round my neck and have done with it?’ joked her friend.
Nell showed compunction, but, ‘Please, Killie! This is so important, and I just don’t know what else to do! I must see him.’
Beata studied the urgency on that young face. ‘Well … I suppose if I am going to tag along with you, it wouldn’t really be a lie, would it?’ And she had harboured such romantic yearnings herself once. Who was she to stand in love’s way? ‘All right,’ she sighed, as Nell began to dance with excitement, ‘Give me your address and I’ll be your alibi – but come on now or we’ll miss the picture! Not that it’ll have as much bloomin’ intrigue as you’ve got to offer.’
On Friday evening, as arranged, Beata duly turned up at Nell’s house. Pleased that their daughter had such a mature, sensible-looking friend, Thelma and Wilfred made no complaint at her going out on the town yet again, not even when Nell announced that she and Beata would probably be enjoying Saturday together too.
Luckily, none of this involved Beata having to lie. ‘But I’m not too keen on you misleading them like this,’ she told Nell, as she hobbled alongside her to the bus stop.
‘I’ll make it up to you, Killie!’ swore Nell. ‘I promise. I hate having to do it too, but I daren’t risk telling them. I’ve missed him so much – oh, you’ll love him when you meet him!’
Beata turned impish. ‘I might take a fancy to him and pinch him off you.’
But, still in high spirits, Nell merely laughed. For as lovely-natured as she was, how could plain and plump old Killie be serious competition?
It was very cold when they reached the station, which was the appointed meeting place with Bill. Buying a platform ticket for each of them, Nell and her friend hurried through the barrier.
The temperature was a good deal lower here, the icy air seeming to ricochet from the stone beneath their feet. Waiting to pounce on him the moment he stepped off the train, Nell pranced from one foot to the other, half in cold, half in excitement. ‘Sorry to make you wait,’ she told her friend when, after fifteen minutes, he still had not shown up. ‘He’s usually so punctual.’
Beata huddled into her coat, and said in her patient manner, ‘Not to worry …’ But the way she rubbed her gloved hands told otherwise.
Anxiously watching and waiting for Bill to arrive, as trains came and went, Nell made no other comment for some while. But after noticing Beata adopt different positions in the next quarter of an hour, even with her mind on other things she was forced to respond to her friend’s discomfort. ‘Killie, you must be freezing, I’m so sorry, I don’t know where he’s got to – let me buy you a cup of tea in the café. If we sit by the window we’ll still be able to see him when he arrives.’
But, when the cups of tea were drained, Bill had still not come.
Nell had grown uneasy. She was trying not to be, but it showed on her face and in the drumming of her fingers on the table. ‘Right, well, I can’t expect you to hang around all night waiting for him, Killie. Why don’t you go home?’
‘I don’t know if I should leave you …’
I’ll be perfectly safe,’ Nell reassured her in a level tone.
‘All right then – but stay in here and keep warm,’ instructed Beata, rising to leave.
‘I will,’ came Nell’s reply. ‘And I’m so sorry for dragging you on this wild goose chase. I swear I’ll make it up to you – and I’ll get the culprit to treat you to drinks tomorrow night, how’s that?’
Accepting this, Beata wished her friend goodnight. ‘And give him gyp when he does turn up.’
‘Oh, I shall!’ vowed Nell.
But her suspense was to continue as another half-hour ticked away. Wandering out of the refreshment room, she cast a fretful gaze around the platform, and then the one opposite. There were squads of men in khaki greatcoats about, but none of them were Bill.
By nine thirty, accepting that he wasn’t going to come, and with the weather too cold to hang around any longer, a frantic Nell turned about and strode quickly towards town, intending to see if he had gone instead to the Preciouses.
But then why would he? Her stride faltered in the realisation that Bill would never have abandoned her like this unless something was wrong. And she might needlessly be disturbing Ma and Georgie, who always went to bed early. Standing still now in the middle of the pavement, a gloved hand over her mouth, Nell began to flick through a catalogue of awful things that might have befallen him, uncaring of those who occasionally stumbled against her in the darkness, her mind and heart in turmoil over Billy. Somewhere, behind a dark bank of cloud, droned a squadron of Halifax bombers. Steeped in worry, and too familiar with this harmonious sound, Nell paid it little heed either. Only a human emission caused alarm.
‘Coming for a ducky with us, love?’
She jumped violently at the voice that was close to her ear, and immediately shook off the soldiers’ advances.
‘Oy, keep your hair on!’ laughed one of them, as she fled home in distress.
How she had prevented her distress being relayed to her parents, Nell did not care, only that it was still there in the morning. A thousand thoughts had traversed her mind since then, one of them being how would she ever get through the weekend not knowing what had happened to him? Perhaps an explanation of his absence would arrive in the morning post – she must visit the Preciouses first thing.
Rising far earlier than normal, disturbing her mother who poked her head from her room and made bleary-eyed enquiry as to where Nell was going without any breakfast, she replied truthfully that she had volunteered to put in some extra hours at the Infirmary and would eat there. Then, whispering so as not to wake her father, she hissed, ‘Sorry, Mother, I forgot to tell you I’d be getting up so early. Go back to bed, and I’ll see you later!’ And off she sped to the Preciouses, rousing them too from bed.
But Ma and Georgie had heard nothing at all.
With a quick apology for disturbing them at this ungodly hour, Nell refused the invitation to enter, and said she would return in the afternoon, following work.
But nine excruciating hours later, there was still no letter.
Distracted by her concern for Billy, baffling her parents with her strange, absent-minded behaviour, Nell was to pay these twice-daily visits to the Preciouses for the best part of a week, hope dwindling at every turn. Bill was dead. Much as she hated to contemplate it, she was certain it must be true, for he would never have been so heartless as to leave her like this. But would her fears ever be confirmed, or was she to remain in limbo for the rest of her life?
Coming over the ancient threshold again this evening, wavering bleakly in the hall to be informed that there was again no letter for her, Nell snatched at anything that might prevent her from weeping in front of witnesses. A tabby cat was winding itself around her calves. She bent quickly to stroke it. ‘You’re very fussy tonight, puss …’
‘I think the dirty trollop’s having kittens,’ announced Ma.
Nell burst into tears.
There were exclamations of pity from the elderly couple, Georgie being the first to comfort, dealing gentle pats to the stooped figure that was racked with sobs. ‘Aw, don’t worry, dearie! There’s probably some good excuse for Bill not coming.’
‘But he would have written!’ Nell’s face shot up to accuse him with red and tear-filled eyes. ‘Something’s happened to him, I know it!’
‘It doesn’t mean he’s dead!’ brayed Mrs Precious with slight scorn. ‘He could have been sent abroad without warning – you know what the army’s like.’
‘He’d still have managed to get a letter through,’ sobbed Nell, fumbling for her handkerchief. ‘Oh God, what am I going to do?’ For she knew now, just as surely as her darling