Read Online Abigale Hall by Lauren A Forry - Free Book Online Page B

‘She came to me in my dreams. Begged me for help.’
    Mr Rolston threw the wireless aside and grabbed his wife’s arms as she held onto Peter’s hands.
    â€˜They won’t let her write. They won’t. “Help me, Mummy,” she said. “Help me!”’
    Mr Rolston slapped her across the face. The second time, she stopped crying. Mr Rolston smoothed back his hair as his wife prodded her bleeding lip.
    â€˜Go and lie down,’ he ordered. She did as she was told, disappearing behind the sheet. ‘You must excuse my wife. She’s ill.’ He took up a newspaper. Peter feared he would be struck with it. Instead, Mr Rolston scribbled something in the margins.
    â€˜That’s where she is.’ He handed it to Peter. An address in Camden. ‘You do see her, tell that whore she’s no longer welcome here.’
    *
    It was after eleven by the time Peter made his way home, thoughts of Eliza and Jessie still distressing him. Home was a small flat in a quiet area of Earl’s Court. The majority of residents should have already been asleep by the time Peter shuffled out of the Underground station, so he thought it odd when he sensed someone behind him.
    He didn’t see anyone the four times he peeked over his shoulder, but the feeling – that pressure on his back, as if something was staring into his soul – refused to dissipate.
    Peter kept a steady pace, ears keen for the slightest sound. He never liked walking down empty city streets at night. It reminded him too much of being caught out in an air raid. Too young to fight, most of his war days had been spent at the family cottage in Shepperton. Though it was much smaller than London, they heard their fair share of sirens thanks to the nearby aircraft factory. Many cold nights had been spent cowered in the Anderson shelter at the bottom of their garden, wondering if they would have a house to return to come morning. His family had been lucky. His father was too old to enlist and all three of his brothers returned home safe to English soil. His mother’s disposition had been Peter’s greatest challenge, but Peter understood her nervy feeling. He had it now.
    It was the feeling one had whenever a telegram was delivered to the door. The drop even the heartiest of stomachs would take as fingers tore open the envelope with silent prayers of ‘not Casualty Services, please God, not that’. It was a feeling which remained under the skin all day, even after good news. That one had escaped this time, but the next would bring Death to the door.
    Something hit the back of his shoe. Peter’s chest constricted as he turned round. It was a stone. Just a small grey stone. Yet the way it hit was as if someone walking behind him had kicked it forward. He looked. There was no one he could see. Though only a few doors from his building, Peter walked faster.
    He tried to imagine what it must have been like for his brothers walking across the fields of France, their packs weighing them down as they waited for a German attack. How they would peer over their shoulders, ensuring it was a comrade behind them, not a kommandant . The longer they went with no attack, the more heightened their senses would become. Every snapping twig or barking dog would become the enemy. Every scent would mean danger. Or death.
    A pot shattered.
    Peter ran to his door, fumbled with his keys. He leapt inside, locking himself in before someone could follow. Leaning against the door, short of breath, he paused and listened. No sound came from the other side of the door. The panic in his chest threatened to escape as a nervous laugh until the door shook.
    The handle twisted and rattled. Peter backed away, the swallowed laugh stuck in his throat. He did not wait for the door to still before running up the stairs to his flat. His foot slipped on the second landing, and he caught himself against a neighbour’s doorway. Peter clung to the wooden