Chapter Text
A/N Firstly, I PROMISE I am not abandoning my other ongoing fic! In fact, my next update for that is almost done and should be out soon.
I wanted to get the introduction to this one out while I was feeling inspired and it was still fresh in my mind, so that I can remember where I want to take it and then come back to it when I finish Full Disclosure. I just wanted to commit to it I suppose, but a second chapter won't be out for a few weeks.
A few people suggested I write a wartime Mondler story, and it was great hearing everyone's ideas for how I might do it, but WW2 was really the only option for me as it is the only war I have even the smallest amount of knowledge about (and even that knowledge is fairly basic!)
This is hugely different to anything I have ever written before and I think it is going to challenge me in lots of ways. Obviously, I will do my best, but I am absolutely sure there will be some massive historical inaccuracies, so any history buffs will have to grant me a little creative license on that score I'm afraid! Having said that, even just researching for this first chapter I have learned some really interesting stuff, so who knows, maybe I will edge closer to becoming a history buff myself!
Anyway, I hope those of you who suggested a war theme like how it starts.
3rd September, 1939, Islington, London
"I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street.
This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.
I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany."
Weekend sunshine spilled cheerfully through the window and kissed Jack's drawn, solemn face as he stared numbly at the wireless. He had known this was coming for many months, and yet strangely, he still could not quite believe it.
"It's all just a load of bollocks. That Hitler's all talk and no trousers."
"We're best staying out of it. Let 'em fight their own battles"
"It'll all be done with by Christmas, you mark my words"
Jack still wasn't sure if the puffed-up complacency of the men at the pub last night had been genuine, or if their bluster and bravado was simply borne of unspoken fear, but either way, the clipped tones of Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, seemed to prove them all wrong in the most devastating way possible.
He inhaled deeply and pressed his eyes closed.
"He sounds tired."
Jack nodded, grateful for the simplicity of his daughter's quietly uttered words, because the implication of Chamberlain's were impossible for him to digest.
Only twenty-one years had passed since the Great War had rocked the world, and it seemed unfathomable that Europe stood on the brink of all out chaos once again.
"He does", Jack agreed soberly, glancing towards her.
When she had fluttered into the room and handed him his mid-morning cup of tea twenty minutes ago, he had been struck by how grown up Monica suddenly looked; her dark hair fashionably curled, a subtle slick of vermillion brightening her lips; sometimes he could not quite believe that the glamorous vision that lived in his house was the same "Little Harmonica" who used to ride on his shoulders in the park and fall asleep reading stories in his lap, but as he looked down at her now, sitting at his feet on the threadbare rug, her knees tucked up to her chin, and her navy blue dress pulled right over her toes, she looked like the frightened child he knew that she was.
She was absolutely right though; the Prime Minister did sound worn.
"He'll need to wake himself up if he's going to get us out of this in one piece", Jack remarked grimly.
He was no great fan of Chamberlain, in fact, he had been quietly appalled by the way Britain and France had appeased the aggression of Adolf Hitler so far, letting him get away with stealing land from Czechoslovakia in exchange for bogus promises of peace.
Anybody who had spent time living as a Jew in Germany in the 1930s, as Jack had, knew only too well that the leader of the Nazi party was not the sort of man you should ever consider giving an inch to.
He supposed he could not really complain too much about Chamberlain. The only times Jack had actually aired these political grievances, he had been leaning up against the bar in the local pub, arguing the toss with the landlord, Richard, and a handful of other opinionated middle-aged men, a pint of ale in one hand and a cigarette drooping from the other.
Hardly political activism.
Richard was of the mindset that Chamberlain had done the best he could, and along with many other British people, he had met the so-called "Munich Agreement" with positivity and jubilation, confident that reaching some kind of compromise with the Nazi leader was the only way to prevent a full-scale war in Europe.
Jack had remained sceptical, but still, he, like everybody else, had sat back and hoped for the best, praying that the Prime Minister's promise to secure "peace in our times" would come good, and keeping everything crossed that Hitler would be a good boy, stick to his word, and play nice. But it was painfully evident that "nice" was not in Adolf's vocabulary, and in March, he proved that to the world with outrageous aplomb, by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia, and in doing so he had also revealed his complete disregard for the opinions of Britain, France or anybody else.
And now he'd taken Poland too.
So here they all were.
Jack placed a strong hand on Monica's shoulder and squeezed tight, a lump suddenly forming in his throat. Here she was, just a couple of weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday: The world should have been at her feet, but instead it looked set to crumble and burn around her.
And then there was his son. Jack couldn't even bear to think about what all of this would mean for Ross. A physically fit, twenty year old male stood little chance of emerging from this disaster unscathed. And a British-German dual national, of Jewish descent? God help him.
"What does this mean, Dad?" Monica turned her head to look up at him, her blue eyes swimming in fear.
"It means… it's a good job we already built our shelter. It means we need to make sure our black out blinds are all ship shape. It means you need to remember to take your gas mask out with you, wherever you go. And it means that we keep saying our prayers every night, and we keep our fingers crossed that Mr Chamberlain sorts Adolf out good and proper this time".
"What will happen to the boys", Monica hardly dared to whisper, a solitary tear freeing itself from her lashes and carving a salty path down her cheek.
"Well… it's just like we thought. They'll have to register for service. Like all of the other men."
Men.
It was still hard for Jack to think of Ross and his best friend Chandler, in such terms. And impossible to imagine them decked out in military boots and tin hats, ready for battle. They were just kids.
"Do you think they'll still come to visit next weekend? They won't have to leave right away will they? Not without seeing us?"
Jack could see that his daughter was moments away from a loud sob and her distress brought a sting to his own eyes.
"We should listen to this" he gently directed her attention back to the wireless, "It's important".
Monica pressed her face into her knees, and Jack could see a small dark patch emerge on her dress, where her noiseless tears had started to soak in to the cotton.
They sat in stunned silence as they absorbed the series of public service announcements that followed the Prime Minister's address.
Cinemas and theatres were to close with immediate effect; crowds were to be discouraged, except in churches; sporting events would be banned.
The new rules and regulations came thick and fast, it was too much to take in, and they barely had time to process even half of the words that reverberated around their modest front room.
And then the sinister wail of air-raid sirens screeched fear into their souls.
Surely not already?
Monica's chin trembled and she let out a terrified whimper as she spun around to face her father with horror-stricken eyes, and the frightened cries of panic from unknown Londoners who had been obliviously enjoying the sunshine out on the street, could be heard through the window.
"Come on! Let's go to the shelter!" Jack commanded, taking his daughter by the arm.
It did not take them long to reach the Anderson shelter they had built with Ross and Chandler's help just a few weeks previously; the structure took up almost the entirety of their small garden.
As Jack hurriedly pulled aside the sheet of metal they had fashioned as a door, he heard Monica sob, and he turned to see her cowering behind him. His eyes joined hers in anxiously scanning the skies for the anticipated Nazi bombers, but found nothing but puffy white clouds.
"Get in!" Jack ordered.
Even on a warm and pleasant day like this, the shelter felt cold and damp, and Jack wrapped an arm around his shivering daughter, making a mental note to put some blankets in here for next time. Assuming there would be a next time. Jack shivered too.
They had all felt rather proud of the shelter when they had first put it together; their digging had been neat and precise, and there was a certain sturdiness about the way they had fashioned their sandbags and corrugated iron roof.
Monica had stood back and observed their construction with a satisfied smile and triumphant hands on her hips, officially declaring it the best looking shelter on Bedford Street.
Ross had agreed wholeheartedly, sharing a snigger with his sister, when he pointed out that the structure Mr and Mrs Jones had shabbily erected at Number 15 looked certain to collapse under the weight of a sneeze, let alone a bomb.
Jack and Chandler had simply raised their brows and exchanged a wry smile. The Geller siblings really were competitive to the last.
As the sirens continued to moan, Jack hugged Monica close and they settled into the claustrophobic darkness, the smell of earth and metal pervading their nostrils.
Just seconds later the door slid open once more and in piled two more bodies, pub landlord Richard and an elderly woman, that Jack recognized as a regular patron of The George Inn.
"Room for two more?" Richard asked somewhat pointlessly, since he was already closing the metal sheet behind him.
"Eileen was out for her morning walk when the siren went off; I took her into the pub, but she didn't think she could make it down the stairs to the cellar. I remembered Monica telling me what a great job you'd all done with your shelter, so we thought we'd come and check it out, didn't we Eileen?"
He and Jack took the old lady by the elbows and lowered her frail form onto the uncomfortable wooden bench that sat along one muddy wall, and then Richard squeezed himself on there too, his thigh jostling for space with Monica's. Monica moved as far away as she could, in order to give him more room, but it was not easy in such a cramped environment.
She could feel Eileen peering curiously at her through the darkness, and she writhed self-consciously, turning her tear-streaked face towards her dad and wishing the two of them were still alone, so she could bury her face against his chest and cling to him for dear life.
"This is Monica, Eileen."
Richard's loud and steadily-voiced introduction indicated that the old woman might be a little hard of hearing.
"She's Jack's daughter. She cleans at the pub a few days a week at the moment, but you'll see more of her soon. She turns eighteen next week, so we'll be able to get her behind the bar. That should see my takings go up shouldn't it? What with her and Rachel, I should think we'll have the prettiest barmaids in all of London!"
Monica swallowed hard. She had hoped that by that time she might have been able to enrol in university, or at least in secretarial college, as she had always planned, but that seemed highly unlikely now. She guessed that the boys would be forced to terminate their studies too, and the thought of what they would be forced to do instead provoked another whimper of distress.
Eileen threw the girl a sympathetic, scant-toothed smile.
They all sat in pensive silence, transfixed by the continuing horrific wail of the siren, until Eileen gave a loud sigh, a tut, and a withering shake of her head as she lamented,
"Fancy spoiling a beautiful September day like this with a bloody war! That bloody Hitler's got a lot to answer for".
The sirens had been a false alarm. Some people said that they had been triggered by bombers spotted off the south coast; others said it was just a trial run by the government, but either way, nothing very much had happened at all since that first haunting warning call, and the dazed population had gradually returned to the strange, suspended unreality that was now their norm.
As Ross and Chandler's visit drew closer, Monica became unrecognizable from the terrified girl who had listened to Chamberlain's grave declaration, in fact, she was so buoyant, that to look at her now you would not think that anything untoward was going on in the world at all.
She hummed sweetly to herself as she prepared a pile of clean linen to take upstairs. She had cheerfully insisted that she would give up her bedroom for a few days so that her brother and his best friend could share it while they were visiting from university, despite Jack assuring her that the boys wouldn't mind doing as they usually did and bunking down in the front room. He guessed that with conscription looming large, maybe Monica just wanted to give them all the comfort they could get. He smiled fondly as he watched her fold a freshly ironed pillowcase.
Monica might have imagined that her secret, dreamy-eyed musings were entirely her own, but Jack knew only too well how desperate his daughter was to see their imminent visitors, and he was almost certain that her keen anticipation of their arrival had very little to do with her brother.
Not that she and Ross were not close. In fact, they were closer than any siblings Jack had ever met in his life. Not surprising, he supposed, when one considered everything the two of them had already been through together in their young lives.
Monica and Ross had come to rely upon one another over anybody else from a tender age; Jack was not proud to admit it, but parenting two children alone had not come easily to him in those awful days that had followed the passing of their beloved Judy, and he had truly struggled to be the anchor his son and daughter needed.
Ross had been ten, and Monica just turned eight, when they had discovered that they were due a new sibling. Judy's third pregnancy was unplanned and unexpected, but still, when it happened it felt like the happiest kind of accident, and the entire family had prepared to welcome their new addition with due excitement.
But little Isobel had arrived too good for this world, bluish-grey and as still and silent as the dolls that sat at the foot of her big sister's bed. She had departed immediately for heaven and had taken her mother there with her, and Jack had thought they would never recover.
He had felt so lost, so utterly out of his depth, incapable of managing even his own grief, let alone that of his children, that sending Monica and Ross to boarding school had felt like the only sensible solution, a decision he had taken for their sake, rather than for his own.
It was not an entirely new idea: Jack and Judy had already discussed at length the feasibility of sending Ross and Monica to Rosenbaum Schule, a progressive, co-educational school set in idyllic rolling countryside in the south of Germany.
Judy, who like Jack, was a relatively successful freelance journalist, had met the school's founder, Annie Rosenbaum, when she had interviewed her for a piece in a left-wing British newspaper, and she had been immediately impressed by the woman's ethos and ideals.
There was a strong focus on the arts, languages, and the great outdoors at Annie's institution, and most importantly it took pride in encouraging critical thinking and political curiosity; attributes the Gellers were desperate to impress upon their children as they looked set to navigate life in an increasingly authoritarian society.
When Ross and Monica first enrolled, the school was actually non-denominational, ending up with an increasingly Jewish cohort by default rather than by design.
When the Nazi party seized power in 1933, Jewish parents found it increasingly difficult to find educational placements for their children, so the inclusivity at Rosenbaum was a real draw for them, and at the same time, some non-Jewish parents were starting to bow to the pressure of boycotting Jewish owned business and institutions.
Nazi scrutiny continued to intensify, and eventually Ms. Rosenbaum was informed that her pupils would no longer be allowed to sit the exams that were required to achieve the standard German school-leaving certificate, thus denying them the opportunity to pursue a university education. This was a significant blow that saw every remaining non-Jewish child withdraw from the school.
Annie came to accept that she and her pupils must seek less hostile pastures in order to survive, and she somehow found the passion and wherewithal to relocate her entire school to England, finding a new home for them in a disused manor house, just outside of Maldon, in the county of Essex.
So Monica and Ross, along with 15 other Jewish students and their teachers, fled Germany via Switzerland, arriving into Dover by ferry, before being bussed to their new lodgings, and recommencing their lessons the very next day.
Facing evermore blatant discrimination in his hometown, Jack's decision to follow his children to Britain had not been a difficult one for him to make, and it was made logistically easier by virtue of his children's' status as dual nationals; their mother having been born and raised in England.
He was glad now that they had all made the move when they had. The relatively small early influx of displaced Jewish people in the early 1930s had not felt particularly impactful to the native population in Britain, and they had been greeted with far less hostility and suspicion than the more recent, far larger, second wave of newcomers.
Jack was a sociable and resourceful man, and had found it relatively straightforward to assimilate into London life, quickly finding a modest home and a job at a small photographic studio in Highbury. It was rather different from his former illustrious career in journalism, but it paid the bills. Just about.
Staff and students at Rosenbaum had also settled well in their new home, and the school's non-traditional approach to education soon caught the eye of a handful of more progressively minded British parents too, and pupil numbers began to grow.
One such parent was the wealthy writer and artist, Nora Bing, an important figure in a reknowned community of creatives based in the South West of England, a group inspired by the beautiful light, the lull of the ocean, and the rugged landscape, who also happened to share a wicked penchant for wildly Bohemian parties.
Her shy, floppy-haired son, Chandler, had gravitated towards Ross the moment Nora enrolled him at Rosenbaum, and the pair had instantly become the firmest of friends.
Thirteen-year-old Chandler immediately learned that the Geller sibling bond was such that if you wanted Ross, you had to take on Monica too, but the dynamics of a trio are notoriously tricky to negotiate, and consequently, Chandler found himself embroiled in a brutal power struggle with the feisty younger girl, as the two of them competed ruthlessly for Ross's approval and attention.
How times changed.
As Chandler and Monica got to know one another better, and the two year age gap between them seemed to narrow as they grew, the pair developed a natural and easy rapport to rival the one he had cultivated with her brother.
She was tougher and more resilient than Ross in many ways, and Chandler could not help but admire her pluck. He liked that she was never too afraid to climb to the top of a tree, or to fearlessly hurl her wiry body to the ground to ensure she caught a cricket ball or saved a goal, but more impressive yet was her quietly determined sense of justice: She was passionately fair-minded, unafraid to speak up, or question wrongdoing, but she always managed to do so in such a considered way that her intervention seldom resulted in conflict.
He loved how they laughed together too. He appreciated her wit, which was sharper and edgier than her brother's, and he liked how much she appreciated his in return. In fact, he positively reveled in it.
It was not long before Chandler was forced to accept that there had been a drastic shift in their little group of three; that it was now Monica, not Ross, that he spent his days trying to impress and amuse.
It probably did not hurt that she had the prettiest smile he had ever seen; and as their teenage years progressed, he increasingly found that there was very little he would not do for a glimpse of the sweet dimples in her cheeks, or to elicit a wry sparkle of conspiracy from her sapphire blue eyes.
Theirs was a tight knit friendship that extended beyond the school gates. When Jack met Chandler, he felt an immediate fondness towards the lad too, and he slotted right into the warmth of the Geller family fold. His bond with the siblings turned into an open invitation to share their lives, and he found that he much preferred to spend holidays and weekends in their cosy North London terrace rather than taking the 700 mile round trip to the sprawling, but crushingly lonely home he shared with his mother in Cornwall.
Chandler became such a big part of their world, that for a time, Monica used to say that she felt like she had gained an extra big brother, but somewhere along the line she had stopped referring to him as such.
At first he had thought that maybe he was just imagining it, but it had started to feel like the stolen glances and moments of pulse-racing breathlessness he had begun to experience whenever she was near, were not entirely one sided.
The first time she kissed him was a few days before he was due to leave for university.
It was a scenario he had guiltily dreamed of many times, but when it actually happened Chandler had been taken aback. He had held her by the arms, dragged his startled lips away from hers, asked her what she was doing. By that point he felt so much a part of their family unit that crossing that line ought to have felt like a despicable violation. In reality, it felt like heaven.
Monica had stood there, in that North London park, her back resting against the dappled bark of a plane tree, and she had bravely met his gaze, her beautiful blue eyes shining with nerves and want, a barely perceptible, but devastatingly compelling hint of challenge and rebellion contained within the small shrug of her shoulders.
"I just thought it would be fun.."
Fun was an understatement and Chandler was lost.
He had stared back at her, unable to breathe for a moment, the wind tousling their hair and deafening them to the rest of the world, and it would have felt like a great cruelty not to have kissed her again. Cruel to them both.
Kissing was not really Chandler's area of expertise back then, and his anxiety that he might do it all wrong had almost got the better of him. But he had taken a deep breath as he gently cupped her exquisite face in his hands, his heart thrashing in his chest as he dared to press his mouth against hers, just like he had seen Clark Gable do it on the silver screen. It was the most euphoric moment of his life and what felt like a majestic sky-full of fireworks had erupted deep in his belly.
The soft mutual caress of their lips was pure magic, and it came so astonishingly naturally that Chandler realized that he did not have to think at all; and he did not have to be Clark Gable.
They were just them, and they were perfect.
They kissed each other whenever they got a chance after that.
They had never really sought to put a label on it, and they had never formally discussed it with Ross or Jack. The shift in their relationship remained unspoken, and probably felt quite subtle to everybody else. To Monica and Chandler it was seismic.
When she heard them at the front door Monica's heart fluttered and soared. Her instinct was to race to greet him, to throw her desperate body against the warm solidity of his chest, wrap him tight in her arms and crush her lips against his with joyful abandon. But Jack and Ross were hovering around, so that would have to wait.
Instead, she moistened her lips and remained at the stove, straight-backed and controlled, slowly stirring the leek and potato soup she had made for their supper. It was a little more watery than she would have liked, but times were tough, and rationing loomed, so Monica was becoming quite an expert at finding ways to eek the very most out of the limited supplies she had available to her.
"Hi Mon!"
Her brother's fond call felt like permission to turn around, an indication that she was not unduly eager; that she had waited for an appropriate and decent amount of time. She took a long, deep inhale. The truth was, she was so eager that she ached.
She wiped her hands on her apron as she emerged from the tiny kitchen, with wide smiles and warm hugs for them both. Her breath caught in her throat as she met the sea blue of his eyes and when she embraced him and felt the warm thud of his heart against hers, her eyes drifted closed and she thought she might die.
"Smells good in here!" Ross remarked, "What are we having? I'm starving!"
Monica was relieved by her brother's forced joviality, as it signaled that he was as desperate as she was to avoid mentioning the grim shadow that was creeping across Europe. She hoped her father and Chandler were similarly keen to ignore the elephant in the room, but she doubted it, certainly where Jack was concerned.
"It's just bread and soup, but it's all ready, so we can eat right away", she assured him, "You two can put your bags in my room. You're taking my bed, I'm going to sleep down here".
Both Chandler and Ross tried to decline her offer, insisting that they should do as they had always done before and take the sofa and floor in the front room, but Monica was so adamant that they eventually had to concede defeat.
As Ross picked up their bags and struggled up the steep, narrow staircase, Chandler eyed Monica with a hint of curiosity, wondering why she had instigated this sudden change to their usual arrangements. The impish smirk she returned provoked a tingle down his spine.
Monica's reasons for swapping her bedroom for the front room were threefold.
Firstly, sleeping in a communal area allowed her the opportunity to dictate everybody else's bedtime.
This was the first time they had all seen each other since war had been declared, and she knew that her dad would be keen to sit up until the small hours with the boys, putting the collapsing world to rights. If she had retired to her bedroom, that was certainly what would have happened, and it would not have suited Monica at all.
Tonight, she was not interested in Nazis, or war, or even what might happen next week.
All she wanted; all she needed; was Chandler. On her. Kissing her.
So her dad's political ramblings would just have to wait.
Before he had retired upstairs, Chandler had helped her wash and dry the chipped mugs they had all used to drink their bedtime tea.
Her pulse had raced as they had stood together at the sink, the air around them crackling with electricity as their bare forearms brushed, and their fingers met in the tepid dishwater.
They were just far away enough from Jack and Ross for her to breathlessly hiss, "Come down and see me when Ross falls asleep".
The darkening of his eyes had confirmed his agreement and aroused a surge of something deeply improper low down in her core.
Privacy was Monica's second reason for wanting to sleep downstairs: Time and space were no mean feat in a house as small as theirs, and she wanted to make sure she was as far away from her father's bedroom as possible.
Finally, as the last traces of summer faded, and the nights felt a little cooler, Monica had thought it might be a bit of a treat to sleep close to the warmth of the fire, but before her dad went upstairs he issued her with a stern warning that even though household fuel was not rationed yet, they should all be doing their bit to conserve the country's vital resources, and therefore Monica was not to have the coals raging all night.
So the fire she had been looking forward to was a little on the timid side, and as the meager pile of glowing embers continued to fade in the grate, the Geller's front room grew increasingly cold.
The only light in the room came from a single candle flickering on the mantelpiece, barely supplemented by the glow of the coals.
Their blackout curtains were of course in place, so they could not even benefit from the light of the moon anymore.
She lay back on the olive green sofa, eyes bright and alert, listening keenly to the shuffles and low murmurs of the two boys as they got themselves ready for bed.
Just as soon as the household descended into quietness she sucked in her cheeks in anxious defiance as she braced herself to feel more of the autumn chill, wishing that the coal fire was a little bit fiercer. Her skin puckered as she stripped off the thick, shapeless, brushed cotton nightdress she had been wearing, and stuffed it under her pillow; and she looked down at her body in satisfaction, admiring, smoothing and adjusting the rather more thrilling garment she had been concealing underneath.
She had found the beautiful knee-length, lace-trimmed, peach silk negligee in a second hand boutique on Upper Street when she was wandering one day with her friend, Rachel. The lingerie was elegant, not vulgar, but still, it would probably not be considered an appropriate purchase for a not-quite-eighteen-year-old girl. Certainly not by her father.
Monica had almost been too scared to buy it, and when she had taken it up to the counter she had stuck her nose in the air in a display of false confidence, handing over her money with her right hand, keeping her left well hidden from view, so that the shop assistant would not have cause to suspect that she was unmarried.
Rachel's eyes had lit up with scandalous delight, and she had teasingly quizzed Monica as to her intention, insinuating that she was planning to use the seductive nightwear to entice Chandler when he was next home from university. Monica was generally considered to be the less exciting and worldly of the two young women, so she had relished the opportunity to make Rachel's eyes pop by responding with nothing more than a coy, non-committal shrug and smirk.
She would never openly admit such a thing to Rachel, or to anybody else for that matter, but her friend was bang on the money: Monica was absolutely desperate to entice Chandler.
Her want for him was both obscene and extreme; she only had to think about him and she would throb and tingle in newly woken places. It all felt rather indecent, and she was actually a little embarrassed about it.
Her limited knowledge of sex and romance came mainly from Rachel, and from Hollywood, and the red hot swell of desire Monica was experiencing felt rather more feral and rude than anything she had seen happen to Vivien Leigh.
The things she imagined doing to Chandler, and the things she dreamed of him doing to her, left her questioning whether other women secretly felt these sorts of feelings too. Wondering if perhaps there was something wrong with her; if maybe she was some kind of pervert.
But whatever she was, she knew she really wanted to feel his hands on her, and she had high hopes that this glamorous nightie might do the trick.
She let out a long exhale as she allowed her own hand to glide over her silk clad silhouette, from breast to thigh, just to see how it felt. Wonderful. It was going to feel wonderful for them both.
Her breath quickened when she finally heard the creak of a floorboard overhead, and she nervously arranged her awkward limbs into what she hoped was a vaguely sultry position as she listened out for the sound of cautious feet on the stairs.
Then she panicked and pulled her blankets right back up to her chin.
She needed to be absolutely sure that it was him. If her dad or Ross came stumbling through on their way out to the toilet, to find her posing in her underwear like some kind of femme fatale, it would be an unmitigated disaster.
She was both relieved and thrilled when Chandler slipped into the room, and she promptly threw off her blankets and reclined like a movie star. A chilly, anxious movie star, admittedly, but it still had the desired effect: The way he looked at her turned her insides molten.
"I missed you", she told him, the heave of her chest causing the silk of her negligee to strain, and Chandler's Adam's apple to shift in his throat.
"I missed you too" he whispered back, his eyes shining as he gazed deeply into hers, bringing his face close and raking his fingers through her softly curled hair.
She could not wait any longer, so she cradled his head in her hands and crashed her lips into his, moaning quietly the moment they met.
Her hands slid down to his back and she dragged his whole body down on top of her. The crushing weight of him felt divine, but Chandler shifted around uncomfortably, worried that he might be hurting her, and in doing so he broke their kiss.
"Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something,"
Tears sprung immediately to Monica's eyes. Of course she knew that they would have to talk about the big awful thing that was about to tear them all apart, but she simply wasn't ready.
She didn't want to talk about any of it.
She had spent all evening closing her ears and mind to any mention of Hitler or Chamberlain, of training camps, of Poland, or Germany, or France. Instead she had located a little oasis of denial in the corner of her brain, and she had curled up inside it; not allowing herself to think about anything beyond the sensation of Chandler's knee occasionally nudging her own beneath the table, and the butterflies that fluttered in her tummy whenever their eyes met over their bowls of soup.
"How would you like to come to Cornwall with me next week? I'll buy you a train ticket for your birthday."
His shyly voiced suggestion was completely unexpected and Monica let out a tiny laugh of surprise and relief.
"It's beautiful down there, I think you'd really like it. We can take walks on the beach, go swimming in the sea, and my mother has the most wonderful garden, with incredible views over the estuary. I'd love for you to see it, Monica. I've always wanted to take you there."
She thought it was the most glorious idea anybody had ever put to her, and in her head she was already there, kissing him madly on some windswept beach.
"I promised Mother that I would visit before I join up, so I just thought we might as well make a little holiday of it."
He regretted speaking those words as soon as he felt Monica's whole body become tense, but there was really nothing anybody could do or say to make any of this any better, so he did the only thing he could, he kissed her forehead and stroked a gentle knuckle across her cheek.
"What do you think?" he asked hopefully, his eyes sparkling gently in the candlelight.
"I'd love to" she smiled back wistfully, "It sounds wonderful"
Chandler's face melted into a sweet grin "Great! I'll speak to your dad about it tomorrow; make sure he knows my intentions are honorable."
He pressed a soft kiss to her lips.
There was a dangerous glint of daring in her eyes when she drew back and asked him in a low murmur "Are they? Honorable, I mean?"
"Of course they are," he confirmed gently, "You know how I feel about you Monica, I'd never do anything to... hurt you."
If only he knew how badly she ached.
She made another grab for him, melding his mouth to hers, her tongue diving to sweep across his, and her lips frenzied, frustrated by the devastating desire she felt for her perfect gentleman.
As she writhed beneath him, she was suddenly very aware that one of his legs had come to rest between her knees, and she scooped her hips, pressing herself hard into the taught muscles of his thigh.
His fingers were at her waist, caressing the cool silk of her nightdress, exploring the sweeping curve of her hip and enjoying the way the softness of her flesh contrasted with jut of her slender hip bone, but Monica's hand found his and she assertively coaxed his gentle ministrations upwards, gliding his palm over her ribs to cup the warm swell of her breast.
She bucked as his thumb brushed her nipple, and replied to his gasp of surprise with another quiet whimper, her pelvis seeming to move of its own free will, grinding insistently against him again.
As his initially reluctant hands began to roam her silky curves with a little more vigor and confidence, she felt his erection hardening against her abdomen; it was an obvious signal that no matter how honorable his intentions, his physical response to her was every bit as violent and untameable as hers was to him, and it thrilled her immensely. She imagined how it would feel to take it in her palm.
"Somebody's coming!"
The squeak of bedsprings and floorboards above jolted them abruptly from their passionate clinch, and Chandler scrambled to his feet, hunching over in woeful embarrassment as he scuttled away to the kitchen. Monica dragged her blankets right up to her nose and squeezed closed her eyes to feign sleep.
When Jack reached the foot of the stairs he paused and peered curiously through the dim candlelight at his daughter's apparently sleeping form before padding away.
"Everything alright Chandler?" he asked, flicking on the kitchen light to reveal the tense-shouldered boy, standing at the sink.
"Yeah, sorry..." Chandler whispered hoarsely, glancing at Jack over his shoulder, but not turning fully around. "I have heartburn, I was just going to drink a glass of water. I didn't mean to disturb you".
"There are some Rennies in that drawer" Jack gestured instructively, leaning against the door frame and watching patiently as Chandler dutifully located the wholly unnecessary antacid tablets and popped two into his mouth.
"Hopefully that'll help, and you'll be able to get some sleep" Jack remarked, a mild sternness in his intense stare.
Chandler grimaced as he chewed the chalky tablets, his tongue and throat dry with powdery alkaline, and Jack stifled a smirk, amused by the lad's discomfort, but not unkindly so.
"Hopefully", Chandler nodded weakly as Jack stood back to allow him to pass, and they both headed for the creaky stairs.
As they reached the top and Jack took a step into his bedroom, Chandler suddenly tutted "Oh wait! I forgot my water!"
He crept hastily back down the stairs, and retrieved the mug he had left by the sink, taking a brave pause by the sofa, dipping to land a stealthy, silent, probably chalky, goodnight kiss against Monica's rueful smile of defeat, then dashing back up to the landing, where a suspicious Jack was determined to watch him retire.
"Goodnight Mr Geller" he muttered with a diffident nod and a hangdog glance, before tiptoeing sheepishly into Monica's bedroom where Ross was snoring softly.
"Goodnight Chandler"
Jack smothered another small chuckle and he shook his head, as he quietly closed his bedroom door, but as he sat down at the foot of his bed an ominous cloud of toxic reality fell all around him, and his eyes stung and clouded over.
He thought about those three precious heartbeats gathered there with him, beneath his roof. Three kind, decent kids, all ripe and ready to start their adult lives, who just wanted what every normal person in the world had ever wanted: To explore. To feel. To love, and be loved in return. Instead, they looked certain to be ripped apart and haunted forever by a war they never asked for. The absolute barbarity of it all brought tears to Jack's deep brown eyes.
A/N The stuff about the school is actually inspired by the real life tale of a German Jewish educator called Anna Essinger, I'd never heard of her before, but she lead an extraordinary life. There is a book about her called The School That Escaped the Nazis.