Rosie Goes to War Read online

  Rosie

  Goes to

  War

  Alison Knight

  Stuck at her gran's house all summer with nothing to do, fifteen-year-old Rosie goes searching through some old junk and comes across a mysterious suitcase. It’s full of vintage-style clothes, but when Rosie tries them on she finds herself suddenly flung back into the same house in war-torn London. With no idea of how she got there or how she can get back, she is soon caught up in a whirl of rationing, factory work, and dances, but comes crashing back to reality when she realises that if she can’t find her way home, she may never be born at all …

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO

  THE SEA SINGER

  LUCA, SON OF THE MORNING

  THE DEEPEST CUT

  OTHER YOUNG ADULT TITLES

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mum can never understand why I don’t like going to Gran’s house. She doesn’t see the shadows, or hear the whispers. She says I’m just being stroppy, and I don’t respect the older generation. But it isn’t that at all. Gran’s cool. She laughs a lot, she’s addicted to her telly, and doesn’t mind if I stay up late. And, she doesn’t nag.

  Seriously, I love my Gran, but her house gives me the creeps. Sometimes, it’s like there’s two houses in one place. The one everyone sees is sunny and warm, full of plants and family photos and odd cooking smells. The other one, that’s hiding inside it, is dingy and cold, where there are other people just out of sight. You can hear them in the next room, or see them out of the corner of your eye. At least, I can. Mum can’t. And if Gran notices, it doesn’t seem to bother her.

  ‘Mind the wind don’t change while you’ve got that sour look on your face, our Rosie,’ says Gran, plonking down a mug of tea in front of me, ‘or you’ll be stuck that like for ever. You won’t get no handsome boys chasing after you then.’

  I feel myself go red at Gran’s words. ‘Boys don’t chase after me,’ I say. ‘They like girls with big boobs,’ I say, thinking of some people I know from school. Oh my God! Did I just say that to my gran?

  ‘Not much change there then,’ laughs Gran. ‘It was the same when I was a girl. Mind you, the war changed all that. Them lads in uniform were happy for some attention from anything in a skirt. Frightened, they were, that Hitler would do for ’em before they got into a girl’s knickers. I was fighting them all off in the end, ’cept my Billy of course. God rest his soul.’

  ‘Too much information, thanks.’ I just can’t picture my grandmother as a girl. I mean, she’s in her nineties – although, as Dad always says, pretty spry. Still, it’s really old. Eewww!

  ‘Don’t you go all prissy on me, our Rosie. I know what it’s like to be fifteen.’

  I try not to roll my eyes.

  ‘I was working by then,’ Gran goes on. ‘After our mum died, me and Nelly had the house to ourselves, what with Dad being away in the war. Had some adventures, we did. Nelly’ll tell you when she gets here. We didn’t sit around sulking because there weren’t no interweb.’

  Huh! Gran and her sister had it all right then – no school, and no parents telling them they’re not old enough to be left alone for a few weeks, which I am, I don’t care what Mum says.

  Not that it matters where I am this summer: it’s still going to be worst one ever. I wanted to go on holiday with my bestie, or rather ex-bestie Jessica. Her family’s staying in a villa with a pool in Italy. They’d invited me to go with them, and it was going to be great because her brother Luke was going with his mate Simon, who I’ve fancied just about all my life. I saved up and bought a sexy bikini that was guaranteed to impress him.

  Then what happens? I catch Jess snogging Simon. Yeah, really. I mean, she’s always known how I feel about him. How could she do that to me? And I can’t believe he is so shallow that he’s snogged her when he was pretending he was interested in me just a couple of days before. I’m not sure I want a boyfriend who plays around like that. And then I had the embarrassment of Luke asking me out. I mean seriously – Jessie’s brother? I’ve known him for ever, he’s like a brother to me. He was probably motivated by pity anyway, but it was really awkward, turning him down. I couldn’t go on holiday with them after that, could I? I told Mum and Dad I’d stay at home.

  But no, my parents are off on a jolly to France because Dad’s got to fix a computer system that’s playing up over there, and they reckon I’m too young to stay home alone and made me come to Gran’s instead. It’s so not fair! And now her scary sister Nelly is coming to stay too. It just gets worse and worse.

  ‘It’s the internet, Gran,’ I say. ‘And I’m not sulking.’ Well, maybe I am, but I reckon I’ve got reason to. ‘I’m just bored, that’s all. If you had proper Wi-Fi I could talk to my friends.’ I can’t use my mobile, because I stupidly forgot to pack the charger. I’ll have to go out and buy another one soon. The battery’s nearly dead and I’ll die if I can’t text anyone.

  ‘Well I haven’t, and I’m jolly glad. You ought to be out and about, making new friends, not sitting here all pale and quiet. In my day, we made our own entertainment.’

  Here we go again. Another lecture on the good old days.

  ‘I’d be up town, going to the picture-house, or to see a show. If me old knees weren’t so bad, I’d go with you now. Loved it up town, I did.’

  Gran always calls central London ‘up town’. I quite fancy going there myself. Jess went to Covent Garden once, and she said it was wicked, with street performers and nice shops and stuff. I won’t admit it to Gran, but I’m a bit scared of getting buses on my own. So I shrug, playing it cool. ‘It’s not the same these days. I’d probably get mugged.’

  ‘Gor blimey! What’s the matter with you? I’ve never in all my days been mugged, and I reckon them toe-rags what do that sort of thing will pick on the likes of me, not you. The cowardly little so-and-so’s will go for the easy target, not a fit young thing who can scream and beat ’em off.’

  ‘If someone comes after me with a knife, Gran, I’ll just hand over my purse and phone. Nothing’s worth getting killed for.’

  ‘Neither is it right to give in to the likes of them. If you don’t do nothing else, my girl, you run. You’ve got a good pair of long legs on you, and most of them muggers are drugged up or drunk, so you’ll leave ’em standing.’

  I laugh. ‘How did we go from me being bored to dealing with muggers?’

  ‘Well, I dunno. Something to do with you being too scared to leave the house, I think.’ Gran’s eyes twinkle behind her purple-rimmed glasses. ‘So, are you getting the bus up town or not?’

  She’s got me. ‘I suppose so. But didn’t you say you wanted me to help you this morning?’

  Gran looks confused for a minute. She does that a lot. Then she tuts.

  ‘’Course I did. It won’t take long. We need to sort out Nelly’s room before she gets here.’

  It looks like Gran has been using her sister’s old room as a dump – there’s stuff everywhere. It’s pr
obably quite big when you clear all the junk out. But right now it’s making me feel weird. The sun’s shining through the window, but it’s freezing in here. One minute there’s wallpaper with little lemon flowers on. The next, I swear, it all merges into plain, dingy, green paint. It’s making me feel dizzy.

  ‘What’s the matter with the walls?’ I ask.

  ‘What walls, love?’

  ‘There.’ I point at a spot of dark green that looks like a big smudge on the pale wallpaper.

  Gran peers at it, scrunching up her eyes, then she shrugs and shakes her head. ‘I can’t see nothing, darling. Is there an air bubble under the paper?’

  I rub my eyes. Maybe I’ve got something wrong with my sight? I don’t think so, though. I had my usual eye-test not long ago and I’m fine. I look at Gran, wondering if she’s in denial. After all, it can’t be easy, living in this house. It’s beyond weird. ‘Must have been something in my eye,’ I say. ‘So what do we need to do?’

  ‘That’ll be all the dust in here,’ says Gran. ‘I’d better get the Hoover.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I say, glad to get out of here for a minute.

  ‘Oh, ta. Get the Pledge and a couple of dusters while you’re at it, love.’

  ‘OK.’ I run downstairs, trying to think up excuses to stay out of there.

  It takes us an hour to sort out the room, which behaves itself for once and looks like normal. When most of the junk has been put away, it’s quite nice. The wallpaper is pretty, in a vintage sort of way. The pale lemon curtains match the cover Gran throws over the duvet. I’m just straightening it for her when I stub my toe on something under the bed.

  ‘Ow!’ I hop around a bit, the pain bringing tears to my eyes. Gran fusses over me until I get embarrassed and calm down. I lift up the corner of the bedcover and glare at the object that attacked me. It’s a suitcase – brown leather, dead old looking.

  ‘What you got there, love? Let’s have a look.’ I pick it up – Oh my God, it’s heavy – and put it on the bed.

  Gran looks at the label. ‘Well, I never did. I forgot all about her.’

  Before I can ask what she means, the doorbell rings and Nelly arrives.

  I must stop calling my great-aunt that. It’s Gran’s fault. She always calls her Nelly, even though her sister doesn’t like it. I don’t see her much, but I remember the last time I did. She told me off: ‘My name is Eleanor,’ she’d said, looking down her nose at me. ‘Only my foolish sister insists on using that ridiculous nickname.’ It made me feel stupid, like when Mrs Sparks, my History teacher, tells me off for not paying attention – which happens a lot. I suppose it’s not surprising that Great-aunt Ne … Eleanor used to be a head teacher at a huge school in London. She probably trained at the same place as Mrs Sparks. They’re both seriously scary.

  I volunteer to put the kettle on. I’m a bit shy round Great-aunt Eleanor. She’s quite posh, not like Gran. It’s hard to see that they’re sisters, really. I use the cups and saucers instead of mugs, find some biscuits, and put it all on a nice tray to take into the lounge, where they’re talking.

  ‘Here she is, Nelly, hasn’t she grown?’

  I put the tray down on the coffee table and wish Gran would stop embarrassing me. Of course I’ve grown – last time Great-aunt Eleanor saw me, I was about ten. I’m nearly sixteen now.

  ‘Oh, you’ve forgotten the sugar, love,’ said Gran.

  I always forget the sugar – no one takes it our house. ‘Sorry. I’ll get it.’

  ‘No, you sit down and talk to your auntie. I’ll get it.’ Gran leaves us to it.

  Great-aunt Eleanor doesn’t say anything at first, she just looks at me all funny. I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve got a spot on my nose or something.

  ‘You’re Rosie. May’s granddaughter.’ she says at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You remind me of someone.’

  Gran comes in the with sugar bowl.

  ‘Who does she look like, May?’

  ‘Well, she’s got her dad’s colouring – brown hair, green eyes. But she don’t really look like him.’

  Eleanor is staring at me with that funny look again. ‘That’s not what I mean,’ she says. ‘There’s something very familiar about her, but I can’t put my finger on it. It is very annoying.’

  Gran peers at me, puzzled. Then she shakes her head and puts a hand to her mouth. ‘What am I thinking? I forgot the spoons. We can’t have no sugar if we ain’t got no spoons.’

  I laugh as Gran goes off to the get them. What is she like?

  Eleanor carries on frowning at me, so I stop laughing. She’s really freaking me out. I resist the urge to check my nose. Instead I check my teeth with my tongue, in case there’s something stuck there. But it feels like I’m sticking my tongue out at her without opening my mouth, which must look rude, so I stop.

  Between the two sisters, I’d have said that Gran looked like the crazy one, with her purple glasses, matching blouse and silver dangly earrings. Apparently she used to have dark hair like mine, but hers is just a ball of silver frizz now. On the other hand, Great-aunt Eleanor is the complete opposite – gold-rimmed half-moon glasses perched on her nose, her white hair pulled back into a tight bun, and a single, neat string of pearls over a lavender twin-set. Yep, definitely scary.

  ‘Here we are,’ Gran comes in with the teaspoons. I breathe a sigh of relief as she takes the attention off me.

  While they chat, I’m thinking I should be able to escape soon. I still have to get a new phone charger, so that’s a good excuse to go out. I hope old Nelly won’t stay long if she’s going to stare at me like that all the time. It’s a bit rude, really. I’d be in loads of trouble if I did it. I must remember to call her Great-aunt Eleanor as well, otherwise I’ll be for it, like last time. Just as I’m psyching myself up to interrupt them, Gran spoils it by pointing at me.

  ‘Our Rosie’s doing ever so well at school, Nelly. She’s doing loads of them GCSEs. I reckon she’s got your brains.’

  ‘Gran,’ I say. ‘It’s no big deal.’ Oh God, this is so embarrassing. I do all right at school, but I’m not one of the nerdy girls who are going to get all A-stars or anything.

  ‘Do you like school?’ asks Great-aunt Eleanor.

  ‘Yeah, it’s OK,’ I say, sounding a bit sulky. I hate the way she’s looking at me, like she’s going to give me a test or something. ‘I’ll probably stay on for A-levels.’ But only because I don’t know what else to do.

  Gran is ever so impressed. ‘Good for you, girl. You’ll go far, like Nelly. Me, I was glad to leave school. I never was much cop at lessons. Nelly hated having to leave school at fourteen, didn’t you, love?’

  Great-aunt Eleanor nods.

  ‘But our poor old Dad couldn’t afford to keep her there after Mum died,’ Gran went on. ‘He needed Nelly out earning, to help pay the bills. She got her qualifications after the war. Did evening classes, didn’t you?’

  Again, Great-aunt Eleanor nods, then takes a sip of her tea, her little finger raised, like she’s having tea with the Queen.

  Gran is on a roll now. ‘In them days there wasn’t much money about – you’ve heard of the Great Depression, have you?’ I haven’t, but before I can say so, Gran goes on. ‘Before the war, there was so many men out of work.’ She shakes her head, looking all tragic. ‘That’s why our dad joined the Merchant Navy. It meant leaving us girls on our own, but it was steady money and he got fed and watered while he was at sea. That’s how he managed to pay for this house. Reckoned it was a good thing to own the roof over your head. ’Course, we nearly lost it in the Blitz, didn’t we, Nelly?’

  I nibble on a biscuit, not knowing what to say. I can normally talk to Gran, no problem. But her sister’s too scary. But good old Gran likes to chat, so she just carries on.

  ‘Ooh, Nelly, I nearly forgot. You’ll never guess what me and Rosie found under your old bed upstairs.’

  ‘I suppose I won’t,’ she says, lifting her cup to her lips. ‘So why do
n’t you tell me?’

  ‘Queenie’s suitcase!’ said Gran.

  Great-aunt Eleanor blinks. Then she very carefully lowers her cup back onto the saucer, and puts them both on the coffee table. ‘It’s still here? I thought we’d thrown it out years ago.’

  ‘I know you wanted to,’ says Gran. ‘But don’t you remember? Bill said we couldn’t chuck it out because it wasn’t ours. He reckoned she might come back for it one day.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Even if she survived the bombing, she’d never have come back. Not after what she did.’

  This is getting interesting. ‘Who’s Queenie?’ I ask.

  ‘A spy,’ says Great-aunt Eleanor.

  ‘No,’ says Gran, smiling. ‘She was a bit odd – downright daft sometimes – but she couldn’t have been a spy. She was a girl who stayed with us for a bit in the war.’

  ‘She wasn’t as stupid as she appeared. I think she was very cunning. She was far too vague about where she came from, and she disappeared without a trace.’

  Gran sighs. ‘The poor girl didn’t stand a chance. We should never have let her go out on her own that night. ‘

  ‘It was her own fault,’ says her sister. ‘She managed to upset everyone. I’m sure it was deliberate. I’m convinced she’d completed whatever mission she had, and used our argument as an excuse to escape back to wherever she’d come from.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Gran laughs. ‘What good would a fifteen-year-old girl be as a spy? There weren’t no war secrets in our house.’

  ‘No, indeed, but she came to work with us at the factory, didn’t she? She could have been spying there.’

  ‘Blimey, Nelly, what would Hitler have needed to know about the seams on sailors’ trousers? Their inside-leg measurements? She never got good enough to do more than the basic stuff.’

  Great-aunt Eleanor sniffs. I try not to smile. This is great. Whoever Queenie was, she’d caused a stir.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Great-aunt Eleanor goes on. ‘But she certainly got friendly with the young men around here, in and out of uniform, as you well know.’

  Gran tuts and waves a hand at her sister. ‘Are you still cross about that? After all these years? Come on, love, I’m sure she didn’t mean no harm. It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?’