fete there on Sunday, so I was thinking of sending you down there for a break.’
Tom looked up, fear crossing his face. ‘But you’ll be coming with us, too, Mummy, won’t you?’ he asked, the panic evident in his tone.
Julia swallowed. ‘Mummy has a lot of work to do here in London, and so many of your friends have already left to go and stay with their friends and relatives. And with Daddy now gone, I thought it might be a nice break for you to go and have some time with Aunt Rosalyn. She’s a lot of fun. I loved going to her house when I was a child.’
‘Isn’t that the lady who has a pony next door?’ asked Maggie thoughtfully as she spooned baked beans into her mouth.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Julia, not sure if the woman’s horse was still alive next door but amazed that Maggie, who had just turned nine, had remembered that. She’d been quite young, about five, the last time they’d been there.
‘I’ve always wanted to learn,’ said Maggie. ‘Learn to ride a horse.’ She stabbed at a potato with a fork. ‘No room for a horse here, is there? Maybe Aunty Rosalyn could introduce me to that lady next door so I could learn to ride her horse.’
Julia smiled. ‘I’m sure there’ll be something that you can do like that. There’s lots to do in the country. And Mummy can come down and visit you at any time. It’s just things could get very difficult here in London. We want you both to be safe.’
‘Will you be safe, Mummy?’ asked Tom in a timid voice.
She could have kicked herself for saying that with her tender-hearted son present. ‘Of course I’ll be safe, Tom. Mummy works for the government, and the government must take care of us. They have special places for us to stay if anything happens. You can’t worry about me.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ he said, screwing up his little face.
‘I do,’ said Maggie. ‘I want to ride the ponies.’
‘But I don’t,’ snapped Tom, his voice rising to a yell. ‘I want to stay here with Mummy.’ He slammed down his fork and rushed upstairs.
After she’d cleared away the tea things, she went up to sit on his bed and talk to him. ‘I need you to be grown up, Tom, and so much more grown up than you are. All of us are having to grow up in some way or another, even Mummy. Without having Daddy here, I have to be Mummy and Daddy, and it would help me a lot if you would go to the country with Maggie, and then I won’t have to worry about you because Aunt Rosalyn will take really good care of you.’
‘But I love you, Mummy, and I don’t want to be away from you.’
‘I know, me neither,’ she said, brushing a curl from his damp forehead where it had fixed itself with the exertion of crying, ‘but the government may ask you to go away anyway. And at least this way you get to go somewhere where you’re with my auntie. I need you to be very brave, Tom, and do this for me.’
‘Is that because I’m now the man of the house?’ he said with a small sniffle.
Julia swallowed down a laugh. She had no idea where he’d heard that before. ‘Well, that’s right. You are the man of the house now that Daddy’s not here. I need you to support Maggie and be good to her and be good for Aunt Rosalyn. I promise I’ll come down as soon as I can. And I’ll write to you all the time.’
‘What about my comics?’ Tom sounded mulish.
‘I’ll send your comics through the post, don’t worry. And they have comics in the village where Aunt Rosalyn lives as well. Everything’s going to be just the same. You’re going to make lots of new friends, and before you know it, this rotten war will be over, and you’ll both be able to come home.’
There was a long pause while he appeared to be considering her words as he toyed with the buttons on her cardigan, then his green eyes flicked up to meet hers. ‘Are there tractors down there?’ he asked, brightening a little.
‘Lots of tractors,’ said Julia, sensing an opening. ‘And animals and fields and streams you can play in.’
Tom’s eyes started to widen. ‘I’ve always wanted to climb trees in a wood, are there woods and trees in the country?’