Prisoner from Penang

1. Singapore-2

The voice was all-too familiar and not one I wanted to hear.

‘Coo-ee! Mary, Mary Helston! Wait!’

Veronica Leighton pushed her way through the crowd of confused women and children pouring out of the station in Singapore.

Of all the people on the planet, Veronica was the only person I truly loathed. She was the meanest, most gratuitously spiteful, nastiest woman I had ever met. When she’d left Penang to move to Singapore with her civil-servant husband about a year earlier, I’d rejoiced to see the back of her. It was she who had caused Ralph’s suicide, and she’d also tried to make a play for Frank. And she’d done her best to make my friend Evie’s life a misery from the moment Evie landed in Penang.

I thought Veronica hated me too. Yet here she was, battling through the crowd towards me with a friendly smile on her face.

She took hold of my arm, steering me away from the throng. ‘Don’t go with everyone else. You don’t want to sleep on a camp-bed in a barrack room with a leaky roof. I have a nice hotel room lined up for you.’

Jerking my elbow from Veronica’s grip, I put my arm around Mum and started to move back towards the flood of other women. ‘Leave us be,’ I said.

‘Don’t be silly, Mary. I moved heaven and earth to get that room for you.’

Seeing the look of scorn and disbelief on my face, she quickly added, ‘Well, I got it for Evie and her brats actually, but she wasn’t allowed off the train. I promised her to look out for you and your mother. She specifically asked me to make sure you got the room.’

I started to protest but seeing the exhaustion in my mother’s face and the long snake of women climbing into the back of army trucks, I hesitated, and Veronica pounced.

‘You’ve absolutely no idea what it took me to get that room. The favours I had to call in.’ She gave that little tinkling laugh of hers that had always irritated me so much. ‘Take it or leave it, Mary. No skin off my nose.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of others who’ll jump at it.’

Mum’s face was telegraphing a silent plea to me. With Dad somewhere on the road between here and Penang, she was feeling lost and overwhelmed and depended on me. I swallowed my pride and accepted the offer.