Home for Christmas by Annie Groves Page B

badly injured?’ Somehow the words had been uttered through her dry lips and throat without her being able to stop them.
    Lizzie gave her a shrewd look.
    ‘I’m only asking,’ Dulcie defended herself, shrugging angrily. ‘Can’t a girl ask? Only a couple of minutes ago you were accusing me of being unfeeling and now when I show some feelings you’re giving me that kind of look.’
    ‘I don’t know how bad his injuries are,’ Lizzie answered, her expression softening.
    Lizzie liked Dulcie even though she knew that she wasn’t very popular with some of the other girls. That was because Dulcie, with her long blond hair, her big brown eyes and her curvaceous figure was so very, very pretty. Dulcie being so very pretty and so very forward and flirtatious didn’t worry Lizzie. Her husband-to-be was the steady, serious type who would run a mile from a girl like Dulcie, but some of the girls they both worked with excluded Dulcie because, Lizzie suspected, they felt that if they welcomed her into their groups she would cast them into the shade. And knowing Dulcie, she probably would, Lizzie thought ruefully. She had certainly made it plain when she had first seen David James-Thompson that she wasn’t going to let the fact that he was virtually engaged to Lydia Whittingham stop her from flirting with him.
    Remembering that, Lizzie felt bound to remind Dulcie warningly, ‘It’s Lydia, his wife, who’ll be most concerned about that and about him, especially with them not being married all that long.’
    ‘She certainly won’t be pleased if it means there’s not going to be any little James-Thompson heirs coming along,’ Dulcie said frankly. ‘And neither will that snobby mother of his. She was the one who was desperate for him to marry Lydia, not David himself.’
    Lizzie was scandalised. ‘You can’t know that, Dulcie, and it’s a mean thing to say.’
    ‘It’s the truth and I do know it,’ Dulcie retaliated. ‘David told me himself that his mother is a snob.’
    ‘I thought you said you barely knew him. Him telling you things like that doesn’t sound much like you barely knew him to me.’
    Lizzie had caught her out and Dulcie knew it. But Dulcie wasn’t the kind to give in – over anything.
    ‘So him and me just got talking to one another – that doesn’t mean anything.’
    Only, of course, they had done far more than just talk. David had kissed her and she had let him. Dulcie would never let her heart rule her head, but there had been something in that kiss that had left her feeling unexpectedly vulnerable.
    ‘Not to you, perhaps,’ Lizzie agreed, ‘but I dare say that Lydia wouldn’t like it very much if she knew that her husband had been exchanging confidences with you. I wouldn’t like it myself . . .
    ‘Oh, did I tell you that we’ve managed to book an hotel for our honeymoon?’ she demanded, her own upcoming marriage pushing everything else out of the way. ‘It’s only for the one night, ’cos my Ralph can only get a forty-eight-hour pass, but we’ve managed to get booked in at this hotel in Southend, although heaven knows how long it will take us to get there, the trains being as slow as they are right now and filled with troops. I can’t wait . . .’ she sighed, that dreamy look on her face again.
    ‘What for?’ Dulcie said scathingly. ‘To start slaving away for a man? You’d never catch me doing that. And that’s what men expect once you marry them. A girl’s better off single, and being treated like she’s special.’
     

Chapter Six
     
    ‘I heard that Buckingham Palace was bombed this morning in that raid we had, and that the King and Queen only just escaped being hit,’ Mrs Windle told Olive as she sat next to her in the front passenger seat of Gerry Lord’s van. Gerry’s parents, who owned a local grocery shop, had loaned the van to the WVS whilst Gerry was in the army. Olive and Mrs Morrison, another WVS member had been taught to drive it by Sergeant