“There’s an oil stove, but you won’t be needing that tonight. The pump’s in the yard, and there’s a privy on the far side.” John seemed to hesitate, then said, “I’ll leave you the lantern, but you must promise to take care with it, and don’t forget the blackout.” He set it gently atop the chest, then went to the door. “You just go across to the kitchen in the morning. Good night, lad.” His heavy footsteps clumped down the stairs, and the door at the bottom banged shut.
At home, Lewis had always slept in the same room as his brothers, and his mum or his sister had always been there when he came home from school in the afternoon. Now, he found himself completely alone for the first time in his life.
He sat down on the rough blanket and stared at the lantern light wavering on the walls. Although the room still held the day’s heat, he began to shiver. He got up and extinguished the lantern, then curled himself into a fetal position on the narrow bed, his fist pressed to his mouth to keep the grief welling up inside him from escaping.
And so he slept, deeply and dreamlessly, until the morning sun brought a faint brightening round the edges of his window.
Awakening brought a moment of comfort, until he realized he couldn’t smell his mother’s cooking, or hear faint snatches of the songs she sang as she moved about the kitchen. Reality flooded back into his awareness, and with it the sense of being watched.
He opened his eyes, blinking stickily at a shadow in his doorway. As his vision cleared, the fuzzy form resolved itself into a boy about his own age, who crossed the room and pulled aside the curtains. Light flooded in, and Lewis saw that his visitor was tall and slender, and wore a navyblazer with a school tie. His dark hair was slicked neatly back above a pale face.
“Cook sent me to fetch you,” the boy said in an accent Lewis had heard only on the wireless. “And I wanted to see you for myself. I couldn’t get away last night—Mummy kept me fetching and carrying for Aunt Edwina while they talked about the war.”
Lewis sat up and rubbed his face. “The war? Has it started, then?”
The boy leaned against the window frame. “Not officially, but they expect the announcement sometime today. Aunt Edwina has the wireless on in the sitting room, and Cook’s listening in the kitchen. Aunt Edwina has a wager on with my dad that it will all come to nothing. ‘A bloody old windbag’ is what she calls Hitler. I think she’s wrong, though. There is going to be a war.”
