Blitz Next Door by Cathy Forde

I’ve to send him drawings.”
    “Big brother?” Pete asked Dunny.
    “Looks like it. Wonder what happened to him.” Dunny cleared his throat. “Just finding my lassie’s voice. “ 9 th November …” he piped, reading on:
    “ Aunt Katy still here. Mummy and her whisper in the front room all the time. When I keek round the door they start talking about rationing. Aunt Katy brought eggs from the farm and we made mirangs. (Is that how you spell it?) ”
    “No,” said Pete. “That’s wrong too: DEEEEEEE-LISH-USSSS .”
    “So what?” said Dunny. “I can’t spell for toffee. Doesn’t make me a bad person.” He went on reading:
    “ Mummy told Aunt Katy about saving those six eggs for my birthday cake and cracking the rotten one in last and spoiling the mixture. Aunt Katy said I’d be having fresh eggs coming out my ears if she’d her way. Mummy got cross and sent me to my room – What for? Unfair!!!! – but I stood outside the kitchen and heard her tell Aunt Katy she hadn’t ruled it out: ‘But Beth knows nothing about it, so keep it that way, alright, Katy? ’”
    “That’s them planning Beth’s evacuation.” Pete flicked to the next entry. A month later.
    “ 8 th December 1940,” Pete read. “Letter from Hugh. Torpedoed last week, but he made it to the lifeboat. Won’t be home for Christmas. Hate this war!!! ”
    “Me now.” Dunny read the next entry, dated a week later:
    “ School panto. Choir sang flat and Mrs Banks blamed me for singing out of tune on purpose. I was not!!!! Was just singing loud because she said sing up. At least I don’t have a giant jelly bottom and a mustash .”
    “Is that how you spell moustache?” asked Pete, but it didn’t matter either way. Dunny wasn’t listening.
    “Giant jelly bottom!” He’d flipped round to bounce in time to Beth’s insult:
    Giant!
    Jelly!
    Bottom!
    Pete gripped the notebook to stop it dancing off the trampoline.
    “ 18th December ,” he read on.
    “ Going to Aunt Katy’s for Christmas. Mummy says we could be doing with the fresh Highland air and I might like to stay there till the war’s over. When I said, ‘No ta,’ she said, ‘It’s not really up to you, Elizabeth .’”
    “Where are we: Downton Abbey? ‘ It’s not really up to you, Elizabeth! ’” Dunny bounced.
    “Looks like it was.” Pete had turned to the next entry. “She’s back at her school in this one.”
    “15 th February 1941 ,
    Someone sent me A VALENTINE. Yukky. See if it’s Mickey Kelly I will DIE. Anna says he’s always making googly eyes at me and staring with his mouth dreeped open. His breath stinks of rotten kippers. Boys make me boke .
    Ps – Valentine from Hugh… ”
    “…covered in rosebuds,” Dunny simpered before Pete had read the words out. “I’m sorry, but that is sick in a sick way, man. Vally from your brother ?”
    Pete said nothing. He could see why he might send Jenny a card. Why not? Also, he was thinking of those faded scraps of flowery pink wallpaper on the ruined walls of Beth’s old house. How sad it made him feel.But if he’d spoken up, his voice would have come out all chopped up and distorted like a Doctor Who baddy because Dunny was bouncing rings round him, reading the next entry.
    “ 10 th March 1941 ,
    I’ve to write out a hundred times: ‘I must remember my gas mask every day for it could save my life.’ Stupid old Jelly Bum Banks. ”
    Dunny flopped down next to Pete. Both boys were laughing at Dunny’s breathless piping voice. On a roll, he sucked in his cheeks, cleared his throat and went on:
    “ 11 th March 1941,
    Was in the shelter nearly all last night. Bombings and raids for hours and hours and hours. Terrified. Mummy stayed with me and I fell asleep for a while. Jamie was sick in the toilet bucket and —”
    “Hang on,” Dunny broke off. “Never read this before.” He flicked over the page. “Or this: I’m leaving in two days, the 13 th .” He said in his own voice, “The night of the