Read Online At the Break of Day by Margaret Graham - Free Book Online Page A

asphalt. ‘He seems to have made it worse and he’s a lovely kid. It can’t have been the war either. Dad didn’t get called up. It’s his chest you see, collapsed lung. He built the new airfields, that sort of thing. Did a bit of dealing.’ He smiled slightly but his eyes were so angry.
    Rosie smiled, looking away. ‘I just bet he did.’
    ‘I wasn’t there, you see. The kids that came back after the first evacuation went away again with the Blitz, like you did.’ He flicked the shredded dandelion at her. ‘She was good to me though, Mum was. She came down visiting, you know. All the time. It was good fun.’
    ‘Was your dad jealous of that?’
    ‘No, I don’t think so. He didn’t change until later. When he came to see me first he was fine. Took back a few hams, sold them well. Even did a bit of dealing with the GIs who were camped in the village.’ He paused and looked up at the sky, and his voice became angry. ‘But then, all of a sudden like, he stopped coming. Didn’t see Mum much come to that after D-Day. Busy, I expect, and then there was Lee. He’s got red hair too.’ Jack flicked a piece of grass off his trousers, nodding towards the boy he had pushed on the swing. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s just wrong. I wanted to tell you before you came. I didn’t want you upset.’
    His face was red now and he didn’t look at her. She wanted to reach across and hold him as he had once held her when she cut her knee and needed stitches. But they were children then. They were grown now and there was a difference somehow.
    He looked at her now and the anger had gone, there was just tiredness, like hers. ‘Come anyway. They want to see you but it’s funny, me dad doesn’t like Yanks.’
    Rosie looked at her hands. ‘He’s not the only one.’
    ‘Oh, I reckon it’s this rationing, you know. Makes people crabby.’
    There were voices behind them now, calling, shouting, and a football bounced behind them and over them and Jack looked at Rosie. ‘Remember the gang? I thought it would help you settle back in.’
    She did remember when they were all around, touching her clothes, laughing at her tan, at her voice, asking about Lower Falls and New York and the skiing. Telling her about Somerset, where they had all been evacuated. She looked away, wishing she had been with them, wishing that she belonged as she had once done.
    It was Sam, the old second-in-command, his hair in a crew cut, who showed her that for him at least she no longer did.
    ‘So you came back. Slumming, eh?’ he said, not looking away when Jack told him to shut his mouth. His pale eyes held hers as he bounced the ball, then threw it to Ted, then Jack. Then bounced it again.
    Her eyes were blurred but it was tiredness, she mustn’t think it was tears. She remembered Sam all too clearly now. He had tied her to a lamppost when they were nine and fired arrows at a potato he stuck on her head. She hadn’t cried then and she wouldn’t now.
    There were laughs and jokes, and always the ball was on the move. She watched, listened, smiled, waited and then Sam threw the ball to her, hard. She had known that he would and batted it straight back at him with a clenched fist as Frank had taught her. He caught it and threw it again, talking to Ted as he did so, but looking at her all the time.
    She threw the ball to Jack. He looked at Sam, then back at her. There was a question in his eyes and she knew he had brought them together deliberately, to face up and get it over with. She shook her head. She was angry now and she would deal with this herself. This was her rec too, her gang, and nobody was going to take it away from her. They’d taken enough already.
    She hurled the ball hard at Sam, and nothing more was said as they caught and threw, caught and threw, just the two of them. Her arm was tired and she was hot, but it didn’t matter. Frank had trained her well.
    It was Ted who broke the silence. ‘So, how’s po-face taken to you