Shirley was dressed in a pretty pink dress with pink and white smocking. She loved being the centre of attention and everybody thought she was adorable. John was a gifted pianist and singer. When his fingers danced over the keyboard, her heart fluttered a little for her mother. John’s way of playing was so like hers and when Shirley heard him playing she laughed and clapped her podgy little hands.
‘Why won’t you go back to Worthing?’ Dinah said as they cleared up the aftermath of the party. Shirley was playing with building blocks with John. ‘Your mother would love her to bits.’
Bonnie shook her head. ‘How can I after all this time? I don’t want to hurt her again.’
‘You do know she spent days on end at the station looking for you?’
Bonnie looked away. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said brokenly. ‘I must have hurt her deeply. I can’t do it again.’
‘Tell me,’ said Dinah. ‘If Shirley went away for a couple of years and then you could have her back, no questions asked, would you refuse to have her?’
‘That’s a bit below the belt,’ said Bonnie.
‘Is it?’ said Dinah. ‘You were your mother’s little baby once.’
Bonnie put the glass she was drying back into the cupboard. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Emilio hadn’t answered Rita’s letters so she had come home for the weekend. She wanted to ask Salvatore where he was. Her mother was still at Granny’s and not likely to be home for a while. It was strange being in the house all alone. Snowy had popped by to check up on her on Saturday morning. Rita was still in bed.
‘Your mother wrote to me this week,’ said Snowy. ‘I’m afraid it’s not good news. You know your grandmother has cancer, don’t you? I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time and your mother wants to stay up there until the end.’
Rita nodded her head sleepily and did her best to stifle the yawn that was coming. She wasn’t very fond of her grandmother. She hadn’t seen her very often as a child. The distance between them hadn’t helped, but she’d sent a knitted scarf every Christmas and she’d written the occasional letter. Rita’s mother worked hard to please the old lady, sending her parcels and letters very regularly, but there was clearly something between them, something unspoken but large enough to affect their relationship.
Rita had thanked Snowy and promised to come for a meal later in the day. She would head over that way once she’d seen Salvatore.
Rita had been surprised that she’d enjoyed doing the shorthand and typing course as much as she did. The course itself wasn’t exactly scintillating, but the girls training with her were brilliant. They all had so many laughs together. Most weekday evenings were taken up with practice homework but at the weekends she was able to go dancing. Brighton was such a lively place compared to Worthing and now that the war was well and truly over, the bright lights beckoned every young girl to the sea front and the dance halls where she could dance the night away with the best-looking boys in town.
Rita’s favourite places were the two piers, which had both reopened the year before. As with Worthing’s pier, in 1940 the council had removed large chunks to hamper enemy invasion, but as soon as hostilities were at an end, the piers were repaired in time for the holiday season. The West Pier was a little more grand than the Palace Pier but both had their charms. If she and her friends fancied kiss-me-quick hats and candyfloss, the Palace Pier was the place to be, while the theatre on the West Pier had some really good shows. She wrote to Dinah, now studying at RADA, and told her all about them, adding that they weren’t a patch on the Worthing Musical Comedy Shows.
Rita was never short of offers from good-looking young men, to her great surprise. She’d had several letters from Bob. He was kind and he was funny, so she enjoyed reading them again and again, but her heart was already given to Emilio. He was her first thought in the morning and her last at night, which was why she was so anxious that she hadn’t heard from him.
The Railway Café was buzzing when she walked in, but even though they were rushed off their feet, Salvatore threw his arms out in his usual exuberant way and kissed Rita on both cheeks.
‘Sit, sit,’ he begged. ‘I just serve and then we talk.’ He went to the hatch and called, ‘Mama, Rita is here.’
Liliana, all pink and flustered, came out of the kitchen a few minutes later, a pastry in one hand and a coffee in the other. She put them in front of Rita and shook her head as Rita reached for her purse. ‘Sit,’ she said repeating Salvatore’s instruction. ‘Eat. Enjoy. We talk later.’
It was more than an hour before they could take a quick break to talk to Rita. First they wanted to know how her grandmother was, and when Grace would be coming home and then they bombarded her with questions. What was the course like? Had she made new friends? What were the lodgings like? Rita answered everything with as much attention to detail as she could and eventually there came the lull in conversation she’d been looking for.
‘I’ve been writing to Emilio,’ she ventured as Salvatore and Liliana sat opposite her beaming as proudly as any parent, ‘but he doesn’t reply to my letters.’
She saw the colour drain from Liliana’s face as she stood up and excused herself. ‘I needed in the kitchen.’
Salvatore picked at a loose thread on his apron. ‘Emilio, he stay with friend.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘He fine,’ said Salvatore.
‘It’s just that Liliana …’ Rita began anxiously.
‘She angry that he not say he was going,’ said Salvatore quickly.
Rita breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Any news of Jeremy?’ Rita continued. ‘We wrote all the time when he was doing his basic training but he forgot to tell me where his next posting would be.’
Salvatore shot out his lip and shook his head. ‘Emilio, he back after Christmas,’ he said giving her a long hard stare. ‘You come back then, Rita. All Emilio needs is the love of a good woman.’
Rita blushed. Christmas was a long way away. ‘Can you give me his address?’
‘He travel around,’ said Salvatore avoiding her eye. ‘You send here. I post for you.’
The customers were beginning to build again and the new help behind the counter was struggling to cope. ‘I go,’ Salvatore apologised.
‘Of course,’ said Rita finishing the last of her coffee. ‘I’m on my way to Mum’s friend’s for tea anyway.’
By the time July came, Bonnie and Dinah had been meeting on a regular basis.
Bonnie usually arranged to see Cook and Dora first and then to meet Dinah to have tea or a stroll in Hyde Park. It came as a pleasant surprise when Dinah suggested that she and Shirley join her for a weekend break.
‘I have a friend who has a cottage in the country,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to a real holiday.’
‘I’m not sure it would be much of a holiday with Shirley around,’ Bonnie laughed. ‘She’s such a live wire these days.’
‘Remind me again?’ said Dinah. ‘How old is she?’
‘Fifteen months,’ said Bonnie. ‘She’s got four teeth and she’s toddling, so she’s in to everything.’
‘Oh do come,’ said Dinah. ‘She’s such a poppet and the place is huge. The garden goes on for ever.’
In the end Bonnie relented. They made arrangements to pick her up by car early Friday evening and said they would be back late Sunday afternoon. ‘I would stay longer,’ Dinah apologised, ‘but I have rehearsals first thing Monday morning and I’ll never get up in time if I don’t have a good night’s sleep.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Bonnie. ‘I have to start work at seven in the morning myself.’
Dinah shuddered. ‘Ghastly hour. Whoever invented it wants shooting.’
The cottage was more like a house. It was set deep in the heart of the unspoiled Kent countryside. Although the nursery backed onto Richmond Park and had its own private gate, somehow Bonnie never lost the feeling that she was in an enclosed space. Here, in Kent, she was able to stand in the back garden and look across the county for miles.
Shirley loved toddling around the garden. She picked up stones, pointed out the flowers saying, ‘’ook, ’ook …’ and ate dirt. Bonnie kept a very close eye on her, but she even managed the three little steps that led to a lower garden by herself. Shirley soon had the adults playing ‘boo!’ by the dustbins and her little giggle was highly infectious.
There were three others in the party. Mick and Clare spent most of the weekend in their bedroom, only emerging for meals or the occasional walk. They were passionately in love and to start with they hardly seemed to notice anyone else, certainly not Shirley. The other person was John Finley.
On Saturday, Bonnie walked into the village with Shirley in the pushchair. Mick and Clare hadn’t yet emerged from the night before while Dinah and John were sitting in the garden learning their lines.
Bonnie was enjoying herself. She and Shirley stopped in a tea room for drinks and watched the world go by.
‘She’s such a good little girl,’ the waitress remarked as Bonnie paid the bill. Shirley was already winning hearts as she waved, ‘Bye, bye’, and smiled at the remaining customers.
When she got back to the cottage, Shirley was asleep. Bonnie left the pushchair round the back and tiptoed away. They had decided at breakfast that they would have bread, cheese and pickles for lunch, so she set about preparing it. Dinah had dozed off in her chair and she could hear laughter from upstairs.
‘Did you enjoy your walk?’ The sound of John’s voice made her jump.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she smiled.
‘I’ll get the wine,’ he said.
She found a lettuce and a few tomatoes in the refrigerator and washed them.
‘We make a great team,’ he said coming back with a bottle of wine.
‘Do you have a family?’ She did her best to sound casual and willed her cheeks not to go red.
‘Just me and my parents. And you?’
‘I have a mother and a sister. My father was killed in the D-Day landings.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘What does your father do?’
‘He owns a knitwear factory, among other things,’ said John. ‘He wants me to take over from him, but it’s really not for me, I’m afraid.’
‘He must be upset.’
‘Very.’
She smiled. She’d wanted to ask more pertinent questions including,
Are you adopted?
, but she had backed herself into a corner. There was no way she could say that without raising suspicion and she didn’t want to do that. Not yet.
‘I hear you’re a bit of a pioneer in the nursery,’ he said putting wine glasses onto the tray she had already prepared.
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ she chuckled. ‘It feels more like darned hard work.’
There was a small silence and then he said, ‘I was sorry to hear about your man.’ She looked up sharply. ‘Dinah told me. Sorry, but we made up our minds from the word go not to keep secrets from each other.’
‘I like that,’ said Bonnie, thinking about her own mother. ‘We should all be open and honest.’
‘He was found in my father’s old factory, you know,’ said John. ‘Odd, isn’t it?’
A distant memory nudged her mind. What was it George had said about John’s father? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it but it felt important. John picked up the tray and they went outside.
‘Oh darling, how marvellous,’ Dinah cried as John put the tray onto the all weathers table.
‘I can’t take all the credit,’ said John stooping to give her a kiss. ‘Bonnie helped me a bit.’
Behind his back Bonnie grinned and Dinah winked at her. ‘I’m so glad you both get on,’ she said. ‘You’re my two most favourite people in the world.’
‘Of course we do,’ said John, putting his hand to his forehead in a dramatic gesture. ‘We are such a comfort to each other in this time of trial.’
Dinah hit his arm playfully. ‘Don’t tease me. I mean it.’
Shirley woke up and Bonnie left them to see to her child. She felt a bit of a gooseberry but she didn’t mind too much. It was good to see Dinah so happy after all the heartbreak of losing her husband so young.
As Bonnie changed Shirley’s nappy inside, she began to think about George again. She wished she had a photograph of him. Sometimes she struggled to remember what he looked like, but then she tickled Shirley’s bare tummy and in her giggly face, she saw him there.
‘Don’t let him get too close to you …’ That’s what George had said about Finley, but what did it mean?
The whole day was wonderfully relaxing. Dinah and John took it in turns to amuse Shirley and of course she lapped up the extra attention.
‘I’ve never had Shirley christened,’ she said. ‘If I do, will you two be her godparents?’
‘We’d love to, wouldn’t we, John?’ cried Dinah en-thusiastically.
‘Rather,’ said John. Shirley was sitting on his lap. He kissed her blonde curls and when she looked up at him he said, ‘You’d like to have an Uncle John, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?’
Shirley stared at him for a few seconds and then reached up and tweaked his nose, making everybody laugh. Bonnie watched them with pleasure. Uncle John in more ways than one, she thought.
The train pulled into the station four minutes late. Even before it came to a halt, several passengers had leaned out of their carriage windows and turned the outside handle to open the door. The train was made up of individual carriages and most had two or three passengers, with the exception of first class.
Oswald George gathered his things with a heavy heart. As the train came to a stop, a deep sense of foreboding descended upon him. As he alighted from the carriage, the chilly English weather hit him once again. Manny Hart was calling, ‘Worthing, this is Worthing.’
A porter came up to him. ‘Carry your bags, sir?’
Oswald nodded and the man lifted his heavy leather suitcase with ease. ‘Taxi is it, sir?’
Oswald nodded again and followed him to the exit. The bleak windswept platform matched his mood. How he longed to be back under the warmth of the South African sun. Ensconced in the taxi, Oswald gave the porter a sixpenny bit once the case was safely stowed inside.
‘Where to, guv?’