Gracie's Sin Read Free

go into town, otherwise they could walk to the camp, assuming they knew where it was. Having delivered this unhelpful information, he buried his nose once more in the mug and slurped loud and long on the thick brown liquid that comprised his afternoon tipple.
    The two girls returned to the empty yard. Here they settled themselves to wait with what patience they could muster, on a low stone wall. The wait was long and dull and boring. One hour passed by, then another. Halfway through the third a large grey cloud blotted out the sun and a thin rain started, cloaking the woods in a pale mist. They huddled together for warmth.
    ‘D’you reckon we should set out to look for this camp?’ Lou enquired.
    ‘And risk getting lost?’
    ‘You’re right. Better to stay put.’
    Their discomfort increased as the rain grew more persistent but they kept on talking, keeping their spirits up, using the time to glean a good deal of information about each other. They discovered that for all they had little, if anything, in common, there was an immediate bond between them.
    At eighteen, Gracie was, in fact, almost five years younger than Lou, and single, though she loved the tale of Lou’s register office wedding and the reception afterwards with three drunken sailors at the fish bar on the Barbican. Lou had been brought up in a mill town in a large, noisy family while Gracie, as an only child, had lived behind her parent’s village shop deep in the countryside. Lou claimed to be untidy, bossy, and cack-handed to the point of being all fingers and thumbs. Gracie admitted to liking things to be tidy and organised, with a fondness for any sort of craft, even needlework.
    ‘You could happen darn my stockings then. They’re allus full of bobbie’s winders. That means holes, if you need the translation.’
    ‘Only if you’ll help carry my kit bag.’
    ‘It’s a deal.’
    They beamed at each other, well suited.
    They were at least alike on two things: an eagerness to do their bit for the war effort, and to have fun and enjoy life while they could. Dusk had begun to fall and it wasn’t so easy now to pick out the thread of road, or the shape of the woods and hills beyond.
    ‘Looks like we might be spending our first night camped out in the station yard,’ Lou drily remarked, and was instantly interrupted by the roar and cough of a lorry’s engine, the grinding of gears and a loud tooting of a horn. It lurched to a stop in a huge puddle, spraying them both with muddy water. A freckled, oil-streaked face appeared through the driver’s window, looking decidedly harassed. ‘Lost the use of your legs then, you two?’
    ‘We didn’t know where to go, and were afraid of causing trouble by getting lost,’ Gracie said, surprising Lou by her spunk at being prepared to speak up. From the look of her, she didn’t appear to be the sort to say boo to a goose.
    The girl frowned. ‘Weren’t you given a map?’
    Both looked at each other in dismay. Were they? Neither could remember. Arrangements had been made so quickly and so much had happened to each in such a short space of time, they couldn’t be entirely sure. This time it was Lou who frantically attempted to disguise their confusion. ‘The station master told us somebody would fetch us, if we’d the patience to wait.’ A slight stretching of the truth and the oil-streaked driver snorted her disbelief, clearly doubting its veracity.
    ‘Bert knows only too well that hell could freeze over before we namby-pamby any new girls here. Well, don’t stand their gawking. We haven’t got all night. Hop aboard.’
    The flat back of the lorry being six foot from the ground, hop was not the word which sprang to mind as the pair struggled to clamber aboard, without losing either their belongings or their balance. They were laughingly assisted by half a dozen other girls who commiserated with Lou and Gracie’s rain-soaked state, though they themselves were well protected in capes and