Chapter Text
Hester's nightgown was ripped. There was a big gash in it, right down her left thigh, leaving the pieces of fabric to flutter scandalously in the night breeze. She must have snagged it on her way to bed, although she couldn't work out why she had not taken it off and put a fresh one on. She would have to repair it in the morning, but she wouldn't be able to sleep with a torn nightie. Her bedroom was freezing, and the cold air would only make her bones ache. Hester traced her exposed leg with her hand; it was already chilled to the touch, textured by goose bumps. She went to sit up, climb out of bed to get changed, only to find herself unable to raise her head more than a few inches off her pillow before she knocked into a solid surface. She pushed at it with her hand, managing to shove it to one side. Blazing light immediately burnt her eyes, forcing her to look down at the dusty earth below.
…dusty?
Hester wasn't in her bed at all. She was huddled on ground, and as she looked around her, realised that the hard surface she had bumped into had been the underside of her desk. Why had she been under her desk?
There was a ringing in her ears, muffling everything else. Shielding her eyes with one hand, Hester felt around her, trying to ascertain what was going on. There was debris everywhere. There was her pillow, but there was Millicent's favourite blouse, and Miss Carter's kitchen spatula. What were they doing in her bedroom?
Finally, her eyes adjusted to the light, and she looked up. It was all a blur from this distance, and Hester felt around her neck for her glasses chain. Thankfully, they were still there, and only slightly dinted. She put them on, and the world came into nauseating clarity.
The light wasn't light at all, it was fire, and the night breeze wasn't coming in from her window, but from the gaping hole where the roof had once been. The house had collapsed, and the buildings opposite were burning. The street was several feet above her head, looming over her. Hester gasped, which made her cough from the soot, choking on hot ash in a hellhole of a crater.
Hester staggered to her feet. She tried to call out, but all that came from her mouth was a hoarse, gutteral groan. Nobody would be able to hear her.
Except…
A tiny whimper, just over to her right. Hester looked over, saw a small figure curled up in the rubble. Hester couldn't recognise her at first, she was covered in muck and her face was turned away, but as Hester approached it became clear-
"Jean!"
Jean groaned faintly in response. Hester stumbled through the broken furniture over to her side, kneeling by her shoulders.
"Jean? Jean are you alright?"
"…hurts, Hes'er…" her voice was slurred, and as her head lolled over, Hester saw her face for the first time.
Jean was covered in blood. Her hair was matted with it, it was spilling out of her mouth, her nose, even her eyes were tinged red. Hester thought she might be sick. She ran her hands over Jean's clothes, trying to find a source, but everything was saturated.
"Where does it hurt, Jean?" Hester asked, desperately hoping for a coherent answer.
"Hes'er…"
"I'm here, Jean, I'm here. You're going to be alright, darling. I'm here."
There were bloody tears leaking from Jean's eyes. She reached a trembling hand towards Hester, and Hester grasped it tightly. She could feel how thready Jean's pulse was, could hear the rattle each time she inhaled.
"'m scared."
"Don't be scared, Jeanie, I've got you. It's you and me, isn't it? So you've got to keep me company until help comes."
Jean went to say something, but on the inhale choked and groaned as her back spasmed. Her whole body juddered, and Hester watched on helplessly. Her hand shook as she kept stroking Jean's hair off her face, but she couldn't stop, wouldn't stop. Jean would be fine. She had to be.
"I'm here, I'm here, Jeanie," Hester said.
Jean finally relaxed, but… no. She hadn't relaxed, she had gone limp. She was entirely quiet, and her eyes were glassy and gazing into a distance Hester couldn't see. There were no more rattling lungs, no more thready pulse… no more Jean.
"No…. nononono-" Hester shook Jean frantically by the shoulders, but she may well have been shaking a rag doll. The stillness was unnatural on bright, vivacious Jean's face.
A sound erupted from Hester's chest, keening and gut-wrenching as she collapsed on top of Jean's body. She couldn't be dead. Not Jean! She was the one who was supposed to live. She was going to change the world.
"Hester!"
A man's voice, distorted by flame and distance, but unmistakenly her John.
"Here!" She tried to call out but all she managed was a wheeze. She couldn't bring herself to ease her grip on Jean's body to head towards John, just remained lying prone, cradling Jean in her arms.
"Hester!" John was there, right beside her. "What happened?"
"There was so much blood, John, the blood…" Hester was gasping, struggling to get the words out.
John wrapped his arms around her, looked down at Jean.
"Is she…?"
Hester could only nod as sobs ripped themselves from her throat. She buried herself in John's chest, solid and alive, wishing she could turn back time, get her family out of this horror story. John was crying. Hester could feel his tears dripping onto the top of her head, trickling down through her hair. She hated that it made her feel less alone, to know that someone else was mourning Jean, that someone else had loved her too.
The weight of John's torso on Hester's side was growing as he leant closer to her. One of his tears had been pulled by gravity onto Hester's cheek. It ran past her nose into the corner of her open mouth. It tasted like iron.
Like blood.
Hester swiped at her face, and sure enough, the back of her hand came back red. She contorted her neck to look up at John. He wasn't crying, but bleeding, not shaking, but convulsing. He crashed to the ground as she moved, his grip on her loosening suddenly. The blood was everywhere. It was a catastrophe in slow motion. The tremors wouldn't stop, he couldn't draw breath, he writhed on his side-
And then he stopped.
"John?" Hester whispered.
No response.
"John?" Hester shook his shoulder. It moved easily, entirely limp. She crouched over him, felt for a pulse. She couldn't find it.
"John!" The tears were coming now, her whole body shaking in disbelief. This couldn't be happening. Not again.
She didn't realise at first that the wailing she could hear was not an air raid siren, but her own grief. She clutched at John's body, curled herself around him.
"Not John, please not John," she murmured over and over as the warmth leached out of him.
"Hester? Hester!" Somebody was shouting her name, but she didn't dare give away her location. If someone found her, they would make her let go of John. They would be separated forever. She couldn't be without him, couldn't live without him.
"Hester!"
Hands grasped her shoulders, trying to pull her away from John's body. "No!" She shrieked, reaching for John. "You can't take him!"
"Hester! It's me, I'm here! Wake up!"
Hester choked on the air as she lurched upwards from John's corpse. She was heaving, retching, curled in on herself. Strong arms encircled her, and began to rock her like a baby.
"I'm here, Hester. It's alright. It was just a dream."
"John?"
"I'm right here. I'm alright."
It was her John, alive and whole and safe.
"The bomb?"
"Hit your lodgings five months ago. You were fine, and I wasn't in the vicinity."
"Jean?"
"Neither was Jean."
"She didn't… die?"
"No. She's perfectly fine, you'll see her at work in the morning."
"Oh." Her voice was faint, as if it were coming from a long way away. John rubbed her shoulders, and she leant into the steady weight of his body. His warm, moving, living body.
"It was a nightmare, darling. Just a nightmare."
Hester hummed, tracing patterns over John's wrist with her finger. She inspected every tiny hair, each vein, then clasped the broad comfort of his hand. He squeezed back, and didn't let go.
They stayed like that for a long time, saying nothing more. John knew the broad strokes of what occurred in her nightmares, finding him or Jean, or sometimes both, covered in blood. Watching them die, helpless to do anything but hold them. Waking up, still clutching John's body from where they had come together in their sleep.
Slowly, ever so slowly, her heart settled back into its normal rhythm, and the nausea started to abate. She finally found the strength to look up into John's face, half believing it would stare lifelessly back at her, covered in blood. But no, his face was as it always was, lined with concern, heavy with bags under his eyes, smiling gently at her.
"Hello," he whispered.
"Hello," she whispered back.
"Can I get you anything? Tea, or a hot water bottle?"
"No thank you. Just… stay, please."
"Of course."
He drew the covers up around them and switched the lamp off once more. Hester lay her head on his chest and listened to the steady thrum of his heartbeat. She shut her eyes and tried to relax, pretending that she had had more than one full night's sleep in five months, that Britain wasn't still at war with Japan, that part of her didn't still feel like she was embracing a corpse. When she slept, it was shallow and fitful, but throughout it was the reassuring warmth of John's body and the pulse of blood pumping through his veins.
///
Hester awoke as she did every morning, unrested, but with daylight on her face and a cup of tea on her bedside table. She watched the steam curling up from the mug towards the ceiling, playing in the morning air. She sat herself up and reached for the cup before looking over at her fiancé.
John was sitting up in bed reading the paper, fiddling with the glasses perched on his nose. He had only just started wearing them when reading, after a particularly stern lecture from the optometrist on the risks of eye strain from too many nights trying to read papers in the dark.
"Good morning," he smiled to her.
"Good morning," she replied, taking a sip of her tea and shivering in pleasure at the warmth which seeped through her bones. "What time is it?"
"A little after six."
Hester hummed contentedly in response. Enough time to revel in lying beside John before they had to get up for work, then. They might be a fortnight into peace in Europe, but they were both busier than ever. Hester sometimes felt like the personal go-between Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his Labour party deputy Clement Attlee. John, meanwhile, was occupied with transitioning Britain's spy network to a peacetime set up; Germany's surrender didn't do away with the need for intelligence operatives, after all.
They lay quietly, letting the world wake up around them. This was their routine: tea, reading, each other. At some point, John would ask Hester if her nightmare was the same one as always, and Hester would reply yes, it was the bombing, and you and Jean died. He would reach out and squeeze her hand, and say that hopefully they wouldn't last much longer. Hester would say she hoped so too.
"Would you like me to drive you to work? You must be tired after last night." Another question John asked every morning. He hated driving, yet still he offered. It made Hester fall a little more in love with him each time.
"No, thank you," she answered the same way as always. "I'm fine to get the Tube."
There was a rationale to her refusal, and a logical one at that. The Tube was much quicker, it was easier on John, and she found the walk from the Tube station a welcome time of peace before the inevitable chaos of the day. It also had the benefit of letting her feign normality. Let her pretend that her throat wasn't hoarse from screaming, and her fiancé didn't currently spend more time worrying about her than his job, upon which the safety of the nation depended.
The question about the nightmares came next, and Hester let John take her hand and offer help in the only way he could. She leant her head on his shoulder, breathed in the scent of him, still musky and warm from sleep. He hummed in response, vibrating contentment from deep in his belly all the way into Hester's very bones. He wrapped his arm around her, pulled her closer, then let his other hand trail its way over her stomach. He leant his face in close, ever so carefully placed a series of butterfly kisses all the way up her neck. She turned her face to catch his mouth when he went to kiss her cheek, and Hester promptly forgot any war, any bombing, any nightmares that had ever plagued her. This was the one thing that banished the image of John covered in blood, and she indulged in it whenever she could.
Their morning snuggle couldn't last forever, of course. The alarm went off all too soon, and the working day intruded into their lives. They walked arm in arm to the Tube station, the one Hester had never seen as a bomb shelter, but where John had spent so many nights trying to protect the borough's children from bombs and fear through will power alone.
This was where they split: John took the Piccadilly Line for Green Park, whilst Hester headed for Westminster on the Metropolitan and District. The train was crowded with other commuters, and it occurred to her idly that surely the service across London would have to be expanded with the influx of returning troops to an already enlarged working population since the beginning of the war. Still, it didn't take long before she reached her stop, and walking up the road to Number 10.
She slipped into the employee entrance, exchanging pleasantries with the soldiers still posted outside. Through the winding corridors to the antechamber outside the Prime Minister's office, where her desk was located. On it lay a telephone, her typewriter and a photograph of John receiving his Efficiency Medal earlier in the year. Also present were a steaming mug of tea and a certain plucky young heroine, perching jauntily on the corner.
"You shouldn't sit on the desk, Miss Leslie."
Jean looked up at her and grinned, utterly recalcitrant. Still, she hopped off obligingly and approached Hester.
"Good morning! I brought you tea!"
"Yes, I can see that," Hester daid drily. "What's the occasion?"
"No occasion! Just felt like it." Jean's smile was slightly too bright to be believable.
"Hmm. Well, thank you."
Hester sat and took a sip whilst Jean looked on eagerly. It was god-awful. Hester wasn't sure how one could make the instant tea and milk powder worse, but Jean had managed it. Still, Hester swallowed and tried to summon a grateful smile, because Jean had made her tea, almost as if she knew what an unpleasant night Hester had had. The younger woman seemed to have a sixth sense for whenever Hester was feeling off. It helped, truth be told. Helped to be greeted with her irrepressible spirit and evident affection for Hester, the diametric opposite of the blood and death of her nightmares.
Jean's bouncing energy had only increased since she and Hester had started work at Number 10. An offhand comment from the Prime Minister when he offered Hester the position of his senior secretary about one of his junior assistants getting married got Jean in the door, but the rest she had done all by herself. There were aspects to her current workload even Hester hadn't been read in on, but she was fairly certain there was a not insubstantial amount of liaison with MI6. It meant that Jean had more reason than ever to rush about the building, which she did with gumption, and that she no longer had to make tea for anyone, which was the source of great pleasure. Unless, of course, Hester had had a bad night. Then, there was always one waiting on her desk.
"Soooo….." Jean sidled up to stand by Hester's chair. With their height difference, they were almost at eye level with each other.
"It's good, thank you."
"No, not the tea! I know the tea's good, I took a sip from it before you arrived to test it. I was wondering if you had heard any more news from the Labour Party meeting."
There were so many odd parts to that declaration, Hester didn't know where to begin unpicking it.
"What do you mean, test my tea?"
"In case it was poisoned! You're an important woman, Hester."
"But you made it!"
"You never know, someone might have infiltrated the factory."
"Jean!"
"What? It's true!"
"And how would they have known which sachet you would pick out for my tea this morning? The answer is no, by the way, I haven't heard anything about the meeting. You've been standing here the entire time I've been in my office, the telephone clearly hasn't rung."
"What do you think they'll decide? Will they call for an election?"
Hester rubbed her temples with her free hand, the other one clutching her mug tighter and tighter.
"I have no idea, Jean. Mr Attlee and the Prime Minister worked well together during the war, but things have taken a turn for the worse in the last week. The Labour Party may decide to withdraw support for the coalition, but I can't realistically see them winning a general election at this moment in time; the Prime Minister is so popular after Germany's surrender."
"What does Churchill think about it?"
"The Prime Minister has far more pressing concerns to deal with than a meeting whose outcome he cannot sway. You're sounding like a journalist, Jean, honestly. Don't you have work to be doing?"
Jean shrugged, wandering around Hester's desk and inspecting the photograph of John.
"Not really. I've got a meeting in fifteen minutes, but nothing until then. It's early in the day."
"Why don't you go and prepare for that, then?"
Jean looked up at Hester's face, which she presumed looked quite exasperated by this point, and straightened.
"Oh! You need some quiet time before the day starts because you had nightmares, I remember. I'll leave you be, and bring you another tea later."
"How did you know I had nightmares?"
"Colonel Bevan telephoned before you arrived, saying it was a bad night and you would probably appreciate a cup of tea and then a moment's peace. That's what he always does."
Affection swelled in Hester's gut, along with a tinge of guilt. John managed to look after Hester all the way from MI5, and of course he would know exactly what she needed. Still, he should be thinking about his job, not distracted by worry for her. She already took up so much of his nighttime with her terrors, and now she knew it was disturbing his work day, as well.
Jean had turned to leave whilst Hester was pondering this, so Hester called out just before she disappeared from view.
"Thank you for the tea, Jean."
Her face popped back around the corner, smiling once more. "You're welcome! And you can go about your day without worrying about being poisoned, because I tested it!"
"You tested it, yes," Hester concurred, and let the younger woman dash off. Before Hester could take another sip of the appalling tea, her telephone rang, and from there, the working day began.
///
"But I need to see the Prime Minister now, it's a matter of urgency!"
"Mr Cartwright, as I have already explained, the Prime Minister is in a security briefing. He has space to meet with you at 4pm."
Cartwright, a particularly whiny junior minister in the department for agriculture, almost stomped his foot at Hester's response. Hester was well-used to this charade, as it happened at least once a fortnight.
"Look, Hester, you know me. Surely you can slip me in a little earlier?"
"It is my business to know everyone in this building, Mr Cartwright. And it's Miss Leggatt to you."
The man let out a splutter of indignation, but had no further arguments. Hester looked over her glasses at him, and then turned back to her work. His stroppy footsteps and disgruntled huffing were audible down the entire length of the corridor.
Hester sighed, and wondered if her job would ever not involve wrangling immature schoolboys. She somehow doubted it.
The telephone rang, and Hester answered it.
"Prime Minister's office."
"Miss Leggatt? It's Denise Richards."
Denise Richards was Clement Attlee's party secretary, handling the administrative side of his role as Labour leader. There would be no prizes for guessing what this call would be about.
"Miss Richards. I presume you have an update for me."
"Yes. The Labour Party has decided to withdraw support for the coalition government. A general election will be triggered. I thought it better for the Prime Minister to hear before the public announcement."
"It certainly will be. I will inform him. Thank you for calling."
She hung up, jotted the message down on a scrap of paper, and prepared to interrupt the briefing. Normally she would wait until it was over, but unlike Cartwright's quibbles, this situation was rather pressing.
Hester knocked on the door and entered when given permission. She stepped over to the Prime Minister, handed him the note, and stood back against the wall. He read it, glanced significantly at her, and made quick work in wrapping up the meeting. His security advisors looked curiously at Hester as they left, evidently wondering what the news was.
Hester wasn't far behind them, instructed to make a series of calls as an election campaign mounted itself in the room next door. She was a civil servant, not a political employee, and was therefore not required to attend. She was quite relieved, to be honest, and not a little unnerved by the whole situation. It would be the first general election in almost a decade, and the war wasn't technically over yet.
Unsurprisingly, Jean hurried up the corridor soon afterwards.
"Is it true?" she asked.
"Yes, Attlee's withdrawn support. The government will have to announce an election."
"That's so exciting! I've never voted before. What's it like? Where do you go? Do you have to use a pencil or a pen-"
"Jean," Hester laughed, "one question at a time. It isn't all that complex you know, and the election won't be for another few months."
"I'm just…"
"Excited?"
"Yes, that."
"It's a big step out of the war, symbolically. Logistically, though, it will be a nightmare, coordinating votes from troops still abroad. I'm rather glad neither of us will be invovled with that. Although, I can imagine the stamps would be rather exotic…" Hester trailed off, tapping her pen against her lips. Jean looked at her, nonplussed.
"Yes, right," Jean said. "Anyway, would you like another cup of tea? Or some more quiet time? I could stand at the end of the corridor and scare anyone away who wants to talk to you!"
"Neither, thank you. And please don't try and scare anyone away, the Prime Minister's corridor sees a substantial amount of vital traffic."
Jean shrugged. "The offer's on the table."
"Thank you, Jean, truly."
Jean bit her lip, wavered for a moment, and slid in to the chair on the other side of Hester's desk.
"Are they still really bad? The nightmares?"
"I don't think it's an appropriate topic of conversation for work, Jean."
"Hester…"
"… they're unpleasant, but I get through them. I wake up and see John, and then you, and I remember that there won't be any more bombs, and I get on with my day."
"Do think they'll stay forever?" Jean's voice was small, unsure. Hester scoured her face for bags around her eyes, hollow cheeks, but found nothing.
"I have no idea. Do you… have nightmares, as well, Jean?"
She shook her head violently. "Not like you. I just… I worry what life will be like, once the war is over."
"Very different in some ways, I imagine, and very similar in others. Life will be hard for some time, yet. They're planning on reducing weekly rations again, and it will be months before all the troops are back."
"What about us?" Hester wasn't used to seeing worry on Jean's face. Vigour, all the time. Frustration, fairly often. But worry? Almost never.
"You and I specifically? Our jobs should be secure, the government isn't going to get any smaller. We're both civil servants, so even if the government changes we'll stay."
"My mother said most girls will lose their jobs, now the war is over. She sounded quite hopeful I'd be one of them."
"Your mother," Hester tried to rein in the venom in her tone, but was only moderarelty successful, "has no say on whether you keep your job. She is correct, that roles such as bus drivers and munitions factory workers will go to men returning from the front line, but your role existed long before the war started, and will continue to do so. You just need to keep doing as good a job as you are and you should be fine."
"She still talks about me finding a husband."
"I'm sure she does. But it's 1945, and you're a grown woman. She can't sign the marriage papers on your behalf."
Jean brightened at that. "True. I try to ignore her, it's just so irksome."
"I can imagine," Hester said drily. "Just… you know your worth, Jean Leslie. Forge your own path."
Jean gave a mock salute. "Yes, ma'am!"
Hester nodded seriously, warmed inside by the laugh that bubbled from Jean. "Go on, back to work."
With an eager nod, Jean bounced off. Hester watched her go, hoping that Jean's mother would finally see the value in the daughter she already had, rather than the one she thought she ought to have. She didn't hold out much hope, however.
///
A rather less welcome interruption appeared at Hester's desk at 3:58pm.
"Is he ready?" Cartwright asked.
"Good afternoon, Mr Cartwright. As you might expect, the Prime Minister is currently occupied with the announcement of the upcoming election. As the matter of your meeting pertains to fishing regulations, he has regrettably had to delay it until further notice. He apologises."
Cartwright's face turned a rather fascinating shade of puce.
"I've waited all day for this meeting," he said through gritted teeth, "and now you're trying to keep me out of that office. Why? You got some grudge against me or something?"
The situation was starting to spiral, and Hester didn't want it to go any further. Interrupting the Prime Minister presently would not go down well, and Cartwright was edging towards menacing.
"Not at all, sir. The Prime Minister asked me to delay all of his meetings for the rest of the day. I do apologise. As soon as he asks me to reschedule them, I will get you in to see him."
"You had better," Cartwright growled, sticking a finger in Hester's face. He stormed off for the second time that day, and Hester sighed. He was rather odious to deal with, and embittered in a way even the most irritating of her former colleagues at MI5 hadn't been. Managing him required a delicate touch Hester struggled to find when she hadn't slept and was ready to go home, but he was just influential enough to cause problems for her if he so desired.
Still, he had been mollified for now, and there were only a few hours until she could leave. Things were mercifully quiet now word had spread that the Prime Minister was holed up with his election staff, and Hester took the time to catch up on administrative tasks. When 6:30 rolled around, Hester tidied up her desk and departed, shedding her prim posture and allowing herself to sag ever so slightly on the walk to the Tube station.
John had beaten her home, which only happened when he knew she might have had a hard day. Lamps cast a warm glow throughout the house, and he had the wireless on, tuned to the new light entertainment programme, as it so often was in the evening. Hester leant against the doorway to the kitchen, watching as he swayed and hummed to the music whilst frying spam and potatoes on the hob.
"Good evening," he smiled when he turned around and noticed her. "A busy day, I expect?"
"Most certainly," she huffed out a laugh. "Better now that I'm home, though."
John came over, pressed a kiss to her cheek. She could just about smell the remnants of the soap he washed himself with each morning. She pressed a hand to his cheek, letting him take the weight of her body as she exhaled for what felt like the first time that day.
"That bad, hmm?" his voice rumbled against her body.
"Just long. Jean helped, though. Thank you for calling her."
John huffed out a laugh. "I told her not to let on that I did that."
"I would say she slipped up, but it was probably entirely purposeful. It's very sweet of you, but you don't need to worry. I don't want distract you from your work."
"I worry less when I know you've got her. If anything, taking the time to inform her only serves to increase my efficiency in the long term."
"Sound reasoning," Hester smirked.
John gave an intoxicatingly earnest smile in return, and this time, kissed her on the lips. It was pure heaven. They just fit together, her and John, like two pieces of a puzzle. He would say like two people who loved each other dearly and had waited a long time to kiss like this, but Hester had always enjoyed collecting turns of phrase in her pockets. There were so many she could use to describe her and John.
He drew away too soon, and Hester whined, trying to capture his lips once more.
"The spam's burning, love," he whispered. She sighed, but let him go. There was precious little food already, they couldn't afford to waste anything. She and John would just have to wait until after dinner.
"So," John ventured as they dug into the spam hash, "a general election."
"Yes," said Hester. "Denise Richards called me this morning. I informed the Prime Minister and didn't see him for the rest of the day. He seemed troubled by it."
"I don't think anyone expected Attlee to strike out so soon. We're still at war, even if hostilities in Europe have ceased."
"I was surprised myself, truth be told. I don't see the logic in it, the Prime Minister is so popular at the moment."
"I agree," John said heavily. "Let Churchill govern in peacetime for a while, then call an election once people are tired of him."
"Do you think people will? Get tired of him, that is."
"We get tired of all our leaders eventually. And Churchill's almost 70, people will want change soon enough."
"I'd quite like Jean Leslie's mother to change," Hester grumbled.
"Oh? What's she said this time?"
"Apparently she's expressed hope that Jean will lose her job now Germany has surrendered."
"What has Germany's surrender got to do with Jean's job? The Prime Minister has always had a large team of assistants."
"She saw the news about wartime jobs winding down and ran with it, it seems. She's desperate for Jean to marry."
John sighed. "She's going to damage her relationship with her daughter. Jean is competent, earning money, and only in her very early twenties. I don't understand what her mother's so worried about."
"Me neither," Hester said as she rose to clear the table. "Jean is troubled by it, which worries me. I don't want her to do anything rash."
"She's got you, love. A supportive friend goes a long way when family is… when things are challenging."
They lapsed into contented silence as John lit the stove for the kettle and Hester washed up. She guarded these quiet evenings together, used them as armour against the lonely nights and trying days. Warm lights, pleasant music and John's company more than made up for the small portions and plainess of the food.
Hester watched John pour the tea as she scrubbed the frying pan. She had just moved on to drying the plates when she felt him approach her from behind and wrap his arms around her stomach, tilting his head up to rest his chin on her shoulder. She leant her own head against his.
"The spam interrupted us earlier," he murmured. "Care to pick up where we left off?"
Instead of answering, Hester carefully placed the last plate on the drying rack, turned around in John's arms, and linked her own around John's neck, resting her forearms on his shoulders. She pressed their foreheads together, before ghosting her lips over his cheek and pulling back. John's pupils were blown wide, his cheeks dappled in blush. Hester let a smile carve itself into her face as butterflies danced through her belly and her back tingled where John's hands lay. She gave him one, two, three pecks on the lips, before nuzzling her mouth into the side of his neck.
"You're gorgeous," he whispered into her ear. Hester loved when he said things like that, knew he saw the dark circles under her eyes and the lines on her face and still thought her beautiful. Saw the nightmares and the trembling and still thought her strong.
"Take me to bed, John."
John had once muttered something about wanting to 'ravish' her. Hester could think of no better word to describe their making love. When they came together, it wasn't a tangle of two bodies meeting, but the two halves of one finding its way home. It was a chorus of panting and giggles and I love yous, the very air turning golden and shining.
Hester lay flush against John afterwards, her head on his chest, his fingers playing with her hair. She felt warm and comfortable, half asleep in his arms. She let her eyes drift shut, heard herself sigh and snuggle in closer to him. Maybe, she thought, maybe tonight I won't dream of your death.
///
Hester's nightgown was ripped.