Thursday’s Child. Helen Forrester

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘Dawn’t be a fool,’ shouted James as he slapped me hard across the face.

      I stopped shrieking and began to weep, rocking myself backwards and forwards, my hands clutching at my nightgown as if to tear it.

      James, with tears running down his face, was saying: ‘Now, dawn’t take on so, luv.’

      His Lancashire accent, usually carefully suppressed, was homely and comforting, and gradually my weeping lessened and I lay back on the pillow. The medicine bottles on the mantelpiece changed from red blobs to definite shapes, and James’s face, so like Barney’s, ceased to be a blurred mirage and I saw how exhausted he looked.

      That last winter of the war had seemed particularly long and cold. Although in Wetherport bombing raids had ceased some time before, most of its inhabitants were worn down by overwork and poor food, and Mother was not surprised, therefore, when at the end of March I caught influenza. On the morning that James called, I was feeling better, and, with the promise that on the following day I should get up, Mother had tucked me up in bed with two hot-water bottles, and had gone out to shop. She had been gone only five minutes when the doorbell rang.

      I let it ring twice, in the hope that whoever was at the door would go away, but the third ring was such a prolonged one that in desperation I got out of bed, hastily wrapped myself in a blanket and pattered along the icy upper hall and down the equally icy Victorian staircase to answer it.

      On the doorstep stood James, looking as white as if he had just seen the sticky result of a direct hit on an air-raid shelter. Mist had formed little globules of moisture on his red hair and on his muffler; his face was blue with cold.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked apprehensively, and shivered in the draught from the open door.

      ‘Get back into bed and ah’ll tell thee,’ said James.

      In spite of ten days of illness, I ran up the stairs and scrambled into bed, my heart pounding with foreboding.

      ‘It’s Barney,’ I muttered, my teeth chattering. ‘Something has happened to Barney.’

      James limped