was, the phrase that encompassed all of her feelings.
‘I know.’ He tried out a weak smile. ‘Why don’t you write one of your postcards? Take your mind off things?’
She watched as he unbuckled his satchel and pulled out the small pack of white postcards, bought from the post office on the high street. He clicked the end of his ballpoint and pushed that across the table too.
Bessie gripped the pen and turned the card to the angle at which she was most comfortable writing – in physical terms at least, because it was mental torture to scribble these lies to the people she loved.
Dear Mum and Dad,
How are you both? How is Nanny Pat’s cat? Still hanging on, I hope.
She paused and looked out of the window.
The weather is cold, but lovely. The sky is clear and blue and, if it wasn’t for the frost and the chill, it could be summer, it has the same colour. The sky . . . where in just a few weeks I will be flying. Can you believe it? I am so excited. Me, an air hostess. All my dreams come true . . .
‘Tickets, please! All tickets, please!’ the conductor shouted, slamming the carriage door behind him. Bessie put down the pen. The old man opposite started and sat up abruptly, blinking.
‘I don’t know what’s going on!’ he chuckled, as much to himself as to his fellow travellers.
I know how you feel . . . Bessie turned again to the world rushing by beyond the window. I know exactly how you feel . . .
CHAPTER ONE
August 20th 1984
The vicar had told the whole RE class that prayers were not meant for personal greed or the fulfilment of desires, and this Bessie adhered to, mostly. Often her requests were for famine relief in Ethiopia, Nanny Pat’s cat, Tiki, who was clinging on to life by a whisker, and her best friend Michelle’s dad, who was out of work and had been for the last two years on account of his dicky back.
But today was a special day. Bessie woke a second or two before her alarm, as she always did, and with her eyes clamped shut, she broke the rules, fairly confident that one selfish prayer, slotted in among the many for the masses, was probably allowed on her sixteenth birthday.
Hey, God, please make this a good year for me. Please help me get out of this town. I want to see the colour of the sky in California. I want to chat to people who don’t know every square inch of this place like I do. I want to have a life like I see on TV, where people live with big, big kitchens, good tans and great hair. I want an amazing life – and I want Lawrence to fall in love with me, like I have with him.
Even the thought of Lawrence was enough to send her a little cuckoo, as if her excitement was more than she could contain. It burst from her like fireworks.
And of course, I also want world peace and an end to all hunger. Thanks. Oh, it’s me by the way, Bessie Worrall.
She kicked off her duvet, jumped out of bed and stood like a star with her hands over her head and her legs splayed. Filling her lungs, she shouted out, ‘It’s my birthdaaaay!’
‘Shut up!’ came the muffled reply from her brother, Philip, whose room was along the hallway. ‘No one cares!’
‘You shut up!’ she hollered in reply, with the express intent of irritating him. ‘And actually, you’re wrong – I care!’
Nothing, not even his foul mood, could dampen her spirits. She walked to the mirror above the chest of drawers in the corner of the room, where an irritating sticky splodge of glue from some long-discarded sticker sat in the corner. She studied her face, figuring she looked pretty much as she had done last night when she’d gone to bed, which was both a disappointment and a relief. Her boobs, she noted, were still no more than small buds, which she cursed, and there was sadly no visible improvement on the crop of spots fighting for space on her chin. She pulled a pouty face, very much liking the way her hair bouffed up when she first woke and disappointed at the prospect of it falling flat over the coming hours. The long-layered lengths with a hint of blonde, courtesy of a generous squirt of Sun-In, gave her a bit of a