‘There isn’t anything else, not with the food shortages; the Germans bombing the ships bringing food into the country,’ Aunt Helen says now in response to Danny’s moan. 

‘There would have been salad if not for the snails eating my…’

Danny rudely cuts Frances off. ‘Stop going on about your garden and your veggies and the conkers you collect with the Girl Guides. It’s nothing compared to what I…’

‘Everything helps with the war effort,’ Aunt Helen interjects, sharply. 

Danny scowls. ‘You’re always defending her.’

‘It’s the truth. The surplus veggies she grows will raise funds to help with the war effort, going towards soldiers like your brother and your da.’

‘But I’m doing things that really matter. You’ll never guess the top secret message I had to deliver to the war office today,’ Danny preens.

‘What was it then?’ Frances asks.

‘If I told you, even if I was allowed, which I’m not, it wouldn’t be secret now, would it,’ Danny smirks. 

The growling of her stomach wakes Frances. 

Much as she hates to agree with her cousin, she’s tired of potatoes, although Aunt Helen comes up with innovative ways of using them - she even made potato pudding the other day and it wasn’t half bad. 

She knows she mustn’t complain. And yet… She longs for bread, milk, butter, once taken for granted, now luxuries. 

The potato heavy dinner makes her stomach bloat, giving the illusion of filling her up but then she finds herself waking like now, her stomach gaseous and rumbly, gnawing with hunger. 

Even the cakes her aunt makes every Sunday are dense with potato. 

Frances eats dutifully, her aunt looking on with a smile, happy to have produced a treat despite the scarcity of sugar and butter, even while Danny complains loudly, putting into words what Frances is not saying. 

In the night she wakes in pain, her stomach kneading, feeling as if it is being torn in two. Those times, as now, night pressing dark and ominous outside, wind howling against the windows, weather insinuating indoors with frosty moodiness, cold indifference, she clasps the medal from her mother, hears her words, her voice soft and gentle, tenderness and love, ‘It will keep you safe.’

Mother’s features are blurring in Frances’s mind (oh how that hurts), but Mother’s voice, saying those words is alive in her head, vivid as the green of her eyes, that she has bequeathed to Frances, that she sees in her reflection in the tired, marked and greying glass of her aunt’s windows, the green of rain adorned meadows glittering in the sun. 

Footsteps descending, directly underneath her room, aiming for surreptitious, but blustering and loud. 

‘Blast it,’ her cousin’s muffled cursing. 

The whine of the front door opening, a draft reaching up the stairs and inveigling underneath her door.

Where is he going? It is cold. 

France cannot stay in bed. She’s curious. 

Pulling on the oversize coat which was given to her by the kind stranger that awful night she lost her mother - which, while wrapping her in a warm hug also overwhelms with bitter memories, crushing smoke, fiery heat, the utter devastation of loss even on the frostiest of nights - she tiptoes down, far quieter than her bumbling cousin 

The living room is full of shadows, the curtains she had sewn with her aunt billowing in the air coming through the front door which her cousin, in his hurry to leave, has left open - which explains the draft travelling all the way up to her attic room.

She shivers in the doorway, cold despite the coat, and peers out, her eyes adjusting to the frost edged, icy dark. 

He’s in the veggie patch. Her veggie patch. 

He digs in his pockets and she blinks once, then again, as she watches what he pulls out. 

She cannot help it. As he sets the creatures down with a care so unlike him, his face creasing in a grin, she gasps, unable to keep silent. 

He turns. 

In the grainy, flickering darkness, his beady eyes meet hers.

He flushes once, guilty, and then his face sets in the familiar, mulish expression he sports when caught out by his mother. 

‘What are you doing here? Spying on me?’ He hisses. 

She gasps again, at his cheek.

‘You are the one putting snails in my vegetable patch. I tried everything to get rid of them, caught them, released them elsewhere, used the remedies the other girl guides suggested and yet they kept on coming. I thought I was doing something wrong, but it’s you!’ Her voice trembles, not with cold but rage. Hurt. 

She knows her cousin has never taken to her but she had no idea he hated her this much. ‘You do know you’re doing yourself a disservice? These veggies are for us and the money raised from the surplus that I sell goes to…

‘Oh stop with your saintliness. It won’t work on me, even if it does with Ma.’

‘But…’ She bites her lower lip to stop her upset and anger from spilling over into tears. She fingers her St Christopher medal. She will not cry. ‘Why do you dislike me so much?’

‘I never got my time with my ma. All my life, it’s always been Johnny this and Johnny that.’ He hisses savagely. ‘When he went to war, I thought, now's my time. And then you arrive, all sweetness and light.’ He spits. ‘She’s always wanted a girl. She was hoping I was one.’ He sounds so sad, suddenly, as if all the anger has left him, leaving only distress behind. ‘It was meant to be just me and Ma.’ 

Frances’s eyes have adjusted to the dark and she can see that her cousin’s shoulders are slumped, his mouth turned down. ‘I can never take your place. She’s your ma.’ 

‘She doesn’t see me, never has.’

‘At least you…’

He pushes past her savagely, so she rocks against the door, the back of her head hitting the door hinge with a smack and thunders past, not bothering to be quiet. 

Frances looks at her vegetable patch, considering the damage the snails will do to it before shutting the door to the wind and the icy rain which has started up, pricking and stabbing with frosty venom, and walks wearily into the cold house. 

In the annexe by the kitchen, her aunt snores gently, tired out by the days’s chores, blessedly impervious to her son's hurt, his spite, the noise he’s just made, hoping, perhaps, that she wake up, take note. 

Frances walks to her room, shuts the door, climbs into bed. 

She clutches the medal, icy cold and wishes it was her mother holding her.

‘At least you have your mother.’ She had been going to say to her cousin. 

She dreams of giant snails who attack her, and when they loom close, they morph into her cousin’s sneering face, yelling, ‘You were never meant to be here.’