The Secret Notebook Page 7

  Blackpool, Saturday December 18, 1943

  Joe’s last Saturday night arrived. He and Jack were due to leave the following day.

  Right until it was packing up time, we danced to the music of the big band at the Tower Ballroom – the floor was crowded for both slow and fast dances – and only stopped dancing for a quick drink now and then.

  On our way home we stopped off in what we thought of as our shelter.

  Joe pulled me close against him, so my face was squeezed against his shoulder. The feel and smell of his dark blue uniform, dampened by sea air, was so familiar to me now.

  I clamped my lips together; tears stole my voice for a second or two.

  ‘I love you, Joe.’ Those words just left me, Dear Diary, they wouldn’t stay inside any longer. ‘I’ll miss you so much.’

  I thought I’d never seen anyone look so handsome.

  Joe’s short fringe fell forwards as the waning moon peeped out from behind a cloud and lit a sparkle in his eyes, just briefly.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been happier or sadder,’ I said. The thought of him leaving the following day had seemed ages away for so long.

  But it was almost here. I didn’t know how to bear it.

  ‘I feel sad, too.’

  I nodded, couldn’t speak, didn’t want him to see the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  He put his finger and thumb gently on my chin and raised my face.

  Pull yourself together! I tried telling myself, but was reduced to wiping my face with my fingers.

  In the privacy of the shelter, no witness but the wind and waves, passion between us was finally ignited by lack of time…

  The following day, after lunch, Dora, Mary and I walked with Joe and Jack to the railway station. Some of the others moving on to other training facilities walked ahead too, talking, laughing and shouting.

  The Blackshaw brothers leaned out of the train window; they looked absolutely the same, yet Joe’s smile was the one to make my insides melt with heat and my heart pound.

  ‘Visit soon!’ My voice came out hoarse, Dear Diary, like I’d been shouting too much.

  Joe held my hand, kissed my fingers. ‘I love you,’ I said, and he smiled in response.

  And then he was gone and nothing but the sooty smoke lingered in the air.

  Blackpool, Friday December 31, 1943

  Dear Diary,

  Almost two weeks he’s been gone and the ache of missing Joe is physical, my stomach churns constantly like a panicky sea, wondering whether he will write. Will he forget me? Did he really feel the same way about me? He said he felt sad…

  But it niggled that he’d made no promises.

  And worse than any of those insecure thoughts, will he live through the war?

  Blackpool, Saturday January 1, 1944

  I felt a big relief when a late Christmas card arrived today from Joe and Jack, signed by them both with a few words saying they hoped I was well, as they were. There was a kiss beneath Joe’s name and a note on the back of the card said thank you for the socks I’d knitted and sent them both for Christmas.

  I write to him every three or four days, so have neglected you, Dear Diary. I tell Joe all the goings on of my daily life, and I always finish by telling him I love him and that I hope he will write soon.

  Blackpool, Monday January 10, 1944

  Although it is already January, past twelfth night, I still have the card stood on my bedroom dressing table as my only connection to Joe. Sometimes, I wonder if the happiness I felt was real. Sometimes the time spent with Joe feels more like a wonderful dream.

  It’s becoming harder to remember every detail; I am grateful that I wrote everything down as it’s too easy to forget the small things.

  I read this notebook time and again, savouring every word written about the time spent with the man I love, attempting to relive every single moment. The ache of longing for him rarely lets up, the churning in my stomach constant.

  Yet, as time moves along, Dear Diary, a question rises up time and again.

  How well do I know Joe?

  That thought chips at the edges of my thoughts; I flick that stray worry away, feeling that there must be some reason for the lack of letters, a hold-up somewhere. Someone in the queue at the butcher’s yesterday said that they’d received a bunch of letters all at once, so I imagine that is what has happened; I am sure I will hear from Joe soon.

  I pick up my diary just to write the day to day things, to keep my mind occupied and to give myself something to do whilst I listen to music on the little radio in my room when I want to be alone.

  But, my Dear Diary, sometimes I can barely breathe for wanting to see Joe so badly. I close my eyes, wrap my arms around myself and remember how tightly he’d held me; how precious he made me feel. How I felt like the most important young woman in the world to him.

  His smile and how handsome he was in his uniform…

  Every time a new lot of billets arrives, I wish with all my heart it was Joe’s lot arriving – and that they were just beginning their time in Blackpool. Then the dream-perfect love affair could start all over again.

  Time, though, gallops on too fast, pays no mind to wishes.

  Proof, my Dear Diary, that you have to make hay whilst the sun shines.

  Enjoy every moment.

  Blackpool, Saturday January 15, 1944

  My Dear Diary, I’m writing this as my head swims and I’ve just stopped feeling as sick as a dog. I managed to get to the bathroom, bilious, desperate to keep the noise down. I splashed my face with cold water, drank some to wash out my mouth after being ill.

  I froze at the knock on the door.

  It was Enid demanding that I stop being a ‘lazy ‘apeth’ and get downstairs to do some work.

  There’s something, something I’ve suspected for the past few weeks, something I have prayed hard that it isn’t true. I have no doubt now. I overheard our neighbour, Phyllis, when she spoke with Enid sometime last year, describing how she had been nauseous in the first month or so when she expected a baby.

  I’ve been feeling that way for several weeks.

  I have the growing suspicion that I’m expecting, too.

  Chapter Six

  Izzie

  Blackpool, Sunday June 25, 2017

  ‘Crikey,’ Izzie whispered as she rose from the chair and put a bookmark to keep the page. ‘That’s unexpected.’

  At the discovery that her dad, Tom, had been conceived out of wedlock, she tried to imagine how different life must have been back in the 1940s; it must have been immensely difficult, she thought, if Molly could only confide in her notebook. Poor Nan, to keep the knowledge secret – so secret it could only be shared with the written word as the choices for her future seemed so very limited.

  Izzie prepared for bed, imagining how it might have been, but the predominant visions from her nan’s secret notebook were of her falling in love with a handsome, charismatic man in uniform, making the most of life at a time when no one knew when their number would be up.

  She pictured Nan as a young woman, working until she was ready to drop in her stepmother’s boarding house, and then laughing, dancing and, like everyone else at that time, taking what she could by way of enjoyment, whilst she could.

  As Molly had written: Make hay whilst the sun shines…

  Whilst she settled down to sleep, Izzie’s thoughts focused on Nan’s life. Falling pregnant gave Nan what Izzie could see as only one choice – she had to marry the baby’s father. Molly had written about how young women were thrown out of their homes because they fell pregnant. It was so sad – and she could only imagine how conflicted Molly must have felt. She was in love with Joe, yet whether she would ever see him again was uncertain. Swamped with the sudden longing to hug her grandmother close, to bury her face in the soft fabric of her blouse, inhale the faint smell of Coty’s L’aimant, make her feel better, Izzie whispered, ‘I miss you, Nan.’

  At that point, Izzie’s thoughts drifted to he
r own marriage.

  It had been their choice, hers and Rufus, but the timing had been key to that turn of events.

  A pang of something like guilt, or regret, or a cocktail of both, accompanied the acknowledgement that if she and Justin had met up, her choice would likely have been different.

  She wondered if the emotional pain she had held close on her journey back to London after her fruitless trip north to meet Justin was anything like the insecurity, the undoubted fear and uncertainty for her future that Nan must have felt upon finding herself expecting and alone. Izzie had felt adrift, lost, directionless…

  Izzie thought that Nan had had much more to face. She’d likely thought she had a simple choice: marry Joe or be thrown out of her home.

  Izzie’s choice had been made, perhaps, because it had been a route that opened up and offered a path out of the agonising anguish, a path that allowed her to lock her pain deep inside and take another unexpected direction.

  Justin called around the following morning. ‘I’ve come to let you know I’ve a job in Scotland – Tobermory – for a tourist brochure. I’m travelling up there shortly.’

  ‘How fabulous.’ A stab of disappointment interrupted Izzie taking a breath. ‘Have you time for a cuppa?’

  ‘Love one.’ He followed her into the large kitchen whilst she made them both a cup of coffee and summarised what she’d discovered in the notebook so far.

  ‘I tried to imagine how different life was, Justin, but it’s difficult to get my head round. I mean, being pregnant without a husband isn’t shocking these days, is it?’

  ‘No, but it would have been shocking back in the Forties. I remember Gran telling me how she refused to stand next to someone at a tram stop who was pregnant and unmarried.’

  Grimacing, Izzie said, ‘Like they’d catch something? It beggars belief.’

  ‘I know,’ he agreed and nodded his thanks for the mug of coffee she set down on the round table. ‘It was different then though.’

  ‘Poor Nan. It’s as if the life I’m reading about is a different one to the one I knew about her.’ She put a plate of biscuits on the table between them and Justin shot her a nod of thanks as he picked one up.

  ‘The job in Scotland, will you be gone long?’

  She didn’t want to care if he never came back, but was finding it hard to hold onto the hurt she’d buried inside for years. She wanted to ask him: Why?

  Izzie still found it hard to believe that Justin had just stopped getting in touch, hadn’t responded to her calls and messages…

  That day had changed the course of her whole life.

  It made no sense – but the question felt too difficult to ask. As though asking would be akin to inviting the intimacy they’d once shared to return and risk ripping the plaster off the agony that lurked inside. It had crippled her emotionally then; it might do the same again if she let it back to the surface.

  The reason he never brought it up, Izzie realised, was probably because he never even thought about it; he’d moved on and he must have done way before their arrangement to meet.

  He had his photography success, the dream come true that he’d always worked towards. And all the beautiful women in his life…

  He really did appear to have it all.

  It was so easy to brush over their shared past and blot it out, smother it. They’d always got along – way before they became lovers, they’d been the best of friends. It would be so simple to return to that tried and trusted friendship, leave their painful episode locked away inside…

  There was no way though that she could brush aside the enormous help he had been in sorting out Nan’s bungalow: helping shift heavy furniture out into the garage, driving her to the local charity shops and recycling centre, mucking in carting stored boxes down the ladder. No matter the hurt caused in the past, Izzie still felt a tangible connection between them.

  ‘I’ll be gone until the weekend.’ He looked her straight in the eyes then. ‘Will you miss me?’

  ‘No.’ She raised her cup to give her something to hide behind and something to do rather than gawp at him, then, unable to lie, added, ‘Maybe, a bit.’

  ‘Strange thing, Izzie, sometimes I feel like we’ve never been apart.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘I have to keep reminding myself that I can’t just grab you close and kiss you anymore.’ As he spoke, a dimple slashed his cheek and in response, a long-stifled sensation coursed through Izzie.

  In that second, she wanted nothing more than to feel his arms around her, pulling her close … to feel his body firm against hers from chest, hips, legs … to taste the coffee on his lips…

  His words set off a reaction that almost caused her to throw her arms around him, hold him, kiss him. Hearing his words moved her emotionally, handed her a kind of sweet emotional shock. Maybe he did recollect just how close they’d been, how fiercely they’d loved one another.

  ‘I keep reminding myself that we both made our choices.’ His words served to bring her back down to earth.

  With a bump.

  He looked at his watch, finished his drink and stood. ‘Better make tracks. If you’re about at the weekend, I’ll be back working my way down the folks’ job list.’ He removed his dark framed glasses and rubbed his eyes, then caught her scrutiny of him.

  ‘What?’ He gave a slight smile. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘Just thinking.’ She probably shouldn’t share exactly what she was thinking; the vision of him grabbing her close and kissing her made her feel breathless, made her want exactly that.

  In spades.

  ‘Then I’m home till just before the New Year, just some relatively local work booked in.’

  ‘Where are you going in the New Year?’

  ‘New Zealand on a wildlife photography assignment for National Geographic, one of my life ambitions.’

  ‘I’m in awe. It’s great you’re doing the work you always wanted to do.’

  He smiled at that and Izzie felt a familiar catch inside.

  ‘I’ve been lucky, that’s all.’

  ‘I know that saying – the harder you work, the luckier you get!’ She walked with him to the front door.

  ‘Bye, then Izzie.’

  ‘Bye Justin, thanks for all your help. Drop by when you’re home?’

  ‘I will.’ Justin leaned down to drop a kiss on her cheek and his closeness made all the fine hairs on the surface of her skin shimmer. She looked up to see what affect her nearness had on him, but he was already raising one hand in farewell and fishing keys out of his jeans pocket with the other.

  After tidying and boxing up a set of first edition books signed by Rufus for her nan, Izzie set them aside thinking she’d offer them to Justin’s parents.

  Justin.

  She dredged up what he had said that had set her stomach twisting inside: ‘I keep reminding myself that we both made our choices.’

  Both?

  Sudden anger surged through her, sending prickles to the ends of her arms and legs. They’d both made their choices?

  Had they, hell!

  He’d made his choice by not turning up and she’d been left with the consequences.

  Heartbroken.

  She’d been as devastated as a jilted bride.

  She should have pulled him up on that. But she couldn’t have done for fear of letting the pain erupt like red-hot lava; she didn’t want him to witness it, didn’t want to feel it herself. Once had been enough. It had to stay contained where it couldn’t cause damage.

  She turned up the radio loud, dancing like a crazy puppet to get her rage out of her system, and then stood puffing, with her hands on her hips, looking around the bungalow to decide on her next job.

  Setting herself the task of stripping off the dizzyingly patterned wallpaper from the hallway, Izzie carried on clearing and then cleaning. She planned to call around to visit Justin’s parents and take the box of books for them - soon

  In the meantime, anything that still needed to go to the local charity shop,
she stacked in the wide hallway at the side of the door.

  Moving into the back room to pull the curtains against the dusk, Izzie eyed the notebook tucked on the table at the side of the room by the chair and felt irresistibly drawn to read more about her nan’s life and how she had dealt with the pregnancy. Izzie felt nervous at what she would find amidst this notebook of secrets entrusted to her. Her poor nan, she had lived for the moment, fallen deeply in love and then fallen pregnant.

  She must have worried that Enid would blow her top, throw her out. Izzie wondered if her nan tried to keep her pregnancy a secret and for how long? It must have been nigh on impossible to keep the pregnancy quiet for long whilst living in a house full of other people.

  Then she thought how precious a new life would be during the difficult time of war, when the newspapers and radio broadcasts pounded home the loss of life. How uplifting it must have been to have news of a brand new life…

  It was daunting for Izzie to read about lives already lived – those of her own family. How strange that her grandpop had been a twin and she had never known about it. She wasn’t sure if anyone had mentioned it during her young life – would she remember? She couldn’t seem to shake anything free in that vein.

  And that thought gave rise to the belief that she had always held as a teenager, that she would have children of her own – with Justin.

  They’d discussed it casually whilst sitting on the beach one afternoon – as though they could affect the outcome just by agreeing they would have twins.

  As if it was that easy!

  She groaned at how simple they’d assumed life would be.

  Meet up, plan their marriage, twins…

  And then the unexpected twist that had altered her life… She had married Rufus – Rufus the celebrity author. Rufus who didn’t want any children, but he had only told Izzie that after she’d married him.