To The Grave Read Free Page A

a fourth brother to her - was already a commissioned regular when the war began.  His childhood belonged to Oadby and it owed much of its happiness to the Lasseter family, before the Buckleys moved away to Hampshire.
    Mena pulled the orange to her nightdress and sighed.   Mary will be so thrilled to see him, she thought, genuinely happy for her.  And yet a part of her envied her sister his return.  She set the orange down, thinking to steal back to her room with a knife after breakfast, to eat it in secret, knowing that it would taste all the sweeter after whatever powdered egg creation was in store for them again this festive morning.  Her hand had barely left the orange when the distinct sound of a creaking floorboard beyond her bedroom door drew her attention.  Her smile grew when she realised that this must have been the sound that had stirred her from sleep.  Was Eddie still there, delivering his oranges in the night like Santa Claus?
    She opened the door with a flourish, expecting to catch Father Christmas in the act.  But as she leapt through the doorway and the cool moonlight followed her, she found her own father instead, glowing in a pool of candlelight.  He was dressed, not in a red tunic and trousers, but in slippers and a new striped dressing gown that was not unlike the curtains that used to hang in one of the spare bedrooms.  He had one foot on the stairs at the top of the landing and a startled expression creased his already worry-lined face.
    “Pop!” Mena said, still smiling.
    Everyone called him, Pop.  Although Eddie, who was more than welcome to, was such a stickler for correctness that out of respect he still called him Mr Lasseter or sir - despite Mr Lasseter’s numerous protestations over the years that he should at least call him George.  Pop was a tall man: lean and lanky, with a balding pate and a wiry grey moustache that he kept meticulously trimmed.  He clutched a bony hand to his chest and staggered forward like a bad actor in the throes of a poorly written death scene and Mena thought he was about to fall down the stairs.  She rushed to him, her smile faltering, but as she arrived he wheeled on her, balancing on the top step with all the nimbleness of a man half his fifty-four years.  His free hand grabbed her.  
    “Gotcha!” he said, laughing disproportionately to the joke until Mena slapped his arm playfully and reminded him of the hour.
    “Shh!” she said.  “You’ll wake everyone.”
    Pop nodded and quickly buttoned his smile, though his steely eyes were still laughing.
    Mena hugged him.  “Merry Christmas, Pop.”
    “Merry Christmas, my lovely Mena,” Her father replied.  “Now back to bed with you until I’ve lit the fires and this old house has had a chance to warm up.”
    Mena reached her bedroom door and turned back.  “Will there be an extra setting for Christmas dinner?” she whispered, sure of the answer.
    Her father’s smile renewed.  “Just you wait and see, my girl.  Wait and see.”
               
    The Lasseters lived just outside the village of Oadby, which was a few miles east of Leicester, between Evington to the north and Wigston to the south.  The war for them had so far been kind, if kind is a word that can sit alongside war so comfortably.  But it had been kind in as much as they were still receiving regular letters from Michael, James and Peter, who were all serving in the European Theatre of Operations and living on the outskirts of Oadby in a crooked old farmhouse that seemed too big without the boys - despite the two refugee children who had been assigned to them - meant that they had not suffered the bombs that had fallen on Leicester.  Neither had they fallen victim to those bombs that had been dumped on the villages when the bombers returned from their numerous raids on Coventry.  And the war had been kind to them perhaps because they were financially better off than most families in Oadby, which meant that when