The Heart of the Family. Annie Groves

find a barn or something to sleep in.’

      ‘Don’t be silly,’ Jean told her. She looked at Sam and then back at the twins. ‘We’ll be going to Wallasey, of course, to stay with your auntie Vi.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘No!’

      The twins spoke together, their words different but their horrified expressions identical.

      ‘Mum, you can’t mean that,’ Lou protested. ‘Auntie Vi doesn’t like us and we don’t like her. Well, we’re not going, are we, Sasha?’

      ‘That’s enough of that,’ Sam told them sternly. ‘You’re going and that’s an end to the matter.’

      Katie could tell that the twins knew he meant what he said. They subsided, still exchanging shocked looks.

      ‘When will we have to go?’ That was Sasha, her voice small and wobbling slightly.

      ‘Not until tomorrow,’ Jean told them quietly. ‘I’ll have to go over and see Vi tomorrow and … and arrange things with her first.’ She was looking at Sam now as though seeking help, but he wasn’t looking back at her.

      Katie had heard all about the relationship between the two families and she knew that it would be hard for Jean to lower her pride and ask her snobbish sister for help.

      Jean looked at Sam’s stiff back. The fact that he was prepared to let her go begging Vi for help said how afraid for them he really was. There had never been any love lost between Vi and Sam, and although she had never said so to Sam, in the early days of their courtship Vi had actually tried to persuade her to drop Sam. If she told him that now … But no, she must not do that. Sam was doing this for them, and he had been right when he’d said that she would never forgive herself if they stayed in Liverpool and something happened to the twins.

      Just as she would never forgive herself if anything happened to Luke or to Grace or to Sam himself, and she couldn’t get to them.

      It was a situation that thousands of families all over the country were facing, especially those living in the cities that Hitler was targeting. And what about the men fighting abroad – how must their mothers and wives feel?

      Jean squared her shoulders. ‘It won’t be as bad as you think,’ she told the twins.

      ‘No, it will be much worse,’ Lou muttered gloomily under her breath.

      Wallasey and Auntie Vi’s.

      Lou flung herself down on her bed with a grimace of disbelief. ‘I never thought Mum would make us go there.’

      ‘She’s going as well,’ Sasha reminded her. ‘And I’ll bet it’s Dad who has said we have to go. Did you see how red his ears went when Mum was telling us, and how he wouldn’t look at us?’

      ‘Well, what about Katie?’ Lou demanded. ‘I’ll bet she doesn’t really want to go and see her parents. She loves our Luke.’

      ‘She was saying the other day that she felt she should go and see them,’ Sasha felt bound to point out, adding firmly, ‘Look, Lou, we aren’t children any more, are we, and after what happened on Saturday, well, I just think that we shouldn’t make things hard for Mum, that’s all.’

      Sasha almost sounded as though she disapproved of what Lou had said. But that was impossible. Hadn’t they reassured one another that their closeness, their twinship, was more important than anything else? Once Lou would have known exactly what Sasha was feeling about anything, just as Sasha would have done her, and this feeling that she did not know what her twin was thinking was unfamiliar territory.

      ‘Sash?’

      Sasha looked at her twin.

      ‘It’s all right with me and you, isn’t it? I mean, I know there was … Well, I just want you to know that I don’t mind if you do still … Well, it was you Kieran liked best really, anyway.’

      Sasha jumped off her own bed and went to stand next to Lou’s, her hands on her hips, her round face flushed with angry colour.

      ‘How dare you say that, Louise Campion? We both said, didn’t we, that we were going to stick together from now on?’

      ‘Yes, but—’

      ‘So why are you keeping going on about a certain person who we agreed we’d never talk about again?’

      ‘There’s no need to get your hair off with me, Sasha. I was just meaning that if you did think about him, then I’d understand and you can say so.’

      Lou didn’t know how to say that she was afraid of losing her twin, and afraid too of the way things seemed to be changing, and not just things but they themselves.

      ‘I’d hate it if you and me was to end up like Mum and Auntie Vi,’ was all she could manage to say.

      The anger died out of Sasha’s face. Although traditionally it was always Lou, the younger of the two, who had taken the lead, just lately Sasha had started to feel older than her twin and as though it was up to her to take charge. Somehow, without knowing how, Sasha had started to recognise that for all her bravado Lou was more vulnerable than she was herself.

      She sat down next to Lou and told her firmly, ‘That will never happen to us, unless of course you keep going on about Kieran.’

      ‘But he liked you.’

      ‘No he didn’t, he just pretended he did so that we’d earn money for him with our dancing.’

      ‘But if he did really like you …’ Lou persisted.

      ‘Oh, stop it, Lou. I just want to forget about the whole thing.’ Sasha gave a fierce shudder, reminding Lou of exactly what her twin had been through when she had become trapped and they had both thought that she might die before help arrived.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘It’s all right,’ Sasha accepted her apology, before telling her, ‘I don’t want to go to Auntie Vi’s either, you know, but we have to think of Mum, Lou. Just think how awful it must be for her.’

      ‘What, you mean because she and Vi don’t get on?’

      ‘No, silly, because Luke and Grace and our dad will still be here.’

      Nearly midnight. The rhythmic tick of the kitchen clock made Jean’s heart thud with anxiety. When would they come tonight? Sam hadn’t been pleased when she had refused to leave for Wallasey this evening. But like she had told him, she and the twins could hardly descend on Vi without any warning.

      ‘Why not?’ he had wanted to know. ‘I’m sure she’d rather be a bit put out and see you safe than find out summat’s happened.’

      Not our Vi, Jean had thought. Vi didn’t like unplanned visitors, and she certainly wouldn’t put the welcome mat out for them. And besides, although she hadn’t said so to Sam, Jean wasn’t leaving Liverpool without first seeing Grace, even if she might not be able to see Luke. She could give Grace a message for him. And then there was Katie to think of. It was all very well Sam frightening her half to death by warning her about what might happen but arrangements still had to be made.

      It was no good, she couldn’t sit still any longer.

      ‘Katie, love, I think I’ll put the kettle on.’

      Jean got up. They were all ready in their shelter clothes, the twins and Katie in siren suits that Jean had made from some material that she and Katie had bought from a shop that sold off-cuts.

      Jean was making do with an old pair of Sam’s pyjamas that she had cut down.

      Kate wondered if she would manage to see Luke before she left. They’d sort of made plans to see one another on Saturday if Luke could snatch a couple of hours of compassionate leave. The CO at the barracks at Seacombe was good like that. Katie felt sorry for those men who did not live close enough for them to get home quickly to check that