Sure and Certain Death (30 page)

She looked at me, her eyes glazed with tears.

‘I will tell Nancy that you came and that you thanked her for what she did,’ I said.

And then she left. But just before that, she pulled my head down towards her face and she kissed me on the cheek. It was, she said, just for a moment like kissing her father’s face once again.

That night there was a raid and so I went out running. My feet pounding down on the pavements that threatened to melt underneath me, I thought about Cissy Hoskin and how her life had been taken away from her by a few silly girls. We all do what we think is best at the time, and yet so often we make mistakes! Nancy and, I imagined, the other remaining White Feather girls were trapped to some extent in their guilt; Fernanda Abrahams was trapped inside a skin she felt she was no longer comfortable with. And Cissy? Cissy Hoskin’s trial will begin next month, it appears. After it she will be sent to the condemned cell and then there will be silence. In a way, I do believe it is probably what she wants.