Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154890 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“No access to the road ahead, folks,” the policeman says, bending as Whit opens his window.
“What’s going on, officer?” I ask, ducking down to see him better.
“Unexploded ordinance was found in a garden in Barnaby Street.”
“Oh no. That’s Aunt Doreen’s street.” I glance at Whit, then back at the officer. “Unexploded ordinance? You mean, like a bomb?”
“Probably left over from the war,” he says. “The army’s bomb squad are on their way.”
“The bomb squad?” My heart begins to flutter rapidly. I press my hand to it, willing it to settle.
“Don’t worry. Your aunt will be safe,” Whit offers. “She will have been evacuated.”
“Yep.” The policeman stands. “The houses are all empty. Reverse at the corner when you can,” he directs Whit as he turns.
“Don’t worry,” Whit says, taking my hand. “They do this all the time.”
“They do?”
“Well, relatively speaking,” he amends. Pressing his arm across the back of my seat, he twists his head over his shoulder as he begins to reverse.
“The camera.” I point at the image that flashes up on the dash. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“It would also be cheating,” he says with a small grin.
Maybe there’s a class they teach somewhere. Driving: How to Make it Look Hot. It shouldn’t be sexy watching him reverse. “No one finds it sexy when I do it!”
“Finds what sexy?”
Damn. “Nothing,” I mutter, glancing out of the side window.
“You think it’s sexy when I reverse?” he asks, driving back the way we came.
“Shut up,” I plead.
“Sure you don’t want to give this a drive?”
I expect to find innuendo painted across his face when I look. But no. “No thanks.”
“The offer stands. And you can back yourself up on me any day of the week.”
“Funny.”
“I wasn’t joking.” When I don’t answer, he adds, “So where to now?”
“Oh, pull over! There’s my aunt.” Doreen is holding court, sitting on a low garden wall. She has a teacup in her hand and a bag and cat carrier by her feet. “Oh, good. She has moggy.”
“Her cat is called cat?”
“No, he’s called Moggy.”
“Moggy means cat. Like mutt means dog.”
“Oh. Then I guess Aunt Doreen is unimaginative.” Which can’t be the case at all.
“There she is!” Doreen announces as we make our way toward her. “I was just talking about you.”
“I hope it was all good.”
“What a thing to say,” she scoffs. “You’re an angel. Didn’t I say she was an angel?” she says, turning to the woman on her left. “This is Sadie. She lives here.” She gestures to the house behind her. “She was kind enough to put the kettle on while we wait.”
A chorus of “lovely cuppa, this is,” starts up from the china cup holding brigade of elderly women.
“How long before you get to go back?” As Doreen’s eyes widen, then flick slowly up then down, I realize how rude I’m being. “Oh, sorry. Where are my manners? This is Whit, Aunt Doreen. You remember I told you about Connor’s friend?”
“I remember you mentioning him, dear,” she says, suddenly patting the back of her hair. “And now the picture is becoming very clear. He’s her boss,” she announces, all wide-eyed and nodding head.
“Oh!” clucks the chorus.
Well, I don’t quite know what that means, but anyway, “Whit, this is Aunt Doreen.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he says, holding out his hand. His voice sounds deep and gravelly, like a fox in a house full of hens. Quite aggressive hens, actually, judging by the appraising looks he’s getting.
“Sorry, how long do you think?”
“Before we get back?” I nod, and Doreen shrugs. “How long is a piece of string? They’re talking about taking the thing away for detonation.”
“It’s that big?” Whit asks.
“What does that mean?” I ask, my head swinging between the two. “Isn’t anyone freaked out by this?”
“Of course we are, love. But they’ve been finding bombs in London since the Luftwaffe buggered off home. We just take it in our stride, don’t we, girls?”
Again with the agreeing chorus.
“So will we be allowed back, do you think?”
“Once they’ve moved the thing.”
“Can I offer you a nice cuppa tea, loves?” Sadie, the owner of the garden wall, asks Whit and me.
“We’ll budge up,” Doreen says, already moving the women along the wall with her butt. “Sit yourselves down. It won’t be long.”
24
WHIT
Aunt Doreen. She’s truly an unreliable narrator because it was long—very long—before we found out what was going on. While Amelia insisted I go home, suggesting I must have better things to do, I didn’t leave. I’m sure I have better things to do, more important things at any rate, but I find I can’t leave her out in some random street, facing such uncertainty.
So I stay. I drink countless cups of weak-as-piss tea and eat more rich tea biscuits than I’ve had in a decade. I listen to the oldies gossip and almost choke on a mouthful of tea when one of Doreen’s lesser fans takes me aside to tell me I ought to protect “young Amelia’s impressionable mind” because Doreen is a “goer” and a “man stealer.” Apparently, all the men of a certain age in this borough know Doreen can “suck a golf ball through a garden hose.”