bye, Jeffrey,’ she said, as friendly as could be.

She was rewarded by a look of intense annoyance on Beryl’s face.

‘So you’re going to be one of my father’s factory girls, are you?’ she said to Gwen, breaking her own advice of ignoring Gwen and Annie.

‘I’m going to be earning me own living,’ Gwen retorted. ‘Not a little schoolgirl in a soup plate.’

‘You are so ignorant, Gwen Barker,’ Beryl said, and stalked off up the track and in at the gate of Silver Sands.

‘Ooh!’ Gwen and Annie chorused and, linking arms again, marched after her, past the gate and on towards the sea wall. As they dropped arms to take a run at the steep slope, Beryl’s mother came out on to the veranda, her face set in lines of disapproval.

Annie couldn’t resist. She gave a friendly wave.

‘Afternoon, Mrs Sutton!’ she called cheerfully and, before Mrs Sutton had a chance to reply, the pair of them raced up the grassy bank, over the bare rutted path at the top and slid down the other side. They landed in a heap at the bottom, giggling helplessly and scratched all up their bare thighs from the sharp grass blades.

‘Did you see her face?’ Gwen chortled.

‘Sour old boot!’ Annie gasped.

It was warm and still at the foot of the sea wall, for the wind was offshore. There was a smell of salt and mud and rotting seaweed on the air. The very last of the Wittlesham beach was at their feet, a narrow strip of pale yellow sand and shingle that dwindled to nothing fifty feet to their right where it met the marsh.

Annie wrapped her arms round her legs and rested her chin on her knees, staring through the barbed wire entanglements, out across the fringe of grey-green marsh and wide expanse of glistening grey-brown mud to where the waters of the North Sea started in lace-edged ripples. It was friendly today, in the height of summer, the sunlight glinting off the gentle green waves. She let the peace steal into her with the heat of the sun. A curlew uttered its sad cry. She felt safe here.

‘Jerries are over there, across the water,’ Gwen said.

‘Mmm,’ Annie said.

That was what they said, on the wireless. It was difficult to believe right here, sitting in the sunshine.

‘My dad’s out every evening, drilling with the LDVs. No, not that. The Home Guard, it now is. Mr Churchill said.’

‘My dad doesn’t hold with it,’ Annie said.

But then her dad didn’t hold with anything that meant cooperating with anyone else. And her dad would be expecting her home soon. She didn’t own a watch, so she had no idea of the exact time, but her dad knew when school ended, and how long it took to walk home. Reluctantly, she stood up.

‘S’pose I’d better go,’ she said with a sigh.

‘You got to?’ Gwen asked. ‘It’s the last day of school. It’s special.’

Gwen’s mum had promised her a special tea, and then they were all going to the pictures—Gwen, her sister and her mum and dad.

‘Not in our house, it isn’t,’ Annie said. ‘Have a nice time this evening. Tell me all about it.’

They scrambled to the top of the sea wall again. Gwen set off towards the town. Annie stood for a moment watching her, then turned and ran down the landward side and up the track beside Silver Sands. She couldn’t help glancing over the fence at the little chalet in its wild garden but, though the windows were still open, none of the Suttons were outside. She skirted round the back of the garden and struck out across the fields. The newly expanded dairy herd grazed the first two. Then there was an empty field that had been cut for silage. Ahead of her across the flat land, she could see the square bulk of the farmhouse and the collection of sheds and barns round the yard. Marsh Edge Farm. Home. It gave her a sinking feeling.

One field away from the house, Annie climbed over the gate and on to the track that led from the farm to the Wittlesham road. She looked at the yard as it grew steadily nearer. Was her father there? She started counting—an odd number of dandelions before she reached the hawthorn tree meant he was there, an even number meant he wasn’t. Nineteen—twenty—twenty-one. Bother and blast. Try again. If she could hold her breath as far as the broken piece of fence he wouldn’t be there …

She reached the gate into the yard. In winter, it was a sea of mud, but now, in summertime, it was baked into ruts and ridges in some places and beaten to dust by the passing of cattle hooves twice a day in others. Hens strutted and scratched round the steaming midden in one corner, the tabby cat lay stretched out in the sun by the rain barrel. A gentle grunting came from the pig pen. Annie started to relax. Perhaps he was in one of the fields on the other side of the farm. She could go in and have a cup of tea with her mum.

Then there was a sudden flutter and squawk from the hens, and out of the barn came her father. He stopped when he saw her and fixed her with his pale blue eyes.

‘You’re late,’ he said.

CHAPTER THREE

ANOTHER long day of work was done and the last chores in the farmyard were finished. Annie looked in at the kitchen door. Her mother was sitting at the big table, turning the wheel of her sewing machine. The needle flew up and down so fast that it became a blur, while her mother fed the long side seam of a green silk dress beneath it.

‘Mum?’ Annie asked. ‘You all right? You need me to do anything?’

‘No—no—’ Edna Cross did not take her eyes from the slippery fabric. ‘Just want to get this done before Mrs Watson comes for her fitting tomorrow.’

‘I think I’ll go out for a bit, then.’

‘All right, dear.’

Annie slid out of the porch, ran across the yard and away down the track before her father could see what she was doing. Once over the gate into the first field, she slowed to a walk. She felt physically light, as if she might bounce along if she wanted to. For a short while, until it got dark and she had to go back indoors, she was free.

She headed automatically for the sea wall. It was no use looking at Silver Sands, for a big family had moved in two days ago for a holiday. Even from here she could see the two little tents they had put up in the garden because the chalet wasn’t large enough to accommodate them all. But it would be all right the other side of the wall. That was one advantage of the barbed wire—it kept people off the beach. Nobody but her liked to sit on the small bit of sand between the wall and the wire.

It was a beautiful summer’s evening, warm and still. Annie dodged the cow-pats and the thistles, singing as she went.

‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye …’

The one big bonus of the war, as far as she was concerned, was that her father had gone out and bought a wireless so he could listen to the news each evening. Which meant that they could also listen to Henry Hall and Geraldo, and her mother could have Music While You Work on. Now she knew all the latest songs just as soon as Gwen did.

As she came nearer to Silver Sands, she could see the family there out in the garden. She felt drawn to study them. There were two women—Mum and Aunty, maybe?—sitting on the veranda knitting, together with a man reading a newspaper, while a bunch of children all younger than herself were running round the bushes and up and down the steps in a game of ‘he’. Annie skirted the garden, wishing there was another way on to the sea wall, but you had to walk a long way away from the town before you got to the bridge over the wide dyke that ran along behind the wall. There were shrieks from the children as someone was caught, and then yells of, ‘Joan’s It! Joan’s It!’ Annie wondered what it would be like to have a holiday. It must be nice to be able to play all day long like those children. Not that she was wanting to run around playing now, of course. She was too grown up for that. But she would have liked it when she was little.

She ran up the sea wall, stopping at the top to look about.

‘Oh!’ she said out loud.

For there, just below her on the seaward side of the wall where nobody ought to be, was a boy a year or so older than herself with a sketch-book on his knee.

If he had heard her, he made no sign of it, but just kept on glancing at the sea then looking down at his paper and making marks. Fascinated, Annie looked over his shoulder. He was making a water-colour sketch. The sky was already done and, as Annie watched, he ran layers of colour together to make the sea, leaving bits of white paper showing through so it looked like the low sunlight reflecting off the waves. He made it look so easy, so unlike the clumsy powder paint efforts that she had occasionally been allowed to do at school.

‘That’s ever so good,’ she said before she could stop herself.

The boy turned his head, screwing up his eyes a little to see her as she stood against the light.

‘Oh—’ he said. ‘Hello. I mean—thanks. I thought you were one of my beastly kid cousins creeping up on me.’

He had an angular face with broad cheekbones, and very dark hair cut in a standard short-back-and-sides, but what struck Annie most was his unfamiliar accent—something she vaguely identified as being northern.

‘No,’ she said.

Now that she had started the conversation, she wasn’t quite sure what to say next.

‘You an artist?’ she blurted out, and instantly curled up inside with embarrassment, because how could he be an artist? He wasn’t old enough.

But, to her relief, instead of laughing, he took her question seriously.

‘I want to be. But I don’t know whether I’m going to be good enough.’

‘But you are! That’s lovely!’ Annie cried.

He shook his head. ‘Not really. The colours aren’t right.’

‘They are—well, nearly,’ Annie said, sticking to the truth. ‘And it’s—’ She stopped and considered, her head to one side. She’d never really looked at a painting before, not a proper one. She had no words to describe what she thought about it. ‘It’s like—moving. Yes—that’s it. The sea’s sort of moving—’

It sounded daft, put like that, because paint didn’t move. But the boy’s face lit up. He had an infectious smile.

‘Really? You think so?’

Glad that she’d hit the right note, Annie grinned back. Without thinking about it, she came and sat down by him. He was dressed in a blue short-sleeved shirt, khaki shorts and plimsolls. His arms and legs were long and skinny. His nose was peeling.

‘I do, honest. I think it’s good,’ she assured him. ‘Are you going to put the pier in? And the wire?’

‘When it’s dry I’ll draw the pier in Indian ink, so I’ll be able to get all the little details. I don’t know about the wire. I think I might do another one, without the pier, just sea and sky and the wire across it.’

Annie nodded slowly, seeing it in her head. ‘Yes, sort of … like a prison—’ The boy turned and gave her a long, considering look.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s just it. It’s supposed to be keeping the Jerries out, but if you look at it the other way, it’s keeping us in.’

‘But if you look through it—sort of fuzzy your eyes—you know? You can pretend it isn’t there at all,’ Annie said.

Which brought on that dazzling smile again.

‘Yes! That’s what I’m doing right now! Just—making it go away. How did you know that?’

‘I do it a lot,’ Annie told him. ‘Pretending things aren’t there. Or people. It’s better like that.’

‘And how,’ the boy said.

They looked at each other, breathless, startled by that heart-stopping moment that revealed a kindred spirit.

‘I’m Tom. Tom Featherstone.’

That intriguing accent. The way he said ‘stone’.

‘Annie Cross.’

Self-consciously, they shook hands. Tom put down his sketch-book and brushes.

‘Are you here on holiday?’ she asked.

‘Mmm. At the chalet.’

‘Silver Sands?’

If it had been anyone else, she would have resented them being in the place she wanted for her own retreat, but with Tom it was different.

‘S’right.’ he said. ‘You?’

‘I live at the farm. Marsh Edge. Over there.’

She pointed her thumb over her shoulder.

‘Oh—that farm. We can see it from the garden. I wondered who lived there.’

‘I wondered who the family was at Silver Sands. I saw the tents in the garden. I thought—I thought it must be nice, to have a holiday, and lots of people to play with. If you’re a little kid, of course.’

‘They’re pests, my cousins,’ Tom said. ‘They’re all younger than me. My sister Joan’s five years younger than me, and my cousin Doreen’s only a year younger than her, so they’re friends, and then the twins, that’s Doreen’s brothers, they’re always together anyway. I came over here to get away from them.’

It was all falling into place.

‘Who are the grown-ups? They your mum and dad?’

‘My mam and Aunt Betty and Uncle Bill. My dad had to stay at home and mind the business.’

Mam. She liked that.

‘Where’re you from?’ she asked.

‘Noresley. It’s near Nottingham.’

Nottingham. Annie pictured the map of England in her head. They’d traced it and put in all the boundaries and principle towns and cities in Geography a couple of years ago. Nottingham was just about in the middle. The Midlands.

‘Where Robin Hood came from?’

‘Sort of. We’re not in Sherwood Forest, though. It’s all pit villages round our way.’

‘Pits? You mean coal mines?’

Miners were one of her father’s many dislikes. They were all good-for-nothing commies in his opinion.

‘That’s right. We run a bus and coach company, in and out of Nottingham and Mansfield, and between the villages.’

Annie thought of being out and about all the time, driving from one place to another, talking to all the people getting on and off the bus.

‘Sounds like fun. Are you going to drive a bus when you’re older?’

Tom sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll have to. I can’t really see my dad letting me go to art school. Depends, though, doesn’t it? If the war’s still going on by December next year I’ll be joining up.’

‘D’you think it’ll go on that long?’

‘Last one did, didn’t it? It went on for four years.’

‘Four years! I’ll be eighteen then.’

Eighteen. It seemed a huge age. And where would she be then? Still here at Marsh Edge Farm, probably. Or … Annie looked at the barbed wire that was supposed to keep the Germans out and a dreadful thought struck her.

‘Do you think they will invade?’ she asked.

It had never really presented itself as a possibility before. It was something lingering on the edge of imagination, like a past nightmare. Now she saw waves of grey-uniformed soldiers coming ashore, cutting through the wire, marching over the fields—her fields—towards her home. Fear sliced through her.

‘I don’t know,’ Tom said. ‘We’re winning the Battle of Britain so far. Our planes are shooting down more of their planes. We can’t lose, can we? I mean—we just can’t—’

‘No,’ Annie agreed. ‘We can’t.’

They both stared through the wire to the horizon. The fear subsided, but still lurked there.

There was a rustling and panting on the other side of the wall, and then two shrill voices broke through their reverie.

‘Tom! Tom! Your mam says you’re to come in, she’s making the cocoa.’

Annie turned round. Two small boys with identical round faces, grey eyes and grubby knees were staring at her.

‘Who’s she?’ one of them asked.

‘Never you mind. Go and tell my mam I’m just coming,’ Tom told them.

The twins stood and gazed.

‘What’s she doing here?’ the other one asked.

‘Talking. Now buzz off. Now! Hop it! Go!’ Tom ordered.

Giggling, they went.

‘Brats,’ Tom grumbled.

‘I thought they were quite sweet,’ Annie said.

Their likeness was fascinating.

‘Huh. You don’t have to share a tent with them,’ Tom said.

He washed his brushes, emptied his water jar, closed his paint box. While they had been talking, the light had faded. It was dusk.

‘You—er—you going to be here at all tomorrow?’ he asked, not looking at her.

‘I’ve got to work. But I might be able to get away in the evening again. I might,’ Annie said, knowing as she said it that she would move heaven and earth to do so.

‘Come over this side again. Where that lot can’t see us,’ Tom said, indicating his family with a backward movement of his head. ‘If you want to, that is.’

‘Righty-oh. If I can,’ Annie said. ‘Bye, then.’

Tom looked at her now and smiled—a shy smile.

‘Bye, Annie.’

She ran all the way home in the gathering dark, inches above the ground.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE sun was already warm on the roof of the small ridge tent. The twins, as usual, were sprawled over far more than their share of the space. The elbow of one of them was jabbing in Tom’s ribs while the foot of the other was dangerously near to his face. They both had sleeping bags made of old blankets held together with large safety pins, but neither of them seemed able to stay inside them. But at least they were still asleep. Once awake, they were liable to start their favourite game of the moment—breaking wind in unison.

Cautiously, Tom moved his arm so that he could look at his new watch. Just gone half past six. He was wide awake now and, for the first time that holiday, filled with a sense of excitement. At last, somebody his own age to talk to, instead of being stuck in between the little kids and the grown-ups.

Annie.

Annie Cross.

A girl.

Girls were practically unknown territory to him. Since he’d been eleven, he’d been at an all boys school, and his sister was much younger than he was so her friends were just kids. Some of his friends had sisters, but they tended either to giggle and blush when he tried to speak to them, or were so adult and sophisticated that they might as well be on a different planet to him. Annie was different, though. He could talk to Annie, and she understood what he was about. And she was pretty. The artist in him appreciated her elfin face, her wide blue eyes, the wave in her fair hair, while the male wanted to reach out and touch the soft warmth of her skin.

Tom eased himself carefully from under the old pink eiderdown until he was sitting up. Still neither of the twins stirred. He reached for his clothes, in a heap by his feet, unlaced the first two eyelets of the tent flap and wriggled out into the morning.

The dew was still wet on the coarse grass of the wild garden, big droplets sparkling diamond-bright in the morning sunshine. A seagull wheeled across the blue sky, filling the silence with its raucous cry. Tom almost skipped as he walked barefoot across the grass to the wash house tacked on to the back of the chalet. By the time he got there, the ends of his pyjama legs were soaking and clinging to his ankles, but it was all part of the heightened pleasure of the morning.

His mood was knocked back as he studied his face in the small mirror above the basin. His features fell so far short of the mature, smooth, immaculately groomed look of all the film stars and band leaders that he couldn’t imagine Annie being remotely interested in him. He couldn’t even shave the night’s sprinkling of stubble off his jaw since that would mean going into the chalet and risking disturbing his mother as he heated the water. Instead he resorted to what his mother referred to as ‘a lick and a promise’ of a wash and dragged on his clothes. After all, Annie wasn’t going to see him now. She wasn’t free till the evening, and even then she hadn’t promised to come. As he went over this fact, how she had hesitated and said ‘I might’, he realised how very much he wanted to see her again.

Outside again, the heat of the sun restored his optimism. The chalet was still, so none of the grown-ups were awake, and the children slept on in their tents. Tom went out of the side gate and on to the sea wall. Usually the first thing he looked at was the sea, but today he faced the other way. Those fields belonged to Annie’s farm. The house in the distance with the collection of barns and outbuildings round it was her home. The sheep and cows … And then he spotted a herd of cows all going in one direction, with a small figure behind them. His stomach tied itself in knots. It was such a weird sensation that he felt quite sick. Annie. That had to be Annie, driving the cows along. He and she were both out in the early morning while the rest of the world was asleep.

He waved, first one then both arms at her, but either she didn’t see him or she didn’t want to respond. Perhaps she was too busy making sure the cows were going the right way. He tried again. Still no response. He watched as she shut a gate behind them and turned away, then waved once more, not realising that he was practically jumping up and down as he did so. The distant figure stopped and, to his joy, raised an arm and waved back. He waved with all his might until she went off across the fields the way she had come. He watched her out of sight.

That must mean that she would come and see him again that evening.

The day seemed to go on for ever. It felt as if he were in a strange parallel existence, talking and acting as usual, yet separated from the rest of the world. He went for walks, played rounders with the children, did chores for his mother, and all the while his thoughts were centred on one thing. Annie.

At last evening came. He escaped from the demands of family and bolted over the sea wall to wait for her. The relief of it. He didn’t have to pretend to be normal any longer.

He knew it was no use trying to paint. Instead, he wrote her name, over and over again, in different styles. Annie Annie Annie. After a while, he gave that up and just stared between the strands of barbed wire at the sea, waiting.

And then, just when he thought that she wasn’t coming, there was a scuffling sound behind him and there she was. Tom was at once delighted and excruciatingly embarrassed. What was he going to say to her? What could she possibly want to say to him? He felt himself going red.

She paused at the top of the wall.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ Tom managed to reply. ‘You made it, then.’

And cursed himself for being stupid. Of course she had made it. She was here, wasn’t she?

She didn’t seem to think it was stupid. She just nodded and scampered down the wall to join him on the strip of sand at the bottom.

‘He gave me extra chores to do,’ she said with a backward motion of her head. ‘I thought I was never going to get away.’

‘Who, your dad?’

‘Mmm.’

Her face was dark and brooding.

‘Does he make you work hard?’

‘He’s a slave-driver.’

The edge to her voice shocked him.

‘Don’t you like your dad?’ he asked.

‘I hate him.’

She sat hugging her knees to her chest, glaring through the barbed wire. Tom felt at a loss. There were times when he hated his father, but most of the time he was all right. If pushed, he would admit that he loved him.

‘Why?’ was all he could think of to say.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

She picked up a stone and tossed it through the barbed wire. When she spoke again, it was cheerfully. It was as if a shadow had lifted.

‘Tell me all about your family, and your house and where you live. I want to know everything,’ she said.

Glad to be back on firm ground, Tom complied.

‘Well, you’ve seen my mam and my sister,’ he said. ‘Mam looks after the house and us. She moans a lot about all this rationing. Our Joan’s all right, I suppose. She used to be quite sweet when she was little, but now she’s getting right bossy. And our dad, he works all hours—’ He skipped over a description of his father, because it seemed like rubbing it in that his was nice when hers wasn’t. ‘And we live in this house on the edge of Norseley. Mam says she’d like to move somewhere nicer, and Norseley’s just an ugly pit village, but Dad says we shouldn’t be ashamed of us roots. And anyway Norseley’s all right. It’s just a bit mucky, that’s all.’

‘I wish I could see it,’ Annie said. ‘I’ve never been anywhere. Just Brightlingsea, where Gran and Grandpa live, and once I went to Colchester.’

Tom looked at her in amazement. Colchester was no distance. It had been the last main line town on their journey here, where they had changed on to the branch line for Wittlesham.

‘Where’s Brightlingsea?’ he asked.

‘Just down there a bit—’ She flapped a hand southwards, away from Wittlesham. ‘Tell me some more.’

So he told her about the rows of cottages and the fires that were always kept burning and the rattle of the winding gear, about the big house at Norseley Park and the family with their horses and their Rolls Royce, and about his school and his friends and the cricket club and the cycling club. And all the while Annie fixed him with her wide blue eyes, and asked questions and smiled or looked angry or sympathetic in all the right places so that he forgot all about time and place in the pleasure of talking to a willing listener.

‘Tom! To-om!’ His sister’s voice shrilled over the seawall.

Tom stopped in mid-sentence and put a finger to his lips. Annie grinned in instant understanding. Silently, they listened to Joan calling.

‘Tom, where are you? Mam wants you. Tom—’ She was puffing now as she climbed the grass slope.

‘I’m just coming,’ Tom called back. ‘Go and tell her I’m coming.’

He looked at Annie.

‘I’ve done nothing but waffle on about me,’ he apologised softly.

‘All right. But you’ve got to come right away,’ said an aggrieved voice quite close to them.

‘It’s nice. I liked it. It’s like seeing a different life, like when you go to the pictures,’ Annie whispered.

‘I said, you’ve got to come right away,’ the voice insisted.

‘All right. I am,’ Tom repeated. He smiled at the thought of his life being like a film. ‘I don’t think they’d put me on the pictures. I’m right ordinary.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re not at all ordinary,’ Annie said.

Tom felt oddly breathless. His heart was thumping in his chest.

‘Nor are you,’ he said.

‘Oh, there you are,’ exclaimed Joan.

Tom could have killed her. He swivelled round to glare up at her in the twilight.

‘Yes, here I am. Now clear off and tell Mam I’m coming, all right?’

He would never hear the last of this now.

‘All right,’ Joan repeated. ‘And I’ll tell her who you’re with, shall I?’

With an irritating laugh, she made off.

‘Blooming sisters,’ he groaned.

Annie stood up. ‘I got to run. It’s nearly dark.’

‘Will you—will you be back tomorrow?’ Tom asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth.

‘I’ll try,’ she said.

And that was all he had to live on for the next twenty-three hours.

The next day was broken up by a very different visitor. In the afternoon, Mrs Sutton, the lady who owned the chalet, arrived with her lump of a daughter and her small son. Tom heard them arrive, heard the mothers all talking together and the kid go off to play with his cousins. He kept very still in the sunny spot where he was playing patience, hoping he’d be forgotten. No such luck.

‘Ah, now, here’s poor Beryl with no one to play with,’ he heard his mother say. ‘Tom’s in just the same position. I’m sure he’ll be glad to entertain you. Tom! Where are you? Come over here!’

He ignored her, hoping she’d assume he was out of earshot, but again he was out of luck. Joan snitched on him and he was forced to make an appearance. The girl was standing there with a silly expression on her face while all three mothers smiled at them both.

‘Hello,’ he said, trying hard not to sound too put out about being interrupted.

‘Hello,’ the girl said, smiling for all she was worth. ‘My mum was coming so I thought I’d come along too.’

‘Oh,’ Tom said.

There was an awkward pause.

‘Well, run along, the pair of you,’ his mam told them. ‘Perhaps you’d like to show Beryl some of your paintings, Tom.’

‘Not on your life,’ Tom muttered. He caught his mam giving him a warning look. He suppressed a sigh. ‘Come on, then,’ he said to Beryl.

She followed him round the side of the chalet.

‘Do you do painting, then?’ she asked, in the same tone of cheerful politeness that his mam used with strangers she wanted to impress.

‘Not really,’ Tom said.

‘Can I see them?’ Beryl persisted.

‘They’re not good enough,’ Tom stated. He wasn’t sharing that with her. It was private. He stopped at the far side of the chalet from the grown-ups and the children, where his game of patience was laid out on a bare piece of earth.

‘D’you play cards?’ he asked to distract her.

‘Oh, yes!’ Beryl exclaimed, looking delighted. She studied the arrangement on the ground. ‘Look—you can put that seven of clubs on the eight of hearts.’

‘I know,’ Tom told her. ‘I was just going to do that.’

He squatted down and swept the pack up.

‘Patience is no good with two. What else can you play?’

‘We play rummy and happy families at home so that Timmy can join in too, but they’re a bit babyish. My mum’s teaching me canasta,’ she said.

‘That’s no good with just two,’ Tom said.

Snap and pelmanism were dismissed by both of them as stupid. Newmarket and chase the ace needed more players. Tom had an inspiration.

‘Can you play poker?’

Beryl looked a bit shocked. She shook her head.

‘It’s easy,’ Tom told her. ‘We’ll play for matchsticks.’

He explained about pairs and runs and flushes. Beryl nodded and said that it all sounded pretty straightforward. But she couldn’t get to grips with the timing. She had no idea when to raise and when to quit.

‘Shame it’s only matchsticks,’ Tom said as he swept her stake into his pile yet again. But there was no pleasure in it really. You needed really sharp competition to make it fun.

Tom shuffled the cards. If only Annie were here instead of this stupid Beryl.

‘D’you know a girl called Annie Cross?’ he asked suddenly. ‘She lives at the farm over the fields there.’

The minute the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them.

‘Yes,’ Beryl said.

Tom said no more, but carried on shuffling.

‘Why?’ Beryl asked.

‘Oh—no reason. I just met her the other day, that’s all.’

He riffle-shuffled the pack, neatly layering them together, not looking at her.

‘I was at school with her, at the elementary. I’m at the grammar now,’ Beryl told him.

It was a safe subject, so he took it up.

‘So am I, back home, that is,’ Tom said.

‘Annie stayed on at the elementary. She’s left now. At fourteen,’ Beryl told him.

Tom said nothing, hoping she’d drop it. He dealt the cards.

‘So she’s never done Latin or French or science,’ she pointed out. ‘Not like you do at grammar school. Not like us.’

There was an unpleasant edge to her voice.

Tom clamped his teeth together to stop himself from answering. He should never have mentioned Annie. Like his painting, she was something private, too special to share with the likes of Beryl.

He picked up his hand and studied it.

‘You playing?’ he asked.

He glanced at his watch. Only four hours till he might see Annie again.

Beryl and her family finally left. The time crawled round to evening. To his joy, Annie managed to get away from the farm. This time they decided to go for a walk along the promenade.

‘Just in case my mam takes it into her head to call me in,’ Tom said. ‘Every now and again she thinks I shouldn’t be spending so much time by myself, and makes me come and join them. I don’t want that happening when you’re here.’

They wandered along towards the town. The beach was deserted and there weren’t the crowds about that there were during the day, but there were still plenty of people enjoying the warm evening, couples strolling arm in arm, girls in chattering groups dressed up for a night out, men on their way to the pub.

‘I got good and caught today,’ Tom admitted. ‘That Mrs Sutton who owns the place came to call, and I got lumbered with her daughter.’

To his surprise, Annie stopped still and stared at him.

‘Beryl? You’ve been talking to Beryl Sutton?’

‘Well—yes,’ Tom said. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Her, that’s the matter. I can’t stand Beryl Sutton. She’s my worst enemy.’

‘Oh—I see—you never said,’ Tom floundered. There was so much he didn’t know about Annie. ‘What’s she gone and done, then?’

‘Everything,’ Annie said. She started walking along again, her body stiff, refusing to meet his eyes. ‘She’s just such a stuck-up madam. She thinks she’s so much better than me, just because her dad owns a factory and she goes to the grammar. I could’ve gone, you know. I was always better than her at school, but she got to go to the grammar and I was stuck at Church Road Elementary.’

‘That’s so unfair,’ Tom said.

‘And another thing, she’s got the same birthday as me. Imagine that—having to share your birthday with your worst enemy. Her mum and mine met in hospital when they were having us, and now her mum comes over and has her clothes made by my mum—’

‘Your mam’s a dressmaker?’ Tom asked. This was a piece of information she hadn’t let drop before.

‘Yes. And you should see the flap she gets into when Mrs High-and-Mighty Sutton is coming! The best china comes out and the embroidered tablecloth. You’d think it was the flipping Queen coming to tea. Makes me sick, it does.’

‘It must do,’ Tom agreed, though he couldn’t really see what the problem was.

‘And now you’re seeing beastly Beryl behind my back!’

‘It wasn’t deliberate! I tried to get out of it, but Joan went and told Mam where I was and then I was stuck with her. It wasn’t any fun, I can tell you. She’s boring and stupid. Not like you.’

Annie flexed her shoulders and made a h’rmph noise in her throat.

‘You’re a thousand times nicer than she is,’ Tom elaborated.

Annie stole a look at him. ‘Really?’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

‘If you really mean that—’

‘Look, we don’t want that great lump to spoil things, do we?’ Tom insisted, tired of these games.

Annie tossed off her bad mood like a coat.

‘No, we don’t,’ she agreed. ‘Tell me what else you’ve been doing today.’

Peace restored, they ambled along as far as the pier, then turned to go back towards Silver Sands. At one point they swerved to go round a large group of young men spilling out of a pub. Their hands touched, and then, of their own accord, it seemed, slid into each other. The warmth of their joined palms, the touch of their fingers, glowed all up Tom’s arm. The blacked-out promenade of a small seaside town was a place of magic.

Neither of them noticed a solitary figure behind them staring with outrage at those clasped hands.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE storm had been brewing all day. Annie could feel it in the viciousness of her father’s criticisms. He always picked holes in everything she did, but on some days it was different. Instead of it being just the way he was, there was an added force behind his words, winding tighter and tighter until the inevitable explosion. The best thing to do was to keep out of his way, but it wasn’t always possible. When the mood was upon him, he seemed to seek difficult jobs that needed both of them to complete so that he could feed his anger at the world and at her. Today it was replacing some fencing. Annie had to hold the posts while Walter hammered them into ground hardened by the summer sun. As they started on their task, planes droned across the sky—a formation of bombers. To the south, ack-ack fire started.

‘It’s them, the Jerries,’ Annie said, gazing up and seawards at the dark shapes. Puffs of smoke were breaking around them, but they flew on unharmed. ‘Where are our boys?’

Her father took no notice.

‘Hold it still, yer useless bitch,’ he growled. ‘How can I hit it if yer waving it about like that?’

Head averted, eyes screwed shut, Annie held the post at arm’s length as Walter smashed down with the sledgehammer.

From the west she heard a higher-pitched engine noise. With an accelerating roar, fighters swooped overhead. Annie squinted skyward. Spitfires! Her hands shook as she held the fence post.

‘For Christ’s sake, you stupid mare—’

Her head stung as her father caught her a blow with the back of his hand. She looked at the post. Straight, she had to hold it straight.

Gunfire cracked over the sea. The engines whined and roared and droned. Caught between fear of her father and of the approaching planes, Annie hung on to the post for all she was worth. Walter swung the sledgehammer. Each blow drove the stake a fraction of an inch deeper into the unyielding soil. The vibration kicked up her arms and felt as if it were shaking her brain inside her skull. Half a mile away over the sea, there was an explosion. Annie looked up. A bomber was going down in flames.

‘They’ve got one!’ she cried.

At that moment the sledgehammer descended again, out of true. The post split at the top.

Walter’s hand cracked into her.

‘I told you!’

‘Sorry,’ Annie gasped.

The life-or-death struggle continued in the air, the planes passing over the coast not half a mile to the south of them, but Annie dared not look up from her task. Her father was nearer than the invaders, and she feared him more.

Each fence post seemed to take an age; none of them went in entirely straight and it was all her fault.

As always, her mother had the meal ready dead on midday. Not even the possibility of a German plane landing on the farm would stop Edna from having dinner ready the moment Walter wanted it.

‘Did you see—?’ she started as Walter and Annie came through the back door.

Then she saw their faces, sensed the atmosphere and lapsed into silence. Her hand shook a little as she ladled out the stew and handed it round. Annie noticed that, as usual, most of the meagre portion of meat was on her father’s plate, while she and Edna had vegetables and gravy. It didn’t even occur to her to question this. Appeasing her father was the number-one priority.

Both women ate silently, covertly watching Walter. Faintly through the window came the sound of another dogfight somewhere in the summer sky.

Walter threw his knife and fork down. ‘What d’you call this, then?’ he demanded.

Annie held her breath. This was it. Fear throbbed through her.

‘B-beef and vegetable stew,’ Edna muttered, keeping her eyes on her own plate.

‘Beef? There’s no beef in this. It’s nothing but carrot and swede. Swede! Flaming cattle food!’

Edna said nothing. Long experience had taught her that anything she said would be fuel to the fire.

Walter’s hand slammed down on the table. ‘Where’s the meat in it?’ he demanded.

The silence stretched, marked out by the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

‘Well?’ Walter barked.

‘It—it’s the rationing,’ Edna whispered.

‘The what? What did you say, woman?’

Edna’s lips trembled. Annie felt sick. She longed to intervene, but knew that it would only make things worse.

‘Rationing,’ Edna repeated, her voice barely audible. ‘I got to m-make it stretch.’

‘Rationing? Flaming government! Here I am, working my fingers to the bone producing beef and those flaming pen-pushers up in Whitehall think they can tell me how much of it I can eat? I’ll give them rationing—’

Relief washed over Annie, leaving her limp and wrung out. It was all right. Her father’s rage had been diverted. She and her mother sat silent, not even meeting each other’s eyes. They ate, though neither of them had much of an appetite left, but the food must not be wasted, so they pushed it into their mouths, chewed, swallowed. All the while Walter’s invective flowed round them, battering their ears, hurting their brains, and they were glad, for words directed at a distant authority were nothing compared to blows rained on them.

When the meal was over, Edna immediately started washing up, busying herself to deflect any possible criticism. Annie was left to follow her father out into the fields again.

As they trudged back to the half-finished fence, she looked towards Silver Sands. There it was, crouching under the sea wall. And there he must be. Tom. Tom, from a magic land called Norseley, far away from Wittlesham, where all families were happy and no one got hurt. In her daydreams now, she no longer got whisked over the rainbow to Oz, but ran away with Tom, hand in hand, to Norseley.

The afternoon went on for ever. To the north and to the south of them, distant gunfire could be heard, while white vapour trails and black balls of smoke scrawled across the sky. At first Walter worked silently, but as the sun beat down on their heads and the grinding labour began to sap his strength, the curses and the criticisms started again. The rant against the government had not been enough of a safety valve. Life itself was stacked against Walter, and someone had to take the blame.

‘Look at that—that’s not straight. For Christ’s sake, can’t you do anything right? All you got to do is hold it straight while I hit it. It’s not difficult. A halfwit could do it. Jesus wept! Why are you so useless? Why was I given just one useless girl—?’

And so on until he was ready to hammer in the next stake, mercifully leaving him without spare breath for speech.

Annie held grimly on to each fence post, trying her hardest to hold it still, hold it straight. But she could not fight against the force of the hammer blows when they landed off-centre and drove the post out of true. Her head ached from the sun and her body ached from bracing against the sledgehammer. She tried to cut her father out, centring her thoughts on the evening to come. She would walk across this very field, past Silver Sands, over the sea wall, and there Tom would be, waiting for her. And then everything would be all right.

When the posts were at last driven in, then the barbed wire had to be stretched between them and held with heavy-duty staples. Annie struggled with the coil while her father hammered in the staples.

‘Keep it tight, can’t you? No good having it sag like that. Beasts’ll be through that before the week’s out. Tighter, you stupid mare! Put some effort into it. Jesus—!’

At last the job was done. Now there was only afternoon milking to get through. It was like walking on the edge of a volcano. Annie knew it would only take one mistake to set off the eruption. Weariness and tension made her clumsy. Only luck brought her through without making a serious blunder.

Teatime was another tense meal, the silence broken only by the Home Service. They all put their food down and stopped chewing to listen to the six o’clock news. Forty-two Allied planes had been lost, but they had claimed ninety of the enemy. In homes across the country there were desperate cheers for another day’s holding on. At Marsh Edge Farm Walter merely grunted, while Annie and Edna said nothing.

Annie thought about the plane she had seen go down. One fewer to invade England. Later, she would talk to Tom about it, for he must have seen it too.

Annie ached to get away. Soon, soon the chores would be over and she would be free. Every fibre of her being longed to escape, to set off across the fields to the sea wall. But her conscience fought against it. What about her mother? Without her there, her mother would be sure to catch it. She was in a ferment of indecision.

They finished off the last tasks of the day and went back into the house. Walter dropped down into his chair.

‘Pull my boots off, woman,’ he growled.

Edna hurried to do as she was bid, kneeling on the rag rug in front of him. She fumbled the laces undone, then began to draw off the boot. It stuck. Edna tugged and caught Walter’s bad toe.

‘Aagh! You stupid—’

He lashed out with his other foot. The heavy boot smashed into Edna’s shoulder, flinging her back so that her head cracked against the flagstone floor.

‘Mum!’

For a vital few seconds fear for her mother overcame fear for herself. Annie flew across the kitchen to cradle Edna’s head in her arms.

‘Leave her be, you interfering little bitch! Coming between man and wife—!’

Walter’s boot thudded into her legs and buttocks, while Annie and Edna clung together and whimpered with terror …

The mothers were talking on the veranda again—his mam, his aunty Betty and Mrs Sutton. This time, thank goodness, Beryl hadn’t come. The anticipation of seeing Annie filled Tom up, so that he felt as if he could almost burst with the excitement of it. There was so much to talk about, with the Battle of Britain happening right over their heads that very day. On top of that, he wanted to hold her hand again, and to walk along together with her as they discussed what had gone on in the sky. There wasn’t much time left now, just this evening and tomorrow, for on Saturday they had to go home. So every minute counted. He slipped out of the chalet, checked that his sister and the cousins weren’t looking, and made a run for the sea wall.

He was used to waiting. Sometimes Annie didn’t manage to get away till quite late. One evening, she hadn’t come at all. When he’d asked about it, she wouldn’t answer directly, wouldn’t even look at him, had just said she had to help her mother. Something about her expression had alarmed him. That look of fierce hatred that came into her face when her father was mentioned.

‘Why? What was so important that you couldn’t get away?’ he asked.

‘I just had to stay,’ she said.

‘But what for?’ he persisted.

‘I just had to, all right? Don’t you have to do things when your parents tell you?’

‘Yes,’ he admitted.

But he was sure there was more to it than that.

He slid down the wall and sat on the sand at the bottom. It was still warm from the day’s sunshine. He had given up all pretence of painting now and just lay against the rough grass, looking out across the water and thinking. Soon, Annie would be here.

The minutes ticked by and turned into a quarter of an hour, then half an hour. Annie did not come. Tom heard the mothers calling goodbye to Mrs Sutton. Another five minutes went by, and then someone came over the top of the wall. It was his sister Joan. Disappointment kicked him in the stomach.

‘Tom, Mam wants to see you.’

‘I can’t come now.’

‘You’ve got to.’

‘Tell her I’m busy.’

‘But you’re not. You’re not doing anything.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re just sitting.’

‘I’m thinking. Now, go away.’

It took a bit more arguing, but in the end Joan went.

Where was Annie?

He didn’t allow himself to look at his watch. He sang Over The Rainbow to himself all the way through, twice. That was Annie’s favourite song. Still she hadn’t come. Bursting with impatience now, he climbed up to the top of the wall and looked out over the fields.

‘Tom!’

It was his mother, standing by the fence.

‘Hell’s bells,’ Tom muttered.

‘Tom, come down here, will you? There’s something I want to speak to you about.’

Reluctantly, he went.

‘Come and sit down here, dear.’

His mother was using her Very Reasonable voice. It was a sure sign of trouble. Silently, he sat down on the edge of the veranda with her. The children could be heard playing in the garden at the back. The other grown-ups were nowhere to be seen.

‘Now, dear,’ his mother began.

Tom looked at his watch.

Where was Annie? Was she coming across the fields this very minute?

‘You know I don’t like to interfere with your friendships—’

That wasn’t true for a start. She never had liked his pal Keith, because his dad was a collier. He made a non-committal noise.

‘But I have to say, I am a little bit concerned—’

Tom looked at her. What was she on about?

‘What?’ he said.

‘I’ve just had a little chat with Mrs Sutton,’ his mother went on. ‘Such a nice woman. Very genteel. And very well-meaning. She has got your best interests at heart, you know, Tom.’

‘Who—Mrs Sutton?’ Tom said, puzzled.

‘Yes, dear. That’s why she thought she ought to speak to me. You see—’ his mother hesitated, then went on ‘—you’ve been seen, dear, walking along the promenade. With a girl. Hand in hand.’

‘What?’

Outrage flared through him. How dared people spy on him and Annie? How dared they? He felt as if something precious had been ripped open and exposed to the world.

‘Who told her that? I know! It was that beastly Beryl, wasn’t it? Great fat lump. She’s got no right—’

‘So it’s true, then?’ his mother asked.

Tom wanted to hit himself for being so stupid.

‘Yes,’ he had to admit.

His mother put a hand on his knee. He jerked his leg away.

‘Well, dear, I have to say that I think you’re still far too young to be having girlfriends—’

‘She’s not a girlfriend—!’ Tom protested.

And then stopped short as he realised that maybe she was. What he felt about her was quite different from what he felt for anyone else, boy or girl.

‘All right,’ his mother conceded, though he could tell that she was just going along with him in order to gain a point. ‘So she’s just a friend. But you see, dear, this girl—she really isn’t a very suitable friend for you. Mrs Sutton knows her, you see, and she says she’s a very coarse, common girl. Not at all the sort of person that I or your father could approve of.’

Incensed, Tom jumped up.

‘Oh, really? Well, that’s just too bad, because I’m not asking you to approve of her. She’s my friend and you’re not stopping me from seeing her.’

He ran down the steps, ignoring his mother’s protests. How dared she say that about Annie? Annie was—

‘She’s not coarse and she’s not common,’ he shouted back at her.

‘Tom, dear—’

‘She’s better than Mrs Nosey Parker Sutton and Fat Beryl any day!’

‘Tom—’

He bolted round the side of the house, across the garden and out down the track, heading for Marsh Edge Farm. Anger propelled him across the fields, talking out loud to himself as his mother’s words revolved in his head. That interfering old bag, Mrs Sutton. He wanted to wipe her face in one of the cow-pats he was jumping over. And his mam believed her! She had no right. Nobody was going to stop him from seeing Annie if he wanted to.

It occurred to him that Annie had told him never to come to the farmhouse. But this was important. This was their last but one evening. They couldn’t waste it.

He slowed to a trot, and then a walk. The field he was walking across had a shiny new piece of barbed wire fencing down one side. That must be what Annie had been helping with today. He had seen two figures working while he’d watched the battle in the air. He opened a gate into the track leading up to the farmhouse and closed it carefully behind him. The edge of his anger had dulled now. He just wanted to see Annie.

And then there she was, coming out of the farmyard. Joy glowed inside him, lighting a great big smile on his face. He waved his arm above his head.

‘Annie!’

She came trotting down the track towards him. Tom broke into a run and, as they got nearer to each other, he noticed that Annie was limping. She stopped before they met. Her face looked different. Pinched. Distressed. Anxiety threaded through his delight. Something was wrong.

He came up to her and put his hand out to touch her arm. She flinched.

‘Annie—what is it? What’s the matter?’

‘What are you doing here? I told you not to come.’ Her voice was sharp, not like her ordinary voice at all.

‘You didn’t come,’ he explained. ‘I wanted to—’

‘You can’t stay here. He’ll see you, and then everything’ll be spoilt.’

‘Who?’ Tom asked. But, even as he said it, he knew. ‘Your father? Is it him? What’s happened?’

‘Just go! Now!’ Annie was frantic. ‘Please. I’ll come and see you tomorrow. I promise.’

And she turned and hurried away from him, still limping.

‘But, Annie—’

He took a few steps after her, his arm reaching out. Then he stopped. She was in deadly earnest. Whatever the trouble was, she thought his being there would make it worse. Slowly, reluctantly, he made his way back.

He got very little sleep that night.

CHAPTER SIX

ON THE very last day of the holiday, Tom’s family went out to lunch at the Grand Hotel. It was far too stiff and starchy a place for Tom or the children to find enjoyable, but the grown-ups seemed to like it, and talked a lot about keeping up standards despite there being a war on. In the afternoon it rained and Tom was dragooned into playing an interminable game of ludo with the others. And then they had a visitor, or, rather, two visitors. Beryl and her little brother came tramping on to the veranda in their macs and wellingtons. Tom’s heart sank when he heard their voices, but the mothers greeted them kindly.

‘Beryl, dear, how nice to see you. And Timmy too. Is your mother coming?’

‘No, she’s gone to the Whist Drive, so she asked me to look after Timmy. He wanted to come here so much that I had to bring him. I hope you don’t mind,’ she said.

‘Of course not. The children love playing with Timmy,’ Tom’s mother said.

‘Perhaps you’d like some lemonade,’ his aunt offered.

‘I’d rather have a cup of tea,’ Beryl answered.

And so it was that Tom found himself sitting with Beryl and the grown-ups drinking tea. He glowered at her across the table. How could she sit there so calm and po-faced when she’d gone and told on him and Annie?

The two mothers chatted on about Wittlesham and holidays.

‘We’ve enjoyed it so much here at Silver Sands that we’re thinking of coming back next year,’ Tom’s aunty Betty said.

‘That’s nice. My mother will be pleased to hear that. Not many people are going on holiday this year, on account of the war. We haven’t got any more bookings for Silver Sands this summer. My mother thinks you’re all very brave to be coming away,’ Beryl said, looking at Tom.

Tom looked away.

‘We’re not going to let that Hitler stop us from having our usual family holiday,’ Tom’s mother said. ‘That would be giving in to bullying.’

‘Lots of people are letting him stop them. It’s really quiet here this summer. Of course, we don’t depend on the lettings. My father has a factory, you know, making parts for the radios in bombers—’

Both women looked suitably impressed. Tom did not.

‘So Silver Sands is just a sideline. My mother says it’s her pin money project, but it’s a good thing it’s within walking distance as we can’t run our car any more. My father’s stood it up on bricks in the garage. For the duration, he says.’

Tom could see why Annie loathed her. She was out to impress them at every turn. When his mother mentioned the Grand, Beryl had been there too, and went on about only going to the best places. What was more, she seemed to be directing it at him. She was for ever looking at him as if to see what sort of an impression she was making. It was time to put her in her place.

‘The rain’s stopped. Coming to the top of the sea wall?’ he asked the moment tea was over.

As if pulled by strings, Beryl sprang out of her chair.

‘All right,’ she said, and trotted after him as he ran down the steps and strode out of the garden. Once outside, he didn’t make for the sea wall, but instead skirted one of the other chalets, so that nobody at Silver Sands could see them. Then he stopped so suddenly that Beryl nearly cannoned into him.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he demanded.

Guilt was written all over her face.

‘W-what?’ she said.

‘It was you who was spying on me and Annie. Prying into other people’s business and then going and telling.’

Just talking about it made him furious all over again.

Beryl tried to make her face look blank.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, yes, you do. It was your mother who came and told my mother, and someone must have told her. You’re the only person who knows both of us, so it must have been you. Made you feel good, did it? Sneaking on other people?’

Beryl went red. ‘It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it! It was—it was my brother, Jeffrey. He’s always doing things like that. He’s a real little snitch. He likes getting people into trouble—’

‘I don’t believe you. I’ve never met your brother Jeffrey. You’re a liar as well as a sneak,’ Tom accused.

‘I’m not a liar! It’s true!’ Beryl cried. ‘He—he came up here a couple of times and watched your family through the fence. Spying. He likes spying. And then he saw you the other evening, with—with—her, and he went and told my mother. She thought she ought to tell your mother, because Annie Cross is such a common girl, but I said she shouldn’t. I said it wasn’t fair and Jeffrey shouldn’t go round telling tales and I said it wasn’t right that my mum should tell your mum and get you into trouble for being with a little guttersnipe like her. But you know what mothers are. They stick together. She went and came up here and told—’

Tom was staring at her, trying to see inside her head.

‘You’d better not be lying,’ he said.

‘I’m not, I’m not! I tried to stop her—honest!’ Beryl squealed.

Still Tom wasn’t convinced.

‘Now you listen to me,’ he said, ‘and you listen carefully. First, Annie Cross is not common or a guttersnipe. She’s a thousand times better than anyone in your family. Second, you tell your brother to keep his nose out of my business, or I’ll have his liver and lights and hang them up to dry. Have you got that?’

‘Y-yes,’ Beryl stammered.

She looked terrified. Shame nibbled at Tom’s anger. He shouldn’t be shouting at a girl like this; it wasn’t right.

‘Right, now go and get your other brother and clear off.’

‘Y-yes, right—but it wasn’t my fault, Tom. Really it wasn’t. I tried to save you—’

‘All right, all right, so it wasn’t you. Just tell your brother.’

‘I will, really, I will—’

He didn’t want to hear any more. He turned away and ran back past Silver Sands and up the sea wall. From there he ran as fast as he could along the top, until he was out of breath. As he ran he looked out across Marsh Edge Farm. Somewhere down there was Annie, and this evening he would see her for the last time. No one—not Beryl, not his mother—was going to spoil that.

‘You all right, Mum? Can you manage?’

Annie hurried to help her mother with the heavy galvanised bucket of water to scrub the kitchen floor.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ Edna assured her.

But she winced as she lowered herself on to her knees.

‘It’s not right. He shouldn’t treat you like that, the bully. That’s what he is, a vicious bully,’ Annie burst out.

Edna looked frightened. ‘Don’t talk about your father like that, love. A few bruises don’t matter. Men are just like that. It’s their nature. They can’t help it.’

‘Not all of them,’ Annie said.

Tom wasn’t like that, she was sure. And Gwen never came to school with bruises on her.

‘He’s a good provider. That’s what matters.’

Was it? Was that all that a man had to do—provide for his wife and children? Gwen’s dad did that, and he was nice to them all as well. Beastly Beryl’s dad was a much better provider, come to that, with enough money to run a car and send them all to the grammar. Did he beat Mrs Sutton and Beryl and the younger boys? She didn’t think so.

Annie sighed. ‘Right, Mum,’ she agreed.

Because it was no good trying to discuss it with her. She’d tried it before, many times, and got nowhere. Her mother simply accepted the beatings as her lot. Sometimes she even claimed to have deserved them, because of her own shortcomings.

The one good thing about her father’s explosions of temper was that for a few days afterwards he was always calmer and quieter. Annie had no trouble getting away that evening to meet Tom. She put on a shirt with a high collar to hide the bruises on her neck and shoulders and set off for Silver Sands, practising controlling her hurt side so that she did not limp. Last—day—last—day—her feet went as she hurried across the fields. Tomorrow Tom was going home, back to the magic land of Noresley, and she might never see him again. It didn’t bear thinking about, so she pushed it to the back of her mind. Now—she would just think about now, and the next hour or two.

When she was nearly at the last gate, Tom suddenly appeared from round the side of one of the other chalets. He took hold of her hand and started pulling her along.

‘This way,’ he said, ‘where they won’t be able to find us.’

‘Who won’t—?’ Annie asked, trying not to flinch as he tugged at her poorly arm.

‘My beastly family. They know to look for us over the sea wall. And if we go along the prom that Beryl girl or her ferrety brother might be spying on us.’

‘Beryl? What’s Beryl got to do with it?’

Tom opened the gate to the chalet garden.

‘This one’s just right. I had a recce this afternoon. They can’t see us from Silver Sands.’

He spread a raincoat on the wet grass and sat down in the shelter of a tall patch of willowherb. Annie eased herself down beside him, carefully arranging her bad leg.

‘What’s up? What’s this about Beryl?’ she demanded.

‘Nothing, according to her, but I’m not so sure. She says her brother saw us on the prom the other evening, and he told his mother, and she told my mother. Then my mother said I wasn’t to see you again.’

‘Not see—?’ Annie was appalled. This was a disaster. ‘But why?’

The next time she saw Beryl and Jeffrey, she was going to give them what for.

Tom looked uneasy.

‘Oh, you know what mothers are like. They get these bees in their bonnets. She went on and on about me being too young.’

‘Too young?’ Annie was mystified.

‘To—er—to have a—you know—girlfriend,’ Tom said gruffly. He could not meet her eyes for embarrassment.

Girlfriend? She was his girlfriend? Like people in the pictures? Annie could feel herself going all hot.

‘That’s stupid,’ she said.

‘Yes.’ Tom looked relieved. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? If we want to be friends, then we can. Never mind what they say.’

‘That’s right,’ Annie agreed, though her stomach sank with disappointment. Not a girlfriend then, just a friend.

‘Not a good day, yesterday, was it?’ Tom said. ‘First my mam trying to put her oar in, then a problem up at your place. What was going on? You looked terrified. I was really worried about you.’

Years of covering up what went on in her household came into play. Part of her wanted to confide in him, but a larger part was ashamed to reveal what her family was like.

‘Oh—nothing. My dad was in a bit of a temper, that’s all.’

‘Really? It looked like it was worse than that, as if you were afraid something dreadful might happen,’ Tom said.

‘No, no … it’s just … like you said—they get bees in their bonnets, parents. If he’d seen you, he might’ve blown his top.’

‘So you’ve not—’ Tom hesitated. ‘I thought, well, you were limping when you came out to see me, and I thought your dad might’ve hurt you. He didn’t, did he?’

‘No, no—’ Annie shook her head to emphasise the point, and caught her breath as pain shot from her neck right down her bruised side.

‘He did!’ Tom’s voice was filled with concern. ‘Was it bad? Come on, show me.’

‘No, really—’

Annie tried to move away, but Tom took hold of her hand and carefully undid the cuff of her shirt. Dying of embarrassment, Annie watched his face as he drew back the sleeve. Horror was closely followed by anger as the ugly purple bruises were revealed.

‘Annie, this is terrible—you poor thing—and this was your father? How could he? Are you hurt anywhere else?’

‘No, really—it’s nothing—’

Annie tried to move away, but Tom let go of her arm and caught her foot. He pulled back the leg of her working trousers, which she had kept on today in order to be covered up. He drew in his breath sharply as more injuries came to light.

‘Annie, Annie, how can he do this to you? We’ve got to stop this. We’ve got to tell someone. The police—’

‘No!’ Annie squealed. You mustn’t—my mum’d die of shame—’

‘He hits your mum as well?’

Silently, Annie nodded.

‘The bastard—Oh, I’m sorry, Annie, swearing in front of you, but—I want to go and tear his head off—’

Tom’s hands were balled into fists. His face was contorted with anger.

‘Don’t—’ Annie cried, seized with fear. ‘Don’t—you look like him when you say that—’

Tom looked ashamed. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

‘I’m sorry—it just makes me so mad, to think of you getting hurt like this. I want to help you, Annie. What can I do to help, to stop it?’

‘Nothing,’ Annie said flatly. ‘There’s nothing. My mum says it’s just the way he is and we have to put up with it because he’s a good provider.’

‘But there must be something.’

‘No. Maybe one day I’ll be able to go away. But till then … Look, it helps just to have you as a friend.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a lot of use,’ Tom said gloomily.

‘It is, really,’ Annie assured him. She tried to put her feelings into words. ‘It’s been really … nice … coming to see you each day. It’s made everything sort of … brighter … you know? Knowing I’ll talk to you at the end of the day.’

Tom’s face was glowing now. ‘Yes! That’s just it! It’s made everything different, knowing you. Like—even very ordinary things like walking along the prom are special when I’m with you …’

He stopped abruptly, scarlet with embarrassment.

‘That sounds right daft,’ he muttered.

‘No, it doesn’t. It’s—nice. It’ll be a nice thing to remember when—well—things are bad,’ Annie told him.

A phrase from the Bible came to her. She treasured it up in her heart. She would treasure up those words of his in her heart, and warm herself with them when life was cold.

‘Look—we’re not going to let them stop us, are we?’ Tom insisted. ‘It’s like in Romeo and Juliet. They didn’t let their families stop them.’

‘Who are they? Were they in a film?’ Annie asked.

‘No, it’s Shakespeare.’

Shakespeare. He’d written things, she knew that much. Plays. They’d never done them at the elementary, but she would get them from the library and find out what Tom was on about.

‘Yes, of course it is,’ she said, to cover her ignorance.

To her relief, Tom did not pursue it any further.

‘We’ll write to each other. Would you do that? Write to me?’

Delight bubbled through her.

‘Oh, yes! That’d be wonderful. But …’

She thought through the difficulties. Her father always sorted through the post, since it was mostly bills and stuff for him. She could not explain away a personal letter to herself from Nottingham.

‘… send them to my friend, Gwen, and she’ll give them to me.’

‘All right. Where does she live?’

Annie recited Gwen’s address. Tom committed it to memory.

‘What about your mum? Is it all right to send to your house?’ Annie asked anxiously.

‘I said I’m not going to let her stop me and I’m not. You write to my address,’ Tom insisted.

Annie repeated it after him till she had fixed it in her head.

Satisfied that they had done all they could, they talked and talked until the light had drained from the sky.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Annie said reluctantly.

This was it. The last moment.

‘I suppose so.’

A whole year till they saw each other again. It was so long that she could hardly bear it. Going back to life without seeing him at the end of each day was like a prison sentence.

Awkwardly, they got up. They looked at each other in silence. Then Tom swooped forward and planted a quick kiss on her lips.

‘Remember—write to me!’ he said.

‘I will,’ Annie promised.

And as she walked home alone with his kiss still warm upon her mouth, loneliness stalked beside her, cold and dark and bleak. She refused to let it in, pushing it away by holding on to the thought that she still had Tom as a friend, even if he was far away. It wasn’t like having him at Silver Sands, but it was something. Whatever else happened, Tom thought she was special.

She began planning the first letter she would send to him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘THOSE poor people in London,’ Gwen said, as she and Annie snatched a few minutes’ conversation outside Sutton’s Bakelite before she went back in for the afternoon shift. ‘Do you know they’re sleeping down the underground now, because of the bombing? I seen it on the newsreel at the pictures. Hundreds of ‘em, all lying on the station platforms. Must be horrible.’

‘It must,’ Annie agreed, though she found it difficult to imagine what it must be like. Unlike Gwen, she had never ridden on the underground.

‘Still, the war’s all right for some. Sutton’s is expanding. Mr Sutton told us all this morning. We’re doing such a lot for the war effort, we’re moving to a bigger factory, out on the edge of town.’

‘I s’pose that means the Suttons’ll be richer than ever,’ Annie said.

‘Yeah, but who cares, eh? Would you really want to be old fattypants Beryl?’

Annie laughed. ‘No, I would not,’ she agreed.

‘Coming to the pictures tomorrow?’

‘If I can get away.’

‘You must. Oh, look, everyone’s gone in. Got to go. I’ll get my pay docked if I’m late. See you outside the Roxy.’

Annie waved goodbye and cycled off to do her errands. She sang at the top of her voice as she bowled along. At this moment, life was good. It was a dull and damp October day, the heavy old bike would soon be even heavier with a load of shopping in the front basket and at home ahead of her there was her father, but for now she was happy. She enjoyed her Thursday afternoon buying provisions and delivering some of her mother’s alteration work, and meeting Gwen was always a treat. But best of all, here in her skirt pocket, warming her thigh, was a letter from Tom.

She put her hand on her leg, feeling the outline of the envelope through the layers of clothing. It was a huge temptation to stop and tear it open, but she controlled herself. It was better if she spun it out. First the pleasure of just having the letter in her possession, then the anticipation all evening, knowing it was hidden under her mattress upstairs, then finally the delight of opening and reading it after her parents had gone to bed. Then she allowed herself a whole week of rereading and planning a reply before starting on the equal but different pleasure of writing back. The letters, together with her outings into town and meetings with Gwen, lit up the drudgery of her day-to-day life.

As she turned into the track up to the farm later that afternoon, she was surprised to see someone cycling down towards her—a man in a raincoat and trilby hat.

‘How odd,’ she said out loud.

They had hardly any visitors at the farm.

It was only when he got really close that Annie recognised him. It was Mr Sutton.

‘Evening, young—er—’ he said as they passed each other.

‘Annie,’ she told him. ‘Evening, Mr Sutton.’

She longed to ask what he was doing at Marsh Edge, but he did not show any sign of stopping.

When she went into the kitchen with the shopping, she found her mother in a fluster.

‘We’ve had a visitor. I’m so ashamed. If only I’d known, I could have at least made some scones. To have a visitor and not even be able to offer some cake! And the state of the place as well—’

‘It looks fine, Mum,’ Annie assured her.

Her mother always kept the kitchen scrupulously clean and tidy, however much mud was walked into it over the course of each day.

‘Oh, but the Suttons have such a lovely house. All modern, with a gas stove and one of those geyser things for hot water. Imagine! This must look so old-fashioned.’

‘It’s nice,’ Annie said loyally, though really she wished her mother could have modern appliances to help her. ‘But what was he doing here—Mr Sutton? I was so surprised to see him cycling down the track.’

‘Oh, I don’t know that, dear. He came to see your father. Now help me get the tea on the table, will you? Or we’re going to be late.’

They both bustled about getting the meal ready. Being late with Walter’s tea was simply not an option. When he came in they all sat round the table in silence as usual, listening to the wireless. It was only when they had finished their last cup of tea and the plates had been cleared away that Annie dared approach the mystery of their visitor.

‘I saw Mr Sutton as I was cycling up the track,’ she remarked.

It was no use asking a direct question, but an observation sometimes got a reply.

‘Ha.’

Walter got out his tobacco tin and began rolling one of the two cigarettes he allowed himself each day. Annie hurried to fetch an ashtray. Walter licked the paper, poked the protruding strands of tobacco inside with the end of a match, then lit up.

‘I sent him away with a flea in his ear,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘Did you?’ Annie said.

Edna looked mortified. Mrs Sutton’s visits for dress fittings were as much a highlight of her life as Tom’s letters were of Annie’s. She didn’t want any risk of spoiling them.

‘Thought he could palm off his unwanted bit of land on me. Must’ve taken me for a fool. But I’m not. He might have that fancy factory of his, but I know a thing or two. Oh, yes. Showed him the door, I did.’

Annie stared at him. Silver Sands! He must mean Silver Sands. That was the only bit of land that the Suttons owned, as far as she knew.

‘You mean the chalet by the sea wall?’ she hazarded.

‘‘Course. What else? Rubbish corner of scrub with a hut on it. He thought that just because it’s running with my land that I’d want it. Must be off his head. Or think I am. I soon told him his fortune.’

‘Summer visitors are nothing but a nuisance,’ Annie said sadly, quoting his often-repeated words back at him.

To have had the chance of owning Silver Sands, only to have it thrown away! It was heartbreaking.

‘Too right. Walking all over my land, leaving gates open and worrying my stock. Ought to be shot on sight,’ Walter agreed. ‘And he thought I’d be interested in holiday lettings after the war was over! I told him, flaming townies are like the plagues of Egypt. I won’t have nothing to do with ‘em.’

Walter went on for some time, telling them what he thought of holiday-makers and giving examples of the dreadful things they had done in the past. Annie just sat and made affirmative noises, her face carefully blank. It had never occurred to her in the past that there was any real possibility of their owning Silver Sands, however much she had wished it. Now it would have been even more wonderful, for Tom had said that his family were thinking of coming back next year. If her father had bought it, she could have been the one who got it ready for them and went to see if they were all right. She would have had the right to stroll in there and visit them, instead of hiding from Tom’s family. And her father had thrown that all away. She felt quite sick with disappointment. Only the thought of Tom’s letter waiting for her upstairs kept her going through the evening.

She needed the letters to get her through the following months. As autumn turned into winter and Walter Cross was forced to change his farming methods by the local War Agriculture Committee, it was Annie who bore the brunt of the extra work. One Saturday late in November, she was out cutting cabbages in the field nearest to the road. It was a foul afternoon with a wet wind coming in from the sea. The continual bending was making her back ache, the sticky mud clung to her boots, making it difficult to lift her feet and the cold was cutting into her exposed fingers and face. On top of this, she had left her mother in a flap about the Suttons. Both Mrs Sutton and Beryl were coming to order dresses for Christmas, and Edna was tying herself in knots trying to stretch the meagre sugar ration enough to bake a batch of biscuits for them.

‘The government’s giving us an extra four ounces of sugar each for Christmas,’ she said.

‘The Suttons’ll have their own. There’s no need to waste ours on them,’ Annie pointed out.

‘Oh, but I must have something to offer them,’ her mother insisted.

The thought of biscuits hot out of the oven made Annie’s mouth water as she toiled. And to think that they were going to be wasted on beastly Beryl.

She saw the Wittlesham to Brightlingsea bus stop at the end of the lane and three figures step down. Beryl’s little brother Timmy went running up the track. Beryl caught sight of her and waved and shouted.

‘Cooee! Annie!’

Annie didn’t answer. She pretended not to see as they made their way to the nice warm kitchen, leaving her labouring in the wind and rain. With a bit of luck, she would be finished by the time they came out again.

But luck was not on her side. As the Suttons came out of the farmhouse she was just on the last row, by the fence that separated the field from the track. Once more, Beryl waved.

‘Hello, Annie!’

At first Annie ignored her, but as Beryl drew level with her, she was forced to give up pretending she hadn’t heard. She straightened up.

‘Hello, Beryl.’

She knew she looked dreadful. She was cold, wet and exhausted. Her face was raw red and her ancient work clothes were spattered with mud. Beryl was warm and dry and still glowing from sitting by the range.

‘Having a nice time?’ Beryl enquired.

Annie wanted to push her face in.

‘It’s my bit for the war effort,’ she responded. ‘What’s yours?’

‘We’re knitting mufflers for soldiers at my school,’ Beryl said. ‘They’re so grateful, poor things. They send us lovely letters thanking us.’

Annie said nothing. The thought of sitting at a desk and learning things instead of cutting cabbages was almost too much to bear.

‘I came top in French these exams,’ Beryl went on. ‘Je suis très fort en Français. I bet you don’t know what that means. It means I am very strong at French. My form teacher says that all educated people should be able to speak French, and she’s a history mistress. Tu es un cochon. I bet you don’t know what that means, either. That’s the trouble with only going to the elementary. Still, I suppose you don’t even need to know how to read and write to dig potatoes.’

‘I’m doing something useful, not just sitting round all day getting fat. Our pigs can do that,’ Annie retorted.

‘And this year I’m starting Latin. I bet you don’t even know what Latin is,’ Beryl said.

‘It’s a dead language. You see stuff written in it in churches,’ Annie said in a bored voice. ‘What’s the point of learning that?’

If she’d hoped to score a point, she was disappointed.

‘Well, of course an uneducated person like you wouldn’t understand. It’s still spoken by doctors and people at universities,’ Beryl retorted.

Annie gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘And you’re going to be a doctor, are you? Pull the other one!’

‘We all know what you’re going to be—a farmhand,’ Beryl said.

Annie was actually glad when Mrs Sutton and Timmy reached them.

‘Come along, Beryl, don’t hold Annie up. I’m sure she still has plenty to do. Good day, Annie.’

‘Good day, Mrs Sutton,’ Annie muttered.

‘Bye, Annie. Have a lovely time!’ Beryl called as she walked off down the track.

Annie choked back tears of frustration and jealousy. Beryl had everything—a rich, kind father, brothers to keep her company, a place at the grammar school. It wasn’t fair.

But then she remembered. Beryl didn’t have Tom. That almost made it all worthwhile.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THROUGH the long hard winter of 1940 to 1941, the people of the industrial cities and ports of Britain suffered the terrors of the blitz while the bombers of the RAF carried out Churchill’s promise to ‘give it them back’. Stray bombs and damaged aircraft crashed into fields and villages and towns, and even the quietest village had its German spy scare. The convoys crossing the Atlantic were harried by submarines, making scarce commodities even scarcer. Britons tightened their belts, worked harder and ate more frugally. But they did not think of giving in.

Annie laboured through the cold days, learning how to work farm machinery from the pool of modern devices now available on loan to farmers, on top of carrying on with the day-to-day work of running a dairy herd. Harder than either of these was keeping on the right side of her father. Praise, or even recognition of the huge part she played in the increased productivity of the farm, was out of the question. But when Walter was in a neutral mood, he did allow her the odd evening off. They were occasions to be savoured to the full.

An April Thursday saw her hurrying to meet Gwen outside the Roxy in the High Street. Gwen squealed when she spotted her and rushed to take hold of her arm.

‘You’re so late! I thought you weren’t coming.’

The two girls trotted arm in arm up the steps of the cinema.

‘I know, I’m sorry. The bus was ever so late, and when it did come it was an awful old thing. I think they’ve sent all their decent ones up to London,’ Annie explained.

‘We need buses just as much as Londoners do,’ Gwen grumbled.

They pushed in through the swing doors. Annie paused for a moment, looking around, making sure it was all just as grand as ever. She breathed deeply, taking in the smell of smoke and wet coats and the faint whiff of disinfectant. Yes, this was it. This was Life. Even in the dim wartime lighting, the entrance looked like a palace with its high ceilings, red flock walls, gold paintwork and shiny brass rails. Wonderful. It was like living in a fairy tale after the wet fields and the austere farmhouse. And it was all hers, for the price of a ticket in the front stalls.

‘Come on, dozy!’ Gwen was already at the ticket booth. ‘We’ve missed part of the first feature already.’

They walked to the stall doors and were escorted into the smoky darkness by the usherette and her torch. Trying not to stumble over people’s legs, they groped their way to their seats and subsided with sighs of pleasure. Settling back, they gave themselves up to fantasy. The sheriff’s posse thundered across the screen, the baddies galloped up into the rocks on the side of the valley, bullets whined and ricocheted, horses reared and fell. The good guys won.

‘That was good,’ Annie enthused as the credits rolled.

‘Yeah—’ Gwen’s accent had slid to somewhere in the mid-Atlantic ‘—sure was.’

A short cartoon came next. Tomcat chased Tweetie-Pie and failed yet again to catch him. The adverts rolled. Gwen elbowed Annie and offered a small paper bag.

‘Here—have a pear drop.’

‘Thanks, Gwennie! Can you spare them?’

‘‘Course—go on.’

Annie sucked off the rough sugar coating and let the gloriously artificial sweet fruitiness fill her mouth. Bliss.

The newsreel followed. Victims of the latest blitz on Birmingham were seen clearing up and fixing ‘Business as Usual’ signs to their damaged shops while smiling and making thumbs-up signs at the camera. Much was made of the successes in Eritrea and the huge bombing raid on Kiel.

‘I heard them going over the other night. They must have been heading for Kiel,’ Annie whispered.

‘They’re so brave, the RAF boys,’ Gwen said with a sigh.

That was quite enough reality. Now it was the big feature—a Busby Berkeley musical. Annie and Gwen were swept into a world of colour, song and dance. Time was suspended and nothing mattered but that the hero and heroine should end in each other’s arms.

The whole audience stood for ‘God Save the King’, and then shuffled out, chattering and laughing.

It was strange being back in cold, dark Wittlesham High Street. At least half of Annie was still prancing about in satin and feathers. The contrast made her feel quite light-headed.

‘That was just wonderful,’ she said, sighing.

But it was no use staying in Hollywood with your head in the clouds. There were practicalities to obey. The last bus left in just five minutes. The girls hurried to join the line of people climbing on board.

Gwen dived into her bag and produced an envelope. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘something to keep your pecker up.’

Annie took it and stared at the writing.

To Miss A Cross c/o Miss G Barker.

Tom. It was from Tom.

‘Already?’ she said, dazed. ‘I wasn’t expecting one for days …’

She stood still, gazing at the letter in happy disbelief.

‘Come on, darling. You taken root?’ a voice demanded from behind.

‘Oh, sorry …’ Annie shuffled forward to the head of the queue. She gave Gwen a quick hug. ‘Thanks ever so, Gwennie. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you—’

‘I’ll think of something. Come and see me as soon as you can! Toodle-oo!’

‘Toodle-oo!’

Annie climbed on board and found a seat near the back. She sat staring at her letter. A night out and a letter from Tom. It was almost too much happiness for one day. Treats had to be hoarded up, brought out as rewards to herself. She thrust the letter in her pocket and sat staring out into the dark, reliving every detail of the musical.

Tom’s letter was like a beacon, seeing her through the next day when the rain drove across the flat fields and it felt more like winter than spring. Her father was in one of his blacker moods and her mother went tiptoeing around trying to appease him. Annie hummed the tunes from the film to herself and kept picturing what was waiting for her under her mattress. It was like a protective charm around her.

The wireless went off at ten o’clock to conserve the battery, and Annie lit a candle to go up to bed. She slit open the envelope while her parents were still moving around, so that there was no danger of them hearing the noise of ripping paper. Then she tore off her clothes, pulled on her nightie and jumped into bed. Now, at last, the letter could be taken out.

There was Tom’s familiar sloping handwriting in black ink.

Dear Annie

We’ve had a big bit of excitement here in Noresley. A bomber got lost on its way back from raiding Sheffield and dropped a bomb on us. Well, not quite on us. The way folk are talking round here you’d think the village had been flattened, but actually it fell on the playing fields of the Miners’ Welfare. But what a bang! It blew all our windows out, which was pretty frightening. Our Joan was screaming her head off and Mam was yelling ‘Are you all right?’ and Dad was yelling ‘Don’t move!’ and all the lights were off. Mam wanted us all to go and sit under the stairs in case it was a real raid, and Dad said that was potty because who’d want to bomb Noresley? So he and I went off to see if the neighbours were all right, which they were except for old Mrs Jackson on the corner, so we brought her back for a cup of tea. Luckily the gas was still working and by then Mam had swept up some of the glass though it was still all over the place. It sort of crunched under your feet. So we sat round the kitchen table and drank tea and cocoa with extra sugar and brandy in it because that’s good for shock. You should try cocoa with brandy—it’s jolly good. Worth having a shock for. Mrs Jackson got quite tiddly and started singing songs from the last war like ‘It’s a Long Way To Tipperary’, so it all got quite jolly, almost like a party. I hoped I’d be allowed not to go to school the next day as there was such a lot of clearing up to do, but Dad said that would be giving in to Jerry, so off to school I had to go, but it was good because everyone wanted to hear all about our bomb from us Noresley lot. I went to see the crater after school and it was massive! The Welfare was pretty well wrecked, but everyone’s getting together at the weekend to repair it and so that’s two fingers up to Jerry. (Whoops, sorry. That’s rude. But you know what I mean.)

So that’s my big news. Our house is all boarded up now until we can get hold of some glass, so it’s pretty gloomy inside, but at least the electricity’s back on again. Otherwise, it’s same as usual—school, homework, football practice, cycle club, pictures. How about you? Have you seen the new Cary Grant film yet? It’s going to be on in Mansfield next week so a gang of us are going over to see it. Has your dad been all right? I think of you a lot like you were after he did that. It makes me mad just to think about it. What does the sea look like now? Not all bright like it was in summer. Whenever I think of Wittlesham it’s always sunny. It’s quite strange when you say it’s been cold and raining for a fortnight.

Sunday. Bad news, I’m afraid. Mam says the bomb has really shaken her up and she doesn’t want to go far from home, so we’ll not be going on holiday this summer. I’m really sick about it, I can tell you. I tried reasoning with her and saying that if she booked up Silver Sands she’d have something to look forward to but she wasn’t having any. Honestly, parents! I’ll be glad when I’m old enough to join up. I’m sick of being treated like a little kid.

Monday. I’ve thought of a way round the holiday problem. The cycle club are doing a tour round the Peaks at the end of July. I’ve already cleared it with the parents to go on that, so what I’ll do is, I’ll come down to see you instead. I can put my bike on the train and there’s a youth hostel in Wittlesham. So I will get down after all! Don’t you think that’s a clever plan?

I’m going to put this in the post now.

Yours truly,

Your friend,

Tom.

X

Annie’s hands were shaking. The bomb story wasn’t really frightening because Tom was obviously all right, and the bit about the old lady getting tiddly even made her smile. But the Featherstones not coming to Wittlesham! It was a nightmare. It was the end of the world. The thought of Tom being in that tent in the garden of Silver Sands this summer had glimmered ahead of her ever since he’d gone away. His alternative plan sounded feasible, but—there were so many buts. Supposing his parents found out and forbade it? Supposing he didn’t have enough money? Supposing the cycle club trip was called off and he lost his cover story? It was a bleak prospect—a summer with no Tom to look forward to.

But then, that X at the bottom of his letter.

She stared at it in the wavering light of the candle flame.

He had never put an X on a letter before.

That had to be a good sign. It was a good sign. Annie blew out the candle and fell asleep with the letter against her hand under the pillow.

Spring turned reluctantly into summer and Britons learned of the loss of the Hood and the abandonment of Crete while the air raids carried on unabated. The one rousing piece of news was the sinking of the battleship Bismark. And then the Nazis invaded Russia. Though the ordinary people of Britain did not realise it at the time, the invasion pressure was off. What concerned them more was that first clothes and then coal were rationed.

At Marsh Edge Farm, Walter Cross finally gave in to pressure from fellow farmers to try sowing ley grass and cutting silage to increase the amount and quality of feed available to the greatly increased dairy herd. By June, a second-hand tractor replaced the elderly work-horse. Its variable reliability did not improve his temper, though even he had to admit that it could work faster and harder than the horse and did not need attending to each day. Annie’s letters contained accounts of these innovations and of her trips into town to meet Gwen and her occasional brushes with Beryl Sutton, but mentioned nothing of Walter’s eruptions of temper. After all, Tom could do nothing about it, and the thought of her being hurt obviously worried him. On top of that, she felt ashamed to admit, even to Tom, what went on in her family. Her letters always ended the same way, asking him if he was still coming to Wittlesham at the end of July. His answer was always the same—yes. But still she harboured doubts.

Her birthday came round. Her mother gave her a blouse she had made out of rayon hoarded from before rationing. It had square shoulders with little shoulder pads and was darted in to a narrow waist. A real grown-up garment. Gwen gave her a lipstick. Fifteen. She was now fifteen years old.

‘We could get married next year,’ said Gwen, whose birthday was a few weeks earlier than hers.

They both tried the lipstick, which was dark red. They tried to do each other’s hair up in fashionable rolls around the face, though Annie’s hair wasn’t really long enough and Gwen’s was too fly-away. Neither of them looked very much like a film star or a dance band singer, but still they were quite pleased with the result.

‘We do look a lot more grown up. That blouse is lovely, very fashionable. You are lucky, Annie, having a mum who can make you things like that,’ Gwen said.

‘Yes, I am,’ Annie agreed, stroking the silky fabric.

‘And you’ve got a boyfriend, you lucky thing.’

Two things to feel lucky about. Annie savoured the feeling. Usually, it was Gwen who had so much more than she did in the way of people in her life.

‘He’s not really a boyfriend. More like a pen-pal,’ Annie said.

‘Ooh!’ Gwen teased. ‘I’ve seen how desperate you are for a letter from him. And you never show them to me. I bet they’re full of lovey-dovey stuff and kisses.’

‘No, they’re not. We just write about what we’ve been doing.’

‘So you say. I wish I had a boyfriend. My mum and dad would go potty, but I’d really like to have one. I want to know what it’s like, being in love.’

‘Mmm,’ Annie said.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror of Gwen’s dressing table. She did look older, what with the lipstick and the hairstyle and the new blouse. No longer a little girl. Love. She imagined love being something all floaty and dreamy, like a romantic song in a film. What she felt for Tom was not like that. It was sometimes quite gnawing and painful and desperate. If he didn’t manage to get to Wittlesham …

‘Wakey wakey!’

Gwen was making faces at her in the mirror. Annie put her tongue out. Gwen crossed her eyes. Annie put her thumbs in her ears and waggled her hands. They collapsed against each other, giggling.

‘Some of the girls at work like John Sutton,’ Gwen said when they had recovered.

‘Ugh! Beryl’s brother!’ Annie squealed.

‘I know but—wouldn’t she be mad if he was my boyfriend. Supposing I married him! She’d have to be my bridesmaid—just think! And that boot-faced mother of theirs, she’d have to smile and be happy. It’d be wonderful!’

‘Why not marry Jeffrey?’ Annie teased.

‘What, that little squirt? No, thank you!’

They both screwed up their faces and collapsed into giggles again.

‘You will let me meet this Tom of yours, won’t you?’ Gwen said.

‘If he comes,’ Annie said.

‘But you will, won’t you?’

‘I expect so,’ Annie prevaricated.

She wasn’t sure. If he did come, she wanted him all to herself.

‘You’d better,’ Gwen told her.

Annie changed the subject.

The nearer it got to the last week in July, the more she wanted to see him, and the less likely it seemed that he would actually arrive. And then, if he did make it, it wasn’t going to be plain sailing. What was he going to do during the day, for a start? It was different when he was here with his family. Even if he did think the little ones were brats and the grown-ups were boring, still they were company. She could only get away in the evenings, and sometimes not even then. It was all so difficult. She turned it over in her mind all day. She lay awake at night worrying. She began to feel quite ill.

On the Friday, she was taking the cows back to their pasture in the evening when she saw a girl on a bike where the track met the Wittlesham road. As she looked, she girl waved frantically and Annie realised that it was Gwen. She waved back. Gwen made beckoning gestures. Annie shut the cows in their field and ran down the track.

‘Gwen! What are you doing here? Whose bike is that?’

‘I borrowed it off my friend at work. Look—I had to bring you this. It says “Urgent”.’

Gwen flashed a letter in front of Annie’s eyes just long enough for her to recognise Tom’s writing, then whipped it behind her back.

‘D’you want it, then?’ she teased, dodging as Annie tried to snatch it from her.

‘Yes—you know I do. Give it—please—!’ Annie squealed.

Gwen was bigger than her and had longer arms. However hard she tried, her friend kept the letter just beyond her reach.

‘Just give it, Gwen. It’s mine!’ she demanded.

She aimed a kick at Gwen’s shins, but she leapt out of the way.

‘Ooh! Kick donkey!’

Annie was practically crying with frustration.

Gwen held the letter with the ends of her fingers, a tan-talising two inches too high for Annie to reach.

‘Promise you’ll let me meet him,’ she bargained.

‘Gwe-en—’

‘Promise!’

‘All right, then.’

Anything, just as long as she could get her hands on that letter.

‘You promised, remember,’ Gwen insisted, and handed it to her.

Annie ripped it open. There was just one sheet of paper inside.

Dear Annie,

Just a note to say that I’ll be on the seven-twenty train on Saturday. Hope you can meet me at the station. It’s going to be a terrific holiday.

Your friend,

Tom.

X

‘Ooh,’ Gwen said, breathing down her neck. ‘Kisses! Who’s a lucky girl, then?’

Annie didn’t even care about the teasing. She flung her arms round her friend.

‘He’s coming!’ she cried. ‘He really is coming!’

CHAPTER NINE

‘ALL RIGHT, son, it’ll be safe with me. I’ll make sure no German spy gets his hands on it,’ the guard said, patting the saddle of Tom’s bike as it leant against the side of the van.

‘Thank you,’ Tom said, forcing himself to sound properly polite.

Why did grown-ups have to patronise you like that? he wondered. He wouldn’t do it when he was a grown-up. It was only a few months now before he would be able to join up. Then they would have to take him seriously.

He hurried down the platform, looking for a carriage with some space in it, but the train was packed. The one before had been cancelled due to lack of rolling stock, so everyone was crowding on to this one. In the end he had to make do with a space in a corridor. A group of soldiers piled on after him and soon he was wedged between khaki-clad bodies and bulky kitbags. It was all very different from the last time he had made this journey. Then he had been with his family and they had got a compartment to themselves. This time it was not exactly comfortable, but it was a whole lot more exciting. Around him the soldiers were laughing and joking and passing round cigarettes. He was on his own, making his way without anyone telling him what to do. The train started. This was it. The adventure had really begun.

By the time he got to London, Tom and the soldiers were the best of mates. Some of them were only a year or so older than him, and they had plenty to tell him about army life. They shared their cigarettes with him, he passed round the sandwiches his mother had made for the first leg of his cycle trip. Tom stopped worrying about whether his cycle club friends might inadvertently drop him in it. This was real life. He was no longer a kid. He was an individual, making his own decisions. Getting from King’s Cross to Liverpool Street when he didn’t know the way was going to be easy.

The journey took the best part of the day. He was starving hungry by the time he reached Colchester and wolfed down a pie and a cup of tea before finally boarding the Wittlesham train. Here he actually got a whole compartment to himself. At first it felt luxurious. Then he began to get nervous. Up till then he had had plenty of people to talk to. Everyone seemed very eager to talk to complete strangers these days. It was something about wartime. The journey across London had been easy enough, for people were more than willing to help a polite young lad and set him on his way. Now at last he actually had time to think about what he was doing.

Over the seats opposite him were two posters of Wittlesham, one showing the pier, the other the winter gardens. Wittlesham. All year, it had seemed like Shangri-La to him. Now he was actually going there. In between the posters was a small mirror. Tom stood up and studied his reflection. Was that a spot breaking out on his chin? He poked the place with his finger. It felt like it. Damn. He wanted to look—well—nice for Annie.

It set off a chain of anxieties. Would Annie still like him? Was it going to be like last time? She’d been working for a year now, up all hours looking after sick and calving cows, driving heavy machinery and the like, while he’d still been at school. Would he seem like a kid to her? He took out a comb and slicked back his hair. Was this all a big mistake? Maybe he should have gone on the cycle club trip after all, and kept it so that he and Annie were just pen-pals. But … he did want to see her again. He sat down on the stiff horsehair-filled seat and tried to remember exactly what she looked like—the wave of her hair, the expression in her eyes, her smile … and then there was the feel of her soft skin, the way her fingers curled round his … Yes, he did want to see her again. Very much.

He recognised some of the landmarks as the train rumbled into Wittlesham. There was the rock factory. There was the back of the Toledo cinema. As they pulled into the station, he let down the window panel on its leather strap and stuck his head out. Was she there? He was sure she would come and meet him if she could, but maybe she hadn’t been able to get away. Her father. Always there was her father, standing in their way. Tom understood. It wasn’t her fault if she couldn’t be there, but he really did want to see her waiting for him on the platform. It caught him by surprise, how much he wanted it. The lurch of hope clutched at his guts like a huge hand.

The train slowed to a halt with a squeal of brakes and a billow of steam. There were hardly any people on the platform. A mother and child, an old lady, a station official. Disappointment sank through him, sick and sour. Her bloody father. It was all his fault. Tom picked up his canvas knapsack and hoisted it over his shoulder, then jumped down and went to collect his bike from the guard’s van. He wheeled it after the straggle of passengers making for the exit and held out his ticket to the collector at the barrier.

‘Tom!’

He looked up. There, just beyond the barrier, flushed and breathless, was Annie.

‘Annie! You made it!’

Happiness surged up and spread a huge smile over his face. He hurried forward until they were standing within a foot of each other, each of them gazing at the other and smiling and smiling. She looked the same, and yet different. The same Annie, just as pretty, just as pleased to see him, but more grown up. Yes, that was it. More grown up.

Overcome with shyness, they shook hands.

‘I’m so glad you managed to get here,’ Tom said.

It sounded stupid even as it came out. He felt himself going red.

‘I nearly didn’t. I had to cycle like billy-o all the way,’ Annie told him.

Her hair was longer. That was it. And done in a different way, except that the cycle ride had blown it about. It looked nice like that, all wild round her face.

She saw him looking at it. Her hand went to her head, smoothing her hair down.

‘I look a mess.’

‘No, you don’t. You look very nice. Very … pretty.’

He stumbled over the compliment and felt even hotter. Why couldn’t he be suave and sophisticated, like someone in a film? He fiddled with the gear lever on the handlebars of his bike.

‘You look older. And you’re taller, too. I have to look up more than last year,’ Annie commented.

It was true. Sometimes he felt all legs and elbows.

‘It’s nice,’ she added. ‘I can’t really believe you’re here. I thought … I was really hoping you would be able to come, but when you said your family weren’t … and then all this about the cycle club and coming here instead, and I thought you’d never be able to make it but …’

‘Here I am!’ Tom said.

‘Large as life and twice as natural!’ Annie cried.

And then they were laughing, and it was all right. It was just like last year. Tom knew he could say anything and Annie would understand, just as it had been then.

‘I suppose I’d better go to the youth hostel first, and make sure there’s a bed for the night,’ Tom said.

‘Right. It’s up this way,’ Annie told him.

They walked along together, wheeling their bikes, talking away nineteen to the dozen. There was so much to say, all the things that they had written to each other to be expanded and explained. A mother with a pushchair passed them. Tom moved to let her by and his hand touched Annie’s. Her fingers clasped his. He stole a glance at her and saw that her face was pink with pleasure, and knew that his was just the same.

So much to say, and so little time to say it. After he had dropped his things at the youth hostel, Tom rode with Annie to where the farm track met the Wittlesham road.

‘See you tomorrow, then. Where shall we meet?’ Tom asked.

Annie considered. He watched the way she screwed up her face a little when she was thinking.

‘Silver Sands!’ she said. ‘Where else?’

‘Of course. Silver Sands,’ Tom agreed.

He hesitated. He knew what he wanted to do. Then he took a breath and swooped forward, planting a kiss on her cheek.

‘See you tomorrow!’ he said, and jumped on his bike.

All the way back to the youth hostel, he felt as if he could conquer the world.

All the next morning, Annie was bursting with energy, despite the fact that she had slept very little the night before. Whatever her father asked her to do, she breezed through it with ease. His bad temper just slid off her. The only problem was appearing as if everything was just the same as normal when the whole world was glowing with possibilities. She caught herself singing as she washed her hands for dinner, despite the fact that her father was scowling and growling behind her. Her mother shot her a puzzled look.

‘You’re cheerful,’ she whispered, when Walter was in the scullery.

‘Oh, well … it’s a nice sunny day,’ Annie said.

She sucked in her smiles and helped her mother bring the food to the table. During the meal she kept her eyes on her plate and concentrated on eating. But it was hard, when what she wanted to do was to dance round the room.

Through the long afternoon, she wondered what Tom was doing. Was he all right? Was he lonely? It wasn’t as if Wittlesham was much of a resort any more. At least it was nice weather, and he could be outside.

The evening chores had never seemed so lengthy. Annie seethed with impatience as her father checked that she had done everything right. As usual, he took issue with her over details and she had to do things again, but at last she was free.

‘I think I’ll just go for a walk down to the water,’ she said, as offhand as she could manage.

‘Waste of energy,’ Walter growled. ‘What about your ma? She want anything doing?’

‘No, no. I asked her and she said not.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes. Completely sure.’

‘Go and check.’

Annie swallowed down her howl of frustration. If she let him see how much it meant to her, he would invent something for her to do, or even simply forbid her to go.

‘All right,’ she agreed, and went to see her mother.

At last she was released. At lightning speed, she washed, changed, ran a comb through her hair and smoothed on some of the new lipstick. And then she was off, running across the fields towards Silver Sands as if her life depended upon it.

And there was Tom, waiting for her by the gate.

‘Seems funny to see the old place all shut up,’ he said after they had gone over their news of the day.

They were sitting on the sea wall, but not in their old place, the sea side. This time they were on the landward side, overlooking Silver Sands.

Annie lay back on the long dry grass. It was lovely to rest after the day’s work, to feel the last of the sun on her face, to have a soul mate to talk to.

‘It’s been shut ever since your family left. I was so mad when my dad didn’t buy it from Mr Sutton. I don’t even know who owns it now but, whoever it is, they haven’t done anything to it. I suppose they’re just waiting for the war to end before they can let it again.’

‘Might have a bit of a wait, then,’ Tom said.

‘Yes,’ Annie sighed. ‘Nearly two years now.’

‘At least we weren’t invaded. Remember last year, when the Germans were just over the North Sea?’

‘And the Battle of Britain was going on in the sky?’

‘We won that.’

‘We did. Good old RAF.’

‘I’m going to join the RAF.’

‘You said that last year.’

‘I know. I meant it then, but it seemed a long way away. Now it’s just over four months.’

‘What?’

Fear jolted through Annie. She sat up and stared at Tom. He was still looking at the chalet, a long piece of grass between his teeth.

‘Four months,’ he repeated. ‘Till I’m eighteen.’

Something seemed to be squeezing her chest, making it difficult to breathe.

‘But … but … you’re still at school,’ she said.

‘So?’ Tom threw the grass stalk away and selected another. ‘All the more reason to join up. Do something real. What’s the point of studying if the country might be conquered? I want to get out there and do my bit.’

Annie cast about desperately in her mind for an argument.

‘Well, of course you do,’ she said, ‘but—you don’t have to go yet. I know there’s talk of the call-up coming down to eighteen, but it hasn’t yet. Why not wait? You’re so lucky to be able to stay at school.’

‘For heaven’s sake! You sound just like my dad. I don’t want to stay at school. What I’m doing there is irrelevant. There are people out there defending our country and what am I doing? Studying stuff that has nothing to do with real life. Look at you—you’re doing your bit, you’re doing a man’s work on the farm, putting up milk production and helping feed the country. It just makes me feel useless.’

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