Lil drew back from the hug to blow her nose. ‘I’m all right, honestly. It’s only the baby making a mess of my emotions. I really should be grateful I’ve had as much good luck as I have.’
Bobby raised an eyebrow. ‘Goodluck? I’d say you’ve had about the worst luck there is.’
‘Not compared to some girls. Did I ever tell you about Meg Woods, who I shared a billet with when I was training?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She was only twenty: good-natured, very pretty. She was married to a lad who was with the BEF at Dunkirk – not one of those lucky enough to get back, but still, lucky enough to be among the captured rather than the killed. He’s been in a POW camp since June 1940.’ Lilian laughed softly. ‘So there was no way out for Meg when she found herself in a delicate condition over a year later.’
‘She was expecting a baby?’
Lilian nodded. ‘Poor kid. She truly loved her husband, but she was lonely – lonely and afraid for the future. And now what’s her poor husband got to come home to? It feels like a sin to be crying for my own selfish sake, when I’m lucky enough to have a father for my little one.’ She winced, and then smiled. ‘Here. Feel this.’
She took Bobby’s hand and placed it on her lightly swollen stomach. Bobby experienced a thrill when she felt something jerk almost imperceptibly under her palm.
‘Oh!’ She flashed her sister a look of delight. ‘He kicked me!’
‘Yes, he just started moving yesterday. He’s an early kicker, the doctor said when I saw him this morning, which is a good sign all is as it should be. Seems he’s going to be a fighter, just like his mother.’
Bobby kept her hand there, feeling the tiny twitches as Lilian’s baby shifted inside her. It hadn’t seemed quite real until she had felt that. It triggered something in her – a sort of visceral joy atthe indomitable nature of life, and excitement for the arrival of this little person who would soon belong to them.
The feeling faded, however, as she looked up at her sister’s drawn features and tear-stained cheeks.
‘You didn’t have to come all this way just to see me,’ Lil said. ‘What were you going to do, try to talk me out of it? You know it has to happen.’
‘I don’t know. I just wanted to see you before you went ahead with it.’ Bobby withdrew her hand from her sister’s stomach. The baby was still now, sleeping perhaps, oblivious to the storm his little presence had created in the world outside. ‘Besides, I didn’t come only to see you. I’ve to be at a recruiting centre in an hour for a medical.’
Lilian frowned. ‘You didn’t join up? I thought nothing could drag you away from that little magazine.’
‘I was called up – that is, I will be, once they’ve satisfied themselves I’m healthy. I don’t know where I’m to be sent.’
‘Oh.’
Lilian was silent, frowning down at the tatty olive carpet.
‘What’s wrong?’ Bobby asked.
‘Nothing, just…’ She sighed. ‘I guess I was still clinging to that daydream, that if I couldn’t make things work with Tony there’d be my little sister, waiting with open arms. I know it’s foolish. You’ve got your hands full with Dad, and besides, you’ll be married yourself soon enough. But as long as I knew I could run to you if I ever had need of an escape, it felt like I wasn’t completely alone, you know? That I’d always have somewhere I could call home.’
Bobby remembered how she had stood at the door of theCourier, thinking about how everyone needed a haven: something unchanging and stable in a chaotic world.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’
Lilian smiled. ‘I’m a selfish mare, I suppose. It never occurred to me you might be somewhere I couldn’t get at you.’
‘Oh, love.’ Bobby put an arm around her. ‘I will always be there for you. If Tony doesn’t shape up, you write to me and I’ll… I don’t know. I’ll work something out. I don’t want you to feel you’re going into this alone.’
‘What about Dad?’
Bobby sighed. ‘Yes, that’s the other worry. He’s doing well at the moment, but you know as well as I do that can change pretty quickly if something happens to derail him. Mary’s said she’ll keep a close eye on him, but it’s not the same as having one of us there. She doesn’t know what it’s like in the really dark times.’
‘I wish I could be there,’ Lil said quietly. ‘Not that he’d want me now, I suppose. Do you have to go?’
‘I can apply for postponement, but I can’t decide if I ought to. When I think about Dad, and that you might need me, I feel like it’s my duty to fight call-up any way I can. But then I watch the newsreels, see all these terrible things occurring, and I feel selfish for caring only about what’s happening on my own hearth.’ She sighed. ‘Charlie thinks I ought to go. It’s hard to argue when he’s putting his life on the line to win this thing.’
‘I see what you mean.’ Lilian patted Bobby’s knee. ‘Well, don’t worry about me,’ she said, with sudden brightness. ‘Tony will look after me – he’s sworn he will. You do what you have to, our Bobby.’
Bobby took her sister’s hand to give it a squeeze. ‘Lil, you don’t have to go through with this. There are other ways.’
