Across the Mersey. Annie Groves

that she was covering him in lipstick.

      ‘Seb, Charlie is taking you and Grace in his car. Grace can sit in the back so you’ll have plenty of room for your crutches. Alan, come on, darling. I dare say that everyone will be waiting for us to arrive.’ She gave a tinkling little laugh. ‘It’s so embarrassing, but everyone seems to take their lead from me and Alan. I suppose it’s flattering really.’

      ‘And entirely natural,’ Grace heard her auntie Vi saying firmly.

      ‘I’m really sorry that you’ve been forced to travel with us, instead of with your cousin,’ Grace apologised to Seb.

      ‘I’m not,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘In actual fact, Alan isn’t my cousin. Our relationship is rather more tenuous than that. It’s very good of his parents to put me up, though, whilst I wait for the medics to pronounce me fit for service. With any luck I should be off their hands by this time next week and back with my unit.’

      They had reached Charlie’s car, and Seb opened the door and told her cheerfully, ‘There’s no need for you to risk creasing your outfit clambering into the back. I’ll sit there.’

      ‘Oh, no, you mustn’t,’ Grace protested, but it was too late. Seb was already settling himself in the back of the car.

      ‘This is going to be such a wonderful evening,’ Bella told Alan, hanging on to his arm possessively as they walked from his car to the Tennis Club entrance. Through the open double doors it was possible to see into the square hallway, which was decorated with bunting in the Tennis Club colours and cleverly cut-out paper streamers of tennis racquets and balls. On a table underneath the central light stood an impressive floral arrangement provided by those mothers who were on the roster for the church flowers, the flowers in shades of red, white and blue, but Bella wasn’t particularly interested in the effort the Social Committee had made to strike a cheery yet patriotic note in the décor for the dance. After all, she had far more important things on her mind than a few paper streamers and some flowers.

      She breathed a deep sigh, keeping a firm hold on Alan as they went inside, whispering softly to him, ‘When we’re married and our children are growing up I shall tell them about tonight and how special it was.’

      ‘Now look here, Bella—’ Alan began grimly.

      But Bella pretended not to be aware of what he was saying, exclaiming instead, ‘Goodness, look over there at Trixie, queuing to get in. What an awful fright she looks, doesn’t she? Poor girl. I really must give her a few tips about how to make the best of herself. Not that she’s got much to make the best of, mind you. Did you tell your parents that mine want them to come over to supper tomorrow? Daddy is getting awfully father-like about young men who take liberties, and the fact that you haven’t spoken to him yet,’ she told Alan archly, ‘but there’s no need for you to worry. He’s a pussycat really. Wasn’t I clever inviting my cousin along for Seb, so that we could be on our own?’

      ‘What exactly happened to your leg, or is it something you’d rather not talk about?’ Grace asked Seb with genuine interest, as they walked towards the Tennis Club together.

      Although he had made light of it she was pretty sure that Seb had been uncomfortable in the back of the car, which was why she was deliberately walking slowly, letting others overtake them to join what was now a small queue waiting to get into the Club. Charlie, too impatient to wait for them, had gone ahead, and had already disappeared inside the building, following Bella and Alan, who had gone inside before the queue had formed.

      ‘On the contrary, I’d adore talking about it, especially to pretty girls,’ Seb grinned. ‘Or at least I would if the truth wasn’t so very dull. I broke it on a training exercise,’ he told Grace, bending down to whisper in her ear, ‘but normally I tell people that I was engaged on a highly secret mission that I’m sworn not to talk about.’

      Grace giggled. She was enjoying herself more with every minute she spent in Seb’s company. She felt as comfortable with him as though she had known him all her life but at the same time something about the way he looked at her and the sound of his voice gave her a deliciously fizzy sensation inside her stomach that made her feel giddy and heady with excitement and happiness.

      ‘What kind of break was it? I’m going to be training as a nurse soon, you see,’ she explained when he gave her a quizzical look, ‘so …’

      ‘So naturally you find my leg utterly fascinating,’ he agreed so straight-faced that it took Grace a handful of seconds to realise he was teasing her again and she burst out laughing.

      ‘You’re a dreadful tease,’ she chided him, mock severely, ‘and from now on I shan’t take a single word that you say seriously.’

      ‘Not even if I were to tell you that you are the most enchanting girl I have ever met?’

      Grace stared at him, the colour coming and going in her face, her eyes wide with shyness and confusion. She wasn’t used to men like Seb and she certainly wasn’t used to them flirting with her.

      Her parents were very careful and watchful, and normally the only boys with whom she had any social contact were those she had known since childhood. Seb wasn’t just a boy, though, was he, she acknowledged. He was all grown up and a man. Her heart gave a flurry of fast beats.

      Grace might not be very experienced but she had a good deal of common sense, so once her heart had returned to its normal beat she responded firmly, ‘Especially not if you were to tell me that. Is it the military hospital you have to go to about your leg?’

      She wasn’t aware of the rueful look Seb gave her as he looked down at the top of her head.

      When he had been informed by Bella that her cousin would be his date for the evening, he had assumed she would be a young woman very much in Bella’s own mould and had resigned himself to an evening of boredom, fending off the unwanted overcoy approaches of the kind of girl he most disliked.

      Grace, though, was the complete antithesis of her manipulative little baggage of a cousin, and Seb recognised that she had no idea just how enchanting she was or how very sweet he found her. Which was just as well, and the way it must stay. It would be all too easy to enjoy the sympathy of a girl as sweet as this one, and they had all been warned about the dangers of doing that.

      In fact, there were an awful lot of things he and the young men who had been recruited with him had been warned against saying and doing, Seb reflected as he drew Grace gently to one side and reached into his pocket, saying ruefully, ‘What an idiot I am. I nearly forgot this,’ as he produced a delicate cream-flowered corsage. ‘Shall I pin it on for you?’

      Grace struggled between the warnings her mother had given her about not allowing young men to adopt overfamiliar behaviour towards her because of what it might ultimately lead to, and her own confusing sweet thrill of pleasure at the thought of accepting Seb’s offer, before saying recklessly, ‘Yes, please, if you wouldn’t mind.’

      Seb, who thought she had the sweetest and most expressive face he had ever seen, guessed what she had been thinking, especially when she had turned her head to look towards the cloakroom. When they had been told during their training that they needed to make the most of whatever opportunities came their way to facilitate their mission, he doubted that putting that training to use in this sort of fashion was what the RAF had had in mind, he acknowledged, as he stepped forward, his body screening Grace from everyone else in the entrance to the Tennis Club.

      As he leaned forward to pin the corsage on the front of her frock he heard her catch her breath and felt her tremble slightly. His own hands trembled a bit themselves. She was just so irresistibly sweet, and it would have been the most natural thing in the world to take her in his arms and drop a light kiss on that pretty little nose of hers. But of course he must do no such thing. One of the requirements of his acceptance for his training had been that he should not be married or thinking of getting married. As they had all been warned, the chances of them surviving a war, given the secret nature of their work, were very slim indeed.

      Bella and Alan had already found a table when Grace