At the Break of Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

making her see what she had escaped. But that wasn’t her fault, was it? Grandpa had made her come back and he hadn’t even come to meet her, and neither had Jack.
    She wiped the train window clear of condensation, felt the wet on her skin as she made herself count the telegraph poles, made herself smell the train, taste the tea thick on her tongue and teeth, watch the rain, because all this was England. The raindrops jerked down the pane as the train rattled slowly over the points.
    Poor little country. Poor goddamn little country – and she saw tired brownstone buildings where no jazz played.
    Guilt came then and it was shocking in its forgotten strength. It was the same guilt which had come on heavy heat-laden nights when she was safe and thousands of miles away from the bombs, the rationing, the grind. But the feeling had faded with the years and she had forgotten it until today. And now there was so much pain, so much anger, so much guilt that she thought her head would burst, but then this too faded. All of it faded. Nothing stayed. She was too tired. Right now she was too tired but it would all come again, along with the panic. She knew. It had been the same six years ago.
    She wiped at the window again then sat with her hands clenched. She watched as the man opposite took out a packet of Woodbines, and struck a match. The smell of sulphur filled the carriage before being swept away in a rush of noise and wind as he hauled on the window strap, flicked out the match, then snapped it up again.
    She watched as he drew deeply and read his paper again. She watched as the woman opposite took out sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper. The tomato was warm and had stained the bread. The child in the corner was kicking his leg against the opposite seat. He had soft brown eyes like Jack’s. She looked away quickly.
    Why hadn’t Jack met her? She pressed her hands together tightly in her lap. Why? He had written all through the years and had said he would come. Frank had cabled Grandpa telling him the time and date. Why hadn’t one of them come?
    She looked at the boy in the corner again and then out at the fields, so green, so lush, even in the greyness, even in the rain. She had forgotten how green it was, how small the fields were. They passed old houses made of deep red Cheshire stone, and copses. She’d forgotten there were copses.
    Yes, why hadn’t either of them come? She had known Norah would not. ‘Norah’s walking around like a flaming great purple bloodhound,’ Jack had written in his first letter to her. ‘She’ll not forgive you for going, leaving her here with iodine and impetigo. It’ll be your fault that the programme was scrapped before she could come too. Just shrug her off.’
    Rosie had, she’d forgotten about the older girl who had increasingly pushed, shoved and scowled her way through life the older she became, but now they would be meeting again. Would it be any better?
    The man opposite stubbed out his cigarette on the floor, grinding his heel down, squashing it, mixing it with the dirt from the floor.
    Rosie remembered salvaging dog-ends with Jack before the war then rolling them into new fags and selling them for two-pence a pack. She and Jack had done that together and his mum had laughed but Grandma had never known. She would not have laughed and now so much of the past was coming back. Grandma would have told Grandpa he was a fool not to tan ‘that girl’s backside’. He had always loved Rosie so much, but he hadn’t come to meet her, had he? He had just issued the order.
    Rosie hadn’t cried when Grandma died beneath the rubble of the bank. Norah had cried while the funeral guests were there and then she had gone up and sorted through Grandma’s mothballed clothes trying on the coat with the fox fur and the paws and the head with eyes which followed you around. It hadn’t suited her purple face, Rosie thought.
    Norah had kept that and the cardigans and given the jumpers to