Home for Christmas by Annie Groves Read Free Book Online Page B

into the shadows behind him. ‘Come and say hello to Agnes.’
    The two small girls who emerged to stand beside him had Ted’s brown hair and blue eyes. Their hair was neatly plaited and their eyes filled with apprehension as they pressed closer to their brother, whilst staring saucer-eyed at the crowd which was now pouring down the stairs in front of them.
    ‘Marie, Sonia, you hold tight to your brother’s hand. Ted, you just make sure you don’t let go of them.’
    The small thin woman, who had now materialised on Ted’s other side, and who it was obvious from her looks was Ted’s mother, hadn’t looked at Agnes yet, but Agnes could understand that her first concern must be for her younger children, just as she understood the bashful shyness that kept the two girls themselves silent as they looked swiftly at her, then away again.
    ‘Don’t fret, Mum, I’ve got them both safe.’
    The sound of the calm loving reassurance in Ted’s voice made Agnes’s heart swell with pride. He was so very much the man of the family, the one they all relied on, just as she had known he must be.
    ‘This is Agnes, Mum,’ Ted was saying, putting an arm protectively round his sisters’ shoulders as he reached for Agnes’s hand to pull her gently closer.
    But although Ted had drawn them altogether like a proper family, and although he was saying with pride in his voice, ‘Come on, girls, give Agnes a smile. After all, she’s going to be your sister,’ neither of the girls would look at her, and Ted’s mother didn’t speak to her at all.
    Agnes had been used to dealing with girls younger than she was at the orphanage, and she guessed that the girls’ reluctance to look at her sprang mainly from shyness, but Ted’s mother’s refusal to smile or extend her hand to her was another matter.
    Instead of responding welcomingly to her, there was coldness and disapproval in Ted’s mother’s eyes when she looked at her, and hostility too, Agnes feared. But now wasn’t the time to do anything about that because suddenly the air was filled with the shrieking rise and fall of the air-raid siren, causing panic to descend on those still at the top of the steps.
    ‘Come on,’ Ted instructed his sisters, grabbing each of them by the hand. ‘Mum, you take Sonia’s hand, and, Agnes, you take Marie’s. Don’t let go, either of you,’ he warned his sisters as he hurried them down the steps. ‘Stay close to me, all of you.’
    The crowd pressed in on them from all sides, and Agnes felt it was more by good luck than anything else that she managed to keep her feet on the steps. She was sure that she would have panicked herself, worried that she’d fall and be trampled underfoot, if she hadn’t had the role of looking after the elder of Ted’s two sisters. But she kept hold of the little girl’s hand and tried to protect her by keeping as close to her as she could.
    They could already hear the planes and they weren’t even down at the bottom of the stairs. The dull menacing thrum of their engines became louder with every breath Agnes took, and she tried to ignore the sounds of panic behind her from those who had yet to make it inside, and the angry protests from those already safely installed, objecting to having to make room for more people.
    ‘Come on, this way,’ Ted urged his family and Agnes, hurrying them towards a doorway in the wall that led, Agnes knew, to a small storeroom.
    ‘It will be locked,’ Agnes told him, breathless with anxiety.
    ‘I’ve got the key,’ Ted responded with a grin. ‘Got it off Smithy this morning, only you’d better not let on to anyone else, otherwise we’ll be crammed in here like sardines in a tin. Do you fancy that, girls,’ he teased his sisters, keeping them in front of him as he let go of their hands to remove the key from his pocket, ‘being squashed like sardines?’
    Agnes was very conscious of the fact that right now she was squashed up very close to Ted. It made her feel warm