Arriving at Julia’s, he escorted her to the doorstep.
‘Thank you for coming tonight, I wasn’t sure if you would.’
‘Of course, I wouldn’t let a friend down.’
He looked earnestly at her then. ‘Is that how you see us, Lizzie, as friends?’
‘Is that how you see us?’ she responded, throwing the question back at him.
‘Yes, but also so much more than that. From the minute I met you in that theatre, I felt a connection I couldn’t really explain…’ He paused and seemed to be struggling to find the right words. ‘But I would love to… explore that.’
She smiled to herself. It was such a formal way to ask her to go out with him. He was always so confident and assured, she was interested to see him so tongue-tied around her in the intimacy of this moment.
‘If you are asking me to be your girl, then the answer is yes.’ She giggled, nervously.
A look of relief crossed his face and he drew himself closer to her, and even in the pitch black she could see the sincerity in his gaze as he studied her face. The attraction between them charged the air; he appeared to want to kiss her, but was nervous to make the first move. She slipped her arms around his neck to encourage him. That was all he needed; all at once his lips were upon hers. Soft and gentle but also with a depth of intensity. Lizzie had kissed before; she and Fergus had kissed often before they parted. But nothing prepared her for how this felt. It wasn’t just the butterflies that were flip-flopping in her belly, or the wonderful scent of his aftershave or the incredible feeling of him so close to her, but there was a rightness between them she couldn’t explain, a feeling of coming home. As though in this man’s arms she could feel safe for the rest of her life.
26
Two days later, Lizzy looked at the blackened building and her heart sank. It would be a wild goose chase, trying to locate where the children from the orphanage were now and she had no way of knowing where to start. After she’d found out that St Barnabas had been moved, this had been the latest address she had found in the telephone directory. Though she assumed Annie might have already been adopted by now, she knew they would have records. Records that had probably been destroyed, because the address she was looking at was now a blackened shell, obviously bombed in the recent attack. As if to mock her, the sirens wailed into life. Hurriedly, Lizzie looked around her. She was in a part of town she didn’t know and so she followed the running crowds as she rushed down into the bomb shelter that was the closest.
One hour later, Lizzie emerged from the underground and clambered up the steps. Her ears were still ringing, and her bones jarred. No matter how many times she went through this, she would never get used to it, even though now it was becoming a familiar event. It wasn’t just the deafening explosions and concussive experience of the bombs dropping above her, but also the re-emerging into a world that was utterly changed. At some point every day she found herself heading for a shelter, then huddling, sometimes for hours, with a group of strangers as they all held their collective breath.
As furrowed brows and concerned eyes studied the ceiling with each new thundering crash above them, their thoughts were not only directed to the destruction being wrought outside but to absent loved ones. If they caught one another’s eye in between bombardments as worried faces and nervous smiles swept the shelter, they didn’t need words to know they were all wondering the same thing: was this unknown group of people the last they would see in this world?
Once the all-clear sounded, it was as though fresh air swept the room, and everybody could breathe easily again. But once they emerged, another world was waiting for them all above ground.
Now, in the street, Lizzie tried to find her equilibrium again; she was disorientated as she tried to navigate her way with so many buildings and landmarks now in rubble or on fire. More than anything, the heat and the dust and the debris still flying around presented so much continuous danger.
Wiping the back of her hand across her forehead, Lizzie could feel the crust of dirt that