The Mersey Daughter (Empire Street #3)(51)

‘Why on earth would he do that?’ Kitty couldn’t see the logic.

‘Who knows?’ Laura regarded her handiwork with vexation. ‘I’ve made the damn thing worse, it’ll have to be trimmed off, it’s too bad. No, I think he might well be one of those officers who can’t accept women drivers. There’s a lot, you know. You’d have thought they would have got used to it by now, but some take extra delight in giving you impossible routes or claiming you’ve made a mistake when you haven’t. You should have seen the space Cavendish wanted me to park in! I could tell he thought I’d mess it up.’

‘But you didn’t,’ guessed Marjorie.

‘Of course I didn’t. I angled it in perfectly, not a scratch on it, all in reverse, and there wasn’t a thing he could say. Bet that ruined his meeting,’ Laura replied forcefully. ‘Oh God, it’s too hot to be cross. We’re going to expire from heat on this very spot if we aren’t careful.’

Kitty shook her head. ‘He sometimes comes into our sessions to speak to our officers and he seems all right to me. Very smart, and you can tell he’s clever. Quite good looking in fact,’ she joked, raising her eyebrows at her friend.

‘Oh honestly, Kitty Callaghan, you’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Laura exclaimed. ‘I’m sure on first appearances he is perfectly civilised. It’s just when you can see his eyes in the rear-view mirror all day, calculating how else to make your journey hell, and knowing that he’s staring at the back of your head, it puts one right off.’

‘Keep your hair on,’ said Marjorie lightly. ‘I’ve seen him around, I don’t think he’s bad looking at all. It’s all right for Kitty, she’s got Elliott. But you can’t blame a girl for wondering.’

Kitty reflected that Marjorie had completely come out of her shell. She would never have made a comment like that when they’d first arrived. ‘So what are we going to do this evening?’ she said, trying to focus her friends on the task in hand. ‘We could go to the cinema. Let’s just try the local one, then we won’t have to worry about transport being disrupted again. I read in the paper that Major Barbara is on, and I’d love to see that. It’s got that Rex Harrison in it.’

Marjorie nodded. ‘His hair’s a little like Elliott’s, isn’t it? Bit on the dark side for me. I’ve decided I prefer fair-haired men. But he’s a super actor.’

Laura looked up, animated at the prospect. ‘He is, and I’ve already seen the play it’s based on, and that’s jolly good.’ But before she could say more, the canteen door opened and a petty officer stood there, ramrod straight and no trace of humour on her face. She briskly strode across to their table.

‘Which of you is Fawcett?’

Kitty and Marjorie looked at Laura, whose face had fallen. She stood wearily.

‘You’re wanted urgently. Kindly see to it that you pick up Captain Cavendish outside the officers’ mess in fifteen minutes. Look sharp.’ And she turned on her regulation low heel and left again.

Kitty realised they’d all been holding their breath, waiting to see if Laura would explode in frustration. She managed to say nothing until the petty officer had shut the door behind her. Then she threw down her bag in annoyance.

‘You see? This is typical. He probably knows I was going out this evening and he’s done it deliberately to spoil my fun.’

‘Laura, we’d only just decided to go to the pictures,’ Kitty pointed out.

But Laura was having none of it. ‘Well, obviously I shall have to go to see what he wants. But I’ll get my own back on him, you see if I don’t,’ she said, picking up her bag and striding from the room.

Danny wasn’t usually one to sit in a pub by himself, but tonight he reckoned he’d earned a drink. His head was spinning. He’d never worked so hard in his life, even though he knew his old mates down on the docks would have laughed at him for saying so. He’d barely moved from his desk, so it wasn’t exactly tough physical graft. But the amount of information he was expected to take in was vast, and then he had to show he understood it and could do something with it. That was on top of the incessant puzzle solving. Even though he knew he was good at them, he had to get to grips with ever more fiendish versions, variations on sorts he knew along with completely new challenges. When he tried to sleep at night he saw numbers and letters revolving round in a wheel, threatening to drive him crazy. But it was all in aid of the war effort, to try to understand the enemy signals when they were intercepted. Eventually he’d be assigned to do it in reality, so that German planned attacks could be pre-empted.

Now he’d been told he’d passed the first part of the training and he was walking on air. Who’d have thought it, he asked himself, shutting his front door. He still lived at home, cycling to and from the centre of Liverpool. No point in having digs when there was a perfectly good house not that far away, and he wanted to keep it for when Jack, Kitty or Tommy returned. So he’d decided to pop down to the Sailor’s Rest.

‘Danny! Haven’t seen you for ages! And look at you, in uniform now.’ Sarah Feeny was coming out of her own front door, not in her own uniform for once, but wearing a bright print summer’s dress. Danny always had to pinch himself when he saw her these days – the girl he’d spent his boyhood thinking of as a kid sister had long gone. She was a young woman now, and, he realised not for the first time, an increasingly good-looking one. But she was still almost family, he told himself.