Return to Hendre Ddu by Sian James

hoped that they could remain friends and that he would still write to her from time to time.
    Tom was completely devastated. ‘What happened to her?’ he asked his father and Lowri. ‘I can’t take this rejection, can’t make any sense of it. When she left here everything was fine. All I had to worry about was her journey back to London, the trains being so badly affected by the war.’
    ‘I’m not so sure that she was absolutely happy even on that Friday morning,’ Lowri said at last. ‘I felt she was worried about something. I asked her how she was feeling, expecting her to say she was excited about telling her father or something of that sort, but all she said was that she would always remember us. I felt it was an odd thing to say, but put it down to the fact that she was so sad to be leaving Tom even for a week or two. What’s at the back of this change of heart? I feel really disappointed in her. Unless there’s some explanation we haven’t thought about.’
    ‘There is a very obvious explanation. Look at me. I’m a wreck.’
    ‘You’re a war hero,’ Josi said. ‘And even Mari Elen thinks you’re as handsome as a prince. She wondered last night whether you would marry her if you were free. I said I thought you would.’
    ‘And May wouldn’t have fallen in love with you if she thought you were a wreck. And she certainly did fall in love with you, Tom. I saw Catrin and Edward years ago, I saw your father with Miriam. I know the face of love.’
    ‘Josi,’ Lowri suddenly added. ‘I’m going to go up to London to find out why she’s changed her mind. I’m not going to let Tom lose her without a fight. I shall make her tell me what it is that’s worrying her.’
    ‘Great heavens, Lowri, what a little fighter I married. Just look at her, Tom. I’m terrified of her…. Are you sure you feel up to it, cariad? You’ve never been to London.’
    One look at her face gave him the answer. ‘So when will you go, my love?’ he asked meekly.
    ‘On the first train tomorrow morning. No, I’ve never been to London, so I don’t want to arrive late in the evening.’
    ‘But how will you find your way about? I’d have no idea how to set about it. She told me that she and her father lived in St John’s Wood. What part of London is that? I’d never heard of it.’
    ‘Tom will give me her address and I’ll take a taxi from Paddington. It’ll probably cost a lot of money, but someone has to speak to her. I’m not having Tom trying to work out what happened and probably blaming himself for something that isn’t his fault.’
    ‘Lowri, I’ll always remember this,’ Tom said. ‘If I wasn’t so incapacitated I’d be going myself.’
    ‘Well, I’m your step-mother now, don’t forget. You two look after Catrin and Mari Elen and leave May to me.’
    ‘But do you have any London clothes and a suitcase and so on?’
    ‘Oh, I shan’t stay long, one night at the most, and my chapel clothes are surely good enough for a day trip to London. I have my wedding hat too, don’t forget. Everyone said I looked a proper toff in that. You needn’t feel ashamed of me.’
    ‘As though we would,’ Tom said. ‘It’s proud of you we feel.’
    ‘I’m speechless,’ was all Josi could say. ‘Absolutely speechless.’

    ‘But I want to come with you,’ Mari Elen sobbed the next morning. ‘I’ve never been on a train in my whole life.’
    ‘We’ll go to the seaside by train before the end of the summer,’ Lowri promised her. She would have promised anything to escape the little girl’s hot, clutching hands.
    ‘But I want to come to London with you today. I want to visit my Auntie May and go to the zoo and see an elephant. I’ve already been to the seaside and I don’t like all that sand in my knickers and I don’t much like the sea, anyway, it’s too sudden and too splashy. And how do I know you’re ever coming back, even?’
    ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, probably before you go to bed. And if you