Free After the Last Dance by Manning Sarra

you?’ Rose asked timidly.
    â€˜No, of course you haven’t,’ Phyllis said but her massive bosom heaved. ‘Though if London isn’t lively enough for you then it’s a pity you weren’t here a couple of years back. Then it was
very
lively, let me tell you.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.’
    Maggie picked up her glass, almost took a sip from it, and then put it down on the slick-wet table with some force. ‘Have you any idea of what… everyone I know…
everyone
lost someone during the Blitz.’
    â€˜I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ She was sorry from the absolute bottom of her heart, but even so Rose had noticed that Londoners had a tendency to go on and on about the Blitz as if not a single bomb had dropped anywhere else. As if no one else had ever experienced what it was like to suddenly have people
gone,
like Janet and Susan from her class at school and Timothy McFarlane who’d once taken Shirley to the fair and had been killed on his first RAF mission, but it was very hard to explain that to these two imperious girls who thought they had the monopoly on loss just because they lived in London. It was far better to apologise again, make her excuses, then leave. ‘So, I take it you two don’t volunteer, then?’
    Or she could stay and dig herself in even deeper.
    This time the look that Phyllis and Maggie shared was less sceptical, more smug. ‘We do volunteer,’ Phyllis said. ‘For the American Red Cross.’
    â€˜But we’re entitled to a night off,’ Maggie added and though Rose’s hair was sodden and heavy, Rose fancied that it was suddenly standing on end.
    â€˜Oh.’ She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but that one syllable was so high-pitched, it rivalled any note that the band’s saxophonist had played that night. ‘At Rainbow Corner?’
    They nodded. Sylvia, who’d caught the last part of the conversation, leaned over Phyllis’s shoulder. ‘I sometimes think we should pay them for the privilege of volunteering. It’s such fun, everyone is so nice and the perks… I have bars of chocolate and packets of cigarettes coming out of my ears.’
    â€˜Do shut up, Sylv. Loose lips and all that,’ Phyllis said, reaching behind to dig Sylvia in the ribs. ‘Not that we accept any of the perks.’
    Rose didn’t care whether they did or not. ‘You volunteer at Rainbow Corner? That’s an actual thing that one could do?’
    â€˜Only if one was over eighteen,’ Maggie told her. ‘Anyway, there’s a waiting list. It’s very long. There’s also a list of girls who are never allowed through the door.’
    She made it sound as if she was going to personally make sure that Rose’s name was added to the blacklist just because she had the audacity not to have been in London for the Blitz. Maggie and Phyllis were utterly objectionable and though Sylvia seemed friendly enough, Rose wasn’t sure she could trust someone who was pally with such rude girls.
    â€˜Oh, look! There’s Cordelia! I haven’t seen her in
ages
!
’
Sylvia was suddenly gone and Rose sat there with Phyllis and Maggie, who ignored her for a good two minutes until Cuthbert thankfully reappeared and asked if he could have the pleasure of the next dance.

6
    It could have been any one of a multitude of different agonies which forced Jane out of sleep.
    She was face down, her head wedged at an uncomfortable angle because she was still wearing her tiara, which now felt like an instrument of torture. She still had her clothes on. Her wedding dress… she paused to remember why she was still wearing her wedding dress, and as she recalled all the horrors and indignities of the last twenty-four hours, Jane wished she were still comatose. All of her was sore; from her feet, which ached from too much walking in limo shoes, to her head, which felt