Where the Heart Is. Annie Groves

Luke’s letter until it was Christmas, hoping that saving it to read then would help to make up for his being so far away in Egypt, whilst she was here in Hampstead.

      Her small attic bedroom in the house where her parents were currently living with friends, now London was being heavily bombed, was freezing cold, and Katie thought longingly of the cosiness of her room in her fiancé, Luke’s, family home in Liverpool. She was missing the warmth and bustle of the Campion household already and she had only arrived here yesterday, she acknowledged guiltily. She felt under her pillow for Luke’s letter, her guilt dissipated by the heady warmth of her love and excitement as she retrieved her precious letter, and then reached out to switch on the bedside lamp.

      A tender smile curled her mouth as she traced her own name on the envelope. One day, when this awful war was over, she would be Mrs Luke Campion.

      Mrs Luke Campion.

      Quickly she opened her letter – from the side as she had been taught to do working for the Postal Censorship Office – her heart skipping a beat when she saw Luke’s signature at the bottom.

      Oh, Luke. Tenderly she pressed her lips to it, closing her eyes as she did so, as though somehow she could conjure up Luke himself, to put his strong arms around her, his dark head bent over her own, his warm lips on hers, kissing her.

      Oh, Luke …

      She mustn’t cry. After all, there were thousands of young women who, like her, were facing Christmas without the men they loved – some of them knowing that their men would never be coming back to hold them and kiss them.

      Katie’s hand shook slightly as she smoothed out the airmail letter and began to read.

      ‘Katie …’ Just Katie? Not even ‘Dear Katie’, never mind ‘Dearest’. But then Luke was on active service in the desert.

      Katie,

      I am writing to tell you that I wish to bring our engagement to an end.

      What? No! There must be some mistake.

      Frantically Katie read the cold matter-of-fact sentence again, and then a third time, her distress growing with each read, tears of shock and disbelief blurring her vision as she tried to read on.

      Through the good offices of ‘a concerned friend’ I have been warned that you have been seeing someone else – no doubt believing yourself safe from discovery with me out here in the desert.

      A concerned friend. Who? A horrible certainty, mixed with a dreadful sinking feeling, invaded her tummy. Carole. It had to be. But surely not; she knew how much Katie loved Luke. She and Carole had been such good pals, working together and Carole dating one of the men under Luke in his role as the unit’s corporal. But then Carole had got involved with an Irish boy they had met at the Grafton dance hall and her head had been turned by his attentions.

      Katie hadn’t deliberately got Carole into trouble when she had told their supervisor about these Irishmen asking so many questions, but the reality was that Carole had broken the Censorship Office rules of secrecy and she had been dismissed.

      She had blamed Katie for that, and had threatened retaliation. But to write lies to Luke about her …

      There’s no point in you writing to me saying that it isn’t true, as I won’t be opening your letter. I should have known something like this would happen. After all, I saw what you were like that time you flirted with that cyclist.

      The cold words almost leaped off the page like physical blows.

      ‘That’s not true,’ Katie protested aloud. ‘You know it wasn’t like that.’

      Luke’s jealousy had been the one flaw in their relationship and her happiness. Sometimes she had felt as though he almost wanted to find her out in some kind of betrayal. It had hurt her dreadfully that he didn’t trust her love for him.

      If we’re honest we did rather rush into things, and I dare say that without the war we’d have realised pretty quickly that we weren’t suited.

      The last thing a serving soldier needs is the worry of wondering if his girl is being unfaithful to him behind his back, and it seems to me that I shall be a good deal happier without that worry.

      Tears welled in Katie’s eyes and splashed down onto the letter, making the ink run. Surely if Luke had loved her as much as he had said he did he would never have been so unkind and hurtful. Instead he would have understood how much she loved him and that she would never ever so much as look at another man because of that.

      Before they had fallen out, Carole had told her that Andy, her boyfriend, had written to her that Cairo was filled with pretty girls. Perhaps Luke was glad of an excuse to break off their engagement. Perhaps in fact he had already met someone else …

      A savage pain gripped her, tightening her chest and trapping her breath.

      I am writing to my parents to tell them that our engagement is over, although for their sake, especially my mother’s, I don’t intend to tell them what you have done. I shall simply say that we have grown apart and the engagement is over.

      Luke

      As Katie tried to gulp back her tears the light from the lamp shone on the engagement ring Luke had given her just before he had been posted overseas.

      That had been such a special day, filled with sunshine and happiness. She had felt so happy, so proud, so delighted, not just that she was going to be his wife but that she was going to be a member of the family she had come to love so much.

      Jean, Luke’s mother; Sam, his father; his sister, Grace, now married to Seb who was ostensibly with the RAF but working for the intelligence agency known as the Y Section, and then the twins, Lou and Sasha, had all welcomed her so warmly into their family and she had felt so at home there, so safe and protected and loved.

      She hadn’t just lost Luke, Katie recognised, she had lost them as well.

      The diamonds in her engagement ring seemed to quiver beneath her tears. Her fingers trembled as she slipped it off and put it in the envelope that had contained Luke’s letter.

      From now on, for her, no matter how long she lived, Christmas Day would always be the day she remembered that Luke had destroyed their love and broken her heart.

ONE

      Mid-February 1942

      Lou Campion eased her regulation WAAF duffel bag off the luggage rack. She had packed everything so carefully, warned by the more experienced girls of what she could expect if she didn’t, but still somehow or other she had ended up with the sharp edge of one shoe catching in the net as she tried to roll the bag clear.

      The February afternoon was already fading into dusk, the seemingly endless frost-rimed flat fields the train had carried them through on the long journey from Crewe now wreathed in fog. Lou was tired and hungry and feeling very sorry for herself, already missing the familiarity of Wilmslow where she had done her initial ‘square bashing’ training along with dozens of other new recruits.

      They were a jolly crowd, even if she had been teased at first for her naïvety when they had found out that she had joined up with dreams of learning to fly.

      ‘Have you heard this?’ one of the girls, a chirpy cockney who seemed to know everything, had asked the others. ‘Lou here reckons she’s going to learn to fly. No, love, what the RAF wants you for is to mend the planes, not fly them.’

      Lou remembered how she had gone bright red with discomfort when the other girl burst out laughing.

      ‘You’ve got a lot to learn and no mistake,’ the girl had continued. ‘The only flying you’ll be doing is off the end of the sergeant’s boot on your backside if she gets to hear what you’ve just said. Hates women pilots, the sarge does. Says they shouldn’t be allowed. See, the thing is, it’s only them rich posh types in ATA that get to do that;