Read Online A Trail of Fire by Diana Gabaldon - Free Book Online Page A

be more than seventeen, and Jerry felt the weight of the five years between them as though they were fifty – looked at him wide-eyed, then whooped with laughter.
    ‘What’ve you been having to drink, Dad? Bring any away with you?’
    That led to more ragging, and he didn’t try asking again.
    Did it matter?

    He remembered almost nothing of the journey from Salisbury to London. People looked at him oddly, but no one tried to stop him. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered but getting to Dolly. Everything else could wait.
    London was a shock. There was bomb damage everywhere. Streets were scattered with shattered glass from shop windows, glinting in the pale sun, other streets blocked off by barriers. Here and there a stark black notice: Do Not Enter – UNEXPLODED BOMB.
    He made his way from St Pancras on foot, needing to see, his heart rising into his throat fit to choke him as he did see what had been done. After a while, he stopped seeing the details, perceiving bomb-craters and debris only as blocks to his progress, things stopping him from reaching home.
    And then he did reach home.
    The rubble had been pushed off the street into a heap, but not taken away. Great blackened lumps of shattered stone and concrete lay like a cairn where Montrose Terrace had once stood.
    All the blood in his heart stopped dead, congealed by the sight. He groped, pawing mindlessly for the wrought-iron railing to keep himself from falling, but it wasn’t there.
    Of course not, his mind said, quite calmly. It’s gone for the war, hasn’t it? Melted down, made into planes. Bombs.
    His knee gave way without warning, and he fell, landing hard on both knees, not feeling the impact, the crunch of pain from his badly mended kneecap quite drowned out by the blunt small voice inside his head.
    Too late. Ye went too far.
    ‘Mr MacKenzie, Mr MacKenzie!’ He blinked at the blurred thing above him, not understanding what it was. Something tugged at him, though, and he breathed, the rush of air in his chest ragged and strange.
    ‘Sit up, Mr MacKenzie, do.’ The anxious voice was still there, and hands – yes, it was hands – tugging at his arm. He shook his head, screwed his eyes shut hard, then opened them again, and the round thing became the hound-like face of old Mr Wardlaw, who kept the corner shop.
    ‘Ah, there you are.’ The old man’s voice was relieved, and the wrinkles in his baggy old face relaxed their anxious lines. ‘Had a bad turn, did you?’
    ‘I—’ Speech was beyond him, but he flapped his hand at the wreckage. He didn’t think he was crying, but his face was wet. The wrinkles in Wardlaw’s face creased deeper in concern, then the old grocer realised what he meant, and his face lit up.
    ‘Oh, dear!’ he said. ‘Oh, no! No, no, no – they’re all right, sir, your family’s all right! Did you hear me?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Can you breathe? Had I best fetch you some salts, do you think?’
    It took Jerry several tries to make it to his feet, hampered both by his knee and by Mr Wardlaw’s fumbling attempts to help him, but by the time he’d got all the way up, he’d regained the power of speech.
    ‘Where?’ he gasped. ‘Where are they?’
    ‘Why – your missus took the little boy and went to stay with her mother, sometime after you left. I don’t recall quite where she said . . .’ Mr Wardlaw turned, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the river. ‘Camberwell, was it?’
    ‘Bethnal Green.’ Jerry’s mind had come back, though it felt still as though it was a pebble rolling round the rim of some bottomless abyss, its balance uncertain. He tried to dust himself off, but his hands were shaking. ‘She lives in Bethnal Green. You’re sure – you’re sure, man?’
    ‘Yes, yes.’ The grocer was altogether relieved, smiling and nodding so hard that his jowls trembled. ‘She left – must be more than a year ago, soon after she – soon after she . . .’ The old man’s smile faded abruptly and his