Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [151]
There was a small pause but he didn’t respond to her gibe, simply saying instead, ‘I had a twenty-four-hour pass. I knew my mother would be worrying with everything that’s been in the papers about the fighting over the Channel, so I decided to come home to tell her myself that there was no need to worry about me.’
Bella wished he would go away. She wasn’t feeling very well at all, but she wasn’t going to let him see that. She hated him, she really did, and she would rather anyone but him had seen what Alan was doing to her. He must have hit Alan very hard.
Her head was swimming and a cramping pain was invading her stomach.
‘You’ll find your mother and sister down at the WVS Refugee Centre. And I don’t know who gave you a key to my house but they had no right to do so.’
The pain was becoming so intense now that she could hardly speak. It was seizing her in red-hot waves like wires being dragged through her insides.
Jan was saying something but the pain was too intense for her to listen.
She heard him curse and saw him get up and go into the hall.
The pain invaded her, possessing her, growing ever stronger as it surged and seethed in a relentless tide of agony. She tried to stand up and collapsed on the kitchen floor. She could hear doors opening and closing and then voices – her mother’s, the doctor’s, Jan’s, his mother’s. She could see anxious faces bending over her, but all that really mattered was the pain. She wanted to tear it from her as it was tearing the child from her womb but it was too strong for her.
On and on it went, relentless and unending, until finally it was over, and her body expelled the life the pain had destroyed.
Grace and Seb had both agreed that they would take things slowly and that they would not allow themselves to be swept away by a kiss exchanged in a very emotional moment, especially now, with the air-raid sirens going off almost every other night and the whole country on edge, knowing that the raids by the Luftwaffe were just the first stage in Hitler’s battle to break the spirit of the British people and invade the country.
This was a time to give their hearts and their minds to the war effort and not to themselves and their own feelings for one another.
Seb had told her that now he was going to be based in Liverpool at Derby House, they would have plenty of time to get to know one another properly and that there was no need for them to rush into anything, quite the opposite. They would start off as they meant to go on. Seb wanted to introduce himself properly to Grace’s parents before they became a couple, and there must be respect for Teddy, even though he and Grace had not been romantically involved.
For her part Grace had said that she had no intention of allowing anything or anyone to stop her from completing her training. Qualified nurses were going to be needed if Hitler went ahead and invaded and there was fighting in the streets.
And then despite all that, and the practical decision they had made, the very first thing they had done afterwards had been to seal their agreement with a kiss of such sweet and intense passion that it had left Grace trembling and Seb wondering how one earth he was going to keep the promise he had just made.
Bella lay motionless in the bed, staring up at the ceiling, watching the patterns made by the sunlight coming in through the curtains. Sunlight that her baby would never see.
The pain started again. A different kind of pain from the one that had ripped through her yesterday. This pain filled all of her, not just her body, which now felt so drained and empty, as, of course, it was.
It bewildered her that she could feel like this. She hadn’t really wanted the baby, except as a means of bringing Alan to heel and yet just acknowledging that brought a searing emotional agony so intense that she could hardly endure it.
How was it possible for her to feel