“And good night to you,” he said lightly, looking up and smiling. “Thank you for coming.”
I said good night to Mrs. Tilling and hurried outside and up the road to the square. The moon lit the graveyard with a sinister glow, centuries of villagers buried beneath the ground, all those people rotting away until their gravestones are the only traces left of them—the marks of their death.
I ran faster, faster, until I was halfway up our drive, the mass of Peasepotter Wood on my left, when an ear-piercing gunshot exploded from the wood. I shuddered to a halt with fear, and within a minute another frighteningly loud shot sounded. Daddy has taken me hunting a few times, but the sound was not like that. It was louder, crisper, a dead bolt through the clear night sky.
I listened for further shots, trying to calm my breath, slow my galloping heartbeat, but nothing. After a few minutes of silence, I crept farther down the lane. As I turned the bend, I sensed something ahead of me, a movement in the shadows. I froze, glaring through the traces of light to see the hunched form of Proggett making his way through the thicket in the wood.
After a few minutes of silence, I crept on, then made a dash for the house and eased the side door open. I half expected everything to be in disarray, to be different.
But it wasn’t. Everything was strangely normal.
There were two fresh bread rolls under a glass dome on the table, so I pocketed them and headed for my bedroom. Mama met me on the stairs. Her eyes had that stare, like a frightened mouse unable to run. Daddy must be on the warpath again.
“Where have you been? Did you hear the sirens?” she whispered.
“I was at Mrs. Tilling’s house,” I said, trying to go past her.
“Did you see Venetia?” Her voice was like cracked ice.
“No, why?”
She seemed to look through me for a moment, then pulled herself together. “I wanted to ask her something, that’s all.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, of course.” She smiled nervously. “Time for bed. Good night.”
I tramped up to my room, drew my curtains, and crawled into bed. I wondered what happened to Venetia to make Mama so scared. I suppose there’s always some drama or other with Venetia.
It’s probably nothing.
Thursday, 1st August, 1940
Tonight the Brigadier was very angry with Venetia. He came home late and shouted at her. He said she is pregnant. That means she will have a baby. Mr. Slater’s baby. It is bad. The Brigadier took her into his office and shouted bad things. Then he hit her. She screamed and ran outside into the night.
“I’ll kill him,” the Brigadier shouted. He went to get his gun.
I was scared. I ran out after her. But she was gone.
So I hid in my room. Then I heard Kitty coming up the stairs. And then the sound of a plane got louder and louder, low in the sky. I pulled up my blanket, scared.
IVY HOUSE,
CHILBURY,
KENT.
Friday, 2nd August, 1940
Dear Angela,
I am wholly exhausted, in every possible way. No doubt you already know that Chilbury was bombed last night. I was there when it happened—watching our world explode in front of me—but let me start at the beginning.
I’d had a tremendous fight with my father—he found out that I’m pregnant and was threatening to kill Alastair. I ran out into the night, desperate to warn Alastair, desperate to tell him about the baby, our baby. Then I heard a gunshot in the woods, and then another, and thought that Daddy had found him and shot him dead. Terrified, I started sprinting down the lane to the village. I had to make sure he was all right. Whatever it took, I had to get to Alastair’s house as soon as I could.
At first I tried to ignore the sound of a distant plane, but it grew louder as I reached the road to the square. It was low in the sky, a throaty roar, spluttering as it wavered in and out of the clouds. I kept on running, trying to escape this whole situation, this war, everything.
As the road opened out into the square, the plane suddenly became deafening, coming in right behind me, low, hounding me down.
I heard shouts from across the square—it must have been someone calling the Vicar to sound the siren as a moment later the slow wail swelled up, clashing with the roar of the plane that had become so thunderous that I felt my eardrums might explode.
But it was too late. It was all too late. The shadow came over me and I looked up to see a Nazi plane looming right above me, the noise overpowering, the dark gray presence making me cower with fright. It soared over me like the grim reaper and, as I glanced up to its extended black underbelly, I saw the bomb-release doors opening, and one by one the deadly load spilled into the night sky, straight toward Church Row.