The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [133]
‘Not here,’ Diane objected. ‘We can’t.’
‘No…Look, what about meeting up at that dance place the day after tomorrow?’
‘The Grafton, you mean?’
‘Yeah.’
Diane nodded.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Jess, I need to talk to you.’
The quiet desperation in Ruthie’s voice made Jess frown. What on earth was wrong? Surely Glen’s CO hadn’t refused to let them get married?
‘Go on then,’ she encouraged her as she finished pushing her hair up out of the way, ready for work.
‘I meant in private,’ Ruthie whispered, glancing over her shoulder.
‘Well, let’s hang on here a minute until the coast is clear, then,’ Jess suggested, waiting until the others had left the cloakroom before saying, ‘OK, what is it?’
‘It’s Walter. He’s dead.’
Jess stared at her in shocked disbelief. ‘He can’t be,’ she protested. ‘You told me he’d just been knocked about a bit. How can he be dead?’
‘He is. He died at Burtonwood,’ Ruthie insisted. ‘That’s what Glen’s CO wanted to see me about, not…not me and Glen getting married. He wanted me to make a statement, because…because he says that it’s because of Glen that he died.’
Whilst Jess stared at her in disbelief, fresh tears spilled from Ruthie’s eyes, swiftly followed by the words spilling from her lips as she told Jess what had happened.
‘You mean that that Myra deliberately lied?’ Jess’s voice was sharp with incredulous anger. ‘By golly, if she were here right now I’d be letting her know what I think of her.’
‘Diane has said that she’ll have a word with her and try to get her to tell the truth.’
‘Huh…’ Jess began, about to say in no uncertain terms just what chance she thought Diane had of succeeding, when she saw the strain in Ruthie’s eyes. There was no point in upsetting her even more, she decided. The poor kid was having a hard enough time of it as it was. For herself, it was only just beginning to sink in what had happened and that Walter was dead.
‘Poor Walter. I think I need to sit down for a bit,’ she confided to Ruthie. She may not have loved Walter in the way that Ruthie loved Glen, but she had liked him and she had thought of him as a friend – a good friend. She raised her hand to wipe the back of it over her eyes and brush away her tears. Who would tell Walter’s girl? She hoped that someone would. She pictured herself getting a letter telling her that Billy was dead, that he had died whilst she had been going about her own daily business and she hadn’t known anything about it. A feeling gripped her like someone twisting a sharp knife inside her chest. It was so intense that she actually lifted her hands to her chest and pressed them against it. What a truly dreadful thing to have happened. And poor Ruthie, to have to cope with hearing that, because of other people’s lies, her Glen was going to be accused of causing Walter’s death.
Jess was still grappling with her shock an hour later as she went through the motions of filling her shells, her movements automatic and neatly efficient. Unlike Ruthie’s, she recognised, as she looked up from her own work to see Ruthie’s hands trembling so much that she spilled some of the TNT.
Going over to her, she told her gently, ‘Come on, let’s get this wiped up, otherwise you’ll end up with burns.’
‘’Ere, have you heard the latest?’ Mel interrupted them excitedly, ignoring the warning look that Jess was trying to give her to alert her to the fact that Ruthie needed a bit of peace and quiet. ‘They’re going to search everyone’s locker, on account of that Alice’s watch going missing. Mind you, I’m not surprised. I told the foreman meself that I thought they ought ter do summat like that. They announced it whilst you two were still in the cloakroom. Said that we all had to line up at dinner whilst they went through everyone’s locker. Cor, look at you,’ she laughed when she saw Ruthie’s white face. ‘One look at you and they’ll have you pegged down as guilty and no mistake.’
‘Give over, will you, Mel,’ Jess told her sharply. ‘Can’t you see that Ruthie’s got enough to worry