Free Lucky Bunny (9780062202512) by Jill Dawson Page A

unfriendly. She has big eyes, chocolate-drop color, like her dog’s. I see in them now something very puzzling, a thing I’ve not seen in anyone’s eyes before. Mum has never looked at me like that. Nan has no reason to. Although it’s new to me, I suddenly know exactly what it is, and a feeling like a spanner turning over in my stomach locks it away. I think it’s going to be useful to me. I’m going to store it up. Like the way I know who is hiding the ball behind their back, in the Queenie game. My way of reading people. Ah, I think. I want to smile. Elsie feels guilty. That’s what guilty looks like. Even so. That Lux soap is in my pocket.
    O n the train home, I’m sick in a paper bag that the billeting lady holds out for me. She makes me stand near the open window in the corridor for the rest of the journey, eyes on me like a hawk. She thinks I’m “sickening for something,” but I know better. It’s just thinking that’s doing it. Of Mum. Where is Mum? Of the hospital, if we have to go there. Of the house with no furniture in it and no Dad there to shout “watcha!” up to us and sweep me off my feet and tickle me with his scratchy beard and put his hand in his pocket and find a sixpence for me. The sick feeling from thinking about Vera again. Vera in a white bonnet, string tied under her chin, and a grey blanket, like a wet bandage, all soaking on her. Vera is a horrible, fearful thing, too ugly to look at or think about, and doing it makes my stomach turn over again and hotness creep up from my belly and rush at me.
    They must have had the funeral without us. Nan mentioned it before we left. Vera’s with the angels now, learning to play a harp. There must be a mini-sized coffin somewhere with soap-colored satin inside it and a boiled empty baby, like a penny guy. And Dad will never see her again, and maybe we’ll never see him again. And if we don’t watch out we’ll all go exactly the same way. Boiled up in a big pot until our heads burst like steamed puddings in a cloth.
    I know that’s what happened, really. I don’t think anyone’s ever going to tell me, but I know it was Mum’s fault. She didn’t want any more blinkin’ babies. Children made her go a bit doolally, Nan said. So she did something so wicked, or stupid, no one would believe it. Put Vera in a pot. Cooked her up. Or dropped a kettle of water on her. It’s like when Nan used to cry, “Moll, what’s got into you?” Has something got into Mum? A devil maybe. And now we’re going to see her again, because the billeting lady says she’s written to our mothers and they’re going to be at the station to meet us.
    I feel sick again.
    B ut as the train chugs into that busy London station with the high church roof with all the windows in it like Ely Cathedral and all the pigeons flitting about up there, I’m grabbing my bag from the seat and pulling faces at Bobby, and suddenly I see him. He’s grinning through the window of the train and just holding a cigarette at his mouth in that way he has, his silver-blue eyes smiling, smiling. He has a smart black hat on and braces and a tie and a new-looking jacket, and he’s chipper, that’s what Nan would say, or is it dipper? Or maybe it’s dapper? Anyway, he’s one of those words, she really would say it, and he’s dark and smart and sparkly; he’s the loveliest, newest, most shiny thing I’ve ever seen.
    â€œDaddy!”
    He’s wheeling me and wheeling me, and kissing my hair and kissing Bobby’s head as Bobby ducks away from him, and he takes a hand each and he’s nearly crying as he hugs us; I can really tell how much he’s really missed us, the way he keeps his mouth buried in my hair for a long time, until the billeting lady comes up and says, all rude and stiff, that she has instructions to hand the children over to a Mrs. Ida Dove