The Chilbury Ladies' Choir(64)

I’d had a tremendous fight with my father—he found out that I’m pregnant and was threatening to kill Alastair. I ran out into the night, desperate to warn Alastair, desperate to tell him about the baby, our baby. Then I heard a gunshot in the woods, and then another, and thought that Daddy had found him and shot him dead. Terrified, I started sprinting down the lane to the village. I had to make sure he was all right. Whatever it took, I had to get to Alastair’s house as soon as I could.

At first I tried to ignore the sound of a distant plane, but it grew louder as I reached the road to the square. It was low in the sky, a throaty roar, spluttering as it wavered in and out of the clouds. I kept on running, trying to escape this whole situation, this war, everything.

As the road opened out into the square, the plane suddenly became deafening, coming in right behind me, low, hounding me down.

I heard shouts from across the square—it must have been someone calling the Vicar to sound the siren as a moment later the slow wail swelled up, clashing with the roar of the plane that had become so thunderous that I felt my eardrums might explode.

But it was too late. It was all too late. The shadow came over me and I looked up to see a Nazi plane looming right above me, the noise overpowering, the dark gray presence making me cower with fright. It soared over me like the grim reaper and, as I glanced up to its extended black underbelly, I saw the bomb-release doors opening, and one by one the deadly load spilled into the night sky, straight toward Church Row.

I found myself racing to reach Alastair’s cottage before the bombs did, desperate to warn him. The plane zoomed overhead, banking to turn back, not even waiting to witness the impending devastation.

I saw a sudden flash of bright white up ahead of me as the explosion of the first bomb ripped into the night, followed by the second, and then another as the noise of the blasts echoed into the night. Fragments of homes, furniture, people hit the air and tumbled down to earth. And the fires, soaring above the destruction: great blue-gold surges of flame gathering momentum into the smoke-and debris-filled sky.

I was knocked to the ground by the force of the explosion, and shards of glass cut my face and arms. I got up and ran to the blaze. It seemed to be centered on Alastair’s cottage, although most of Church Row was wrecked, valleys of bombshell among surviving walls swathed with the colossal flames. Blood was dripping from one of my arms where it had been slashed, but I just ran and ran. Had there been enough time for anyone to get out before the bomb struck? Had anyone survived? Had Alastair survived? And Hattie? What about Hattie?

I screamed out, “Alastair, Alastair!” but nothing came back. Just the immense sound of the fire, every so often an almighty explosion as the flames found something volatile.

The fire was scorching as I came closer, and I could see the outline of Alastair’s cottage and Hattie’s next door.

I stood for a second and watched the fire come alive, every memory and ounce of Alastair being swept up into the universe. I began crying, still shouting out his name, not bothering to cover my face, beseeching God to make Alastair walk unharmed out of the fire.

That’s when I heard the cries. I stopped with horror as I listened to the high-pitched screams of a baby. Rose. Hattie’s baby. I looked toward her cottage. It was more intact than Alastair’s, the second story still in place but about to collapse into the blaze.

I looked behind me. There was no one there.

“Someone, please help,” I yelled into the square, but no voice came back.

The baby screamed again. My stomach convulsed. I trod carefully over to the house and kicked the front door, which landed in an explosive heap at my feet, fires raging inside the skeletal building. I leaped back and shouted again.

“Help, please!”

There was so much smoke and dust in the air, I had to back away to get a good deep breath, and even there it was so hot and airless, almost impossible to breathe. Then I braced my arms in front of my forehead and plunged into the house. Knowing that the staircase was beside the door, I ran up and found the baby in a cot in the small bedroom, blue flames licking the far wall and a dense black smoke smothering the air. I picked her up in her blanket and darted back out the door. The heat was unbearable, and I felt the stairs melting away beneath my feet as I plummeted down, holding my breath and praying that I would get out before the whole place collapsed.

As I came to the bottom, the last stair gave way and I tumbled forward onto the floor by the door, shielding the baby from the weight of my body with my elbows, blood gushing from my arm onto the blanket and over my dress. I hauled myself up and stumbled through the doorway and over the debris, unable to see the ground in front of me because of the baby clasped to my chest. I finally came out far enough that the air was cool and clear of soot and smoke and I stopped to catch my breath, turning just in time to see the house explode into a million splinters.

Clasping hold of the baby, I watched the fire and eruptions, blood dripping from several wounds, my shoulders curved in over the tiny baby, clinging to her as if she were the last hope in the world. Suddenly, a hulk of a man came toward me, and I prepared for a new terror, but he stopped in surprise. “Venetia!”

It was Colonel Mallard, looking incredibly anxious and intense.

“Is that a baby?” he said frantically, taking the bundle from me with great urgency, because it was at that moment that I felt the ground sway beneath me, coming up to meet my weak and bloodied body as I collapsed in a heap among the debris.