[COMPLETED] Ellen and her twin brother, Aaron, are time-travellers. They don't know why they have this ability, they don't know how they got it and don't know how to control it. For now they just know they are stuck out of time.
With the help of fri...
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Beeston town, 5th August 1941
'Coaaaal! Coaaaal!'
The cry came from a man with his shirt sleeves rolled up and dust on his face. He was perched on the driver's seat of a wagon being pulled by two caramel brown horses. The headboard, a meter above the seat, boasted a sign in thick white lettering reading Smedley Bros. Coal Merchants. Once more the man announced his wares to the tenants behind the closed doors of Humber Road.
'Coal! Coaaaal!'
A woman in her overall and headscarf popped out of a nearby terraced house and hailed the merchant. Immediately the passenger of the wagon, a man of similar build and stature as the driver, jumped down from the cab. He waltzed along the side of the flat bed wagon and heaved a heavy sack of coal onto his back. With two clenched fists full of hessian he pushed himself forwards. He disappeared behind the woman into the blackness of a small passageway sandwiched between her house and her neighbour's.
'Why have all these houses got those strange patterns in the windows?' Ellen asked. 'They're not just on this road either. They were like it in the houses we've passed.'
The coal wagon trundled by and Ellen studied the houses on both sides of the road. Every window in all of the houses looked alike with their cream coloured diamond outlines.
'It's just tape,' said Marianne. 'They stick it on to protect them from bomb blasts.'
'How's tape going to protect a house from a bomb?' said Ellen, wondering if she was missing the point and posing an idiotic question.
'Not from being hit by a bomb. Nothing will protect a house from that. No, if a bomb falls further up the road then the blast would blow in the windows of the houses nearby. The tape reduces the amount of shards of broken glass flying into the house and cutting people.'
'Really? Does it work?'
'I don't know, but I guess it must be better that not having it as a lot of people are doing it.'
'I don't remember your house having any diamond tape. Or any other houses in York for that matter,' said Ellen.
'We don't. Maybe the government has been recommending it to the places most likely to be attacked. Like London and the larger cities. I guess they don't consider York to be a target.'
Ellen considered a row of terraced houses to her right. All of them had their diamond tape windows. She wondered just how safe their occupants really would be if such a bomb exploded nearby. Maybe, she thought, it was more a comfort for the residents than anything else.
She looked at Marianne whilst remembering York station.
'Maybe after this afternoon's air raid siren, albeit a false alarm, the people of York might feel they need to tape up their windows just in case.'
'I'm sure they will,' replied Marianne. 'I'm sure they will.'
