The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [38]
Diane was too taken aback to know what to say. ‘Well, perhaps when the war is over you and your husband could think about emigrating,’ she began, but Myra cut her off with a bitter laugh. ‘Jim? Go and live in America? There’s no way he’d do that, and even if there was…No, I’ve got other ideas,’ she finished smugly.
‘I’ve got some letters to write,’ Diane told Myra when it became obvious that she didn’t intend to tell her what her ‘ideas’ were, ‘but if you feel like going out for a walk later…?’ she suggested, trying to restore peace and anxious not to be cooped up in the house on such a glorious day.
‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ Myra said carelessly. ‘I’ve got plans.’
Myra was anxiously aware that Nick hadn’t asked her for a date last night. He would have asked her, of course, if Diane hadn’t come over when she had, Myra was sure of that. He’d been keen enough, after all, when they’d gone outside. A shiver of excitement gripped her body. No one had ever made her feel like this before. It was strangely exhilarating, dangerously so. She had lain in bed last night, unable to sleep, recalling how she had felt when she had let him take her outside, knowing what he wanted. There had been a hunger in him for her then, just like there was hunger in her to escape from the greyness that war had brought to the country and to make a new life for herself. If she played her cards right, he could be her ticket to that new life.
Diane looked at the two letters she had just written. The first, to her parents, had been the easier to write. She had simply told them what she knew her mother in particular wanted to hear: that she was comfortable in her billet and happy in her work. She had mentioned last night’s dance very casually, knowing that her mother would be searching her letter for telltale signs that she was ‘getting over Kit’ and, equally, telltale signs that she wasn’t.
The second letter had been more difficult to write. She had thanked Beryl for what she had told her, and assured her that she knew she was acting in her best interests in disclosing to her that Kit was seeing other girls. She had also told her, though, that she wanted to put Kit and the past behind her and that she no longer considered him important enough to want to hear about him. How could she ever forget him if she was constantly being reminded of him and the love she had lost? She couldn’t tell her friend that, though. Not without either making her feel guilty or running the risk of her telling others that she was pining for him. It had been hard to strike what she hoped was the right note, and she had read the finished letter through half a dozen times, anxiously checking that she hadn’t said anything she would regret nor omitted to say everything that needed to be said. She had finished her letter with a cheerful few lines about the Grafton and going dancing there and the fun she expected to have in her new life in Liverpool.
Now all she had to do was go to post the letter before she could have second thoughts.
‘Just going to post my letters Mrs L,’ she called out to her landlady as she opened the front door.
The afternoon sunshine revealed the dust dimming the green of Chestnut Close’s front garden hedges. A legacy of the heavy bombing the city had endured, the dust was everywhere, coating everything in a thin fine film that Liverpool’s inhabitants no longer seemed to notice. No doubt when you had come through a bombing blitz as heavy as that endured by the city, a bit of dust was easy to ignore, Diane decided as she strolled towards the postbox.
She was not looking forward to going in to work in the morning. She suspected that by now everyone would, in the way of such things, know about last night. She could explain what had happened, of course, but it would still be embarrassing. She had