The Last Train Home

Chapter Sixteen

I sent a second letter to Mum begging her to relent and let me go home, but even that wouldn't get her to budge. She was set on my staying with the Goodwins until it was safe for me to return to London and to her, safe meant the war's end. When I received her next letter, a few weeks after the second one, she had also sent one to the Goodwins which I wasn't too pleased about. If she wanted me to stay with them, it didn't feel fair that she would be able to write to them and check up on me.

What Mum expected to hear back, I didn't know. Most of my time on the farm was spent working with Mr Goodwin, occasionally running errands with Mrs Goodwin and taking riding lessons from Alec. There really wasn't all that much to say, unless Mum had been expecting me to be doing more than the tasks I had already completed. Mrs Goodwin ended up thinking the same as me and the letter back was nothing more than a page long.

The weather had well and truly changed with dark clouds becoming a permanent staple in the sky with rain threatened at regular intervals. My horse riding lessons had become harder to do due to the mud and how hard it would be to walk on it. Instead, I helped Mr Goodwin mend the kitchen cabinets and build the occasional shelf. With all that done, our next step was to paint.

"We can move all the furniture to the middle of the room and cover it in dust sheets to protect it," Mr Goodwin said.

"Don't you go spilling any paint on my sofa," Mrs Goodwin called from the kitchen.

"We won't." Mr Goodwin winked at me. "Take the other side of this unit and we'll move it."

"What colour are we painting the walls?" I asked, grabbing onto one end of the unit. Mr Goodwin grabbed the other.

"We have a light green that's going in here and the kitchen will be a light yellow. It'll match the furniture and won't be too far off the original colours."

I nodded and Mr Goodwin and I moved the large unit from in front of the wall to the middle of the room. We continued to move everything around until all of the living room furniture was piled up in the middle of the room. Once it had all been moved, Mr Goodwin grabbed one of the many dust sheets and draped it over the top of the furniture as added protection from the paint. Neither of us were that confident in keeping the paint to the walls only and had made sure to lay the dust sheets across the floor as well.

Mrs Goodwin walked out of the kitchen with an apron in hand which she forced over my head, standing behind me and tying it to make sure it didn't come off. I stood there and accepted my fate. Even I knew it would be better for me to wear the flower-covered apron than to end up with paint-splattered across my clothing, especially the new slacks that she had paid for.

With so much area to cover and just one day to do the entire room before we moved onto the kitchen, even Mrs Goodwin would be getting her hands dirty. She had decided to wear her own pair of slacks rather than her usual dress and also wore a flowered apron. Her hair had been pinned back into rolls and she had tied a scarf around her head to stop any paint from flicking up into it. I had decided to forgo the scarf. I would get paint in my hair with it.

Once all the furniture was covered and the dust sheets pushed right up against the baseboard to protect the carpet, Mr Goodwin popped the lid of the paint tins and we sent to work painting the walls. Mr Goodwin started by painting along the outline of the baseboard to protect it whilst Mrs Goodwin and I attacked the main body of the wall.

"You seem to be enjoying yourself there," Mrs Goodwin said.

"Mum never let me join in with the painting at home. We redecorated my bedroom a few years ago and I was sent to stay with Eva when they painted. Mum thought I would make a mess," I said.