Had she done something wrong?
It was Grace who’d initiated that unexpected kiss last night, not her. Yet now she was behaving as though she blamed Caroline for it. Hated her, even. Her eyes filling with tears, Caroline bent her head. It hurt to breathe and everything inside was aching. She didn’t know how she could possibly bear to go on …
Hearing Lily and Morris on their way downstairs, she wiped a quick hand across her eyes. There would only be awkward questions if anyone saw her crying.
Unhappily, she trailed into the kitchen. Lily, who’d come downstairs with an armful of Christmas presents, was chatting to Grace about the weather, while Morris played excitedly with his Christmas stocking.
Lily turned with a smile on seeing Caroline. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said. ‘I was just telling Grace, I spoke to oneof our neighbours earlier. She came by with a jar of home-made chutney for Christmas lunch while I was out feeding the chickens. Anyway, her brother’s a driver on the buses, and he says they should be running again from the day after Boxing Day. They’re not expecting much more snow this week, and the road to Porthcurno will likely be passable by then.’
‘That’s excellent news.’ Caroline heard a tell-tale tremor in her voice and could have kicked herself. She added swiftly, ‘I wanted to thank you again for taking us in. It was very kind of you.’
‘Nonsense, we were glad to have you.’ Lily studied her thoughtfully. ‘You look tired … I hope the bed was comfortable and not too much of a squeeze.’
‘Oh, we didn’t notice, honestly. Too exhausted.’ Grace came forward to help Morris retrieve his Christmas orange, which had rolled under the kitchen table. ‘Itwasa tight squeeze, though. Last time I slept in a bed that small, I was a baby.’ But she was grinning as she straightened. ‘No, I’m only pulling your leg. It was cosy, wasn’t it, Caroline?’
Her cheeks burning, Caroline managed to stutter, ‘Very c-cosy, yes.’
Thankfully, Lily had bent over her son and so didn’t see her embarrassment. ‘It’s called an orange, Morris,’ she was saying. ‘It came on a ship across the ocean, just in time for Santa to pop it in your Christmas stocking. Mmm, delicious! I haven’t smelt an orange in years.’
That night, Grace slept on the floor in a makeshift heap of blankets. Caroline climbed into bed without comment and lay there shivering, her thoughts whirling until she fell intoa troubled sleep. Grace had never once mentioned their kiss or shown her any special attention, leaving Caroline miserable and racking her brains to understand what had gone wrong. And Boxing Day was no better, with Grace still determinedly sleeping on the floor. They might as well have been polite strangers sharing the same room.
Returning by bus to Porthcurno a few days after Christmas, they found a GPO van in the yard and a man in uniform halfway up a newly sunk telegraph pole, who gave them a wink and made a cheeky remark as the girls passed underneath, which they quite rightly ignored.
Hearing the dogs bark, Tilly ran out to greet them with the exciting news that a telephone was being installed at the farm. ‘Isn’t it a smashing idea? This means I’ll be able to telephone home, as my father had a telephone line put in last year to help with his business.’
When Mrs Newton came back from the shop that evening, she and Violet tried the telephone for the first time, ringing first Lily and then Alice, with much laughter and festive greetings, until Joe grumbled about call costs. Then Alice’s father, Mr Fisher, rang them back while everyone crowded curiously into the snug, where the receiver had been installed … but only so they could hear what it would sound like to have the telephone ring.
‘Goodness, that’s loud,’ Mrs Postbridge exclaimed, clapping her hands over her ears.
Over dinner, Mrs Newton told Caroline about her soup-and-sandwiches social, which had gone down very well in the village. In return, Caroline had felt driven to explain why she’d left her family without even spending Christmas with them, stammering and blushing throughout the difficultstory, and had been reassured by hugs and exclamations of support from both Tilly and Mrs Postbridge. Mrs Newton had even called her ‘a very brave girl’, for standing up to her father.
Caroline didn’t feel particularly brave. In fact, she felt more like a coward, too scared to ask Grace why she was acting as though nothing had happened between them. But she was terrified Grace might declare that what they’d done was disgusting and unnatural, and that she wanted nothing more to do with her.
That fear left her silent, unable even to meet Grace’s eyes across the dinner table. But she kept remembering the kiss they’d shared, convinced that she would never again in her life experience such a breathtaking moment.
But over the following weeks, it seemed like Grace’s sudden chill spread outwards, as heavy snow blocked the roads and plummeting temperatures left everything under a deep freeze. Slowly, the rations dwindled, while the livestock began to perish in the cold, and still Grace would not speak to her beyond clipped, stilted exchanges about tasks that needed doing on the farm.
Everything was so miserable, Caroline thought one night with a groan, throwing herself down on the bed and burying her face in the covers. There was no promise of light on the horizon. Only the relentless darkness of a winter that refused to end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sheila was blissfully deep in the Land of Nod when someone banged on her bedroom door, and she heard Violet call, ‘Mum! Get up, quick! There’s someone on the telephone, asking for you.’
Befuddled, Sheila lay blinking at the darkness for a few seconds, still surfacing from a strange dream where she’d been chasing a chicken around and around the kitchen table … A telephone call? For her?
‘You’d better not be pulling my leg, Violet Postbridge,’ she muttered, throwing back the bedcovers and stumbling into her slippers and dressing gown, the room still dark. ‘Gawd, it ain’t even light yet. What’s the blessed time?’
‘It’s nearly eight o’clock in the morning, Mum. We let you sleep late because you looked so worn out last night after spending all evening on the yearly accounts.’ Violet looked at her with a worried frown when she emerged. ‘You’d best hurry, though. It’s a posh-sounding man on the phone, and he won’t wait forever.’
‘A posh-sounding man?’ Sheila stared at her. ‘Do you mean Bernie?’
‘No, a Mr Chilcott. And he sounds young. I don’t have a clue who he is or what he wants. He said it was urgent, but he’d only speak to you.’
‘Urgent, my … my foot,’ Sheila exclaimed, gripping the banister as she made her slow way downstairs, her joints always a little stiff after she’d been sleeping. ‘I don’t think I like telephones. And I don’t appreciate being hurried when I’ve just woken up. So if you wouldn’t mind not badgering me …’
Violet tutted but said nothing more, following in silence.
Downstairs, Sheila found Joe in the snug, standing next to the telephone table. He held out the receiver to her with a baffled look. ‘It’s someone from the government for you,’ he hissed. ‘Says he’s in Whitehall.’
