Always in My Heart by Ellie Dean Read Free Book Online

the heat would soon ease the knots in her joints.
    A small shovel of precious anthracite and a couple of logs from the pile Ron always left beside the scuttle soon had the fire blazing, and she set the kettle on the hob and the teapot to warm while she laid the table. All this activity made her feel a bit giddy, and she had to sit down for a moment to catch her breath.
    The buzzing from her hearing aid was becoming a real nuisance and she switched the blessed thing off, once more mourning the loss several months before of the lovely new device Peggy had bought her. It had been so careless of her to trample it into a million pieces – but then she had been alone in the pitch darkness of the Anderson shelter, disorientated and afraid as she’d woken to the vibration of the overhead bombers.
    She clucked impatiently at her wandering thoughts and turned her attention to more practical things – like making that pot of tea, and getting on with preparing the breakfast.
    As she stood in the warmth of the range in Peggy’s kitchen and stirred the large saucepan of porridge, she contentedly hummed a little tune and regarded her surroundings. She had come to live at Beach View several years ago – long before this nasty war had spoiled things – and this room was the warm, beating heart of the boarding house that was now her home.
    No one could deny it was shabby, for the chairs were mismatched, the table scarred, the lino worn into holes by the stone sink and in the doorway to thebasement, but somehow it didn’t matter. This was the room where everyone met to eat and talk, to knit and sew, listen to the wireless or catch up on local gossip, and Cordelia loved it. She felt safe here, warmed by the knowledge that Peggy’s family loved her and that even the young girls who were billeted here accepted her as an intrinsic part of their lives.
    She sipped her tea and carried on stirring the porridge, her thoughts drifting back to the distant past when she’d been the youngest of four siblings growing up in the big house by the beach in Havelock Road.
    Her parents were already middle-aged when she’d been born. The family was comfortably off as her father was a solicitor who had his own practice, and Cordelia had been blessed with a happy, fulfilled childhood. Her eldest brother was already married by the time her first birthday came round, and although she possessed some faded sepia photographs of those early days, she couldn’t remember ever meeting him, for he’d resigned his practice partnership with their father before she was two, and had gone in search of a more adventurous life in the tropics. The second brother was much closer in age and had been her hero, for he always had time for her and was tall and handsome, with kind eyes and a rather fine moustache. He’d been killed in the trenches in 1917, and she remembered she’d been inconsolable for months.
    Cordelia stirred the porridge a little more vigorously as she thought of her sister Amelia. They had never got on, for Amelia was five years older and very bossy, andit had taken some courage and will power to stand up to her. Amelia had become even worse in adulthood, and despite being a spinster, took it upon herself to tell Cordelia how to run her home, look after her husband, and raise her sons. Amelia was now living alone in a bungalow on the north-western edges of Cliffehaven, running a branch of the WI and on the committees of half a dozen good causes – no doubt enjoying her position of power, and telling everyone what to do.
    ‘Good luck to them,’ she muttered. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to listen to her any more.’
    The porridge was bubbling nicely and she carefully slid the saucepan away from the direct heat and covered it with a lid. With a second cup of tea at her elbow, she sank into the kitchen chair and glanced at the newspaper headlines.
    The battle for Moscow was still raging, as was the tank battle in Tobruk; the Japs had invaded Siam and there