‘Who are you going out with? Someone I know?’
‘Just a lad I met at the dance hall the night I got back. You won’t know him. He’s from out of town, only here for the festival week.’
‘All right,’ Bobby said, disappointed. ‘We can go another night. We’ve got the whole week.’
Lilian swung her legs off the bed. ‘I need to speak to Dad. You can write your letter to Charlie while I’m gone.’
‘I’m really not sure I ought to write to him, Lil. He’s practically a married man, after all.’
‘You ought to do something. Otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering “what if?”’
Bobby unpacked her case slowly while Lilian was out of the room, turning the problem over in her mind. If Charlie really was engaged, he must surely be in love with the girl. He wasn’t the type to settle for anything less than that, she was sure – unless, God forbid, Lilian was right and there was a more urgent reason for the hasty engagement. But it was true that if Bobby didn’t let him know how she was feeling, then theirs would forever feel like a story without an ending. If he intended to marry someone else then let him reject her decisively, so there would be no ‘what ifs’ about it.
‘Well? Did you write to him?’ Lilian asked when she came back in.
‘I’m not going to write a letter.’
‘Are you sure? It would drive me mad knowing I felt that way and doing nothing about it.’
‘I’m not going to do nothing either. I’m going to send him a telegram.’ Bobby showed her the scrap of paper on which she’d written her message to Charlie.
‘“Ask me again?”’ Lilian read. ‘You write for a living and that’s all you’ve got to say?’
‘It’s all I need to say. He knows how I feel. This tells him that I’ve changed my mind about marriage, and that if he asks me again, I’ll give him a different answer. But I’ve phrased it as a question because I’m not making any assumptions about whether he will ask again. It’s in Charlie’s hands now.’
‘Well, you know best.’ Lilian gave her a squeeze. ‘I hope it works out for you, little sister. I’d like to see you happy with him. He suits you.’
‘You’re right, it would have driven me mad not to at least let him know. I’ll take it to the telegraph office now.’
There was a sense of relief that came with sending the telegram, and a certain excitement too. Perhaps it had all been a misunderstanding and there was no engagement, or at least not a serious one. Perhaps she would receive a reply tomorrow – even today if Charlie sent a telegram in return. She had given Clara’s boarding house as her return address. And when Charlie came home on leave, she would be there waiting to give him the answer he’d always wanted from her…
On the way back to the boarding house, she stopped at a telephone box to phone Don at theCourieroffices and ask if the boys there would be free later, since her sister wasn’t available that night. The mills were closed but it was still a working day for the newspaper, which needed to get a new edition out on Thursday even in festival week. Tony and Freddie already had plans that evening, Don told her over the phone, but he would meet her in The Swan for a drink after work.
‘How is Joan?’ was the first thing Bobby asked him when they met in the pub later. Like all of the city’s drinking establishments during Bowling Tide, The Swan was thronged with people. However, they’d been lucky enough to find a small table to themselves.
‘I’d like to say she’s blooming, but she’s been as sick as a dog for the past three months,’ Don told her. ‘It was the same when she was having our Sal.’
Bobby smiled as she sipped her half-pint. ‘I hope you feel suitably guilty about it.’
‘I’ll be glad when it’s over and done with, for her sake. The quacks reckon the baby’s growing strong and healthy though, in spite of her age, so that’s a weight off my mind.’ He took out his pipe and started filling it with his favourite Tom Long tobacco. ‘How’s your old man doing these days?’
Bobby thought back to the evening meal they’d all shared at the boarding house. She’d been looking forward to eating together as a family again, but it had been rather a sober affair. Jake was still mourning the loss of his beloved Triumph motorcycle, Lilian had been uncharacteristically quiet, and her father, who had been in high spirits when they’d arrived, had seemed depressed for some reason too. It hadn’t exactly been what Bobby would call a holiday atmosphere. She wondered what Lilian had needed to speak to their dad about and if it could have anything to do with his sudden shift in mood.
‘All right, I think,’ she told Don. ‘Country living certainly agrees with him, and he barely touches whisky these days except as an aid to sleep – he drinks beer now instead, and not too much of it. He seemed quiet this evening though. Perhaps he’s missed the old place more than I thought.’
Don lit his pipe. ‘Or he’s already had enough of it. Wouldn’t blame him. Bloody hate Tide week, all these people everywhere.’
‘How’s Tony?’
‘Oh, don’t talk to me about that idle bugger,’ Don said, scowling. ‘You know, just when I thought he was experimenting with the concept of hard work for the first time in his career, just when he’d actually managed to impress me, he goes back to being pure, undiluted Tony Scott. He’s got another girl on the go to distract him, I suppose. I ought to have sacked that loafer when I took over the paper, but God help me, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’
‘How did that story of his work out – the big meat raffling racket he was working on exposing last time I came up? He reckoned it would make his name as a reporter.’
‘That’s what I’m talking about. He was all excited about it, said it was going to be the biggest thing we’d ever run and he had names, dates, everything, then the next minute he’s pulling it. Flat-out refused to let me read the thing or see his notes or anything. Chucked the whole lot in the fire and said we couldn’t print it because it would be a libel risk.’
Bobby frowned. ‘But it wouldn’t be, would it? He said he had some really strong evidence to back it up.’
‘What Tony says and the truth are not often the same thing, Bobby, as I’m sure you remember when you spent your days writing most of his copy for him.’ He glanced at her. ‘You changed your mind about coming back to us yet?’
