Home for Christmas. Annie Groves
sadness Sally realised that she could see a glint of another horrifying emotion in his eyes. He was happy. Happy that Morag had kissed him.
‘Sally, please don’t look like that. It isn’t what you—’ Morag was saying, trying to catch hold of her arm, but Sally moved back. She was trembling so much that she had to lean on the wall to support herself.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No don’t touch me . . . don’t come anywhere near me. How could you? How could you do this?’
‘Sally.’ Now it was her father trying to reach for her, his familiar face – the kind loving face she had known all her life – creased in distress. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out about Morag and me like this. We were going to tell you . . .’
Sally felt as though her heart were being wrenched out of her body when her father reached for Morag’s hand and held it tightly, giving her the most tender and protective of looks.
‘I wanted to tell you,’ he continued, ‘but Morag wanted to wait until after Christmas. She thought it would be easier for you then.’
‘Easier for me to be told that my father and my supposed best friend were betraying my mother’s memory in the most grotesque and horrible way?’ Sally demanded on a choking breath of disbelief that was getting close to hysteria. ‘Dad, how can you think that? How can you do this, when Mum . . . She’s not even been dead two months yet. Two months and yet already Morag has somehow managed to worm her way into . . . into the place that should only ever belong to my mother.’
‘Sally, that’s enough!’ The stern note in her father’s voice shocked Sally into fresh despair. ‘I will not have you blaming Morag – for anything.’ The loving look her father gave Morag made Sally feel as though someone were squeezing her heart painfully hard. ‘If you must blame anyone, then blame me. I love Morag and I know that the love I have for her would have had your mother’s blessing.’
‘No!’
The denial was torn from Sally’s throat as she pulled open the back door and ran out of the house, ignoring her father’s plea for her to stop.
It was dark now and Sally didn’t know how long she’d been crouching here beside her mother’s grave, anger and grief spilling from her with the tears she had shed.
In two days it would be Christmas, but there was no place in Sally’s heart now to celebrate that special season.
‘Sally.’
The sound of a much-loved voice saying her name had her crying out in relief. She turned to him as he crouched down next to her, the scarf her mother had knitted for him last Christmas twisting in the ice-cold wind blowing across the bleak graveyard.
‘Oh, Callum . . .’
She was in his arms and he was holding her tight, the warmth of his embrace thawing her emotions, so that fresh tears fell.
‘I suppose you know what’s happened?’ she asked him when the tears had finally stopped and she was drying her face with the handkerchief he had offered her.
‘Yes. I’ve just come from the house.’
‘Callum, how could they betray my mother like that? My father and your sister my best friend – I still can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to see Morag ever again. I don’t want her coming to the house or having anything to do with my father. I blame her more than I do him. I—’
‘Sally, I know you’ve had a shock, and I can understand that right now you feel a certain amount of betrayal, but I promise you that the only reason they didn’t tell you about their feelings for one another was because they didn’t think you were ready. When they discussed it with me—’
Whilst he had been speaking to her Callum had stood up drawing Sally to her feet as he did so, and now he was holding her cold hands in the warmth of his, but for once she was barely aware of his touch.
‘You knew? You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?’ she demanded angrily.
‘They asked me not to, although . . . Sally, we all know how much you loved your mother, and how much her death has upset you, but you are an intelligent girl and, to be honest, I’m surprised that you didn’t see the love growing between them for yourself. I know that your mother did, and that she welcomed it, knowing that two people she loved so much would find happiness together.’
‘No, that’s not true. My mother would never have wanted . . . She loved my father.’
‘Yes, she did, and in my view it was because of the great love she had for both him and for Morag that she welcomed the knowledge that your father would not be left alone after her own death.’
‘You’re on their side, aren’t you?’ Sally accused him.
‘It isn’t a matter of taking sides.’
‘It is for me.’ Sally pulled away from him, adding bitterly, ‘And I know now whose side you’re on, Callum. I wish I’d never met either of you. I trusted Morag. I thought she was my friend, but I realise now that I never knew her at all. No one who was a true friend to me would have done what she’s done, betraying my mother, stealing my father, and you taking her side. I never want to see either of you again.’
‘Sally, please don’t be like this.’
‘Don’t be like this? How do you expect me to be? Am I supposed to be glad? Am I supposed to welcome the fact that my best friend has been making up to my father behind my back whilst my mother has been dying?’
‘Sally . . .’
Callum was reaching for her, his dark hair, tangled by the cold wind, flopping over his forehead, as he held out his arms. The pain she was feeling was more than she could bear. She had loved him so much, and she had thought that he loved her, just as she also believed that Morag was her friend and that her father was devoted to her mother. But all of them had deceived her, and betrayed her mother, and she would never be able to forgive them. Never. She stepped back from him.
‘Don’t touch me. Don’t come anywhere near me.’ Her furious words were raw with bitterness and pain.
12 September l940
Sally Johnson pushed back her mop of dark red curls, briefly freed from the constraint of her starched acting sister’s nursing cap, and slipping off her shoes, wriggled her toes luxuriously.
She was sitting in a small windowless room close to the sluice room of the operating theatre where she worked. In this small haven the nurses were unofficially allowed to have a kettle, tucked away, when not in use, in the cupboard above the sink along with a tin of cocoa and a caddy holding tea so that they could make themselves hot drinks. The place was more of a large cupboard than a room, the dark brown paint on the skirting boards like the dull green on the walls, rather faded, although, of course, both the floor and the walls were scrupulously clean. Staff nurse would have had forty fits if her juniors hadn’t scrubbed in here with every bit as much ferocity as they did the theatre itself.
When it had three nurses or more in it there was standing room only. Right now though as she was in here on her own, Sally had appropriated one of the two chairs for her tea break. Nurses always had aching feet when they were on duty. They’d had a busy shift in the operating theatre: a list of patients with all manner of injuries from Hitler’s relentless bombing raids on London.
Thinking of their patients brought home to Sally how much more responsibility she would have when she got her promised promotion to sister. She was very proud of the fact that Matron thought she was ready for it, even if there were times when she herself worried that she might not be. Sally loved her work, she was a dedicated and professional nurse who always put her patients first, but right now she couldn’t help thinking longingly of her digs in Article Row, Holborn, and the comfort of a hot bath. What a difference time could make –