Catching Falling Stars (3 page)

Moany Mrs Mann is always rude in a righteous way, as if only
her
opinions matter and everyone else is being foolish – and she’s only too happy to tell them so. But this is the rudest I’ve heard her be. Mum is going to explode, I know it.

“Shh!”

Shh? That’s
all
Mum has to say?

“Don’t you try and shush me, Madge Gilbert! If you can’t accept friendly advice—”

“Shh!” Mum tries to quieten our ignorant neighbour more insistently. Our neighbour who’s as friendly as a scorpion living in a gorse bush.

“How dare you—”

“QUIET!” Mum hisses at Mrs Mann.

“Glory, Glory, Glory,” Rich whispers in a voice so tiny only I can hear it.

I go to squeeze his hand when I hear him whisper another word.

“Listen.”

And now I can make out what Mum’s been trying to tune into. The reason she’s been shushing Mrs Mann. Mrs Mann must hear it too – she hasn’t barked back at Mum.

It’s a droning sound.

It’s getting louder by the second.

It’s become a frenetic drum roll in my chest as well as a noise in my ears.

It’s right above us, and—

WHAM!

For a split second I’m in the eye of a storm: there’s a deafening crack of thunder, a burst of lightning, and I’m being thrown upside down by a twister and spat out again.

Stillness.

I’m not where I was.

There’s no bench under me, just heavy, hot …
things
on top of me.

Rich and Mum aren’t holding my hands any more – my fingers are buried in stones and earth.

I can’t see anything but pitch darkness.

I can’t take a proper breath because of the smoke and dust.

I lift my head and try to scream but I don’t have a voice, only a shrill ringing in my ears.

Overwhelmed with shock and exhaustion, every breath shallower and more difficult to draw in, I let my face fall back on to the bumpy surface where I’m sprawled. I’m so weak. Maybe I should just close my eyes, drift into deeper darkness, let whatever happens happen…

But my cheek is resting on something soft. Something made of felt and stuffed with wool.

Duckie.

Duckie is with me but Rich is not.

And now I’m clawing, fighting my way through rubble and dirt. A second ago I was limp as a jellyfish washed up on shore, but now I’m a fierce lioness, tearing at whatever’s around me, roaring though I can’t hear myself.

Rich needs me. I’m not going to stop till I find him.

Together we’ll escape – from whatever this is – and feel cool air in our lungs and warm sun on our faces.

I hope…

Butterflies.

Twirling, dancing butterflies.

Dozens of them bob and weave outside the window as the bus pulls up and grinds to a halt. One lands on the glass, its white and apple-green wings opening and shutting like angels’ wings. I put my finger up on my side of the window, trying to connect with it, but it flutters off to join its friends.

Isn’t it a bit late in the year for butterflies?

“Thorntree! Anyone for Thorntree?” the bus driver calls out, making Rich jump beside me.

My brother’s always been nervy but he’s been jumping at everything lately: Betsy or Buttons trying to leap on to his lap, the jangling bell of the scrap man coming down our road, kids cackling and shouting out in the street. All of that’s got him more twitchy than usual.

It’s no surprise, though. It’s only been a couple of weeks since we were blown up.

“Thank you, driver!” Mum replies, getting to her feet and brushing sandwich crumbs off the skirt of her smart blue town suit. “Come on, you lazy lumps!”

She’s talking to me and Rich, of course. We’re both tired from the long journey, on two bumpy, rattling buses, staring at the view for hours as the London suburbs gave way to Essex countryside.

Standing up from the long back seat we’ve been sitting on, my legs feel as weak and wobbly as a newborn kitten’s.

“Glory, Glory, Glory?” says Rich, who’s been huddled between me and Mum all the way. “Are you scared now too?”

Oh, he’s seen me stumble.

“Not a bit!” I lie brightly, hoping he doesn’t see that my hands are shaking too. “I’ve just got pins and needles, that’s all.”

I hope Rich believes me. On the way here, I told him how excited I was, how I was looking forward to all the adventures we’d have. I didn’t tell him that the reason I couldn’t finish my paste sandwich was because my tummy was in such a knot with nerves that I thought I might be sick.

“Quickly, my darlings!” Mum chides us.

Rich shuffles over so that I can help Mum pull suitcases and bags from the rack above, then the three of us try to exit the bus without battering passengers as we go. (I see some of them staring at Rich. He does look quite strange, with his one black eye and the eyebrow above it mostly burnt away. They should see the
rest
of him.)

But at last we’re off, with the bus door clattering and creaking shut behind us.

I put down the suitcase and awkward brown paper parcel I’m carrying, and dig about in my bag for my gloves. The weather’s still Indian summer warm, but Mum told us to pack for chillier weather too, and right now I’m glad of the gloves in particular. The string of the big parcel is cutting into my fingers. Though I’m actually glad too that I have all this awkward luggage; it gives my shaking hands something to do.

“Where’s the pavement?” asks Rich, staring down at the bare, brown earth beneath his polished leather boots. He’s speaking too loudly – Mum had to keep shushing him on the bus – because his hearing is pretty bad after the blast. Mine was bad too, but I’m getting back to normal. As normal as I can be after what happened.

“Thorntree is just a little country village,” Mum tells him, as she lifts a hand to tidy her already tidy, rolled hair. “Things are different here, Rich.”

Now that I’m kneeling, I see that my brother’s long socks are slipping down. I reach over and hoist them up, so no passers-by can stare at the fiery pink patches on them. At least the clusters of blisters have healed now. They made him look like he had some strange tropical disease.

“And what’s that smell?!” Rich asks, wrinkling his freckly nose, unbothered by me sorting him out (because I
always
sort him out).

Now I smell it too. It’s not the sugary scent of the sweet factory; it’s the lingering stench of boiled vegetables, or something very like it.

Glancing around, I see a collection of old houses, shops and buildings, all huddled around a village green, with a large, sprawling oak tree and a small, lily-pad-dotted pond. And hovering over the green are swathes more butterflies. I’ve suddenly remembered what they’re called, and at the same time spotted where the smell is coming from.

“Cabbage whites,” I murmur.

“Oh, my goodness, yes!” cries Mum, catching sight of the sea of knobbly round cabbages growing where there’d normally be grass. “Well, that’s the biggest vegetable plot
I’ve
ever seen.”

“Is it for the war effort, Glory?” Rich asks me. They talk about nothing else at school. Everything is for the war effort; there are special bins outside the playground for scraps of paper, cloth, glass and metal. There’s even one for food scraps, to feed pigs.

Not that Rich will be going to back to his school for a while…

“Yes, it’s for the war effort,” I tell him as I start gathering up our luggage, like a packhorse.

It’s ever so quiet round here
, I think, gazing about and not seeing a single person. It’s like a ghost town, with the white butterflies as flitting, tiny spectres.

“Will we be eating cabbage a lot?” Rich asks, his skinny, bruised face crumpling with concern. He hates cabbage.

“I’m sure there’ll be lots of other lovely things to eat, Richard,” Mum reassures him as she begins to walk, following some scribbled instructions on a piece of paper in her hand. “Right, come on; I think it’s this way…”

Gas mask boxes bashing our hips, we trundle behind her, sneaking a peek into the grocer’s shop window with its stacks of tantalizing tins. They’re piled so high you can’t see inside.

“‘Pass The Swan, and take the lane on the right’,’’ Mum reads from her note.

“I don’t see a swan, Mum,” says Rich, looking over at the pond as we follow her. “There aren’t even any ducks!”

“Not
that
kind of swan, Rich. It’s the name of this pub,” I tell my brother, nodding at the building we’re coming up to. It’s a proper old-fashioned inn, peppered with small windows – just the sort of place you could imagine a highwayman staying in centuries ago. A sign sways on creaking chains above the open door, but the picture on it is so faded that you can only guess that the flakes of paint once showed a graceful swan.

My heart lurches when I spot that we’re being watched. Well, that
I’m
being watched. From one of the pub’s upstairs windows an unsmiling, scrawny-looking girl is staring at me, elbows on the windowsill, pale-coloured eyes roving over me.

But what’s to see? I’m nothing special. A thirteen-year-old girl in a flowery summer dress with a white Peter Pan collar. Grey socks. Buckle shoes. Bobbed brown hair held back on one side with a slide.

Maybe she’s staring because I’m wearing my winter coat on a warm day, since I didn’t fancy carrying it.

Or maybe she’s gawping at the vivid, puckered scar on my right cheekbone.

“We must be near the farm,” Rich suddenly calls out gleefully. “I can hear a pig!
Oh, piggy-wiggy, where are you, oh piggy-wiggy, where are you…
”

As Rich breaks into a silly little sort-of-song, the staring girl gives a sudden, snorting laugh, and then disappears inside.

I feel the faintest flurry of dread. It’s not the friendliest of welcomes, after all.

“Rich, it can’t be the farm
quite
yet,” Mum says with a smile. “According to Vera, we have to walk quite a way down the lane before we get to Mr Wills’ place.”

Vera works alongside Mum at the parachute factory. She came around to see us the day the after the bomb fell, and went from tut-tutting over the mess the broken glass had made in the back rooms to rolling up her sleeves and helping Dad clear the place up.

She wouldn’t hear of Mum getting out of bed to make tea for her; in fact,
she
made the tea, and came to serve it to us on a tray, with a cake she’d baked and brought specially. What a sight me, Mum and Rich must’ve been; all huddled together in my parents’ big brass bed, a bundle of clean cotton nighties and pyjamas covering messed-up and bloodied skin.

“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you, Madge, love?” Vera had said kindly, reaching over to pat Mum’s hand.

“I think so,” Mum had replied, though it hurt her to talk, since she’d taken a blow to her jaw in the blast.

“The kiddies can’t stay here…”

Not with the planes now aiming for London, ready to drop their cargo on us all, Vera meant. I think she was trying not to say the words out loud, for Rich’s sake, but he was curled up asleep with Duckie, his small body – dotted with scars, blisters and burns – trying to rest and heal itself.

“I’ve been chatting to your Norman, and he agrees with me,” Vera carried on, her voice turning matter-of-fact as soon as she noticed Mum crumble, her eyes filling with tears. “And I’ve sorted something out for you.”

She passed Mum the paper with a name and address on it.

And here we are now, walking down the country lane to the sanctuary of a farm that belongs to some relative of Vera’s husband, George. There
had
been talk about the schools around our way doing a mass evacuation again soon, but after what happened, Mum and Dad just wanted us gone, out of harm’s way, as quickly as they could arrange for it.