The Heart of the Family. Annie Groves

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СКАЧАТЬ you two and me would be better off finding somewhere safer to live outside the city.’

      ‘But what about Katie?’

      That was Sasha, looking quickly past Jean to where Katie was standing pouring the now boiling water onto the tea leaves.

      ‘There’s no need for anyone to worry about me,’ Katie told them all firmly. ‘In fact I was already thinking of taking my leave and going home to see my parents.’

      She caught another approving nod from Sam and a grateful look from Jean. ‘And I think that you and your mum going somewhere safer is exactly the right thing to do,’ she told the twins calmly. ‘In fact, Luke was only saying the same thing the last time I saw him,’ she added, crossing her fingers behind her back. She was sure that Luke would have said that if he had been asked, because he was very much his father’s son and Katie knew instinctively that it was Sam who was insisting on them going rather than Jean.

      What a terrible decision that must have been for Jean. She had four children, after all, two of whom would have to remain in Liverpool and face the danger from which Sam obviously wanted to protect her and the twins. Katie could imagine how she would have felt in such circumstances.

      ‘But how can we leave Liverpool?’ Sasha asked uncertainly. ‘Where will we go?’

      ‘I know,’ said Lou, as irrepressible as ever. ‘We will have to be trekkers. You know, you go and queue up for the trucks in the evening and then they take you out into the country and you have to find a barn or something to sleep in.’

      ‘Don’t be silly,’ Jean told her. She looked at Sam and then back at the twins. ‘We’ll be going to Wallasey, of course, to stay with your auntie Vi.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘No!’

      The twins spoke together, their words different but their horrified expressions identical.

      ‘Mum, you can’t mean that,’ Lou protested. ‘Auntie Vi doesn’t like us and we don’t like her. Well, we’re not going, are we, Sasha?’

      ‘That’s enough of that,’ Sam told them sternly. ‘You’re going and that’s an end to the matter.’

      Katie could tell that the twins knew he meant what he said. They subsided, still exchanging shocked looks.

      ‘When will we have to go?’ That was Sasha, her voice small and wobbling slightly.

      ‘Not until tomorrow,’ Jean told them quietly. ‘I’ll have to go over and see Vi tomorrow and … and arrange things with her first.’ She was looking at Sam now as though seeking help, but he wasn’t looking back at her.

      Katie had heard all about the relationship between the two families and she knew that it would be hard for Jean to lower her pride and ask her snobbish sister for help.

      Jean looked at Sam’s stiff back. The fact that he was prepared to let her go begging Vi for help said how afraid for them he really was. There had never been any love lost between Vi and Sam, and although she had never said so to Sam, in the early days of their courtship Vi had actually tried to persuade her to drop Sam. If she told him that now … But no, she must not do that. Sam was doing this for them, and he had been right when he’d said that she would never forgive herself if they stayed in Liverpool and something happened to the twins.

      Just as she would never forgive herself if anything happened to Luke or to Grace or to Sam himself, and she couldn’t get to them.

      It was a situation that thousands of families all over the country were facing, especially those living in the cities that Hitler was targeting. And what about the men fighting abroad – how must their mothers and wives feel?

      Jean squared her shoulders. ‘It won’t be as bad as you think,’ she told the twins.

      ‘No, it will be much worse,’ Lou muttered gloomily under her breath.

      Wallasey and Auntie Vi’s.

      Lou flung herself down on her bed with a grimace of disbelief. ‘I never thought Mum would make us go there.’

      ‘She’s going as well,’ Sasha reminded her. ‘And I’ll bet it’s Dad who has said we have to go. Did you see how red his ears went when Mum was telling us, and how he wouldn’t look at us?’

      ‘Well, what about Katie?’ Lou demanded. ‘I’ll bet she doesn’t really want to go and see her parents. She loves our Luke.’

      ‘She was saying the other day that she felt she should go and see them,’ Sasha felt bound to point out, adding firmly, ‘Look, Lou, we aren’t children any more, are we, and after what happened on Saturday, well, I just think that we shouldn’t make things hard for Mum, that’s all.’

      Sasha almost sounded as though she disapproved of what Lou had said. But that was impossible. Hadn’t they reassured one another that their closeness, their twinship, was more important than anything else? Once Lou would have known exactly what Sasha was feeling about anything, just as Sasha would have done her, and this feeling that she did not know what her twin was thinking was unfamiliar territory.

      ‘Sash?’

      Sasha looked at her twin.

      ‘It’s all right with me and you, isn’t it? I mean, I know there was … Well, I just want you to know that I don’t mind if you do still … Well, it was you Kieran liked best really, anyway.’

      Sasha jumped off her own bed and went to stand next to Lou’s, her hands on her hips, her round face flushed with angry colour.

      ‘How dare you say that, Louise Campion? We both said, didn’t we, that we were going to stick together from now on?’

      ‘Yes, but—’

      ‘So why are you keeping going on about a certain person who we agreed we’d never talk about again?’

      ‘There’s no need to get your hair off with me, Sasha. I was just meaning that if you did think about him, then I’d understand and you can say so.’

      Lou didn’t know how to say that she was afraid of losing her twin, and afraid too of the way things seemed to be changing, and not just things but they themselves.

      ‘I’d hate it if you and me was to end up like Mum and Auntie Vi,’ was all she could manage to say.

      The anger died out of Sasha’s face. Although traditionally it was always Lou, the younger of the two, who had taken the lead, just lately Sasha had started to feel older than her twin and as though it was up to her to take charge. Somehow, without knowing how, Sasha had started to recognise that for all her bravado Lou was more vulnerable than she was herself.

      She sat down next to Lou and told her firmly, ‘That will never happen to us, unless of course you keep going on about Kieran.’

      ‘But he liked you.’

      ‘No he didn’t, he just pretended he did so that we’d earn money for him with our dancing.’

      ‘But if he did really like you …’ Lou persisted.

      ‘Oh, СКАЧАТЬ