Read Online While We're Apart by Ellie Dean - Free Book Online

replied softly. ‘Mum and Dad couldn’t face seeing me off again after the army trucks picked me up from the farm.’
    Mary kissed him again, glad of his strong arms around her, but aware of the nervous tension that ran through him. ‘I had to come,’ she murmured against his freshly shaven jaw. ‘I couldn’t bear to think of you leaving without seeing you just one more time.’
    â€˜Right, you horrible lot,’ shouted a sergeant from somewhere in the mist of smoke and steam. ‘All aboard – and jump to it. Yer in the army now, and I don’t like idlers.’
    Mary clung to Jack as he kissed her for the last time. ‘I’ll send you my address,’ he said as he picked up his bag and edged back towards the open carriage door. ‘Take care of yourself, Mary, until I come home again.’
    â€˜And you take care,’ she managed as the tears welled. ‘I love you, Jack.’
    He ducked his head and reddened as the other men cheered and encouraged him to kiss her again, but he clambered on to the train, and the sergeant slammed the door behind him before marching to the next carriage.
    Mary stood on the platform desperately searching for sight of Jack. And there he was, lifting the blackout blind and opening the window, leaning out as the whistle blew and the train began to roll slowly forward with a hiss of steam. She reached out and their fingers touched before the train gathered speed. ‘I’ll write every day,’ she shouted as she tried to keep pace with him.
    â€˜So will I, I promise,’ he yelled back.
    Mary came to the end of the short platform as the carriages trundled noisily past her with their blacked-out windows. She stood and watched until the train was lost in the darkness. ‘God go with you, Jack, and bring you home safely,’ she stuttered through the tears she could no longer hold back.
    â€˜There, there, lass,’ said the elderly stationmaster. ‘He’ll be back afore you knows it. Now, you dry them tears and I’ll get the missus to make us a nice cuppa. How about that?’
    Mary pulled herself together and nodded. ‘That would be lovely,’ she replied with a tremulous smile. ‘It’s a long ride back home to Harebridge Green.’
    She sat drinking the tea in the stationmaster’s cosy cottage, feeling the warmth of the roaring fire slowly thawing out her fingers and toes. She tried to ignore the coldness that had settled in her heart as she dutifully admired his wife’s large collection of lovingly polished copper pots and horse brasses, and listened attentively as she talked about her equally large family of whom she was inordinately proud. Yet her thoughts were with Jack, her heart frozen at the thought she might never see him again.
    Having finished her tea, she thanked the couple for their kindness and regretfully left the snug little home. It was well past nine o’clock and her journey would take at least half an hour now she was so tired and downhearted. She was relieved to find that her bicycle had come to no harm after being thrown to the ground so carelessly, and as the clouds disappeared and the moon’s glow brightened, it was much easier to see her way.
    As she rode through the sleeping countryside to the accompaniment of the tyres singing on the tarmac, she thought about Jack. He was the same lovely Jack she’d always known, but the uniform had already changed him in some indefinable way, and she wasn’t at all sure she was happy about that. Even the smallest of changes could be amplified by distance and time, and she could only pray that this enforced parting wouldn’t prove to be the end of all they’d planned and dreamed about.
    She was snapped from her thoughts by the distant wailing of sirens, and she stopped pedalling to look back at the sky above Hillney. Searchlights were already piercing the darkness as the pitch of the sirens rose, and