Then there were arms around me. I heard a voice say my name. At first I thought it was an angel, come to pluck me out of hell. And then I thought it was you, Emmy, waking me from a nightmare. I fell into those arms and I felt myself being lifted.
I opened my eyes to tell you I was afraid and I saw that I was not dreaming. You were not holding me there on the sofa while I pulled myself out of a tormented sleep. I was in Thea’s arms.
Where’s your mum? Where’s Emmy?she shouted as she carried me toward her house.
I could not answer her.
A boom split the air as another bomb fell not far away. Thea stumbled and then caught her balance against the door frame. She dashed with me through her front room and I remember all of her furniture was covered in white sheets. Then we were on her back step and I saw what Thea had been up to when the sirens went off. Her two cats and the four kittens, much larger now than they had been when we left for the countryside, were laid out on her back steps. They were lying so strangely still in the midst of all that chaos. I knew they were dead. She had gassed them with ether, Emmy. So that they wouldn’t starve on the streets as she and her mother evacuated to a relative’s home in Wales. I didn’t know that many London pet owners euthanized beloved pets that they couldn’t take with them when they fled the city. Thea and her mother were leaving London the next day. Her mother was already at a hotel near Paddington station. Thea had come back to the flat to take care of the cats so that her mother wouldn’t have to see. She had just finished her dreadful chore when the sirens began to scream and so did I.
I learned all of this from Granny much later. All I knew then as Thea ran with me to her Andy was that the kittens I had loved and played with and called special names were dead.
It was dark and clammy inside the shelter. Every time a bomb shook the earth, the Andy’s walls rumbled. Thea held mein her arms on a cot on the floor, rocking me back and forth while she sang Christmas carols. I don’t know why she did that. Granny said later it was because she didn’t have to concentrate on the words; they were just right there. Or maybe it was because Christmas carols made us think of presents, Father Christmas, peppermint, and Baby Jesus. Things that make us feel safe and loved and happy.
I don’t know how long the raid lasted. I just remember there being a moment when the bombs stopped and the booms outside were replaced with the wail of emergency-response vehicles. When we crawled out of the shelter, we saw that the world around us had become colorless except for the orange hue of hundreds of fires. Ash and dust swirled.
Thea steered me past the cats. Their lifeless bodies were peppered with bits of roofing tile.
She led me back to our flat, calling Mum’s name:Annie.
Julia, did your mum bring you back here from Gloucestershire?she asked as we stood in the living room.
I shook my head no.
How did you get back, sweetie? Did Emmy come with you?
I had no voice to tell her.
What are your foster parents’ names? Do you know where they live?
I thought of the idyllic world we had left just hours before, where everything was perfect except that Mum wasn’t there. I wanted to go back. I wanted to go back in time to that happy place before you left me. Before the bombs came. Before the dead cats.
Charlotte,I said. It was the only word I said for a long time.
Charlotte?Thea said.What’s her last name?
I couldn’t remember.
Sweetheart, where does Charlotte live?
I couldn’t remember where she lived, Emmy. I still can’t.
Thea took me by the hand into the kitchen.
Did you and Emmy write to your mum?she asked.
I might have nodded as Thea looked through Mum’s recent mail for a letter from us.
Does your mum keep important papers in a special place? Do you know where she’d put your billeting card?
I said nothing. A blanket of numbness was replacing the fear.
We went upstairs, crunching on glass that had been blown onto the steps. Thea went into Mum’s bedroom and opened her top bureau drawer. She looked inside and pulled out an envelope. Granny told me much later that Thea had thought she’d found a letter from us because she didn’t recognize the return address.
But it wasn’t a letter from you and me.
It was the letter Granny had written to Mum after Neville died. Thea read it while I leaned against her leg.
That was how I came to be with Gramps and Granny, Emmy.
