chapter 1...

Just to give you a taster. If you happen to know any agents/publishers looking for a New Adult historical fiction debut by an emerging talent, then do waft them in my direction!

Chapter 1

When it happened, it felt like the end. As it turned out, it was just the beginning, but how could she have known that, on that cold November afternoon in 1941?

She was almost home when she saw a swish of blue-grey as the airman rushed towards her up Western Way. The wind whipped a strand of hair across her face. It caught on her mouth and she spat it out.

He was barrelling towards her, arms outstretched, mouth wide. He was shouting something, but the wind took his words and hurled them down the street, towards London, the Thames and away.

Then she heard him: “Get down! Get down!” The airman hurled himself at her, rugby tackling her, pinning her down.

She began to scream, but before the sound escaped her mouth, the explosion lifted them both off the ground, tangling their limbs before throwing them back down. Sudden and hard: her skull whipped back against the pavement. His knee was in her groin. The buttons on his uniform dug into her cheek, her breast. In her mouth the damp-cloth-sweat smell of his clothes. The juddering weight of him on top of her and the sound: deep, loud, painful.

And then it was over.

Colours blurred and separated. She tried to breathe, couldn’t, choked, shoved at the smoke-coloured weight on top of her. They rolled together, slow motion wrestlers in the settling dust. Then they pulled apart, limbs dragging against each other.

He sat up. She looked up at him. There were patches of grit and mud on his uniform and a cut on his cheekbone, spilling blood.

“Are you all right?” he mouthed. She couldn’t hear him properly, her ears filled with a dull ringing.

“Fine, I think,” she said, her voice sounding far away. She pushed herself into a seated position and rubbed the back of her head.

The pavement was cracked, slabs ripped apart to reveal tree roots and dry earth. The air smelled metallic, dark, burnt.

He staggered slightly, getting up, then he held out a hand for her. She took it and struggled upright, bare legs scraping the broken ground.

“You’re hurt,” she said, pointing at the cut on his face. He put a hand up to check.

“It’s nothing,” he said, feeling the wound and then, as he brushed a lock of dark Brylcreemed hair away and rubbed the grit out of his eyes, he noticed that his RAF cap was missing and turned to search for it.

She watched him, the blue-grey figure, searching for his cap by the unravelled kerb. Her eyes followed him find it, pick it up, brush it off and shift it onto the correct position on his head – the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle found and slotted in.

There was dust up her nose and in her mouth. She wiped her lips on the sleeve of her coat, but succeeded only in pushing more grit into her mouth and leaving a smear of red on the beige wool.

As he began to walk back towards her, brushing the dust from his jacket, she looked beyond him, at the place the bomb had struck.

“Well, we were lucky, weren’t we?” said the airman, as he drew level. “I don’t hold out much hope for the poor blighters at number thirty-two, though,” he continued, following her gaze.

She looked past him to the smoking pile. It was like a giant’s game of spillikins, a mess of sticks and rubble. She could hear the sound of the belated air-raid siren starting its slow wail.

“You’re a bit shaken up, I can see that. I’m not too chipper myself, to be honest. Let’s get you home. You’ll feel better after a cup of tea,” he said. He touched her lightly on the forearm. She turned to face him. “Now, where is it you live?” he said.

There were specks of gravel on his cheeks, and the livid slash of blood. His eyes were blue and round, like a child’s.

“I live at number thirty-two,” she said.