Free The Girls They Left Behind by Lilian Harry

don’t see why we got to wait,’ someone else chipped in. She had frizzled ginger hair and the end of a cigarette drooping from her lip. ‘I’ll be going to stop with my sister at Farlington. I don’t see as that’s their business. They never took no interest in us before.’
    ‘Yes, but they’ll give you money, won’t they,’ Mrs Wilson said. To buy new clothes and furniture and stuff. And they wants to know just who’s bin bombed out, for their records.’
    The ginger woman looked as if she didn’t give tuppence for
    the records, but the possibility, of being given money didn’t seem to have struck her before. She sat down again and lit another cigarette.
    At midday the tables were cleared again and urns of soup
    and tea brought in. There was more bread and marge, and this time most people ate it. There was milk for the children, but it was obvious that supplies were scarce. Presumably the bombing had made it difficult to get fresh food through, though there seemed to be a good store of tins and packets in the school.
    At last the queue reached S, and Kathy found herself sitting in front of the trestle table with the girls one on each
    side of her. The woman behind the table was wearing a floral dress and looked hot and sticky. She was rather fat, with wavy grey hair that looked as if it had been polished.
    ‘Name?’ She had a scratchy pen and an inkpot. ‘Address? And how many in your family?’
    ‘Just the two girls,’ Kathy said, and the woman looked at her sharply.
    ‘Husband away?’
    ‘He’s in the Merchant Navy.’
    ‘I see.’ The woman wrote down all the details. ‘You’ve managed to save your documents, that’s a good thing. Some people have got nothing, just nothing. What else is salvageable?’
    Kathy stared at her.
    ‘What else did you bring with you? Can you get much out of the house? Furniture, clothes, utensils?’
    Kathy shook her head numbly. ‘Nothing.’ She felt the ache in her throat, the hot threat of tears in her eyes. All day she’d been trying to keep them back for the sake of the children, but now her control was slipping.
    ‘Nothing at all?’
    ‘We couldn’t even get Princess Marcia,’ Muriel said suddenly. ‘And Stella’s donkey that Daddy brought home.’
    The woman looked at the children, then back at Kathy.‘All day she had been interviewing people who had been bombed
    out of their houses and now had nothing at all, and she had begun to harden herself towards the tragedy of it all. It was the only way to get through. But the sight of Muriel’s face, mourning her lost doll, touched her heart and brought her own tears perilously close.
    ‘Well, there’ll be other dolls,’ she said briskly, forcing them back. ‘The main thing now is to find you somewhere to live and give you some money. Now, you can be housed for a short while in a reception centre about half a mile away — a church hall. This one is being kept for immediate emergencies. You’ll be allowed enough money for your immediate needs such as soap and a change of clothes, and when a house is found for you, you’ll be given money for furniture.’ She opened a tin box and gave Kathy a pound note and a ten
    shilling one, entering the figure in a column beside Kathy’s name. She signed the sheet of paper, then tore it off and handed it over. ‘Keep that safe. It tells us what you’ve had.
    You’re allowed a total of five pounds but it’s not to be frittered away, mind. And if you’re evacuated the sum will be different, of course, since you won’t be requiring furniture.’
    ‘I shan’t be evacuated,’ Kathy said. ‘I want to be in Portsmouth for when my husband gets home.’
    The woman pursed her lips. ‘You’ll be sending the children away, though.’
    Kathy shook her head. ‘I’d rather we stayed together.’ ‘They’d be a lot safer out in the country.’
    ‘We’d rather be together.’ She tried a shaky smile. ‘Anyway, they say lightning never strikes twice in the same