Free At the Break of Day by Margaret Graham

around her. Sam’s lips were still thin. Jack’s eyes were steady. The others were nodding, smiling, all uncertainty gone.
    Sam still didn’t smile though. He said, ‘OK, you say you haven’t changed.’ He looked at Jack. ‘You tell her about tonight, then bring her along. We’ll see if she’s changed. We’ll see if she’s got too good for us all.’
    Jack’s face set, he took Sam by the arm, moving him along towards the pavement. Ted followed. Dave and Paul too. Rosie didn’t. She watched them, then the delivery boy cycling past. He rode ‘no hands’ and sat with his arms folded, whistling. She looked back at the gang. What was happening tonight? Whatever it was, she’d do it.
    Ted turned towards her, then nodded to Jack, so did the others. Sam just stared and then called to her, ‘Be there.’
    The delivery boy had reached the corner. Rosie called back, ‘Bank on it, Sam.’ But what was it?
    As they walked back without Sam and the others, Jack told her about the bomb which had killed Sam’s mother, the GI jeep that had killed his sister. But he wouldn’t tell her about tonight. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you involved. I have to explain some things first.’
    They passed the black-tarred replacement windows in a damaged house and he told her how in this time of shortages he, Ollie, Sam and the gang had bought demob suits off the men coming home and resold them at a profit, and that didn’t hurt anybody because the soldiers didn’t want them anyway.
    He told her about the drivers who would deliver twenty-one pigs to the wholesalers and be given a receipt for twenty. How the odd one would be sold, piece by piece. For a lot of money. It was big business. Nasty business.
    ‘But what about tonight?’
    He told her about the police swoop on marketeers in March designed to end the racketeering. About the major roadblocks around London and other cities. About the lorries and vans the police searched for eggs, meat, poultry. He told her about the market stalls being raided. He told her that the police were still stopping and searching anyone who seemed suspicious. That it was a dangerous time to be out and about if it looked as though you were up to anything shady.
    ‘But what about tonight?’
    He asked her if she remembered Jones who had owned their houses. Jones was getting very flash, he said, because he took people’s money for black-market produce like that extra piece of pork – and only sometimes delivered the goods. He also pinched produce from the local allotments, but they could find no proof. Last of all, he had taken two cheeses from a farm where the neighbourhood owned two cows and had a cheese club.
    ‘Sure I remember him, now what about tonight?’ She grabbed him now, turning him to her, laughing, and it was the first time she had done that for so long.
    ‘Tonight we are not banging door knockers, we are not cutting up sleepers for fuel and selling it, we are not making cigarettes out of dog-ends. Tonight we are breaking into a warehouse owned by Jones and taking two of his cheeses. You, me, Sam and Ted. All the gang. We’re taking back what’s ours. Are you coming?’
    He was still facing her, his eyes serious, though his mouth was smiling. She thought of the lake, but all that was slipping away from her. Just for now, it was more distant.
    She thought of Grandpa, the police action Jack had just explained. ‘We could get caught?’ He voice was serious.
    ‘Yes.’ He didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes, we could. It might be big trouble.’
    ‘Does this cheese really belong to the street or is it all for money?’
    ‘No. The cheese is ours. We’re sick of getting taken for a ride, and being pushed around.’
    She smiled, walking on now, hearing him catch her up.
    ‘When do we start?’ she said because she knew all about being pushed around.
    It was dark when she left the house. She had bathed in the tin bath as she said she would and felt better. She wore a loose dress, it