Always I'Ll Remember by Rita Bradshaw

she was telling fibs. But Abby had shown them, Clara thought complacently. The very next Sunday after she had come home in tears because they had fallen out with her for telling lies, Abby and James had taken her for a ride and stopped right outside Betty’s house. Betty’s eyes had been like saucers. Clara wriggled with ecstasy as she remembered. And the next day at school Betty had given her a whole bag of bullets and Hilda had let her play with her new skipping rope without taking turns, and they’d never called her a liar again.
     
    Hugging Abby’s neck she planted a wet kiss on her sister’s cheek. She loved Abby the best in all the world.
     
    ‘Excuse me but isn’t it his father’s car?’ Nora sniffed pointedly. ‘Good as James’s fancy job might be, I don’t think it would run to buying and running a car.’
     
    Abby looked at her mother over Clara’s blonde head. Her mam never let up, not even on this day when war had been declared. She was like a dog with a bone as far as James was concerned and yet he had never put a foot wrong in all the time they had been seeing each other. But he’d never please her mam, Abby was reconciled to that now.
     
    Right from that first magical night when she had walked into the kitchen with the enormous box of chocolates clutched in her arms and declared to her mother she had a lad, the atmosphere within the house had been such you could cut it with a knife. She could have understood it if she’d decided to walk out with someone like Jack McHaffie or Rory Fallow, who were no strangers to the local constable and the prison cells, but James? Her Aunty Audrey had declared James was the perfect suitor for any daughter. But when her mother had found out James was a doctor’s son and had been to university, and that he was training to be an accountant, you would have thought he was Jack the Ripper from the way she had reacted. Father Finlay had made another appearance, but the fact that James’s parents were Catholics, albeit nominal ones, had taken the wind out of the good Father’s sails to some extent.
     
    Father Finlay had demanded - and demanded was the right word for his imperious manner - to have a meeting with James, and it was then that Abby realised just how much she had changed. She had looked steadily at the man she had been terrified of all her life and for the first time she saw him for what he was - a man like any other. She refused Father Finlay’s demand - what right had he to subject James to what at best would be an interrogation? - and the priest had left the house in a huff, with her mother flapping at his coat-tails.
     
    Her father’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘You going for a run in the country again, lass?’ he asked, and she knew he was trying to pour oil on troubled waters.
     
    She nodded, but before she could speak her mother said with some satisfaction, ‘According to the postmistress it won’t be long before they’ll stop such jaunts. Petrol will be needed for better things than waltzing about in fancy cars on a Sunday afternoon.’
     
    Abby was on the point of firing back when the gravity of the day swept over her anew. Instead of responding to her mother’s sniping she remained quiet and walked out into the backyard with Clara. It was a perfect September day. The sky was blue and cloudless and somewhere high in the thermals a lark was singing.
     
    Abby sighed. It seemed incredible war could have been declared on such a beautiful Sunday morning but already things were different. Normally the back lane would be ringing with the shouts of bairns playing their games in the ridges of dried mud and dust, but today there was an ominous silence. Everyone had been glued to their wirelesses since early morning, and the only life she could see was a solitary black cat stalking along a wall some distance away.
     
    Oh James, James. She wished he was here right this minute. She hugged Clara to her. Although he’d said little