Far From Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

Families had been forced to move out, their children sent far from home and into the care of strangers; their husbands, sons and brothers fighting abroad.
    To the west, beyond the street that led up the hill from the seafront, lay the broader Camden Road which ran past the local parade of shops and on to the school and hospital until it reached the High Street of Cliffehaven town centre. The school was closed due to a block of flats falling on it during an early bombing raid, the children swiftly evacuated to safety, the teachers, like her eldest daughter Anne, enlisting into the various services. The hospital had, thankfully, escaped damage but the new factory Solomon and Goldman which had opened only weeks before had not been so lucky, and production had been seriously affected. It was a miracle no one had been hurt.
    Peggy tutted, slung the straps of her gas-mask box and handbag over her shoulder and hurried westwards towards the High Street and the town hall where the WVS had set up a reception station for the homeless and dispossessed. She supposed she should be grateful they weren’t receiving the same treatment from the enemy as London, but being directly beneath the shortest route from the continent to the capital meant they were getting their fair share.
    It was a shame she’d been born a woman, she decided as she walked determinedly past the Anchor, Ron’s favourite pub, because she’d have liked to have shown Mr Hitler just what she was made of.
    Danuta Chmielewski heard the front door slam and, from behind the curtains of her first-floor bedroom window, she looked between the criss-cross of white tape down on Peggy Reilly as she paused on the steps before striding purposefully to the end of the street and crossing over to Camden Road. She followed her progress until she was out of sight, lost among the other housewives who were hurrying to join the queues outside the local shops.
    Peggy was, Danuta guessed, in her early forties, with a bustling, no-nonsense air that was evident in the way she walked. Dark haired and pretty, despite the weariness that seemed to shadow her eyes, Peggy had been kindness itself. Danuta knew only too well how hard it must have been for her to tell her about Aleksy – God knew, she’d had to impart such awful tidings herself too many times not to know how she felt. It never got any easier, either, she silently admitted.
    Danuta pulled the curtains on the bright sunlight, unable to bear its cheerfulness. She turned her back on it and stood in the broad bay, trying desperately to find some essence of Aleksy in this room he’d once slept in. It was a pleasant room at the front of the house above the dining room, furnished with a highly polished oak wardrobe, chest of drawers and dressing table. The two single beds stood opposite the door, the eiderdowns covering crisp linen, the home-made rag rug between them on the varnished floorboards. There was a gas fire with a shelf over it, and a mirror above that. A comfortable chair sat to one side of it, a padded stool stood in front of the dressing table, and a little rattan table held the bedside lamp and the few precious photographs she’d managed to rescue from the rubble of their home.
    It was luxurious compared to the shelled-out barns, ditches and ruined farmhouses where she’d had to sleep over the past months, and although she was dreading having to share it with the mysterious Nurse Brown when she eventually arrived, it was certainly more comfortable than the cramped, cold apartment her parents had rented in Warsaw. The thought of those tenement rooms only made the homesickness more unbearable and, at this moment, she would have given anything to roll back this last year and be with her family again. But they were gone – all of them – and no amount of wishing could bring them back.
    Danuta moved slowly across the room and sank on to her narrow bed, her gaze fixed to those faded, creased photographs that she’d carried so