Free The Girls in Blue by Lily Baxter Page B

older children seemed to think the whole thing was a game, and fortified by food and drink they began to explore. Annie was struggling to cope with the air of a martyr about to be burnt at the stake, but Maggie appeared to be in her element. Miranda could only guess that the years her grandmother had spent as an army wife both in India and East Africa must have prepared her to rise to such an occasion, which she was doing magnificently.
    ‘Miranda.’ Maggie took her aside. ‘We have to think about feeding these people. I want you to go to the coach house and liberate the sack of potatoes that Elzevir delivered to your grandfather earlier this afternoon.’
    ‘But he needs them for his experiments.’
    ‘Feeding hungry mouths is more important.’ Maggie pressed a large iron key into her hand. ‘Go now while he’s taking his constitutional along the cliff top, and you’d best take Rita with you. A hundredweight of potatoes is too much for one girl to carry.’
    Miranda unlocked the door but Rita was first inside the coach house, exclaiming in wonder. ‘I thought places like this was just in the flicks. What with haunted attics and this old ruin, you could make horror films here. Before Mum got sick we used to go to the pictures once a week. I loved
The Raven
with Boris Karloff, and then there was
Sweeny Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
with Tod Slaughter. I can’t get enough of creepy movies.’
    ‘It’s just an old coach house, only now it’s used as a garage and Grandpa’s workshop. You’ve got an over-active imagination, Rita.’ Miranda headed for the place where her grandfather kept the sack of potatoes, but when she realised that she was on her own she had to retrace her steps. She caught Rita peering beneath Chloe’s dust sheet.
    ‘Blooming hell! It’s a posh motor. Don’t tell me that your grandad drives this.’
    ‘He doesn’t and don’t touch. This is Chloe and she belongs to my Uncle Jack. Now leave her alone and help me with the sack. I can’t lift it by myself.’
    Rita replaced the covers with a sigh. ‘I’d give me eye teeth for a ride in that thing. I wonder what else you got hidden in the Gothic mansion.’
    ‘Shut up,’ Miranda said, losing her patience. ‘For the last time, Rita, are you going to help me or not?’
    Later that evening, when the evacuees had been fed on mashed potato and fried eggs, and the mothers had taken their children up to their respective rooms, the house was suddenly quiet. Miranda had left Rita unpacking her suitcase with strict instructions not to move her things. Sharing the room that had been hers for as long as she could remember was not something she would have agreed to had it not been forced upon her, but she kept telling herself that she must be kind to Rita, who had lost everything. She must not be mean and selfish. She did not want to end up like Auntie Eileen who had houseboys to wait on her hand and foot, and according to Annie expected the same treatment whenever she deigned to visit her parents.
    Miranda made her way downstairs, moving as quietly as possible so that she would not disturb anyone. Clutched in her hand was the photograph of her father in its dented silver frame, the only personal item she had managed to salvage from her parents’ room before the chimney stack collapsed. She tiptoed to the drawing room and placed it on the mantelpiece next to a photo of her grandfather in his army uniform. The startling likeness of father and son brought a lump to her throat and she stood for a moment, gazing at the smiling images of the two most important men in her life. ‘Goodnight, Dad,’ she whispered, closing her eyes and screwing up her face as she had done as a child when she said her prayers at bedtime. ‘Please God keep my dad safe from harm, and Maman too, wherever she is now.’
    The atmosphere in the room had become oppressive and she needed some fresh air. It was almost ten o’clock and the long summer evening was drawing