The Last Train Home

Chapter Twenty-Six

Christmas flew by in a flurry of board games, an assortment of foods, and a speech from the King - the first of its kind. By the time I went to bed, I was exhausted from the amount of food and the games we played that I forgot all about the present Jonathan had found under the tree, the one I assumed had come from Alec. It would remain unopened for several months.

After the Christmas season passed, we returned to working on anything in the house that needed fixing or replacing. I had been surprised that there had been anything left to do since we had done so much in those first few months. Jonathan and I set to work repairing the furniture upstairs, including my bed which had a broken slat in the middle that had gone unnoticed by me for over four months.

I received several more letters from Mum and Dad and I sent them responses, telling them of our Christmas and of Goose, who got bigger every day and had started to hang around Jonathan and me when we did our work. Her training had been going well even though I had no idea what I was doing and just told her to do things over and over again until she obeyed me. It worked so I couldn't really complain about it too much.

"Can you believe we've been here for six months?" Eva asked, scuffing the toe of her boot along the ground.

"Hm, not the week-long trip I had been expecting." I laughed.

"Definitely not. With rationing and everything, I get the feeling we might be here a little while longer."

"Jonathan is less than impressed that bacon has been rationed, he was really annoyed when they announced it."

Eva laughed. "Aunt Margaret was upset by the sugar rationing, she's worried about her cakes."

"There's a war going on and she's worried about her confectionary?"

"She says cake cheers people up." She shrugged.

"That's true enough, I suppose."

We continued to walk through the village square with no real sense of where we were going or what we were going to do. Eva and I had a promise to see each other at least once a week other than a Sunday, especially since it took us so long to be able to talk away from our host families the first time. Neither of us had seen Enid or Mark that much over the passing weeks, but Enid had been busy with school and Mark still struggled on the farm.

The longer we spent away from the city, the further apart our little friendship group seemed to drift. Enid had made friends at school and spent more time with them since they often studied together once the school day ended. Mark had several new siblings since his host family had several younger children of their own and so when he wasn't working on the farm, he was entertaining them. Only Eva and I made a conscious effort to see each other, but we had been friends since we were born.

I could hardly believe we had been in the country for as long as we had and sometimes I forgot that the war was even going on. Planes continued to fly overhead and the Government had introduced rationing to limit our food supplies because of the Germans bombing our imported goods from the Continent. Other than that, it was easy to forget that the war was even happening.

"Have you seen Alec recently?" Eva teased.

I stuck my tongue out at her. "You're not funny."

"He gave you a puppy for Christmas! Come on! And he finished the carving on the sign. Now that's a sign."

"Mr Thompson gave me the puppy, not him. There are no signs."

"Yes, there are." She paused. "Both physical and metaphorical."

I rolled my eyes. "You're annoying. Can we talk about something else?"

"I got a letter from Anthony today," she said. "There's talk of sending them off to France, just in case Hitler decides to try his luck."