In wonder, we looked around the garden, hearing shouts from other houses as people hurried to their shelters.
A car went by, grabbing my attention, and I looked along the side return next to the house and into the street. There, on the other side of the road, was Jackson. At least I thought it was Jackson, standing stock-still on the pavement, looking up at our house. I gasped. But then a cloud covered the moon and the garden went dark. And when the cloud moved away again, there was no one there. Perhaps I’d been imagining it.
The distant boom of the anti-aircraft gun, which was only a couple of miles away, told us the planes were approaching. Then, from overhead, we heard them. Louder than they’d ever been so far. As one, we all turned and looked up, to see them coming from the south, in awful, sinister formation.
‘We need to get into the shelter,’ Mrs Gold said. She sounded rattled, which was unusual. She set off down the garden, and Nelly and I followed.
The plane engines were louder now, and Nelly grabbed my arm in fright as we heard the whistle that meant a bomb had dropped.
‘The railway line will be shining in the moonlight,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be so easy for them tonight.’
‘Inside,’ Mrs Gold said briskly. She yanked open the door of the shelter and went down the few stairs and we followed. It was freezing inside and smelled dank and damp. I thought that for as long as I lived, if this war ever ended, I would never again go underground. No tube trains. No houses with cellars. I would stay above ground in the fresh air.
Mrs Gold lit the lamp and we blinked in the dim light. I sat down on one of the narrow beds. It was so early – we would be here for hours. I wondered if it had been Jackson I’d seen outside the house, and if it was, where he was now. Home safely, I hoped. Though I didn’t like him I didn’t wish him ill.
Another crash made us all jump.
‘Blast,’ Nelly said, going through her pile of entertainment. ‘I don’t have the poetry book Percy bought me. I definitely picked it up, it was on top of everything else.’
‘Perhaps you dropped it?’ I said, privately thinking she’d read those poems a million times already and surely she knew them all off by heart by now?
Nelly clutched her chest. ‘I stumbled when we were in the garden,’ she said. ‘When that cloud covered the moon for a moment, I lost my footing. Maybe I dropped it then?’
‘Oh well,’ said Mrs Gold. ‘It’ll still be there in the morning. Who fancies a game of gin rummy?’
‘I’d rather have a gin,’ said Nelly gloomily. She tilted her head, listening to the planes overhead. ‘I’ll just go and have a quick look. It’ll be on the path, I’m sure.’
‘Nell, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ I said.
‘It’s fine, Elsie.’ She tutted at me, and I looked at Mrs Gold, who shrugged her shoulders as if to say “what can you do?”
Nelly pushed open the door and went up the two steps to the garden. ‘God,’ she said. ‘Look at this.’
‘What is it?’ I leaned out of the entrance to see what she wastalking about and gasped as I saw the stream of planes overhead. The engines were deafening and I thought about the people in the East End, knowing they were coming – probably hearing them already – and bracing themselves for the destruction to come. ‘Maybe we should go to the hospital,’ I said, to myself really. ‘We’ll be needed.’
‘Not now. It’s not safe.’ Mrs Gold had squeezed in next to me and was looking up at the sky, white-faced. She raised her voice over the sound of the planes and shouted: ‘Come on, Nelly, come back.’
Nelly’s book was lying on the path, quite close to the house, its white cover gleaming in the moonlight.
Nelly called something over her shoulder but I couldn’t hear her properly. The planes overhead were even louder now, their engines roaring. They were so low I wanted to duck down and cover my head with my arms.
‘Nelly, come back,’ I yelled, but I knew she couldn’t hear us.
She ran along the path, scooped up the book, and turned back to us, holding it high in triumph. There was a whistling sound from overhead and an enormous, blinding flash. It felt, for a second, as though all the air had been sucked from where we stood, with a whooshing sensation. Everything was silent and the world slowed down, and then it rushed back at me, with a horrifying roar and a blast of hot air that was so powerful it knocked me off my feet and sent me flying into the back of the Anderson shelter.
And then everything went dark.
*
I was dazed for a moment, not completely sure what had happened as I heard the bangs and thuds around me. But then the horror engulfed me again and I struggled to my feet.
‘Nelly,’ I gasped.
Mrs Gold was getting up too. She had blood trickling down her face. She put her hand to her forehead and then glanced at her fingers, dark with sticky liquid, and she looked at me with a confused frown. I knew I should help her, but …
‘Nelly,’ I said again.
Like a cloud passing from the sun, Mrs Gold’s bewildered expression cleared.
