Read Online To The Grave by Steve Robinson - Free Book Online Page A

she’d swapped a fire-watch shift with one of her friends because her ‘friend’ had no one else to sit with her.  She’d even stayed home when she was supposed to meet Joan on their usual night to make the story seem genuine, and it had worked a treat.  She had until midnight.
    It had been raining most of the day, but it was thankfully dry now.  It was after nine p.m. and almost dark when Mena set out on her bicycle for the church.  Double summertime hours, which had been in place between April and September since the war began, meant that it stayed light an hour longer than usual.  Dusk was the time to go fire-watching and although she would have liked to go sooner, it had apparently suited Danny and she didn’t want to do anything to arouse her mother’s suspicion.  To further maintain the lie, she had her gas mask, torch and flask with her in her bicycle basket, and as the evenings were still chilly, she wore her coat and scarf, which was just as well given what she was wearing beneath it.
    Mena allowed her excitement to permeate only when her back was to the house.  She kicked hard at the pedals and began to grin, in part because she knew how well she’d fooled her mother, but mostly because she was about to embark on her first proper date.  Her skin began to prickle.  She felt so alive and as bold as she’d felt when she wrote her note to Danny, asking to see him again.  She pictured his face: his angular features and those piercing blue eyes that had tried to avoid hers out of shyness, she thought, on that day she first saw him.  Surely he would forgive her forwardness.  There was a war on.
    Mena slowed as she came to the edge of the village.  She felt her skin flush beneath her coat and she knew it wouldn’t do to arrive at St Peter’s glowing like a scullery maid; not this time.  The streets were busier than she would have liked.  At first she felt the need to look away from every face that glanced towards her, but her lie had been so perfect.  It didn’t matter if anyone saw her because she had her mother’s permission to be there.  After a while she found herself smiling and nodding at people she knew, although there were a good many nowadays that she did not.  Every other person she saw wore a military uniform of one kind or another and it was apparent to her that Danny’s pass was no special case tonight.
    She was almost there.  She could see the church spire above the rooftops ahead, stabbing into the clouds that were only just visible now in the rapidly darkening sky.  She stopped short of the road that led to the church and pulled her bicycle into a side street where there was a terrace of houses with blacked-out windows.  She propped her bicycle against a drainpipe and removed her coat and scarf.  Beneath it she wore her favourite dress: the same blue polka-dot dress she had worn on Christmas day.
    Mena checked her reflection in one of the windows.  She straightened her hair and realised she’d have to be quick or she’d lose the light.  She unscrewed her soup flask, which contained no soup tonight.  She tipped it up and her lipstick fell into her hand, followed by an eyeliner pencil that she quickly began to use.  When she’d finished, she stood back and pouted at her reflection, thinking her effort not bad at all under the circumstances.  Not quite Veronica Lake, but it would do.
    She draped her coat over one arm and continued the rest of the way on foot, wondering as she walked where Danny would take her on their first date.  Does he know anywhere? she thought.  It would never do to turn up at the same dance in Leicester that Joan’s parents were going to.  Wherever they went they would have to take the bus out of Oadby; it was one thing to be seen in her coat and scarf pretending to be out fire-watching, but it was another matter altogether to be seen out socialising after dark with a Yank.
    The church was in front of her suddenly, like she’d lost track of