1944 [n.h]

chapter fifteen

The next few weeks were spent blissfully uninterrupted. Niall and I spent the long hazy days of what was left of summer with each other. Some days I honestly forgot that Niall wasn't a permanent fixture in my life, it slipped my mind that any day, Niall could just go, disappear out of my life forever.

But every time that thought weaselled in to my brain, I had to fight and push it back out. I couldn't cope with those thoughts floating around in my mind, it wasn't safe to let them take a-hold of me.

I didn't want to imagine a world in which I had to live without Niall. I'd spent so long with him now, and I couldn't picture having a day go by without seeing him.

I knew the day would come soon enough though. I was dreading it, but I knew it was inevitable and there wasn't a thing I could do to stop it.

I lay awake, deep in to the night sometimes and just thought about it, thought about having to deal without Niall and what I'd do if he never came back. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these late night thoughts ended in fits of tears and an hour long hug with Niall the following day.

I'd fallen in love with Niall, tragically and I knew there was not one thing I could do to stop myself. I was constantly falling, deeper in to the rabbit hole and I knew I couldn't stop now, I had to keep falling until I hit the bottom. If there was a bottom. With niall, I didn't think there was.

With niall, I saw a lifetime worth of love and cherishment, I saw our entire future together. He promised to marry me one day and I believed him. I wanted so desperately to believe that the future I had frivolously mapped out in my mind, night after night, would one day come true and happen.

I hoped this wasn't all just a figment of my imagination. I knew Niall was real, as much as I knew our love was real. But I was terrified of finding out whether our future together would become a silly dream I once made up as a young girl.

These were the thoughts I often fought so hard to push away.

...

"Rob!" Niall bellowed. He was on a rock in the middle of one of the lake in the fields surrounding the town. Niall's swim shorts must have been two sizes too big for him and the same must've gone for Robert, the trunks hanging low just beneath his knees.

The pair looked ridiculously goofy much to mine and Ruth's amusement. I couldn't take two looks at Niall without bursting out laughing.

Robert took a long run from the picnic rug Ruth and I were sat at, swim suits on and at the ready, although Ruth's seemed to be a little more revealing, I didn't even dare show my stomach. Before we even had a chance to blink, Robert had dived in to the murky lake as Niall flung his head back, his feet splashing in the water as a loud child-like laugh escaped his lips.

"Brilliant" He laughed, clapping his hands as I rolled my eyes and took a sip of the dull water. Robert soon began to chant for Ruth to join him and Niall in the water which she did without a second thought, tiptoes padding to the water's edge before she sunk in and swam around the boys.

"Lilly, c'mon!" Niall pleaded as I looked up from the cross stitches of the rug and automatically shook my head.

There was no way I wanted to go in the water. I didn't have the confidence Ruth had, nor did I have a great love of water, especially murky and mystic lake water where you can't see your hand under the surface, let alone your feet.

"I have to pick up Henry in an hour!" I made myself up an excuse. My mother was down in London for the weekend and Archie had been sent back to France so I had to take care of my brother, but during the days he went to a sort of nursery thing for the younger kids in the village. I suppose it occupied their minds with nonsense other than the war.