Here is an excerpt from my new novel, set partly in York, England, during World War II. To order your copy of the book, go to https://geni.us/ThePromiseSheMade
Bombs were falling on York.
Somehow Ruby knew it was a dream though it felt so real, the enemy planes hurtling through dark skies, setting the roofs of the city ablaze. York Minster was on fire, boats on the River Ouse were bursting into flames and Ruby was running down the middle of her aunt’s street, her nightdress billowing around her. She was dragging Eliza by the hand and her beloved Antoine was in the dream, too, running alongside them both and wearing – of all things – his baker’s apron. As Eliza tripped, he reached down to sweep the little girl into his arms.
A bomb landed in front of them, the ground shaking with the impact, the noise deafening. They stopped running and huddled together, Antoine shielding Ruby and Ruby hunched over her sister to protect her from the blast. Along the pavement, the newly planted beech trees were burning like oversized matches and the air raid siren screamed on and on. Piercing. Haunting. Terrifying.
Air raid siren.
Ruby’s eyes snapped open. She was lying in bed in her aunt’s house, blinking into the darkness. The dream-images had faded, but not the noise. The siren was real, and she could still hear it. She turned over and saw the pale figure of her sister standing beside the bed, her eyes wide with fear.
‘The Germans are coming,’ Eliza said.
They stumbled onto the landing at the same time as Aunt Martha and Uncle Stanley. All four of them thundered down the stairs and into the kitchen.
‘Get your coats, both of you,’ Aunt Martha cried. She was flinging open the cupboards, gathering food and matches and candles. Uncle Stanley, ignoring them all, threw open the back door and ran into the garden. It was raining outside, thick sheets of rain that obliterated everything.
Eliza was trembling as Ruby fed each thin, white arm into the sleeves of her coat and buttoned it for her, as if she was still a toddler and not about to turn eight years old.
‘It’ll be a false alarm, knock on wood,’ Aunt Martha cried. She turned circles, looking for wood to knock on. ‘Come on, you two. Quick sharp!’
Ruby took Eliza’s hand, realising too late that she had forgotten her own coat, and they followed their aunt out into the darkness and pouring rain. The air was full to bursting with the noise of the siren as they splashed down the garden path towards the Anderson shelter. Ruby had an arm round her sister’s shoulder and she could feel her shivering, even inside her coat. Shivering with fear, not cold.
The shelter sat like a hunchbacked beast in the spot where Aunt Martha’s roses had been. They had dug up the roses together last autumn, her aunt’s face full of sorrow to see them go. But needs must, as she liked to say, and a shelter wasn’t going to build itself.
The digging had been the worst part. Days of it, the two of them working side by side while Uncle Stanley was down the pub. Like hollowing out a grave, Ruby had thought, recalling her parents’ funeral with a sudden pang of sorrow. Eliza had brought them endless cups of tea, or dug alongside them with her toy spade, until it was time to fix the corrugated walls in place. A domed roof completed the structure and, since the government didn’t supply a door, Ruby had propped a piece of chipboard up against the sunken entrance.
That had been months ago and they hadn’t had cause to use the shelter until now.
Rain fell so fast it was like standing under a waterfall and the ground wasn’t firm any more, it was thick mud. Aunt Martha followed Uncle Stanley into the shelter, holding fast to the corrugated roof and slipping, sliding down into the hole until only her round face was visible in the darkness.
‘Quick, now,’ she called up to them.
Ruby tugged on Eliza’s hand, but her sister wouldn’t budge.
‘No…’ she whispered.
Ruby knew what she was thinking. Down in the shelter they would be ankle-deep in mud and there might be rats. There were certainly spiders and creepy-crawlies, and it would be almost pitch dark, with only candles to offer a faint light. The shelter stank of damp and rotting things, and, worst of all, there was earth piled up over the roof, which made you feel it might fall in on you at any time.
‘We have to, Eliza,’ Ruby cried, raising her voice so she would be heard above the pounding rain, the incessant siren. ‘It won’t be for long, but if the bombs come…’
Eliza’s eyes were round with fear, her head spinning from side to side. ‘No,’ she said again, her voice full of terror. ‘No. No. NO!’
It seemed to Ruby that the sirens grew louder in that moment, the rain faster, the mud thicker. She was drenched to the skin already and shivering with cold as she pulled her sister towards her.
