The Twisted Way by Jean Hill Page A

uncle’s damp old Anderson shelter were not ideal but so long as they could indulge their passion they didn’t care. This arrangement came to an abrupt end when Richard was posted to France.
    ‘We’ll get married after the war, Anne,’ he promised. ‘I’ll keep you to that.’ She laughed and hugged him. She thought that she might marry him but was in no hurry to be tied down. She was far too young. Now, that young Canadian billeted with her father’s old aunt Gladys, he really was something. Oh well, as long as they were careful she thought she would not have any unwanted kids, and it would give her a chance to test the waters elsewhere.
    The same arrangement of sleeping with a boyfriend was transferred to the young Canadian, Johnny. Old Aunt Gladys was often out visiting friends or sleeping in a neighbour’s Morrison shelter, which was convenient. In fact, Anne preferred Johnny in some ways, he was better in bed, and surprisingly handsome despite his plump build. He often seemed restless and unpredictable but she dismissed his behaviour as normal for a young man away from home and faced with the horrors of war. He was killed after a few months when his plane was shot down during the Battle of Britain.
    A few weeks later Anne found she was pregnant and she knew that an illegal abortion would be a risky undertaking. She didn’t want some old backstreet crone helping her out for a few pounds. There was another way.
    The next time Richard came home on leave she decided to tell him about the baby. ‘Richard, I’m pregnant,’ she said. ‘It’s your baby and it must have happened last time you came home on leave. I’m sorry, but you did say we would get married one day ... it will just be earlier than we had planned.’
    ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We’ll get married straight away, it’s not the best of times but we don’t want too much gossip, and whatever happens we will have done the honourable thing and won’t give the local old righteous busybodies too much to talk about over their garden fences. Our baby will be born in wedlock.’
    The baby, Felicity, was born a few weeks later than expected but nobody in the family was any the wiser.
    ‘First babies are sometimes late,’ Anne said, assuming an innocent expression, and Richard believed her.
    ‘Looks like her dad,’ Anne lied. ‘Just the same shaped face, she will be a pretty little girl.’
    Felicity looked very much like her mother, the same odd pale flecked blue eyes and fine curly fair hair. She was a problem child but Anne was convinced that if Felicity had not been so restless she could have been a high flyer instead.
    Richard became suspicious but usually kept his doubts to himself.
    ‘I can’t believe I’ve spawned a child like Felicity,’ he said in an unguarded moment. ‘She’s an unsettled little girl, nobody in our family is like that.’
    ‘Nor in mine,’ Anne retorted. ‘It’s just one of those unlucky things. Of course she’s your daughter, there was nobody else. She must be a throwback, it does happen. Maggie who lives in the next street married a white American soldier last year and her baby is black. Her husband’s family traced the baby’s genes back three generations to when a great granddad had married a coloured girl.’
    Anne’s heart beat furiously and she prayed that Richard would believe her. She thought sometimes about Johnny. He too had been ‘restless’ and it occurred to her that it might be hereditary, though she had never heard or read about such a condition.
    Richard did not answer, at least their son who had been born the following year must be his; he had the same shaped ears as Richard, though both children had Anne’s tapir nose and odd blue eyes. He did not trust his wife, a feeling that grew and festered within him.
    Felicity continued to be a difficult child. Anne was not lenient but became exhausted in her efforts to control her. In a later decade Felicity might have been diagnosed as