Page 62 of Strangers in Time

Molly put a hand to her mouth. “Your… your grandmotherdied?”

Charlie slowly nodded, even as he shivered. Not from the cold but from saying, out loud for the first time, that his gran was no longer with him.

“Oh, I’m so very sorry, Charlie. Please come and sit down over here. And let me bring you a blanket.”

She did so and wrapped it securely around his shoulders before sitting beside him. “What happened to her? Was she ill?”

Charlie rubbed his wet nose. “Dunno. I found her on the floor of the loo. Her eyes were open and she weren’t breathin’. The doctor said somethin’ ’bout her heart. They… the men took her away in the motorcar.”

“You mean the undertakers?”

“S’pose, yeah,” sniffled Charlie.

“Do you know where they took her?”

In answer Charlie handed her the card from his pocket.

She read off it. “Yes, of course.”

“They says to come round tomorrow.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s right,” Molly said. “They would need some time to… to organize things properly.” She looked at him and asked tentatively, “Did you live with your grandmother?”

Charlie nodded.

“And did you… live with anyone else as well?” she asked in a delicate tone.

Charlie shook his head. “No. My mum’s dead. And Dad died at Dunkirk. I’m… sorry I didn’t tell you before but… I don’t like to… talk ’bout not havin’ ’em.”

Molly sat back, her guilt increasing tenfold over keeping her own secret about her father from him. “I’m so sorry. But it will be fine, Charlie.”

He lifted an angry gaze from the floor to her. “It ain’t fine. Gran’s dead!”

“I meant that things will be taken care of.Shewill be taken care of. I will help you to do so. Losing… someone you love is hard enough without having to worry about such… details.”

Everything you said to him could just as easily apply to you.

Charlie rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the half crown she’d paid him, and his shillings from the night before. “Got this to bury her proper.”

Molly looked at the coins and said, “I’m sure that will be enough.”

“You really think so?” Charlie said dubiously.

“Yes, absolutely. Now, what are in the bags?”

He had set them on the floor beside him.

“This one’s Gran’s things, to be… to be buried in. And this one is, well, all what I got ’cause we… see,Ican’t live there no more… the rent… Gran’s wages got cut, so’s we couldn’t… pay it.” He stopped abruptly and looked deeply ashamed.

“We’ll worry about that later. For now, while you eat, I’m going to go through these things and see what’s what.”

Charlie looked embarrassed. “I took her underthin’s and such because…”

“And that was perfectly sensible for you to do.”

Charlie’s expression suddenly turned frantic. “My book, I forgot my book!”

“That’s all right. We can go back and get it later.”

---