The woman nodded; she looked as though she was about to buckle. Adela gently took her baby from her, and she crumpled into Joyce’s arms like a deflated paper bag. Joyce held her tight, feeling the trauma coming off her in waves.
Eventually, they drew away from each other.
‘I need to get my children out of here,’ she rasped.
‘Of course,’ Joyce replied.
The woman and her children rode up front with Joyce, and she stared out of the van window.
‘They’ll cover this up,’ Jean said eventually. ‘But I’ll never forget the sights I saw.’
When they pulled up at the council offices, she turned to Joyce. ‘It’s you I have to thank for being alive.’
‘How so?’ Joyce asked.
‘After you left, my son started crying again. I came looking for you, I wanted to see if I could borrowPeter Panto read to him, so we were outside by the gates when the bomb hit.’
Joyce breathed out slowly and squeezed her arm. ‘You go and get your little ’uns to safety.’
She hopped down and opened up the library doors, grabbing a book from inside.
‘Here, take it for the journey.’ She placed the book in Jean’s hands. The woman looked at the dog-eared copy ofPeter Pan. ‘But it’s a library book. I can’t guarantee when I’ll get it back to you.’
‘It’s a gift,’ she replied.
The woman looked close to tears at the gesture. And then she was gone, hurrying her children towards a large coach waiting outside the council offices. The encounter had been like looking into the abyss and seeing a small, beautiful glimmer of hope. They had survived where hundreds of others hadn’t.
Joyce turned to Adela. ‘That’s enough for one day for you,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m taking you back to Swiss Cottage to rest. I’ll drive.’
For once, Adela didn’t put up an argument, and allowed Joyce to drive her slowly back to Swiss Cottage underground station. She clambered out, instinctively clutching her belly. This was a secret that couldn’t be hushed up for all that much longer.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ Adela asked.
‘Not yet; there’s someone I need to see.’
Joyce drove back to the bombsite as fast as she dared, ruminating on the woman she’d become this past four months. She’d never broken a single rule in her life; now here she was, misappropriating council vehicles, giving away library books. In a stroke, the Blitz was stripping away all the old formalities and societal codes that governed life. She parked and jumped down, brushing off the brick dust that smeared her rumpled old clothing. Her second life was beginning right here; now she truly realised the fragility of the one life she’d been blessed with.
She spotted him in the thick of things, helping to heave a giant steel girder. She watched him work with a pang of love and admiration.
Twenty minutes later, he turned and spotted her.
There were no words. They crashed into one another, gripping each other tight. He held her so close, she felt his tears soak her hair.
‘I tried, Joyce. I tried...’ he wept. ‘But I failed ’em.’
She pulled back and gripped his face.
‘Now, you listen here, Harry Harding. No one works harder than you. This atrocity is not of your doing. You tried. Dore tried.’
He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and looked back at her, eyes hooded with regret. ‘I did try. I went up the council offices four times in total, told ’em there was hundreds of folk who urgently needed transporting out. On the last occasion, they told me the coaches had already left. By the time I got back it was too late...’ His voice turned to dust as tears slid silently down his cheeks. ‘Too late.’
‘But what happened to the coaches?’
‘They went to Camden Town instead of Canning Town. By mistake.’
The dreadful truth hung between them.
‘All those children, Joyce.’
