I sent a second letter to Mum begging her to relent and let me go home, but even that wouldn't get her to budge. She was set on my staying with the Goodwins until it was safe for me to return to London and to her, safe meant the war's end. When I received her next letter, a few weeks after the second one, she had also sent one to the Goodwins which I wasn't too pleased about. If she wanted me to stay with them, it didn't feel fair that she would be able to write to them and check up on me.

What Mum expected to hear back, I didn't know. Most of my time on the farm was spent working with Mr Goodwin, occasionally running errands with Mrs Goodwin and taking riding lessons from Alec. There really wasn't all that much to say, unless Mum had been expecting me to be doing more than the tasks I had already completed. Mrs Goodwin ended up thinking the same as me and the letter back was nothing more than a page long.

The weather had well and truly changed with dark clouds becoming a permanent staple in the sky with rain threatened at regular intervals. My horse riding lessons had become harder to do due to the mud and how hard it would be to walk on it. Instead, I helped Mr Goodwin mend the kitchen cabinets and build the occasional shelf. With all that done, our next step was to paint.

"We can move all the furniture to the middle of the room and cover it in dust sheets to protect it," Mr Goodwin said.

"Don't you go spilling any paint on my sofa," Mrs Goodwin called from the kitchen.

"We won't." Mr Goodwin winked at me. "Take the other side of this unit and we'll move it."

"What colour are we painting the walls?" I asked, grabbing onto one end of the unit. Mr Goodwin grabbed the other.

"We have a light green that's going in here and the kitchen will be a light yellow. It'll match the furniture and won't be too far off the original colours."

I nodded and Mr Goodwin and I moved the large unit from in front of the wall to the middle of the room. We continued to move everything around until all of the living room furniture was piled up in the middle of the room. Once it had all been moved, Mr Goodwin grabbed one of the many dust sheets and draped it over the top of the furniture as added protection from the paint. Neither of us were that confident in keeping the paint to the walls only and had made sure to lay the dust sheets across the floor as well.

Mrs Goodwin walked out of the kitchen with an apron in hand which she forced over my head, standing behind me and tying it to make sure it didn't come off. I stood there and accepted my fate. Even I knew it would be better for me to wear the flower-covered apron than to end up with paint-splattered across my clothing, especially the new slacks that she had paid for.

With so much area to cover and just one day to do the entire room before we moved onto the kitchen, even Mrs Goodwin would be getting her hands dirty. She had decided to wear her own pair of slacks rather than her usual dress and also wore a flowered apron. Her hair had been pinned back into rolls and she had tied a scarf around her head to stop any paint from flicking up into it. I had decided to forgo the scarf. I would get paint in my hair with it.

Once all the furniture was covered and the dust sheets pushed right up against the baseboard to protect the carpet, Mr Goodwin popped the lid of the paint tins and we sent to work painting the walls. Mr Goodwin started by painting along the outline of the baseboard to protect it whilst Mrs Goodwin and I attacked the main body of the wall.

"You seem to be enjoying yourself there," Mrs Goodwin said.

"Mum never let me join in with the painting at home. We redecorated my bedroom a few years ago and I was sent to stay with Eva when they painted. Mum thought I would make a mess," I said.

"So is trusting you with that brush really a good idea?"

I laughed. "The only thing getting paint on it today is the wall, and probably me."

"You already have paint on your arm," Mr Goodwin said. He gestured to the strip of green paint down my left forearm. "Speaking of your room, it could do with its own fresh coat of paint. Once the main rooms of the house are done, we can get your room painted as well."

"Sounds good."

I turned back to the wall and continued to paint, watching the stripes of colour appear on the wall and staring at the small lines caused by the brush. Mr Goodwin sounded so happy with the idea of painting my bedroom and giving it a more personal touch for me rather than the chipped yellow paint that was already on the wall. Despite not hating the idea, I knew I wouldn't be staying forever and for all we knew, the war would be over in a months time. It felt wrong to decorate a room that would be abandoned in a matter of time.

Still, I couldn't really say that to Mr Goodwin and resolved to focus on the painting at hand rather than any future work that might not even happen. If he wanted to paint the room then I could hardly tell him not to because I didn't think I would be with them long enough to matter. Perhaps if we went for a more neutral, less personal colour then I wouldn't feel so bad with the idea but Mr Goodwin seemed set on making the room mine despite the limited time I would be with them. It had been bad enough that I had to unpack my suitcase.

Although I had resolved to leave all of my things in my suitcase to make for easy packing, the arrival of the rest of my things from London and the extra slacks from Mrs Goodwin had forced me to use the chest of drawers in the room. Unpacking felt like I was betraying my parents, accepting the fact that I had left London and accepting that it would be a little while before I could return home.

Maybe I was thinking too much into the whole thing. Eva, Enid and even Mark had settled in quite well and become comfortable with not only their host family but even being out of London. They had all exchanged letters with their families but none of them had asked to return to London. After almost two months, I was the only one still wishing the war would hurry up and end so I could go home and the others looked like they were designed to stay in the country, perhaps even after the war's end.

We made it halfway around the room before lunch and by the time we stopped to eat, I had paint almost everywhere. Even though I was sure I hadn't been too heavy-handed with the paintbrush, I had ended up with paint on my hands and arms as well as splashed all over the front of my apron. Perhaps Mum deciding that nine-year-old me shouldn't help had been a good thing, especially if fourteen-year-old me couldn't be trusted.

"You do know we're painting the wall, don't you?" Mr Goodwin joked when we sat down on the dust sheets to eat sandwiches prepared by Mrs Goodwin.

"There might be more paint on me than the wall by the end of today."

"So it's a bath for you tonight then. We have church tomorrow and I don't want you going looking like some sort of swamp monster. Let's hope that paint comes off." Mrs Goodwin tutted and took a bite out of her sandwich.

"I give a literal meaning to the phrase 'green-fingers.'" I laughed and wiggled my fingers which looked like I had dunked them directly into the paint tin.

"There we go, if the paint doesn't come off we can tell everyone that Sybil really loves gardening." Mr Goodwin chuckled. "You've been with us for almost two months now, do you think you've settled in?"

"I guess so. I mean, I like helping out with the farm work and the additional carpentry, Mum would never let me do it unless Dad convinced her. That, and I don't have to spend my time getting yelled at in school for one reason or another."

"Your mother mentioned your schooling in the letter she wrote," Mrs Goodwin said. "I said that we were educating you in a way, which isn't really a falsehood. Since you're fourteen, we can't make you go to school anyway."

"She'll love that. She's always wanted me to sit for the school certificate even though we both know my skills lie outside academics."

Mr and Mrs Goodwin exchanged a glance and I tried not to think too much of it. They often exchanged looks without saying anything, they did it when the letter from Mum arrived and they read through it the first time. I understood the looks over the letter since my Mum could be a formidable woman when it came to my schooling and the things she wanted me to achieve whilst I was away. Mum's letter was a tad more aggressive than the Goodwins let on. Still, Mrs Goodwin was right in it being my decision about whether I returned to school or not and I had never belonged there.

After lunch, we returned to the painting with Mr Goodwin still working on the finer details to ensure no paint went anywhere it wasn't supposed to. Very slowly, the room started to come to life with the light green colour on the walls and the light from the newly cleaned windows streaming in. Such a simple thing like a change to the wall colour made a drastic difference to the way the room looked. Once the entire farmhouse had been painted, it would look like a completely different building.

We painted every wall in the living room, including the one that followed the stairs to the landing. Mr Goodwin decided that that floor would have to be painted in the same colour so it all matched, but that would be done after the kitchen. By Christmas, Mr Goodwin hoped to have the inside of the farmhouse looking brand new with all the walls painted and the damage and wear having been mended. There was two months until Christmas and still a fair amount of work that needed to be done.

When we had finished painting, Mrs Goodwin hurried me upstairs to take a bath before supper. She thought the paint would come off easier if some of it was still wet. I had been right in thinking I would end up covered in more paint than the wall. It had splashed all over my apron, splattered down my arms and fingers as well as on my face with strands of my hair having been coloured green. It took a lot of scrubbing to remove all the paint, but it did come off. Eventually.

"Thank the Lord that the paint came off," Mrs Goodwin said when I appeared at the bottom of the stairs after my bath. "You've started to get a little bit of length on your hair now, we might be able to do something with it."

"I used to have it cut every few months, but I suppose I can let it grow for a change. Might as well try something new, I've been doing a lot of that."

"If you don't like it, you can cut it all off again, but not with my scissors, mind." Mr Goodwin laughed.

"True enough."

"I was going to go into the village on Monday to get some more paint for the landing upstairs, I thought I might pick some up for your room so we have it ready. What colour would you like?"

"I don't know, maybe blue? That's the colour of my old room."

"Blue it is."

Mrs Goodwin pulled a face, as though surprised that I would choose such a colour for my room when pink would be an option. Mum had pulled the exact same face when I told her what colour I wanted my room to be several years before. She always thought it wasn't a good colour for a young lady, but I didn't care. I liked the colour.

Maybe I should have given another colour to Mr Goodwin. Something simple like grey or beige just so it wouldn't match my room at home. I didn't want to grow too comfortable.

~~~

A/N - Chapter Sixteen is here! I still have no idea how long this story will be, it seems to be going on forever xD

Anyways, do you think Sybil will warm to the country? Do you think Sybil's mum will find out she's not going to school?

Comment below!

First Published - June 30th, 2021