his comrades’ – their mother’s statement. And all the things in between that hadn’t been said but which Lou had been able to sense with the maturity that being in uniform and having to work as part of a team with others had brought her.
‘I could tell this afternoon that she wasn’t herself,’ Lou had admitted to her mother when they had been in the kitchen together after tea, washing up the tea things, a family ritual that Lou had once done everything she could to escape, but that today she had loved because of the opportunity it gave her to share a special closeness with her mother, as two adult women.
‘I thought that it must be because of me and because she thought I’d been talking about her behind her back.’
Jean had sighed and shaken her head. ‘There’s no reasoning with her these days. I wouldn’t mind so much if I thought that she was happy, but when I can see that she isn’t…’ She’d turned to Lou, her hands still in the washing-up water, red and slightly chapped from all the hard work they did. Looking at them, Lou had felt a surge of fierce love for her mother, and an equally intense wish that she could do something not just to put things right between her and Sasha, but to help her mother as well.
‘I’ll try and talk to her, if you like,’ she had offered. ‘I’d planned to tell her anyway how sorry I am that I was so mean to her when she and Bobby first started going out, because I didn’t want things to change and I just wanted it to be me and her, like it had always been.’
Lou had guessed that their mother had expected Sasha to return home early from her tea out with Bobby because Lou was home, and that she was upset because Sasha had not done so. Because of that Lou had set herself the task of showing her parents, and especially her mother, that she was not upset or offended and that she was happy in their company, telling them about her own life in ATA, or at least giving them a carefully edited version of it so as not to alarm her mother, listening to the news with them, laughing when her father reminded her of the racket she and Sasha used to make with their music and their dancing, and listening with genuine interest whilst Jean brought her up to date on things that were happening within the family.
But all the time Lou had been trying to think of the best way to break down the barriers between her and Sasha.
‘No,’ she answered her twin now with a warm smile, ‘I wanted to wait up for you so that we could have a proper chat. Do you remember how we used to talk so late into the night that Mum threatened to make us sleep in separate rooms?’
When Sasha didn’t respond but turned away from her instead, and started getting ready for bed, Lou tried again.
‘Mum and Dad were both saying how much they like Bobby.’
Sasha, who had put one foot on their shared bentwood chair whilst she removed her stockings, stiffened but didn’t say anything.
‘I’m really sorry that I was such an idiot and behaved so badly when you and Bobby were first seeing one another, Sash,’ Lou apologised generously. ‘I was so immature and selfish, wanting to keep things between us the way they had always been.’
Sash had returned to removing her stockings. Her twin had lost weight, Lou recognised. Even the dim light of the bedside lamp couldn’t conceal how pinched her face looked. Lou looked towards the window with its heavy blackout covering. If only Sasha would just make some response, but her twin was behaving as though Lou simply wasn’t there.
Lou wasn’t going to give up, though. Not for one minute.
‘I was so jealous of Bobby,’ she continued, laughing at herself, ‘him being with bomb disposal and being a real hero. You must be so proud of him, Sasha.’
Now at last her twin reacted, turning to face Lou, her eyes blazing with emotion in her pale face.
‘Proud of him for risking getting himself killed when he knows what that would do to me? When he could ask for a transfer out?’
Sasha’s voice held so much anger and so much pain that Lou could feel that pain in her own heart.
‘I hate this war. I hate it and I just want it to be over, before it can take Bobby from me,’ Sasha burst out.
In a flash Lou was pushing back the bedclothes and getting out of bed, her one thought to comfort her twin, as she ran across the space that divided their single beds.
‘Oh, Sash, I’m so sorry.’ Lou reached out to put her arms around her twin.
‘No you’re not. You’re enjoying this war, like everyone else: Mum and Dad, and Grace and Seb, and…and everyone. Well, I’m not enjoying it. I hate it. I hate everything about it, everything.’
Sasha had torn herself free from Lou’s embrace before Lou could stop her, snatching up her toilet bag, obviously intending to go to the bathroom.
Lou watched her go, her heart aching for her twin, knowing instinctively, because they were twins, that what Sasha had really wanted to say was that she hated everyone involved in the war rather than merely everything.
Poor Sasha. Of course her twin must be worried about Bobby, especially with him having such a very dangerous job. Lou wasn’t in love herself so she felt that she couldn’t truly appreciate how it must feel to know that the person you loved and wanted to spend the rest of your life with might be taken from you. On the other hand, she did know girls who were engaged and married, and whilst they were naturally anxious for their loved ones their feelings about the war did not match Sasha’s. Feeling very troubled and concerned for her twin, Lou went back to bed.
Sasha was an awfully long time in the bathroom. Because she was upset or because she was hoping that Lou herself would be asleep by the time she returned, Lou wondered. If that was the case, perhaps right now the best thing she could do for her twin was grant her that privacy, Lou accepted tiredly as she stifled a yawn. It had been a very long day and hopefully there would be time for them to talk properly to one another tomorrow, when Sasha was feeling calmer.
When she opened the bedroom door and saw that the room was in darkness, Sasha let out her pent-up breath in shaky relief. There was no point in her trying to explain to her twin how she felt. Lou simply wouldn’t understand.
Putting her wash bag on the dressing table, Sasha felt in the pocket of her dressing gown for the familiar reassuring security of her small torch. She had bought it and its batteries on the black market, and it and Bobby’s engagement ring were her most precious possessions. Both of them gave her comfort and helped her to feel safe.
Very carefully she put the torch under her pillow and then quickly removed her dressing gown. If she concentrated and didn’t think about the dark and the ice-cold shudders of fear it sent crawling down her spine, she could be in bed and reaching for her torch before it had the chance to take hold of her. What she must not do once she was in bed was think about how the weight of the bedclothes reminded her of being trapped in the bomb shaft, knowing that if Lou let go of her she would slip completely beneath it, swallowed up by the darkness, and the weight of the bomb and the earth around it pressing down on her smothering her.
She was in bed now but she was trembling so much she couldn’t get hold of the torch. A cold sweat was filming her forehead, panicky nausea gripping her stomach, her heart pounding and her lungs refusing to expand to take in air. A horrible choking sensation tightened her chest, as the seconds ticked by, her panic only releasing her when she finally held the torch and switched it on. Light. It made her feel so much safer and calmer. With the little torch
