The Nightingale Girls - By Donna Douglas Page 0,41

would laugh at the idea of her playing chess, Millie thought. She never seemed to find the concentration to finish a game. ‘My friend Sophia’s family is having a house party over the New Year,’ she conceded reluctantly.

Lucy’s eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘Is that Lady Sophia Rushton? Daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Claremont?’ Millie nodded. ‘Oh, how thrilling! I was only reading about her in Tatler the other day.’ Lucy sighed. ‘I’d love to meet her. Perhaps I could come down to Billinghurst sometime?’

‘Perhaps.’ Over my dead body! Millie thought. She could just imagine what her grandmother would make of Lucy. She was what the Dowager Countess would call ‘an arriviste’, which in her eyes was even worse than being a communist.

Millie took Katie’s arm and steered her towards the ornate brass-trimmed doors. ‘Let’s go inside, shall we? It’s freezing out here.’

Knowing Katie was short of money she’d expected to do nothing more than browse, but Lucy had other ideas. They trailed after her as she bought gloves and stockings, then proceeded to try on hats in the millinery department.

‘What do you think of this one?’ she asked, turning her head this way and that to admire a green feathered creation from every angle as the salesgirl fussed over her.

‘You look as if a parrot’s landed on your head,’ Katie muttered. Millie spluttered with laughter.

Lucy turned around sharply. ‘I’m sorry? Did you say something?’

‘I said it’s a shame Doyle couldn’t come with us. I bet she would have loved an outing,’ Katie said, meeting her eye boldly.

‘If you ask me, she didn’t want to come because she knew she couldn’t afford it.’ Lucy adjusted the hat a fraction and pouted at her reflection. ‘She’s so poor she probably couldn’t even afford the bus fare!’ She laughed unkindly.

‘She didn’t want to come because you were so beastly about Bradley,’ Millie said.

‘She deserved it.’ Lucy pulled off the hat and tossed it back dismissively at the salesgirl. ‘She’s an idiot.’

‘She’s not an idiot. She tries very hard, she’s just terribly nervous and shy. And you don’t make it any better, picking on her constantly.’

‘I can’t help it if she’s incompetent, can I?’

‘Stop it, you two,’ Katie broke in. ‘If we’re all going to fall out we might as well have stayed at home. We don’t get that much time off and I want to enjoy it, not bicker all the time.’

‘You’re right.’ Millie looked at Lucy.

‘Fine by me,’ Lucy shrugged, putting on her beret and smoothing down her chestnut hair. ‘Let’s hurry. I want to buy some more presents before the shop closes.’

It was dark by the time they got back to Bethnal Green, and the fog was a dense, cloying blanket, pierced only here and there by the sulphurous glow of the streetlamps. Millie, Lucy and Katie stood for a moment at the bus stop, trying to get their bearings.

‘Holy Mother of Jesus, I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Katie declared. ‘How are we going to find our way back to the hospital?’

‘We can manage,’ Millie said bracingly. ‘We’ll edge our way along the wall like this, you see?’ She groped until her fingers found the rough brickwork. ‘If we hold on to each other we should be all right.’

They made their way slowly down the street, clutching each other’s hands in case they became separated in the dense fog. Figures shuffled past them, emerging briefly like ghosts from the gloom then disappearing again, shoulders hunched against the cold. From the road to their right came the muffled clip-clop of heavy horses and the rattle of carts making their way cautiously homeward.

They reached the corner of the road and stopped. Opposite them they could make out two pools of dull light from the lanterns on top of the gateposts at the Nightingale.

‘See?’ Millie said. ‘I told you we’d find our way.’

She stepped off the kerb and almost immediately a car loomed out of the darkness. There was a squeal of brakes, a glare of headlights, and the next thing Millie knew she had landed in an undignified heap.

‘Sweet Jesus, I can’t look. Is she dead?’ Katie whimpered, covering her face.

‘Of course she isn’t!’ Lucy snapped back. ‘Do pull yourself together, O’Hara. I thought you were supposed to be a nurse?’

The car door slammed and the driver appeared out of the fog. He was tall, dark-haired and not much older than Millie.

He looked very shaken when he saw her sitting in the gutter. ‘Are you all right? Oh, God, what