Page 13 of The Stranger in Room Six
‘Ronald,’ sobbed his wife. ‘Ronald!’
Someone put a white sheet over him.
‘But he won’t be able to breathe if they do that,’ implored Mabel.
‘Too late for that, love, I’m afraid,’ said a man in a tin hat.
Still, they dug. Mabel’s fingers were bleeding. Her throatwas hoarse with shouting. ‘It’s no good,’ said Lizzie tearfully. ‘We can’t do anything.’
‘But we’ve got to.’
Then she gasped as a little arm poked up between some bricks. ‘Look!’ she said, pulling it out. ‘It’s Polly, Annabel’s doll! My sister must be near here.’
‘It doesn’t mean she’s alive, dear,’ whispered Lizzie.
‘She is! She has to be!’
Suddenly, there was another roar from the sky, followed by the screech of sirens.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Lizzie whispered, looking up at what seemed like a flock of birds in the distance. ‘They’re coming again.’
‘Everyone to the shelters,’ yelled the air-raid warden.
‘We can’t leave,’ Mabel screamed. ‘I’m looking for my mama and Annabel!’
‘You’ve got to,’ urged the man in the tin hat.
Then he picked her up and carried her, one arm flailing furiously on his back, the other clutching her sister’s doll tightly.
‘I’ll come back,’ she screamed at the rubble. ‘I promise you; I’ll come back!’
10
For the next two nights, Mabel slept on the crowded floor of the town hall, arms clasped round her sister’s doll.
Then Aunt Clarissa arrived. She was younger than Mama, but much taller and not as smiley. Her long fur coat almost touched the ground while her mauve felt hat, perched to one side above her beautiful oval face, had a feather pointing up to the heavens.
‘I suppose you’d better come home with me,’ she said.
Mabel felt numb, as though she was here but not here. ‘But how will Mama and Annabel know where I am?’
Aunt Clarissa’s eyes fixed unwaveringly on hers. ‘They’d have dug them out by now if they were still alive. I’m afraid we have to be realistic, dear.’
Mabel’s bones and teeth began to judder. ‘Can Lizzie come too?’ she whispered.
‘Who?’
‘Our maid.’
Her aunt raised her eyebrows as though Mabel had said something very stupid. ‘Do you think I can afford to feed two extra mouths? One is bad enough.’
‘It’s all right, love,’ Lizzie whispered. ‘I’ll be fine, I’ll find another job.’
Reluctantly, Mabel followed her aunt into a large, shiny black car with a badge on the front that said ‘Morris 8 Tourer’. Her insides felt blown out, as if she had been hit by the bomb herself.
‘Do you think it hurt them?’ she whispered.
‘They wouldn’t have felt anything,’ came the crisp reply.
