He should have come on Sunday, her mum was saying, they could have given him a decent cuppa. Then she was on the swaybacked davenport, holding a cup of hot water that smelt of tea-they could change the tea leaves only once a week, and this was Friday, she thought irrelevantly. Hear Roger’s small, husky voice warm in her ear, saying ‘Mummy? Mummy?’ in confusion. Heard the man’s name, Captain Randall, Frank Randall. She could hear, though-hear her mum rush through from the kitchen, slippers slapping in her haste, voice raised in agitation. Her vision sparkled at the edges, and the stranger’s face swam above her, blurred with concern. He hadn’t been killed, he’d been lost somehow, maybe captured, and now they’d found hi-Then she saw the small box in the soldier’s hand and her legs gave way under her. She tried frantically to damp it down, deny it, the hope that had sprung up like a struck match. ‘Yes?’ She couldn’t help the leap of her heart, the clench of her stomach. ‘Mrs MacKenzie?’ The man who stood at the door of her mother’s flat was tall, a dark silhouette in the dimness of the hall, but she knew at once he was a soldier. She was just undoing her garter, thinking that she’d have to start using leg-tan like Maisie, drawing a careful seam up the back of each leg with an eyebrow pencil, when there came a knock at the door.
She noticed with dismay the hole in the heel of her stocking, though. Just time to sit down for what seemed the first time in days, and take off her high-heeled shoes, relief washing over her feet like seawater when the tide comes in.
0 kommentar(er)
