Her mother was down the stairs and reaching for her handbag where she had dropped it at the front door when Emmy reached for her.
“Mum, please! Wait.”
Her mother turned to face Emmy.
“Please, Mum. Tell me where you’re going.”
Mum looked at her for a moment, studying her daughter’s face as if seeing it for the first time in a long while. “I am going to get help.”
It made Emmy sick to think she was going to whomever she was selling her body to; she was sure that was where her mum was headed. Emmy had brought her to this moment. It was because of her that Mum’s options for finding Julia had been reduced to this.
“Mum, don’t go,” Emmy pleaded.
“I have to.”
Then, from some crazed part of her, Emmy tossed out an offer that scared her breathless the second she uttered it, not only because it was so terrible, but because she was ready to make good on it. “Take me with you. I’ll do... I’ll do whatever it is you have to do. I’ll do it. This is all my fault.”
Mum’s features softened into a look Emmy hadn’t seen since Neville first came into her life to stay. Julia was a baby, and Mum was happy then. She reached out to touch Emmy’s face, cupping her fingers gently under her daughter’s chin. “No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is! It is. Let me do what you have to do.”
She smiled, dropped her hand, and looked away. A mirthless laugh escaped her. “Oh, Em. You’re not like me. Deep down I’ve always known it. You’re not like me. This is my doing. I will fix it.”
When she turned back to look at Emmy, her eyes were glistening. “Find something to cover the windows.”
“Mum—”
“Stay here. Watch for your sister. Don’t go outside after dark. It’s not safe.”
Before Emmy could say another word, her mother stepped outside into the chaos of their broken street and she watched her walk away, a beautiful woman in a heather gray dress with whispers of floral scent trailing after her.
Twenty-one
AFTERMum left, Emmy busied herself with looking for something to cover the windows in the front of the flat. Geraldine saw her poking about the ruins across the street for larger pieces of wood and brought over her last piece of plywood. She helped Emmy cover the front window downstairs, the biggest of the three that had shattered. And she let Emmy borrow her hammer and nails so that Emmy could cover the empty window frame in Mum’s upstairs room, and the little one upstairs in the privy.
Emmy attempted to return the hammer but Geraldine asked her if she and Mum were staying that night at the flat. When Emmy nodded, she said, “You know there’s no electricity, no gas, no running water?”
“Julia might come home.”
“Does your mother keep a gun?”
Emmy shook her head, unable to reason why her neighbor was asking that.
“Hang on to the hammer, then.”
She watched Geraldine trudge off with one suitcase to who knew where, the rest of her worldly belongings as secure as she could make them.
Back inside the flat, Emmy swept up the shards of glass, shook out all the sofa pillows, and waited for Mum.
At dusk she was still not back.
Emmy found half a package of biscuits and another of sardines and ate them.
Still Mum was not back.
She went upstairs to the room she shared with Julia, grabbed the coverlet and pillow from her bed, and took them downstairs. She arranged herself on the sofa so that she would hear if anyone came to the front door. The room quickly became inky black as the sun set and whatever residual light that crept in through the boards over the windows disappeared. She pulled the blanket up under her chin and clutched Geraldine’s hammer. Minutes later, the air raid sirens began to wail, and the drone of planes overhead rumbled outside. Emmy grabbed the blanket and hammer, and headed for Thea’s, pulling open the broken front door and running through the kitchen. When she flung open the back door, Emmy saw that Thea’s cats lay dead on the back step, stretched out as if they had been arranged there by Death itself. Emmy grimaced as she stepped over the bodies and crawled inside the Anderson shelter. Emmy yanked the door closed and scooted as far back as she could in the pitch black of the damp shelter, knocking over a box of metal items that skittered across the dirt floor. The ground beneath her knees rocked as somewhere nearby a bomb connected with its target, and a spray of dirt fell on her.
“Stop! Stop it!” Emmy yelled, pressing her hand to her ears, while fear coursed through her veins.
