Forbidden Liaison: They lived and loved for the here and now Read Free Page B

could hear him muttering to himself as she washed her hands at the sink. ‘Seen any Jerries about yet?’ he asked.
    ‘They’re still probably all tucked up in their nice warm beds,’ Izzy replied. ‘Like I should be. But one of these days they’re going to find out you’ve discovered a few loop-holes in their administration, then they’ll come looking for you.’
    Sydney laughed. ‘They couldn’t organise a …’
    ‘Sydney!’ Hannah shouted.
    ‘Poor sods,’ Sydney said, still laughing. ‘My heart bleeds for them, it really does.’
    ‘Watch your language,’ Hannah’s voice rang out again from by the range fire she was stoking. ‘We may have fallen on hard and difficult times, but that doesn’t mean we have to lower our standards.’
    ‘Standards and gossip, that’s all you women think about,’ Sydney muttered.
    Izzy smiled to herself as she sat down to tuck into her illicit boiled egg, but her mother’s rigid standards were beginning to stifle her.
    Sydney got up noisily from the table. ‘If I were a younger man I’d be out there fighting those bastards,’ the words being forced through his teeth with a vehemence that was common.
    ‘Sydney, language,’ Hannah said again.
    Sydney just grunted as he made to leave the kitchen. But before he got to the door he turned to Izzy. ‘You’re going to have to drive the milk into town. I’ve got a field to turn over. Watch out for pot-holes, the tyres are bald. I’ll hold you personally responsible if they burst,’ he said as he left.
    ‘I do wish he would moderate his language,’ Hannah said as she sat down at the table opposite Izzy. She poured herself a cup of sugar-beet tea with one hand, while the other tucked away a strand of greying hair that had escaped the bun at the back of her head. ‘Self-restraint and moderation in all things. That’s my motto,’ she added rather righteously. ‘And do tie your hair back, Izzy. It’s a wonder you’re not eating it with your breakfast.’
    Izzy flicked her hair back with a jerk of the head as she finished off her breakfast. She said not another word. She felt there was nothing she could say that would be understood. So when she’d finished eating she got up from the table.
    ‘Just looking in at the stables then going down to thorn-hedge field to fix the gate,’ Izzy informed.
    ‘Did you hear what your father said? You have to take the milk lorry into town.’
    Oh, sh…’ Izzy caught sight of her mother glaring at her. ‘Sorry, for even thinking it,’ she apologised.
    ‘Just be careful; steer clear of any Germans. Don’t even look at them. You know Connie Burton’s pregnant?’
    Izzy smiled at the thought of becoming pregnant simply by looking. But some soldiers did deserve a second glance as they were rather handsome, and tanned. But her mother was really beginning to irritate her to the point of her having to say something as she still treated her daughter like a small child. And her father, well, he treated her like another one of his farm hands. She had been married, for God’s sake. Had been for nine whole months: nine whole months she’d had a husband. Then nothing: no-one. He was gone, joined-up. He said he would send for her when he’d finished training. Then they arrived, isolating everyone. And now, she hadn’t heard from him for going on three years. The thought that at least he could get a message to her through the Red Cross, even though they were censored, left some doubt at the back of her mind that he might not still be alive.
    Then she sighed, rolling her eyes. She’d heard the Connie Burton saga many times before. ‘I know, he’s a pilot in the Luftwaffe,’ Izzy recited, rote-fashion.
    Her mother looked at her again from above her glasses which were perched on the end of her nose. ‘You’d better be careful, my girl. You know what happened before.’
    ‘Mother, why is it you always make a big song-and-dance over nothing?’
    ‘The man was drunk. He could have…