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

parked farm trucks and fire engines, and the large group of men who were preparing to tackle the fire as the women looked on. She skidded to a halt, and froze in horrified shock at the sight before her. The rectory was ablaze, the flames spearing through the roof and shooting from the windows, blackening the red bricks and devouring everything within reach.
    Mary dropped the bicycle, fighting against restraining hands from the gathered crowd as she searched wildly for her mother and father. She couldn’t see them anywhere, and wrestled her way through the trucks, Home Guard members and wardens, and past the fire engine down the drive towards the men who were battling the inferno. ‘My parents,’ she screamed above the noise of water pipes and the shouts of firefighters. ‘Where are my parents?’
    A fireman turned, his face blackened with soot and sweat, his expression saying more than any words as he shook his head.
    â€˜No! No, they can’t be!’ Heedless of the danger and mad with fear, she tried to rush past him. ‘I have to get them out,’ she screamed as she struggled to escape his iron grip on her arm.
    And then two sturdy arms were wrapped around her, leading her determinedly back to the lane, as a familiar voice penetrated the fog of hysteria surrounding her. ‘It’s too late, Mary, love. They’ve gone.’
    Mary looked up into the soot-smeared face and kind eyes of Jack’s father. ‘But they can’t have,’ she sobbed. ‘They can’t have.’
    Joseph Boniface continued to hold her, his dark brown eyes, so like his son’s, looking down at her with infinite understanding and gentleness. ‘The rectory took a direct hit,’ he said in his slow, deliberate manner. ‘They wouldn’t have suffered or known anything about it.’
    She stared at him and tried to absorb his words, but all she could hear was her father’s blessing as he’d kissed her goodnight – all she could feel was a crippling, numbing guilt that she’d disobeyed him and hadn’t been there when he’d most needed her. ‘It’s all my fault,’ she sobbed. ‘I shouldn’t have left them and now Daddy’s . . . Daddy’s . . .’ She collapsed against Joseph in a great storm of bitter tears.
    Joseph held her while she wept, and muttered soft words of consolation. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said quietly. ‘Of course it’s not, and you must never even think it.’
    He awkwardly patted her back until the storm ebbed, and then drew away. ‘I have to help put out the fire, but Barbara will take you home to ours,’ he said. ‘She’ll look after you, and you can stay with us for as long as you want.’
    Mary looked from him to his wife and then was hypnotised by the sight of those terrible flames. They rose higher and higher despite the jets of water pounding on them, hungrily clambering up the crumbling walls and consuming everything in their path. Glass shattered in the heat, curtains withered to blackened wisps that floated in the swirling smoke, the chimneys toppled – and she cried out as the great roof finally succumbed and caved in with a mighty crash that sent sparks and debris flying.
    As the men rushed forward to kill the swiftly travelling flames that were now igniting the overhanging trees, Barbara gently took Mary’s arm. ‘Come away, love,’ she said. ‘The men have work to do, and we’re getting in their way.’
    It was as if she was sleepwalking, for she put up no resistance as Barbara led her through the choking smoke and back into the lane. This was her punishment – the burden she would have to carry for the rest of her life – but it was her parents who’d paid the awful price for her deceit, and she knew that she would never find redemption.

Chapter Four
    THE ANCHOR HAD stood in Camden Road for almost two centuries. It