Free As Time Goes By by Annie Groves

outraged back Hazelpulled a rueful face at Sam and muttered under her breath, ‘Poor bloody kid, she’s so scared of living she might as well be dead. It’s a crying shame, and we’ll have to do something about it.’
    ‘There’s no harm in having a bit of fun,’ Lynsey was telling Mouse determinedly. ‘Not if you ask me, and not when you remember that there’s a war on and wot that Hitler is going to do to us if he has his way.’
    Her comment caught Sam like a blow. No matter how much they tried to put it out of their minds, or hide it behind a cheerful mask of banter and determination, for the whole country the fear they shared was never really very far away.
    ‘Lynsey’s right, there’s nothing wrong in going to a dance, Mouse,’ Hazel smiled.
    ‘In fact,’ Lynsey added, ‘I reckon that it’s our duty to think about those poor boys of ours, fighting to save this country and risking their lives for us. It wouldn’t be right to deny them the opportunity to have a bit of fun in their off-duty time, and it certainly wouldn’t be Christian,’ she told Mouse mock piously, adding, ‘Anyway, me and others are going, and Sam’s coming along too, aren’t you, Sam?’
    Sam was now caught out fair and square. And there was certainly no way she wanted to be lumped with Mouse and the pair of them turned into a couple of killjoy miseries, avoided by the other girls.
    ‘Yes, of course I am,’ she agreed, forcing a hearty enthusiasm she couldn’t feel. ‘And you’re comingas well, Mouse. You don’t have to dance,’ she told her, shrewdly devising a way out of her own fear of making a complete fool of herself on the dance floor. ‘Not if you don’t want to, but you can’t stay here on your own.’
    ‘No … I wouldn’t want to do that,’ Mouse agreed ‘Do you think there really is a ghost here, like May said last night?’
    Sam laughed. ‘Of course there isn’t.’
    ‘Well, that’s not what I’ve heard,’ May defended her story stoutly. ‘Like I said, I’ve bin told they was thinking of closing it down as a school on account of the number of girls wot had been taken bad after seeing it and having to be sent home.’
    ‘And the moon’s made of green cheese. I’ll bet they were making it up just so they could get out of lessons,’ Hazel scoffed, adding, ‘I’m going down for my supper. Fair starved, I am. I heard one of the other girls saying that it was toad-in-the-hole tonight, and that’s one of the few things that Cook serves up that’s halfway decent.’
       
    ‘So come on, Sam, and tell us all about this sergeant you’ve taken a shine to then,’ Lynsey demanded.
    They were sitting together at the supper table, and Sam’s could feel her face burning with self-consciousness.
    ‘Don’t talk such rot. Sergeant Brookes is—’
    ‘Oh ho, so it’s Sergeant Brookes, is it? Bet that’s not what you call him when you’re on your own with him, is it, girls?’ Lynsey teased Sam, winking across the table at the other girls.
    Sam knew that it was silly to feel so self-conscious and defensive about her good-natured teasing but she couldn’t help it. Whilst there had been kindness in the tall fair-haired Royal Engineer’s eyes and voice, there had been none of the male appreciation she had seen men exhibiting towards girls they found attractive – nothing improper in any way, in fact. The truth was that she just wasn’t the sort that got those kinds of looks from men, and she was sensitively aware of that fact even if the girls ribbing her weren’t.
    ‘You’ll have to drop a hint to him that you’ll be at the Grafton on Saturday,’ Lynsey told her knowledgeably. ‘If he’s got anything about him he’ll be there looking out for you. Nothing like a slow smoochy dance to help you to get to know someone.’
    ‘Not eating that, are you, Mouse?’ May asked cheerfully, eyeing Mouse’s barely touched food. ‘’Cos if you aren’t you can pass your plate over here.’
    Sam