The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,58

he was staring at me.

Anna pushed me forwards towards the exit, but I couldn’t move.

‘Come on, Juliet,’ Anna shouted above the hullaballoo and the sound of the siren. ‘Grab you gas mask. We need to go.’

‘But what about Marie …’ I asked, suddenly pressed against a table and losing Edward’s face in the crowd. ‘I can’t see her. You go out, Anna. I’ll just go take a quick look for her, won’t be a mo.’ I turned towards the dance floor, straining to find Edward’s face in the crowd.

Anna grabbed my arm. ‘Oh, no you don’t. She’s a big girl, she’s probably out already. Come on, this way. There’s another exit down here, see?’

Reluctantly, I followed Anna, her hand in mine, to the exit, the crowd gaining momentum now. We were just stepping out onto the street when a bomb pierced through the high domed ceiling of the ballroom and landed with a direct hit on the dance floor, sending a tsunami of debris – glass and walls and chairs and tables and band instruments and doors – flying through the air. Anna and I were knocked off our feet into the road, having had moved away just enough to avoid being buried (dead or alive) by the debris. I lay there in shock for a few moments. Anna’s hand reached across the void and squeezed on mine. We lay for what seemed like an eternity but must only have been seconds, waiting for the noise of the collapsing building to stop. Two words – two people – flashed through my mind: Marie and Edward.

The first sound to penetrate the silence once the rubble had settled was the bell of the Fire Service truck as it worked its way through streets to reach us, which was tricky as access was barricaded by the detritus of other collapsed buildings flattened by the bombing. The bell acted as a call to arms, leading the able-bodied survivors to clamber over the rubble in a desperate attempt to find friends. The Fire Service attached a hose to the hydrant and sprang into action against a fire that was now taking hold behind the stage, which seemed utterly surreal now in its new, open-air status, completely visible to the street.

We searched for Marie before being dragged away by members of the Auxiliary Fire Service. We looked on at the devastated scene as the bodies of the men and women we had just been dancing with – bodies of those who hadn’t rushed to get out quickly as Anna had made us do – were pulled from the rubble and laid to rest on the side of the road.

We heard Marie before we saw her. She was sitting on her knees on the road behind the bombed-out dance hall and through a cascade of tears she was singing Anna’s favourite song – Over the Rainbow. A man’s head was cradled in her lap, his Army uniform shredded by flying glass, a bright red line trailed from his open skull across Marie’s skirt and pooled on the road.

I rested a hand on Marie’s shoulder.

‘Did you know him?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘No, but he was just left here and I didn’t want him to be alone.’

Come on sweetheart,’ I said, at the arrival of the stretcher bearers. ‘You need to leave him to the auxiliaries now.’

Marie sniffed, nodded, took a deep breath of the dank air, rested the man’s head on the floor, stood, attempted to brush down her tattered, blood-stained uniform and – as only Marie could at such a time – asked Anna for a comb to run through her dust-covered hair. We began to edge away but didn’t get very far before Anna stopped in the middle of the road and threw her arms around Marie.

‘We thought we’d lost you,’ she sobbed.

Marie used her thumbs to wipe away Anna’s tears.

‘Lost me?! Me? You gotta be kidding, honey. No Gerry bomb is gonna stop this Yankie-doodle-dandy from having a good time!’ She looked down at her uniform again and then at us. Our uniforms were our pride and joy. It was heart-breaking to see them in tatters.

‘Sonofabitch Gerry bastards!’ she said. ‘Look at the state of us! We’ll head straight into town next day off and buy new!’

‘Yes, let’s do that,’ I said, brightly, trying to help Marie bolster Anna who had begun to shake. ‘Looks like it’s back to Austin Reeds for new togs, eh, Anna?’

‘Austin Reeds?’ Marie scoffed, incredulous at my choice