Free A Step Too Far by Meg Hutchinson

fighting this war yet not for another three years could Alice make decisions for herself.
         At the nightly signal denoting completed armaments were to be removed from the factory, Alice switched off her own machine. In one minute the rest would fall silent. Shaking her head at Becky’s call to come into the canteen, she wiped her hands on a cloth already stained with oil then took her packed lunch to where she could watch the proceedings. This was a saving grace of working through the night; here she would watch a dance of a different kind, a lumbering yet somehow graceful dance.
         Alice’s spine tingled. This was as good as going to the pictures, it was better than watching any gangster film.
         Biting into her bread and margarine – canteen lunches cost money her mother said they could not afford – the blood in her veins chilled into delicious ice. There in the almost blackness came the sound of something moving, something which growled deep and ominous.
         Perched on her wooden crate, Alice pressed into the shadows. If Isaac Eldon spotted her he would order her away to take her lunch break with the rest of the workforce in the canteen.
         At the further end of the workshop, veiled in mysterious darkness the sound of movement came again.
         Almost afraid to blink lest it be heard above, that harsh whoosh of breath drawn into massive lungs, that deep animalistic threat as it was exhaled, Alice felt her senses jar. Bread sat unswallowed on her tongue. Soon would come that slithering swish which in her mind became the sliding of some gigantic reptilian body, a gorgon such as she had trembled at when listening to the story of Medusa, a grotesque demon capable of killing her with a glance. Fuelled by fantasy, an exquisite thrill of fear rushed through her. Yes, this was definitely the equal of sitting in that flea pit of a cinema unrealistically called ‘The Odeon’. Odeon! She giggled almost choking on a lump of bread, odious would be far more apt.
         A few yards away Isaac Eldon called an instruction and moments later came the creak of doors being pushed open. Despite herself, Alice drew a sharp breath. It always affected her this way. It seemed the whole end wall of the workshop slowly vanished allowing moonlight to cast its magic over silent machines, to touch levers and pulleys until they appeared to float in a world of silver, a world revealed to her only through the darkness of war.
         Sandwich lying forgotten in her hand, Alice slipped into a half forgotten world of softly silvered stillness, the world of childhood, of sitting at a bedroom window staring into the hush of a summer night, breathing the scent of sleeping gardens that for those precious moments overcame the smell of coke-fired furnaces and factory smoke. It had been a world of hope, the years ahead a blank canvas on which she would design a beautiful life.
         ‘All set this end.’
         The call acted swiftly on Alice, winging her from childhood into the present.
         Turning her glance from the velvety patch of moon filled sky she peered into the depth of shadow clouding the opposite end of the dim lit workshop.
         Now! It would be now!
         ‘Right Harry  . . .’
         Isaac Eldon’s quiet instruction echoed on the following moment of silence, on a peace she knew would soon be shattered.
         ‘. . . bring ’er up.’
         Then she saw it. Looming out of the shadows, red eyes blinking, lungs belching, a huge body dragging toward her. For a long, heart-stopping moment it seemed the red eyes looked directly at her, that the growl of approval was a threat intended for her. The delicious thrill suddenly became genuine alarm. Any interruption in its progress would bring Eldon to find the reason and that reason would be her! That would lead to more than a telling off: she could possibly be sacked. Isaac Eldon was a fair man in his dealings with the factory hands, he