hummed happily to herself as she got on with her work. She couldn’t wait to tell Sally about her impending visitor.
Tilly didn’t get the chance to tell Sally about the naval officer until they were both back at number 13, Tilly positively bursting with delight when she came in to find Sally in the kitchen with her mother.
‘You’ll never guess what, Sally. A man came into the office today asking for you, and he’s coming round to see you tonight. At least, I think he is.’
Sally, who had been standing up, sank down into one of the kitchen chairs, the colour draining from her face, leaving her skin the colour of milk.
‘A man, you say? Did he give you his name?’
Tilly shook her head. She could see that something was wrong and that Sally looked upset. Conscience-stricken, she told her lamely, ‘He was ever so nice. Good-looking too. He said he was from Liverpool. I thought . . . I thought you’d be pleased to see an old friend.’
Somehow Sally managed to produce a wan smile although it was an effort. It wasn’t Tilly’s fault. Tilly was desperate to show her how grateful she was over her intervention with her mother with regard to the Hammersmith Palais visit. At Tilly’s age she would probably have done the same thing.
‘Oh, Tilly,’ Olive shook her head reproachfully, ‘you shouldn’t have given him Sally’s address without checking with Sally herself first.’
Callum. It had to be him. It couldn’t be anyone else. Sally felt acutely sick. There was no point in upbraiding poor Tilly, though. She was now looking distressed enough as it was.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve done the wrong thing,’ Tilly said, looking flustered and guilty.
‘No . . . it’s all right,’ Sally told her unsteadily, feeling obliged to explain, ‘Callum’s sister married my father after my own mother’s death.’
Olive’s breath escaped in an understanding sound of compassion whilst Tilly looked confused.
‘I left Liverpool because I . . . didn’t approve of the marriage. I dare say Callum hopes that time and distance have softened my feelings.’
‘You don’t have to see him,’ Olive told her. ‘I am quite willing to tell him that you don’t wish to, Sally.’
Sally was tempted to accept Olive’s offer. Seeing Callum was bound to be emotionally painful. But what if something had happened to her father? Anxiety speared through her.
‘No. It will be better if I see him. That way I can make it plain to him that I haven’t changed my mind.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Tilly looked even more guilty and miserable.
‘You weren’t to know, Tilly. Callum is a very decent and respectable man. There would be no reason for you to suspect him of anything unpleasant. He’s a schoolteacher.’
‘He was in uniform,’ Tilly blurted out. ‘Navy. An officer’s uniform, I thought.’
Sally disliked the reasons that her heart was bumping along the bottom of her ribcage even less than she liked the uncomfortable breathless feeling it was giving her. Callum meant nothing to her now. She didn’t care what danger he might put himself into.
‘When he comes, Sally, you can see him in the front room. You can be private in there, and I’m here if you should need me.’
Sally smiled her thanks to Olive, shaking her head when her landlady continued, ‘We’ll have tea now, I think. That way Sally’s visitor isn’t likely to arrive when we’re halfway through it.’
‘There’s no need to change things for me,’ Sally told Olive. ‘I’m really not hungry at all, I’m afraid.’
Upstairs in her bedroom she looked towards the window, covered with its blackout cloth, as the law decreed. When she had first moved to London she had been afraid that someone from home – her father, Callum or even Morag herself – might try to get in touch with her, but as the weeks had gone by she had begun to feel safer. Nothing could protect her from the pain of what had happened, but at least she had felt protected from fresh misery. Until now.
It was just gone seven thirty when Callum knocked on the door to number 13.
Unable to stay on her own in her room as she had intended, Sally had gone back downstairs to the kitchen where Olive had been putting the final coat of icing on her Christmas cake. Watching her, Sally had immediately been transported back to her childhood and her own mother’s kitchen. Tilly didn’t realise how lucky she was to have her mother, but at least Sally knew what it was to have a mother’s love, unlike poor Agnes, who was perched on a kitchen stool happily helping to cut out red berries and green Christmas trees from the marzipan to which green and red colouring had been added by Tilly as the two girls did their bit towards decorating the cake.
‘I’ll go,’ Olive announced when they all heard the door, putting down in a bowl of hot water the palette knife with which she had been smoothing the royal icing, then removing her apron before heading for the door.
Sally let her go. It was going to take all the emotional and mental strength she had to face Callum.
When Olive opened the door to Sally’s visitor, she felt very much as Tilly had done when she’d first seen him, liking his strong manly features and feeling reassured by his friendly smile. The uniform did its bit to establish him as someone to be trusted, of course. But then Sally had never said that he was someone who could not be trusted, and Olive could well understand why her lodger did not want to see him. She admired Sally’s love and devotion for her late mother and sympathised with her feelings.
Callum’s, ‘I’d like to see Sally if she’ll see me,’ received a small inclination of Olive’s head and a calm, ‘Yes. She is expecting you. If you’d like to come this way . . . ?’
He wasn’t wearing an overcoat, and since she wasn’t sure what the etiquette was with regard to the naval officer’s cap that he was carrying, she didn’t like to offer to relieve him of it.
She showed him into the front room, its gas fire hissing warmly and its green, fern-print curtains drawn over the blackout fabric to give the room an air of cosy warmth.
Olive was very proud of her front parlour. She had redecorated it herself, painting the walls cream, with the picture rail painted the same green as the curtain pelmet. A stylish stepped mirror hung over the fireplace. The linoleum was patterned to look like parquet flooring and over it was a cream, dark red and green patterned carpet. The dark green damask-covered three-piece suite had been a bargain because there’d been a small tear in one of the seat cushions, and on the glass and pale wood coffee table, which was Olive’s pride and joy, was a pretty crystal bowl that had caught her eye in an antique shop just off the Strand.
A radiogram in the same pale wood as the coffee table stood against the back wall behind the sofa, and Olive couldn’t help but give a very satisfied glance around her front room before telling Callum that Sally would be right with him and then whisking through the door.
When Olive opened the hall door into the back room, Sally was already getting up from her chair, her face set and tense.
‘I haven’t offered him a cup of tea or anything,’ Olive began
