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By Root 785 0

smoke, men crowding round the bar, whilst a couple of women of the same type and profession as the one she had seen outside were sitting at one of the rickety tables. As Myra surveyed the room, a man standing at the bar turned to spit on the floor, catching sight of her as he did and nudging the man standing next to him. Within seconds every man at the bar, or so it seemed to Myra, had stopped talking to turn and look at her, except for the man she had come here to find. He was continuing with his conversation as he kept his back to her. Because he didn’t want to acknowledge her? Myra smothered the anxiety she could feel uncurling deep inside her, and walked quickly over to him. He was wearing civvies instead of his uniform, and the man he was talking to was the same American he had met here once before. He gave her a hard unwelcoming look before nudging Nick and muttering something to him as he slipped him a package.

‘What…?’ Nick began tersely as he turned round and saw her, but Myra was determined to have her own way.

She shook her head, stopping him, then told him, determinedly, ‘I need to talk to you, Nick -but not here.’

‘Hey, look, can’t you see that I’m in the middle of a business meeting here?’ was his response.

Myra had no intention of giving in, though.

‘This is important, Nick. It’s about what happened the other Saturday before we went to London…remember?’ she warned him.

The two men exchanged looks.

‘We can’t talk in here,’ Myra told Nick.

‘Go ahead, Nick,’ the other man said, still ignoring her. ‘I’ll be in touch – usual place.’

How quickly he melted into the shadows, Myra noticed. One minute he was there, the next he had gone, or so it seemed.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t been in touch with me before now,’ she said to Nick as he hurried her out of the club, and up the stone steps, ‘especially seeing as we’re engaged now. I’ve been thinking about that, Nick,’ she added, ‘about me and you being engaged.’

‘Well, don’t think about it,’ Nick snarled at her, ‘because there ain’t no point.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Myra demanded, put out. ‘And why are you out of uniform?’

To her shock he turned on her, winding his fingers tightly into her hair.

‘Ouch,’ she protested. ‘You’re hurting me, Nick.’

‘Am I? Good. Maybe that will teach you not to come poking your nose in where it isn’t wanted.’

Myra was outraged. ‘Not wanted! You weren’t saying anything about me not being wanted when you gave me this.’ She waggled her ring finger.

‘Did you tell anyone you were coming here?’ he demanded, ignoring her comment.

‘No. I would have told Diane, but she was acting all uppity about that Walter going and dying that I didn’t bother,’ Myra sniffed disparagingly. ‘Look, Nick, when you and me are married—’

‘Back off, will you?’ he told her.

Back off? Myra stared at him. ‘You can’t tell me to back off,’ she started to bluster, ‘not with us getting married.’

Nick started to laugh. ‘Me marry you? Are you crazy?’ he taunted her, looking contemptuously at her. ‘There’s no way I’d tie myself to a dumb broad like you. Broads like you come a dime a dozen in New York, and no way does anyone marry them.’

Myra’s heartbeat slowed ominously and then started to beat far too fast at what she recognised in his look. Suddenly and very clearly she could see her chance of fulfilling her dream slipping away from her. Nick was her passport to that dream and to the future; without him…She forgot that she was already married and that she wasn’t in a position to marry him; in fact she forgot everything other than the agonising pain she could feel bursting into life inside her as destructively as ignited TNT. ‘But you said—’ she began.

‘Said, schpred,’ Nick shrugged dismissively, as he let go of her hair. ‘I ain’t the first guy to spin you a line to get you into bed and don’t try telling me I am. There’s no way a dame, who gives it out like you do, doesn’t know what it’s all about.’

‘You don’t mean that…You’ve…you’ve got to marry me,’ she burst out in her panic, ‘otherwise…’

Nick stopped chewing his gum, his body suddenly completely motionless