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( Chapter Twelve: ❛ HELL IS ONLY AN OCEAN AWAY ❜ ) DECEMBER, 1943
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THE SILVER MOONLIGHT OF MIDNIGHT SLIPPED SILKILY THROUGH HER BEDROOM, pooling on the floor at Bill's feet as he picked up his shirt which had been tossed over her tea dress, turned inside out on the floor. She watched his figure in her sleep-induced haze, propping herself up against the headboard with a pillow to buffer her spine against the cool wood.
With her platinum hair beautifully unruly and just as pale as the moonglow that reflected in the whites of her eyes, Ginny tugged the duvet up to her collarbone to preserve her modesty. A room that was once saccharine and orange with passion and warmth was now bone white with chill. The mood had depressed down from spontaneity to a mutual knowledge of the inevitable. Bill was to return to his billet. He was probably already late. It was so easy to lose track of time in Ginny's company. He chose not to check the clock; thinking too much about time left him watching as every tick marked a second closer to the end of their entanglement.
They looked so good when they were together, two attractive blondes that may as well have come in a paper-doll sprawl as a matching set. Ginny wanted to believe that they belonged together, like peaches and cream in a tin. A tram on its line screeched outside. For some, the night was just beginning. A colourful carnival of swing skirts and hair-bows oozed out of one bar to another, Aussie men keen to win their girls back with a night on the town. Tomorrow, things would be back to normal. Normal.
Their hometown would be Yank-free once again, and perhaps even all the better for it. Perhaps the girls would quell their hysteria and go back to being married to an kitchen apron and not a foreigner. Ginny could apologise to her parents for bringing a stranger into the intimacy of their home.
Merely asking for forgiveness, though, didn't mean that those things had never happened. Just because the Americans would be gone didn't mean the memories of them would be. There would still be knocked-up Aussie girls disowned by their parents and war-wives weeping into handkerchiefs over their husbands shipping back out to the Solomon Islands.
Bill leaving didn't mean she got her virginity back. She was still lying debauched and undressed in a bed with a strange satisfaction mewling in her stomach, the attractive bend of her leg milky pale and exposed above the sheets. She was still the epitome of a respectable young Melbourne good-girl gone bad, made a fallen woman by the Americans.
She watched him as he combed his tow blonde hair back with his fingers as he peered into the small glass she had above her dresser. He could see her over his shoulder, glowing in the light from the window, like his very own pin-up that he'd memorised. He considered what he'd tell his friends when they asked where he'd been all evening, whether he'd admit he'd actually slept with a woman. Maybe they'd think it was uncharacteristic of him; he'd never shown too much interest in girls on other occasions, and had spent most of his time sleeping and drinking himself into an early grave.
