her sleep.
Had those really been tears she had seen in her mother’s eyes earlier? Tears caused by her? The weight of Tilly’s guilt oppressed her. Being grown up wasn’t just about doing what you wanted to do, she was beginning to recognise; it wasn’t all about good things, it was about the consequences of those things as well. She had made her mother cry, and now that mattered far more to her than the fact that they had been found out and prevented from going dancing. There was a tight miserable pain inside Tilly’s chest, and with it a fear. Previously she had believed that whatever happened in her life to upset her – like when the Benson sisters at school had started lying in wait for her and making fun of her – her mother could and would make everything all right again. But that had been before she had seen her mother’s tears, before she had known that her mother was vulnerable.
The pain and guilt was too much for her. Throwing back the bedclothes, and trying not to shiver in the room’s chill, Tilly felt in the darkness with her feet for her slippers, burrowing her toes into their warmth in relief. She didn’t want to turn on the lamp in case she woke Agnes, but she was still able to retrieve her dressing gown from the post at the foot of the bed, quickly pulling it on and wrapping its cord round her. Her mother had been talking about making her and Agnes proper siren suits with hoods on them, to protect them from the cold should the air-raid siren go off and they had to spend the night in the Anderson shelter. Tilly had seen one of the suits in the window of Swan and Edgar. Bright red, its hood trimmed with swansdown, it had looked very warm and Christmassy, the pretty cosy image it portrayed very different from the reality of war rationing looming, and the increasing shortages of everything. All the best shops had their Christmas displays in their windows now: hampers with their lids thrown back to show what was inside in Fortnum and Mason; toys, of course, in Hamley’s; women’s clothes in the expensive dress shops in muted shades to tone with men’s uniforms. Christmas had always been such a special time at number 13. Her mother had made sure of that. Quietly and quickly Tilly made her way from her own bedroom to her mother’s.
Olive heard her bedroom door open. She had come to bed in the hope that sleep would stop her from brooding on the events of the evening, but sleep had proved to be impossible. Tonight, for the first time since she had been able to wrap her baby arms round her, Tilly had not kissed her good night. Olive had wept silently over that.
Tilly’s mother’s bedroom was filled with the familiar scents, which, blended together, became the scent that to Tilly was her mother: Pear’s soap, freshly ironed laundry, the smell of clean rooms and a warm kitchen, lavender polish, and baking – her mother’s scents. Tears of guilt and shame blurred Tilly’s eyes but she didn’t need to be able to see to find her way across the room.
‘Mum, are you awake?’ she asked hesitantly.
Olive turned to her daughter. ‘Yes, Tilly.’ She felt her bed depress under Tilly’s weight.
‘I’m sorry about what I said earlier, and about what I was going to do. It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have done.’
The wretchedness in Tilly’s voice tore at Olive’s heart. Sitting up in bed, she reached for her daughter and put her arms round her, her cheek resting on Tilly’s downbent head.
‘I’m sorry too, Tilly. Sorry that I haven’t treated you, trusted you, as I should.’
Her mother’s apology made Tilly feel even worse. Turning, she flung her arms round Olive and told her fiercely, ‘You don’t have anything to feel sorry for. It was me who . . . who lied.’
Stroking her hair back from Tilly’s forehead, Olive told her sadly, ‘I’ve been selfish, Tilly, trying to keep you as a little girl, when you aren’t. I never wanted to stop you having fun, I just wanted to protect you. War makes people anxious to take what happiness they can, Tilly, when they can, especially the young. When we think someone we care for might be snatched from us, and with them our future happiness, it makes us all do things and take risks we wouldn’t normally take. For young people that often means falling in love, being hurt.’
‘I just wanted to go out dancing, but you’re afraid that I might meet someone and fall in love and that they might be killed and then . . . I’d be like you were when Dad died. Oh, Mum . . .’
They held each other tightly.
‘Sally has offered to go with you and Agnes to the Palais, just to help you find your feet there the first time you go.’
‘You mean . . .’ Tilly swallowed hard. This generosity on the part of her mother was too much for her to bear. Fresh tears fell.
‘You’ll have to take care of Agnes, Tilly. She isn’t as used to thinking for herself as you are.’
‘Can I stay here with you tonight?’ Tilly asked.
Olive smiled in the darkness and drew back the bedcovers.
They were almost the last to leave the Palais and now, in the foggy darkness outside the dancehall, they stood facing one another on the pavement.
‘Next time,’ David told Dulcie, ‘I’ll take you somewhere a bit more exciting than this.’
So there was going to be a next time. A thrill of pleasure surged through Dulcie; not that she was going to let him see how she felt. Instead she demanded, ‘Who says there’s going to be a next time?’
‘Not who but what,’ David answered, ‘and this is what says there will be.’
When he cupped her face in both his hands and gently drew his thumbs along her cheekbones, gazing down into her eyes as he did so, Dulcie could only gaze back at him. She’d been kissed before but never like this, like she’d seen people kissing in films, and no cheeky fumbling with her clothes either. David was a true gentleman. And awfully good at kissing. The only thing that could make right now any better would be being able to boast to Lizzie about it, but of course she could never do that.
‘There’ll be no seeing me again after you get married to Lydia,’ Dulcie felt bound to warn him, but David merely laughed.
‘Giving Lydia a wedding ring isn’t going to stop me enjoying life, Dulcie.’
Deep down inside, Dulcie felt unexpectedly shocked. She knew that David didn’t love Lydia, but to hear him speak so casually and uncaring made her wonder how serious he could ever be about any girl.
‘It might not stop you enjoying life, but it will stop me from going out with you,’ Dulcie insisted.
David was frowning now. ‘If you’re trying to persuade me not to marry Lydia, then I should tell you—’
‘I’m not trying to persuade you to do anything,’ Dulcie defended herself heatedly, not letting him finish. ‘What I’m doing is telling you that I won’t cheapen myself by providing a bit of fun for a married man. I think more of myself than to do that, even if you don’t.’
David looked crestfallen. ‘I’m sorry, Dulcie,’ he said immediately. ‘I didn’t mean . . . That is, you know how it is with me and Lydia. She doesn’t want me, she just wants who I am. You and I, we’re two of a kind, I know it.’
‘We aren’t two of anything, and we aren’t going to be.’
She meant it, David could see, and part of him admired her for her determination, even whilst most of him wished that she was more malleable. He might not have spent much time with her, but there was a quality
