War Orphans Read Online Free Page A

Thermos flask. To her profound disappointment she’d seen nothing had been done. Where once brightly coloured blooms had grown there were now only straggly plants, their flowering long over, their leaves brown and tangled with woodbine. Other weeds besides woodbine grew in profusion, thistles and nettles thrusting and spreading between rotting flower stems. The allotment hadn’t been touched for a very long time and nature was claiming it back as its own.
    Yesterday, she’d gone down there because he hadn’t been home for his dinner – brisket, roast potatoes, cabbage, carrots and parsnips followed by rice pudding.
    ‘Dad, I’ve got dinner on the table. Are you coming now?’
    ‘I’ll be right there once I’ve finished this.’
    He was sitting on an upturned water butt pretending to read the paper, which he was holding upside down, his mind obviously elsewhere.
    Sally tried to blank out the fact that all the other allotments were already devoid of flowers and turned over for the sowing of seedlings. Potatoes, cabbage, beans, carrots and onion were in far more demand than flowers.
    She was aware that a few of the other allotment holders were glaring in her father’s direction.
    ‘When you going to get rid of them flowers and grow something useful?’ one of them shouted out.
    ‘And do some weeding,’ shouted another. ‘One year’s seed is seven years’ weed! When you going to do some weeding, eh?’
    ‘When hell freezes over,’ muttered her grim-faced father without looking in the direction of the speaker.
    Something else shouted was drowned out by the piercing whistle of a passing train.
    Sally sighed. ‘I’ll wait until you’ve finished,’ she said.
    Her father grunted something inaudible then looked up at her. She noticed his eyes were red-rimmed.
    ‘Your mother loved these flowers. I can’t rip them up until she’s ready to let me.’
    Every week when her mother was alive he had carefully dug around each of his flowerbeds, where dahlias, moon daisies and chrysanthemums grew in ordered glory. His flowers had won prizes, and despite the urging of government to turn all available land to the growing of vegetables, he’d held out. They were his Grace’s choice. She’d helped him plant them and he saw them as the last link with her and with the happy times they’d had together.
    A lump in Sally’s throat drowned any chance of retorting. She hurried away. If her mother had still been alive she would have insisted that they dug up the ground to plant vegetables. But her father refused to move on, at least for now. All Sally could do was hope and pray that he’d return to his old self before very long, though she had no way of knowing when that would be.
    And she had someone else to be worried about now. Joanna Ryan loved reading and always put her hand up to be the next to read out loud. Today she did not and had seemed quite distracted all day.
    Sally had harboured misgivings, but every child could have an off day. What happened next confirmed that something was indeed very wrong.
    ‘Please, miss.’ Susan Crawford, a pink-cheeked girl with dark hair, looked at pointedly at Joanna sitting beside her. ‘Jo’s crying. The man in the black van came and took her cat.’
    The four o’clock bell rang announcing that school was at an end for the day.
    Sally dismissed the rest of the class but before Joanna could leave, she walked between the desks and laid her hand on Joanna’s shoulder.
    ‘Stay a moment, Joanna. I want to talk to you.
    The sound of slamming desk lids was followed by that of scrabbling feet and excited chatter as the children fled the classroom and headed home.
    Joanna had remained sitting at her desk, her head in her hands. Even though her face was half hidden, Sally could see it was wet with tears.
    Joanna’s friend Susan lingered, shifting from one foot to the other in her leather sandals and baggy socks, settled in wrinkles around her ankles. Sally told her to go outside and