Dream On Read Free Page A

his cap. ‘You’ve had your break. Let’s get this finished before the foreman catches us.’
    â€˜Least the weather’s cleared up, eh, Ginny love,’ Pearl said gently. ‘You know, I was surprised our bedroom ceiling never come down on top of us when that thunderbolt dropped last night. Right overhead it was. I thought we was back in the Blitz for a minute.’
    She put down her butter-knife and smiled at Ginny, trying to encourage her to join in. Pearl knew it was no use leaving it to Nellie to look after the poor little thing, it wouldn’t even occur to her. She might, on a very rare occasion, consider her son, Ted, whom, Pearl was sure, Nellie loved in her own peculiar way; but it would be very seldom that she would put even his needs before her own. And apart from that, well, she had no mind for anyone but herself; even on that terrible night in 1941, which Pearl supposed the inconsiderate old trout probably wouldn’t even remember.
    But Pearl would never forget that night.
    Ted and Ginny had been together, on and off, for almost two years by then; far more off than on, as anyone but the starry-eyed Ginny would have admitted, but a kid as innocent and trusting as her had stood no chance against the smooth ways of a handsome charmer like Ted Martin. After spotting the newly blossoming, pretty little blonde going into number 11 to see Dilys, Ted had homed in on her like a rocket launcher.
    The night that stuck in Pearl’s mind was one of the occasions when Ted had actually turned up to take Ginny out as he had promised, and after an evening spent up West, he was taking her back to her house in Antill Road.
    They were later than they’d said they’d be and Ginny was expecting a right rucking, but, instead of finding her mum and dad sitting up waiting for them in the back kitchen, all they had found was a pile of bombed-out rubble.
    It was strange, the sort of thing that made the hairs stand up on the back of Pearl’s neck just to think about it, but Ginny had said afterwards that before she and Ted had even turned out of Grove Road and into her street, she had known there was something wrong. She could feel it somewhere deep inside, as surely as if someone was speaking to her.
    Ginny had let go of Ted’s arm and stumbled along in the black-out, tripping and sliding on the debris and the sand spilling from the ripped and shredded sacking bags, ignoring the firemen, policemen and wardens who tried to stop her. She cared nothing for their shouts and warnings, nothing for her own safety, all she wanted to do was reach her house and her family. She had to get to them.
    As she finally skidded to halt on the pavement, her heart was racing and her blood pounding in her ears.
    But she was too late.
    Her mum, her dad, and her five little brothers and sisters – all seven members of her family – were dead. Gone together in a single hit.
    Ted had held her to him, stroking her back and rocking her as if she were a child with a grazed knee that he could make better with a kiss. He’d breathed into her hair, telling her not to cry, soothing her. But there was no need. Ginny couldn’t cry, she was too numb; tears had no purpose or meaning.
    Ted had walked her back to his house in Bailey Street, whispering gently to her that everything would be all right; she would stay with him and his mum for the night, and he would sort everything out in the morning.
    But when they reached his house, they couldn’t get in. Nellie had locked up the place hours ago, having cleared off to the shelter in the cellar of the Drum and Monkey, a pub on the corner of nearby Damfield Street. She had paused, it had to be said, for a brief moment to think about her son as she had locked the door against potential looters; but had then blithely presumed that, being like her – a twenty-four-carat survivor – her boy Ted would have made his own arrangements and had proceeded to untie