ANNIE GROVES
The Heart of the Family

Copyright

This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2009

Copyright © Annie Groves 2009

Annie Groves asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007265909

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007322695

Version: 2016-12-15

Dedication

For my readers who have so kindly and generously supported me. I hope you are all enjoying reading about the Campion family as much as I am enjoying telling their story.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

PART TWO

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

PART ONE

ONE

Wednesday 7 May 1941

It had just gone midnight. Conversation between the occupants of Jean Campion’s comfortable and homely kitchen slowed and stuttered, then died.

Jean’s twin daughters, Sasha and Lou, Katie, her billetee and her son, Luke’s, girlfriend, looked at one another.

Jean’s husband, Sam, who had been out working since eight o’clock that morning helping to remove what could be cleared of the devastation left by Hitler’s six nights of ferocious bombing, slumped in his chair, looking defeated. All of them were waiting for the dreaded and now familiar sound of the air-raid siren, warning them that Luftwaffe bombers were approaching the city, bringing yet another night’s destruction and death.

The tension caused by the heavy bombing of Liverpool had taken hold of them just as it had all those who were now virtually trapped in a city cut off from the rest of the country, its buildings destroyed, its people killed and maimed, a helpless victim now waiting for the deathblow.

Jean looked at the twins. They had been very subdued since Sasha had been rescued on Saturday night after becoming trapped in a bomb site. The young UXB soldier who had taken Sasha’s place beneath the bomb so that she could be rescued without the device being disturbed had become a hero to the whole family.

Without his bravery Jean was convinced that there would have been only one of the twins here now. Her heart missed a beat. She mustn’t think of what could have been. She must concentrate instead on praying that they would all survive what was happening now. The twins were growing up. Soon they would be sixteen – young women and not merely girls any more. Sixteen and on the brink of womanhood with their adult lives stretching ahead of them, if they survived Hitler’s onslaught on Liverpool.

Just gone midnight. If the bombers were coming then they would know soon. The siren had sounded around midnight for the last three nights.

Jean thought of her two eldest children – Luke in the army and stationed at nearby Seacombe barracks; her daughter Grace in her final year as a trainee nurse and on duty tonight in one of the city’s busiest and most vulnerable hospitals – and she prayed as she had done every night since the war had started that those she loved would all be safe.

Surreptitiously Katie looked at her watch. Nearly half-past midnight. Would tonight be yet another spent in the air-raid shelter, trying not to be afraid for Luke, whom she loved so much and whom she knew, as a serving soldier whose unit was on home defence duties, would be in far more danger than they were?

Jean couldn’t bear the tension any more. ‘I’ll put the kettle on—’ she started to say, and then stopped as it began: the shrill urgent call to protect themselves, the sound of which gripped a person by the throat and around the heart, a shuddering shocking exhalation of noise that warned of the terrible unbelievable horror that brought death raining down from the night sky.

They exchanged helpless, anguished looks.

‘Here we go again,’ Sam announced unnecessarily. ‘I’ll walk you down to the shelter and then I’d better go and report for fire-watching duty.’

‘But, Sam, you’ve worked from morning to night for the last six nights,’ Jean protested, as they all picked up the bundles containing the sleeping bags and everything else they would need for yet another night in the air-raid shelter.

‘Aye, well, at least I can still work, not like some,’ Sam replied grimly.

Jean felt her heart bump shakily. On Sunday morning, in the aftermath of Saturday night’s heavy bombing, two of his colleagues had been badly injured when a building had collapsed on top of them.

Fortunately, the shelter was only at the end of the road. Ash Grove nestled comfortably between the top end of Edge Hill, with its aspirational working-class inhabitants, and the bottom end of middle-class Wavertree, lying further inland to the east, and was far enough away from the docks and the city centre not to attract the main attention of the Luftwaffe. But not so far that the Campion family couldn’t in happier times walk down to the ferry in under half an hour when they wanted to visit Jean’s sister, Vi, and her family who lived across the water in Wallasey. And certainly close enough for Luke to take that same ferry home from the Seacombe barracks, which also lay on the other side of the river from the city.

Once they were outside in the street they were able to see what the blacked-out windows had protected them from.

Below the gentle rise that lifted Edge Hill and Wavertree above the city proper, the probing beams of the anti-aircraft batteries revealed ghoulish images of gutted buildings, still smoking from the fires of earlier bombing raids.

They had reached the shelter now. Sam gave Jean a swift hug and, unusually for such an undemonstrative man, turned to hug both the twins, then placed his hand on Katie’s arm and gave it a small squeeze before standing to one side to watch as they all filed into the shelter.

Jean prayed, as she always did, that her husband would return from his work safe and unharmed.

‘Not again.’

Grace heard the note of suppressed panic in the voice of the probationer who was new on the ward, and told her calmly, as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘I think Mr Williams has finished with his bottle now. Go and collect it from him and take it to the sluice room, will you? When you’ve done that come back and help me get the patients ready to take down to the shelter.’

After pausing to check that her calming words had had the right effect, Grace moved swiftly towards the end of the ward to start securing those patients who had to stay put. Straps hung down at the sides of the beds, ready to fasten over the patients when the siren went off, and the recent spate of attacks now ensured that everyone moved automatically to do what had to be done – even the new probationer, once Grace had calmed her fear.

Grace loved working on men’s surgical. The patients were for the most part absolute darlings – although of course there was always the exception, like her own cousin Charlie, who had been brought in on Saturday night suffering from concussion. Charlie was well on the way to recovery now, but not quite well enough to go home, and he was making a thorough nuisance of himself, expecting special treatment because his father was a member of Wallasey’s town council, and flirting with the other nurses, despite the fact that he was engaged and due to get married in June.

Now, as she paired up with the probationer so that they could secure the patients, Grace reflected that routine and having a job to do, as she had quickly learned, had a way of calming the nerves and making a person focus on necessities instead of worrying about what might happen – or thinking about the terrible raid three days ago when the hospital had been bombed, and staff and patients killed and injured.

Another bloody air raid. Determinedly Charlie avoided the look he knew his cousin Grace would be sending him. After all, why should he risk his own life pushing ruddy beds around, like those patients who were daft enough to get out of their beds to help the nursing staff? In this world a chap had to put himself first if he wanted to survive.

Whilst he might have been too badly concussed to be able to remember much of what had happened to him when he had originally been brought into the hospital, once he had started to recover, the memory of what had happened that night had come back to him. Naturally, Charlie had then been quick to edit the truth to show himself in the best possible light. In his version of events, the beating inflicted on him by the ex-soldier-turned-petty criminal who had been blackmailing him had become a tale of him being set upon by some unknown men, no doubt intent on robbing him when he had been on an errand of mercy to see an old comrade.

His mother had been too relieved that he was safe to ask too many questions, and Dougie Richards, the blackmailer, certainly wasn’t going to call his bluff, since he had been killed by the bomb that that been dropped on the pub he had made his headquarters.

As for the girl with whom he had spent the night, as an engaged-to-be-married man Charlie wasn’t going to tell his mother or anyone else about her, was he? As he joined the exodus of people hurrying down the stairs to the safety of the air-raid shelters, Charlie shrugged dismissively. What a chap did with that kind of girl had nothing to do with the respectable things in life, like getting engaged and married. The girl he’d bedded lived in a different world from the one inhabited by women like his mother and his fiancée, and those two worlds never could and never would meet. That was understood.

Pity he’d left his battledress jacket behind, though. If the discharge he was angling for, so that he could leave the army and return home to Wallasey to work for his father, didn’t come soon, he could end up having to fork out for a replacement. He’d got far better things to spend his money on than a piece of army kit he wasn’t going to wear.

Everyone who’d heard what had happened to him said how lucky he’d been to have left the pub where he’d gone to meet his ex-comrade, before it had been flattened by a bomb, killing everyone inside, but only he knew just how lucky he was, Charlie acknowledged. With Dougie Richards and his fellow thugs dead, Charlie was now free from the threat of blackmail.

Having assured his mother that his bruises looked worse than they were, Charlie had then told Vi that he didn’t want Daphne, so carefully protected from the realities of life by her doting parents, to be unnecessarily upset by the sight of them when she already had the wedding to worry about. The last thing he felt like doing right now was having to comfort Daphne whilst she wept all over him. That reluctance had nothing whatsoever to do with his memories of the passionate warmth in his arms of a girl who was not his fiancée. Of course it didn’t. Good Lord, the last thing Charlie wanted in a wife was passion. Daphne was the perfect wife for him.

Yes, he had a lot to congratulate himself about, Charlie decided, with a grin. Poor old Bella, his sister, had had her nose well and truly put out of joint by his sudden ascent to the throne of parental favouritism, and her own removal from it, on account of his upcoming marriage to Daphne.

Daphne’s parents not only possessed a double-barrelled surname and titled connections, Daphne’s father was a Name at Lloyd’s and, in Charlie’s father’s own words, ‘bound to be rolling in money, war or no war’.

Edwin was the kind of man who judged other men by one simple criterion – their financial status. Those like his wife’s twin sister’s husband, who didn’t have a hope of ever earning what Edwin did, he despised; those who threatened his supremacy in his own field, he made sure he kept where they belonged – several rungs below him on the ladder, by whatever means, dirty tricks included, if they were called for; those a few steps above him on that ladder he detested and consequently accused in public of using sharp practices, of a type abhorrent to him, of course, otherwise he would have been their equal. But those like Daphne’s father, who were members of the ‘professional class’, and who had family money, were so far above him in his estimation that he could only treat them with reverential awe. To have his son marry the daughter of such a man swelled Edwin’s chest with a pride that had had Edwin dismissing Bella’s claims on his paternal affections in place of Charlie’s. Edwin had decided that Bella was to hand over the keys to the smart house Edwin had bought for her on her own marriage so that they could be given to Charlie and his bride-to-be. What need, after all, did Bella, a widow with no children, have of a detached house, Edwin had asked pointedly. All she had done was fill it with refugees, he had reminded his daughter during the argument that had followed the announcement of his decision.

Remembering that row now, Charlie grinned. Poor old Bella indeed. His sister might be a stunning-looking girl, with her blonde curls and her large blue eyes, and the waist she swore measured only twenty-two inches, but her looks had no effect on their father and nor had her angry reminder that the refugees had been forced on her by the Government, and the council of which he was a member.

In fact, Charlie acknowledged, his future was looking pretty good. Or it would have been if it weren’t for this ruddy bombing. He pushed past a group of nurses who had had to adjust their walking pace to the slowness of the patients they were assisting, without stopping to offer to help, his thoughts fixed on his own bright future and securing a decent place in the air-raid shelter.

The night air was thick with the smell of burned wood, the smoke from the fires that had been put out hanging over the city like a November smog. His mother had had forty fits when she had come to visit him, complaining about the fact that it had taken her three hours to get to the hospital because of all the blocked roads.

‘They’ve bombed Lewis’s,’ she had told Charlie angrily, ‘and there were soldiers lolling around in the street, sitting on brand-new furniture that had been removed from some of the shops, and drinking bottles of beer. Disgraceful. I mean who would want that furniture now?’

Charlie could think of any number of people who’d no doubt be only too happy to acquire it, if only to sell it on through the black market, but of course he had known better than to say so to his mother, who wasn’t renowned for the acuteness of her sense of humour.

Without anything having to be said, the more senior of the trainee nurses such as Grace had taken it upon themselves to go in turn with those patients who, because of the severity of their wounds, were not only bed bound but also could only be moved very slowly.

Tonight it was Grace’s turn. She had seen the brisk nod of approval that Sister had given her when she had come quietly to the bed holding the most seriously injured of all their patients, a young soldier who had been caught in a blast from an unexploded bomb. His face and head were heavily bandaged. It was a miracle, according to the doctors, that he was still alive. Grace, who had been on duty the night he had come out of the morphine he had been given and who had heard him screaming in agony and then begging for death, found it hard to think there was anything miraculous about what he was having to suffer.

He couldn’t survive, they all knew that, and for that reason if no other they were all taking extra care to ensure that the fact that he was still alive was respected and that he was treated exactly the same as those patients who would survive.

Hannah, Grace’s closest friend from their original training set, had told Grace bluntly that had she been someone who loved him she would have been tempted to place a pillow over the bandaged face to ease his agony for ever.

As Grace and one of the porters slowly pushed his bed towards the exit, a bomb exploded close at hand, causing the patient’s body to contort in agonised fear. Automatically Grace reached for his hand to comfort him, holding it in her own.

Just as it had once seemed unbelievable that something like this could happen, now it seemed equally impossible that it would ever cease. The worst of the debris caused from Saturday night’s bombing had been cleared away but the scarred seared wall of the courtyard where so many had died, caught in the bomb blast, still stood as a stark reminder of the frailty of life. The patient, who had been trembling convulsively, suddenly went still, the grip of his hand slackening.

They were still several yards from safety and the shelter, but Grace realised she had something far more important to deal with now than her own safety.

Bending towards the bed, she told the porter quietly, ‘I think we need the padre, if you can find him for me, please, John.’

They said that you always remembered your first death, but for Grace each one brought her that same sense of loss and pain, and that wish that things could be different and that her patient might live.

What was easier now, though, was to hold tightly to the slackened hand and quietly recite the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Sister, in that calm all-seeing way of hers that Grace so admired, seemed to materialise on the opposite side of the bed out of nowhere, her own hands competent and professional as she reached for the dying man’s other hand, checking his pulse against her watch, then talking quietly to him once Grace had finished her prayer.

He had gone before the padre managed to reach them, but the formalities of respect had still to be gone through, the blessing said, and a doctor summoned, a space found for the ritual and respect accorded to the newly dead even in the midst of a bombing raid that could take their own lives at any minute. A well-trained nurse did not abandon her patient to protect her own safety.

Grace waited until the doctor gave the brief nod of his head that signalled that the body was to be taken to the morgue before accepting her own dismissal from Sister and continuing on her way to the shelter.

It was three o’clock. Her eyes felt dry and gritty from smoke, brick dust and uncried tears. When this war was over she would cry an ocean of them, but not now – not when, as their vicar had said from the pulpit on Sunday morning, with every strong heartbeat of hope and courage and the belief that they would prevail they were driving back the enemy, just as with every weak heartbeat of fear they were inviting defeat.

Now instead of thinking about the bombs and worrying about her own danger, she would think instead of Seb and how much she loved him. Like her, Seb was on duty tonight. He was based at Derby House, down near the docks. They tried to time their off-duty hours so that they could be together if at all possible. Nurses weren’t allowed to wear engagement rings, so Grace kept hers hidden, wearing it on a fine chain beneath her uniform. When she felt afraid, like she did now, just knowing that it was there and that Seb loved her was enough to calm those fears.

The air-raid shelter was crowded, but a nurse whom she vaguely recognised shuffled along to make room for her, welcoming her with a tired smile.

None of them had taken her full off-duty hours, snatching a few hours of sleep instead and then going back to work, knowing how desperately her skills were needed.

The remorseless throb of aircraft engines overhead made Grace want to cover her ears. They couldn’t go on like this much longer, being attacked night after night, everyone said so, talking about the effect the unrelenting attacks were having on people’s morale in low hesitant whispers. The unthinkable, the unbearable, had begun to drift into people’s minds, obscuring hope in the same way that the smoke-and dust-filled air was obscuring the sky.

‘Lord knows where we’re going to put them as gets injured tonight,’ the other nurse sighed wearily. ‘The whole hospital’s already bursting at the seams.’

Grace nodded. It was true, after all. Patients were already having to lie on makeshift beds in corridors. The operating theatres were working at full capacity, with extra surgeons coming in from surrounding towns, including Manchester, and now the staff were facing shortages of supplies, the hospital authorities unable to restock fast enough to cope with the demand. Some patients, like the boy who had died earlier, were so badly injured that there was nothing that could be done for them other than to try to relieve their pain, and even that wasn’t always possible. Word had gone round on the grapevine when Grace had been in the dining room earlier that with the city almost cut off from the rest of the country, morphine was to be kept for those patients who could survive and not given as palliative care to those who would not, for fear of the supply running out.

War was such a cruel thing, its horrors thankfully unimaginable to those who had not experienced them. Grace had seen people whose bodies were so badly damaged that if anyone had told her three years ago about such injuries she would have thought they were trying to frighten her.

She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the sound of the continuous waves of incoming bombers and focus instead on the bursts of gunfire from the ack-ack guns. How much longer could Liverpool survive such an onslaught? Not much longer, she suspected. The Germans were bombing the heart out of the city and its people, destroying its buildings, smashing its infrastructure, maiming and killing its people, knowing how much the whole country depended on the vital necessities – raw materials and foodstuffs – that those Merchant Navy convoys whose port was Liverpool struggled to bring in from across the Atlantic.

Cutting off that vital lifeline would be like cutting off the flow of blood to a patient’s heart – and only death could follow.

TWO

Down in the protected underground buildings beneath Derby House, Seb couldn’t help worrying about Grace. He loved her so much and she was so very brave, as he already had good cause to know, never flinching from putting the safety of her patients first.

Derby House was the Headquarters for Joint Strategic Planning, a combined operation involving both the Navy and the RAF, and Seb had seen the devastating losses the conveys were suffering thanks to the speed and accuracy of Hitler’s U-boats.

Churchill had given orders that no effort must be spared in capturing from the Germans one of their Enigma machines. These cipher machines sent signals between the U-boats and their HQ close to Paris, using special codebooks, and if one could somehow be acquired, British codebreakers at Bletchley Park would be able to decipher singals and so warn convoys of the U-boats’ whereabouts. But thus far no Enigma machine had been captured and the shipping losses continued to be very heavy.

Seb was part of a secret RAF Y Section, set up to listen in on and speedily record enemy Morse code messages, and he was waiting for the particular sender he was currently monitoring to start transmitting again. It was at times like this, with an air raid going on, the city devastated by what it had already endured, and other men putting their lives at risk to protect what was left of it, that Seb wished that he was playing a more active role in the country’s defence himself.

At the beginning of the war when he had been approached to work for SOE, using his radio operator’s skills to teach French Resistance cells the skills they would need, Seb had been working in the field in France in conditions of such personal danger that he had truly felt that he was doing his bit. But then with the German invasion of France and the BEF being driven back to Dunkirk, Seb had been recalled to England.

Dunkirk, everything it had been and everything it now represented for the way in which, by some miracle, tens of thousands of soldiers had been rescued from the beaches of northern France, was etched on his soul for ever. He had been lucky, but so many had not.

Back in Liverpool he had expected to be handling Morse code messages sent from France by members of SOE secretly landed there and from the groups of French Resistance he had helped train. Instead he had been put in charge of some newly trained Y Section recruits, dealing with military messages passed between the enemy.

Churchill insisted on seeing every day the transcripts of the messages monitored the previous day, a habit he had begun, so Seb had heard, when he had been First Lord of the Admiralty. The work demanded the highest level of concentration, and the kind of quick mind that could speedily recognise the variations in the ways different operators touched the keys of their machines. As Seb always said when he was lecturing new recruits, a wireless operator’s touch on the keys was as individual as a voice.

What they were doing was the other side of war, the hidden side. Where the glory boys of the RAF pursued their targets in full view through the skies, those members of the RAF employed on Y Section duties tracked theirs through countless recordings of Morse code messages. It took concentration, dedication and a special instinct to be able to recognise and follow a specific message sender; to recognise his or her ‘way’ of tapping out the Morse, to be able to block out the crackles, hisses and jamming devices used by the enemy as though they did not exist and to sense that moment when the sender was about to change frequency and plunge after them to keep track of them.

On a night like this one, though, when your girl was in danger and you weren’t, translating Morse code messages didn’t really feel much like a proper man’s work.

Seb looked at the clock on the wall in front of him. Just gone half-past three. With any luck the raiders would leave before it started to get light. As soon as he went off duty he could go up Edge Hill to Mill Road Hospital where Grace worked to check that she was all right.

Nearly four hours they’d been at it now, Luke thought bitterly, as he lay sleepless on his hard narrow army cot bed listening to the bombers sweeping in.

The defiant night fighters of 96 Squadron, based at Cranage, had been screaming overhead but had as yet failed to turn back the incoming waves of the raiders.

Luke and his men would be on duty at first light as they were part of a work party of three thousand soldiers detailed to help in the clear-up operations after the bombers had left, work they’d been engaged in every day since Sunday.

Tonight it sounded as though it was Bootle that was getting the worst of it. Thank heavens his family lived well away from the docks, up at Edge Hill, and Katie with them, although nowhere was safe.

From his vantage point on the roof of a building close to the Automatic Telephone and Electric Company, off Edge Lane, where he was doing his turn on fire-watching duties, Sam Campion could see as well as hear the waves of incoming enemy bombers.

All that was left of St Luke’s, the church that had been regarded by many as the most beautiful church in the city, was its tower and a blackened shell. The Town Hall had been hit, as had the New Royal Telephone Exchange in Colquitt Street, and on Duke Street various buildings had been destroyed. The city was at its last gasp. Flames and smoke billowed from newly hit buildings, and it seemed to Sam that there could be only one end to Liverpool’s magnificent fight against the Luftwaffe’s bombs.

Sam’s heart had never felt heavier, nor his emotions more intensely aroused. It was only now, looking down on the burning city, that he realised how much he loved it. Liverpool was being bombed and burned right down to its foundations, and yet not one word of concern had Sam heard spoken on the wireless, nor one word of praise for all that its people were doing to try to save it. Let London be bombed and the whole ruddy country knew about it, but when it came to Liverpool, the powers that be didn’t seem to care that the city was in danger of burning end to end.

The acrid smell of the smoke drifting towards him from Brunswick and Harrington Docks, and the Prince’s landing stage, stung his eyes, or at least that was what Sam told himself was the cause of his need to knuckle the moisture from them. The overhead railway had been hit and from Gladstone and Alexandra Docks Sam could see ships burning down to the water line.

High above him in the night sky, fighters from RAF Cranage were doing their best to drive back the raiders, and as Sam looked on, an RAF planes pursued one of the bombers, finally catching up with it over the Welsh hills. As he watched the defender bring down the bomber, and then looked down on the burning city, Sam admitted to himself what he had been trying to avoid since the blitz had started.

He might not be able to do anything to prevent his two older children from being exposed to the continuing danger – not with Luke in the army and Grace a nurse – but he could insist that Jean took the twins out of the city for their own safety and hers.

Exhaling on the decision, Sam felt his chest contract with pain. He and Jean had never spent a night apart in the whole of their marriage, she was the best wife any man could have and the only wife he could ever want, but it simply wasn’t safe for them to stay in the city any longer.

Lying awake in her comfortable bed in the cottage she was renting in Whitchurch, Emily Bryant too could hear the sound of the bombers on their way to Liverpool, fifty miles away from her new home in the small market town on the Cheshire-Shropshire border and surrounded by farmland. She had definitely done the right thing getting out of the city, and only just in time, judging by what she’d heard on Sunday when she and Tommy had made their first visit to their new church. Everyone had a tale to tell about what they’d heard about the pounding Liverpool had taken and the damage that had been done.

By rights she ought to be asleep. After all, they were safe enough here, with no need to go into some nasty uncomfortable air-raid shelter. She was a fool to have relented and left that worthless husband of hers with a decent sum of money in his bank account – money he’d no doubt spend on those trollops of his. He could, after all, have come with her and Tommy if he’d wanted to, but of course somewhere like Whitchurch would be far too quiet for Con.

It wasn’t too quiet for her, though. It fact it suited her down to the ground.

As soon as she’d got everything unpacked and the two of them properly settled in she’d have to see about sorting out a school for young Tommy. It was just him and her now. Mother and son, so to speak. Just thinking those words filled her with so much happiness that she could feel it right down to her toes. And yet for all her happiness, and despite knowing that she had made the right decision in leaving Liverpool – after all, what did she owe the city; what had it ever done for her except give her an unfaithful husband? – the sound of those bombers and their relentless purpose brought a lump to her throat and caused her to say a silent prayer for the city of her birth.

Eight o’clock. She’d better get a move on, Lena decided, otherwise, she’d be late for work and her boss had told her that she wanted her in early because they’d have a lot of women wanting their hair done, since the blitz meant that many no longer had access to proper water in their own homes.

Lena hesitated as she turned the corner and saw a small group of women and children standing on the pavement outside number ten, where the Hodson family lived. Her heart sank. There was no way she could avoid them, not with half the houses down on the other side of the street and no pavement left.

‘Ruddy Eyetie,’ Annette Hodson said loudly as Lena drew level with them. ‘I don’t know how she’s got the brass neck to show herself here amongst proper English folk when her lot have sided with that Hitler.’

Annette Hodson was blocking the pavement now, her arms folded across her chest as she confronted Lena.

Some of the sparse mousy hair has escaped from her rag curls and was hanging limply over the red scarf that drew unkind attention to her heavily flushed face. The apron she was wearing was grubby, her fingers stained with nicotine. Annette Hodson was a bully whose own children went in fear of her. Somehow, though, she’d set herself up as the street’s spokeswoman when it came to who and what was and was not acceptable. She’d had it in for Lena ever since she’d discovered her husband leering at Lena one Saturday afternoon after he’d trapped her in conversation, one hand resting on the house wall as he refused to let her go past.

Initially Lena had been believed when Annette had appeared, quickly making her escape, but then the comments had started, and Lena’s aunt had soon backed up her neighbour and friend, warning Lena that no good came to girls who made eyes at married men.

‘Course, it’s that Italian blood of hers,’ Lena had heard her aunt telling Annette.

Lena had never known the Italian side of her family but she did know that the war had turned some of Liverpool’s citizens violently against the Italian immigrant community, which had previously lived peacefully in the city.

Italian businesses had been attacked by angry mobs, and Italian people hurt. There had been those who had spoken out against the violence and those too who had helped their Italian neighbours, but there were others who, like Annette Hodson were the kind who seized on any excuse to take against other people.

Then, by order of the Government, all those Italian men who had not taken out British citizenship had been rounded up and sent away to be interned for the duration of the war. That had led to more violence and also to terrible deprivation for those families deprived of their main breadwinners.

Italian families with sons who had British passports and who were in the armed forces found that they were being treated with as much hostility as though they were the enemy, and those with Italian blood had quickly learned to be on their guard.

‘I’ll bet she was down the shelter last night, though, taking up a space that by rights should have gone to a proper British person,’ Annette was jeering. ‘If I had my way, it wouldn’t just be the Italian men I’d have had rounded up; I’d have rounded up the women and the kids as well and put the whole lot of them behind bars. Aye, and I’d have told Hitler he could come and bomb them any time he liked, and good riddance. ’Oo knows what she gets up to? For all we know she could be a ruddy spy.’

Ignoring Annette’s insults, Lena stepped out into the road to walk past her and then gasped as a small piece of broken brick hit her on the arm. Automatically she turned round to see Annette’s youngest, four-year-old Larry, grinning triumphantly as he called out in a shrill voice, ‘I got her, Mam. Ruddy Eyetie.’

‘Good for you, our Larry. Go on, throw another at her, Eyetie spy,’ Annette encouraged her son, laughing as he bent down to pick up another piece of broken brick.

She wasn’t going to run, Lena told herself fiercely, she wasn’t. She would think about him instead, her lovely, lovely soldier boy. That way she couldn’t feel the pain of the sharp pieces of brick the children gathered round Annette were now hurling at her with shrieks of glee. They didn’t mean any harm, not really. It was just a game to them. Lena gasped as someone threw a heavier piece, which caught her between her shoulder blades, almost causing her to stumble.

‘Eyetie spy, Eyetie spy,’ the children were chanting. ‘Come on, let’s get her … Let’s kill the spy.’

‘What’s going on here?’

Lena had never felt more relieved to see the familiar face of the local policeman as he grabbed her arm to steady her.

‘Oh, it’s nothing, Davey, just the kids having a bit of a joke on Lena on account of her being an Eyetie, isn’t that right, Lena?’ Annette challenged her.

Lena longed to deny what she was saying, but she knew that if she did Annette would only tell her aunt and then she’d have her aunt going on at her and threatening to tell her uncle to take his belt to her.

Tears of misery and self-pity blurred her eyes. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had, not really, and her parents had never been the loving protective sort, too interested in quarrelling with one another to bother much about her, but right now she wished that her dad was here and that he could put Annette Hodson in her place and the fear of God into her just as she was trying to do to Lena.

Davey Shepherd had released her now.

‘Aye, well, no throwing stones, you lot,’ he told the now silent children. ‘Otherwise Hitler will come and get you.’

‘Lena’s an Eyetie and she should be locked up,’ Larry piped up truculently. ‘Me mam says so.’

Lena could tell from the way Davey didn’t look at her that he didn’t want to get any further involved.

‘You’d better get on your way,’ he told her in a gruff voice.

‘Aye, and don’t bother coming back,’ Annette called after her as Lena made her escape whilst Davey stood watching her.

There was brick dust on her cardigan sleeve. She’d look a fine mess turning up at work all dusty and dirty. Simone would give her a right mouthful and no mistake. The hairdresser might speak to her clients in an artificial and affected posh voice, but when they weren’t around and she was in a bad mood, she yelled at the girls who worked for her, using language so ripe it would have made a fishwife blush.

Lena had been working part time for Simone ever since she had left school, fitting the hairdressing work in round the cleaning jobs her Auntie Flo forced her to do, and which really were part of her aunt’s own job, but now Simone had offered to take her on full time and Lena had said ‘yes’ immediately. Other hairdressers might have closed down thinking that the war would be bad for business but Simone had different ideas and she was shrewd. She had told Lena that, with all the rationing and everything else, she reckoned women would want their hair doing more than ever, and that the war could actually be good for business.

She had been proved right. With so many women going into war work and earning their own money, they could afford to treat themselves.

Simone had told Lena right from the start that the main reason she was taking her on was Lena’s own hair.

‘They’ll take one look at you, and come in here expecting to be turned out looking the same. So you just think on to make sure that you tell them wot asks that it’s this salon that does your hair.’

Lena knew that her aunt was itching to make her leave the salon and get better-paid work in one of the munitions factories, but luckily for Lena she wasn’t old enough – yet. You had to be nineteen at least before they’d take you on, or so she’d heard. She’d heard too about the danger of working in munitions. There was a girl down the road who’d lost an eye and had her hands all burned, and that was nothing compared to the injuries some of the women got. Not that her auntie would care if she was injured.

It wasn’t just her that Auntie Flo didn’t like, Lena knew; she and Lena’s mother had not got on very well either, and her auntie was fond of pointing out that for all that Lena’s mother had been so proud of the fact that she was in service with a posh family, that hadn’t stopped her from getting herself into trouble with the Italian who had charmed his way into her knickers.

Lena found it hard to imagine that her mother had once loved her father. There had been no evidence of that love during Lena’s childhood. Her mother had always been criticising her husband, and Lena’s father had spent more time with his Italian family than he did with Lena and her mother. As she had grown up Lena had become used to hearing her every small misdemeanour put down to the ‘bad blood’ she had inherited from her Italian father. That had been one issue on which her mother and her auntie had been united.

Like many of those who had been in service, Lena’s mother had been a bit of a snob in her own way, and uppity too, saying that she wasn’t having Lena growing up rag-mannered and not knowing what was what, and how to do things right. Lena’s parents had died together in the November bombings of 1940, leaving Lena with no option other than to move in with her mother’s sister, whose ideas of what was and what was not acceptable were very different from those of Lena’s mother.

Lena could still remember having the back of her hands rapped when she’d hesitated over which piece of cutlery to pick up when her mother had been teaching her what to use.

Witnessing this, her aunt had jeered at her mother and they’d had a rare old argument about it, Auntie Flo claiming that it was plain daft giving Lena airs, and her mother retaliating that she wasn’t having her daughter showing herself up by not knowing her manners.

Her mother would certainly have had something to say about the state Liverpool and its people were in now, Lena thought, blinking against the gritty smoky air.

Where the narrow streets opened off the road she was walking along, running down towards the docks she could see new gaps where last night’s bombs had hit, and people picking their way carefully through the debris as they searched for their possessions. Fires were still burning in some of the newly bombed-out buildings down by the docks, fire crews playing water hoses on them. Here, though, where the road turned upward away from the docks, the buildings were relatively unscathed, with only the odd collapsed building.

She could see the salon up ahead. Thankfully, at least that was still standing. Lena didn’t reckon much to the chances of staying out of munitions if she lost her hairdressing job.

After what had just happened with Annette Hodson she’d have been tempted to pack her things and take herself off. There was plenty of work around now, and she’d heard that the council was rehousing anyone who’d been made homeless. Imagine living somewhere where there was no aunt and cousin, and no Annette Hodson either. But she couldn’t leave now, could she, not now that she had met him? She had to be there for when he came looking for her on his next leave.

A small wriggle of pleasure seized her. Hopefully next time there wouldn’t be any bombs falling and then they could make proper plans.

He wasn’t based at Seacombe barracks, but somewhere down south. She’d found that out from his papers, which she’d found in one of the pockets of his battledress, just as she’d also found out that he was single, his full name and his address in posh Wallasey.

Not that she’d got any need to go looking for him, because she just knew that he would come looking for her when he was next on leave.

Annette Hodson and her woes forgotten, Lena almost skipped the rest of the way to work, her head full of happy plans for the future she was going to share with her Charlie.

Charlie. She hugged the name to her, saying it inside her head and then in a determined whisper, Mrs Charles Firth. Lena gave another wriggle of blissful pleasure. Oh, but she could not wait to stand in front of her aunt with Charlie on her arm and his ring on her finger. That would show Auntie Flo, with all her talk of Lena having bad blood. Her Charlie had loved her dark curls and her dark eyes, and he’d love her curves too. A pink blush warmed Lena’s cheeks as she remembered just how much Charlie had loved them and how intimately. Of course, what she had let him do would have been very wrong if he hadn’t been a soldier and been at war. She tossed her head. A girl had to do the right thing by her chap when there was a war on. What if her Charlie were to be sent to fight overseas and …? Lena shivered, the joy draining from her. What if he had already gone overseas? She must not think like that. He wouldn’t go without coming to find her first. Not her Charlie. After all, he had said that he loved her and that he would marry her, hadn’t he?

THREE

Picking her way through the rubble littering the street, Katie stopped when something caught her eye, a bunch of May blossom, the kind that children picked from the hedgerow for their mothers. Its wilting flowers now lay in debris, its stems bruised and the flower petals covered in dust. As she bent down to pick it up tears filled Katie’s eyes. What was the matter with her? She hadn’t cried when she had seen the broken buildings, had she, and yet here she was crying over a few broken flowers. Where had they come from? Someone’s home? One of the houses that had stood in this street of flattened buildings? Katie touched one of the petals. A terrible feeling of helplessness and loss filled her. How many more nights could the city go on? And then what? Would they walk out of the air-raid shelters one morning to find them surrounded by Germans who had parachuted in during the night? That was the fear in everyone’s mind, but people would only voice it in private. Even Luke’s father, Sam, had started talking about the city not being able to hold out much longer.

She must not let her imagination run away with her. She must think of Luke and be strong. But she didn’t feel very strong, Katie admitted, as she picked her way carefully through the bricks and broken glass covering both the road and the pavement. It was just as well that she could walk from the Campions’ house on Edge Hill to the Littlewoods building where she worked as a postal censorship clerk, because there were no buses or trams running.

Everywhere she looked all she could see were damaged buildings, and the people of Liverpool exhausted by six long nights of air raids, each one destroying a bit more of their city and increasing their fear that Hitler was not going to stop until there wasn’t a building left standing.

The same people who five days ago had brushed the dust off their clothes and held their heads up high now looked shabby and pitiful. Her own shoes, polished last night by Sam Campion, who polished all his family’s shoes every night and included her own, were now covered in the dust that filled the air, coating everything, leaving a gritty taste in the mouth. Her cotton dress – the same one she had worn yesterday because it was simply impossible to wash anything and get it dry without it being covered in dust – looked tired instead of crisp and fresh. As she lifted her hand to push her hair off her face, Katie acknowledged how weak and afraid she felt.

Here she was, going to work, and she had no idea if there would be a building still standing for her to work in, but as she turned the corner, and looked up Edge Hill Road, she saw to her relief that the Littlewoods building was still standing.

As had happened the previous day and the day before that, there were ominous gaps and empty chairs at some of the desks where girls had not turned up for work, but it was the empty chair next to her own that caused Katie’s heart to thump with anxiety.

She and Carole had been friends from Katie’s first day at the censorship office when Carole had taken her under her wing, and the fact that Carole was dating one of the men in Luke’s unit had brought them even closer.

Katie knew that Carole was living with her aunt, whose home was much closer to the docks than the Campions’ and, as she looked from the empty chair to her watch and then towards Anne, who was in charge of their table, a terrible thought was filling her mind.

‘Carole isn’t here yet,’ she told Anne unnecessarily, unable to conceal her anxiety.

‘I haven’t been told anything.’ Anne looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, and Katie felt a stab of guilt. Her brother was a merchant seaman, and with one of the convoys, and her fiancé was fighting overseas. ‘Try not to worry. With all the damage that’s been done and the trams and buses not running properly she might just have got delayed.’

Katie gave her a wan smile. Anne was right, of course, but it was still hard not to worry.

The disruption to the postal service caused by the blitz meant that the letters they had to check were only arriving sporadically; Katie tried not to look at the empty chair as she started work.

Theirs was important work – vital for the safety of the nation, as they were constantly being told – and it demanded their full concentration, but it was hard to concentrate on the constant flow of written words, checking them for any sign that they might contain an encoded message, when she was so conscious of Carole’s empty chair. Katie herself was involved – as part of her work – in correspondence with someone who was thought to be a possible spy.

She wasn’t really cut out for that aspect of her work, as she was the first to admit, but as her supervisor had told her more than once, they all had a duty to do whatever had to be done to protect their country from its enemies.

The door to the corridor opened. Katie’s head jerked towards it, her breath leaking from her lungs in a sigh of relief as she saw her friend.

‘I was getting really worried about you,’ she began as Carole sat down, only to break off as she saw the tears fill Carole’s eyes and then spill down her face.

‘What is it?’ Katie asked worriedly.

Carole shook her head, searching in her handbag for an already damp handkerchief before telling her, ‘It’s our Rachel, my dad’s brother’s eldest. She bought it over the weekend. Collapsed building. She’d bin up to London to see her hubby back off to camp. He’d bin home on leave. Seven months pregnant, she was, an’ all. I were her bridesmaid when she got married the year before last.’

‘Oh, Carole …’ Katie didn’t know what to say. It was plain that Carole was very distressed, and with good reason.

Anne looked towards them and said quietly, ‘Katie, why don’t you take Carole down to the canteen so that she can have a cup of tea? Don’t be gone too long, mind. We’re short staffed and there’s a backlog building up.’

Still crying, Carole allowed Katie to guide her back into the corridor and from there to the canteen where a sympathetic tea lady provided them both with cups of hot tea.

‘It will have to be without sugar,’ she warned them.

‘I can’t take much more of this, Katie, I swear that I can’t,’ Carole wept. ‘It’s really getting to me, them bombing raids every night, not knowing if I’m still going to be alive in the morning and not getting any sleep, and now this. Our Rachel was only twenty. Her dad, my uncle Ken, thought she was too young to get married but she said that she was going to be a wife to her George whether her dad let her say the words in church or not, just in case anything should happen to him with him being sent overseas, so her dad gave in. But now she’s the one that’s bin killed and her poor little baby with her. Oh, Katie, what’s going to happen to us and to this country? It’s all right Churchill saying we’ve got to stand firm, but it isn’t him that’s getting bombed every night, is it? I keep thinking that I might never see me mum and dad again, and I’ve a good mind to get out of Liverpool whilst I still can and go home.’

‘London’s being bombed as well,’ Katie felt obliged to point out.

‘Yes, I know, but not like this.’

Katie knew there was nothing she could say, and nothing she could do either, other than put her own hand over Carole’s in a small gesture of comfort.

‘Come on, lads, tea break’s over – back to work,’ Luke instructed his men.

They’d been working for over four hours, since six in the morning, helping to clear the debris from one of the main roads out of the city. A few yards away a group of men from the Liverpool Gas Company, aided in their work by men from the Pioneer Corps, had also been having their tea break, the tea supplied by volunteers from the WVS and their mobile canteen.

‘You’re Sam Campion’s lad, aren’t you?’ one of the older men asked Luke, nodding his head when Luke confirmed that he was, and saying triumphantly, ‘Thought you were. You’ve got a real look of your dad. Working with him the other day, we were, when the Salvage lot were helping us to get what we could out of Duke Street, after it got bombed.’

Now it was Luke’s turn to nod. The Gas Company’s mains’ records and control equipment had been housed in their Duke Street premises and it had been vitally important that they were salvaged.

The city had been lucky in that, despite a large number of electricity substations being damaged, with temporary repairs, the power company was still able to supply everyone with electricity.

‘Jerry can’t come back much more,’ the other man told Luke, handing his cup over to the waiting WVS volunteer. ‘There ain’t much left to bomb.’

Not much left to bomb and a hell of a lot of clearing up to do, Luke thought grimly, as he turned back to his own men.

They had been detailed to work alongside the men from the city’s Debris Clearance and Road Repair Service, shifting the rubble of bombed and collapsed buildings out of the way so that the damage to the roads underneath could be repaired and the roads made passable.

Unlike the previous Sunday when they had been working in the city centre, today they were working closer to Bootle, where the majority of the bombs had been dropped during the night.

Whilst one work party cleared the debris into a large mass, another transported the rubble by requisitioned lorries to temporary tips on Netherfield Road and Byrom and Pitt Streets, and a third was responsible for shifting this debris into the lorries.

It was backbreaking work – unless of course you were detailed to drive one of the lorries.

They’d been working for another half an hour when there was noisy commotion in the street behind them. Luke turned and watched grimly as a huge piece of machinery was driven down the road towards them.

He’d already heard all about the fun and games caused by the overenthusiastic help of the newly arrived detachment of American engineers and their heavy excavating and earth-moving equipment, sent to England under the new Lend Lease Act, along with the engineers who were to show the British how to use these monster machines.

In order to speed up clearing the rubble from the bombed buildings, the City Fathers had asked the Americans if they could help. Liverpool’s streets, though, were not designed for wide American machinery, and it had turned out that the instructors sent over with them had not actually driven the machines before themselves. There had been one or two unfortunate incidents, including one in which a machine had become stuck down a narrow street. The sight of such a thing lumbering towards them now had Luke’s men exchanging knowing looks.

‘I guess you guys could use some help,’ the gum-chewing sergeant, who had clambered down from the cab of the vehicle along with four GIs told Luke laconically.

One of the tall, broad-shouldered black GIs grinned and commented, ‘Hey, Sarge, look at that. They’re using shovels. Ain’t that something?’

His tone was affable enough but Luke could see that his men were bristling slightly, and he could understand why. He wasn’t too keen on the big American’s manner himself, although he suspected that rather than being deliberately patronising, the GI simply wasn’t aware of the effect his words were likely to have on men who had had little sleep during five continuous nights of heavy bombing, and who had just spent the last four hours trying to deal with some of the aftereffects of those bombs.

‘Hey, buddy, we’ll have that truck filled for you in ten minutes flat,’ the sergeant told Luke.

‘Ten minutes. Hey, Sarge, I reckon we could do it in five. In fact I’m ready to bet on it. Ten dollars says we fill the truck in five.’

Luke frowned. He had no ideas of the rules governing the US Army but in the British Army gambling was forbidden. Some of the men might run illegal card schools but they would never have challenged a sergeant to a bet – especially not in public. The Americans were slouching against the cab of their vehicle, laughing and smoking even though they hadn’t been given permission to stand easy, and talking to their sergeant as though they were all equals and they had no respect for his rank at all. Luke’s frown deepened. He might only be a corporal but he knew how to make sure his men were a credit to their regiment and he would certainly never have tolerated such sloppy, unsoldierly behaviour.

The sergeant, though, far from castigating the soldier, was unbuttoning the flap on his pocket and removing a wad of notes, peeling some off and slapping them down against the shiny metal of the machinery.

‘Ten says you can’t and another twenty says you can’t do it in four minutes.’

‘Hey, boys, come and see the sarge lose his money,’ the private called out.

Laughing and whooping, the men crowded round, all of them peeling off notes.

‘You’d better have big pockets to match that big mouth of yours, Clancy,’ the sergeant derided the GI, ‘’cos you sure as hell are going to have to dig deep into them.’

The Americans were behaving more as though they were on a bank holiday outing than involved in the serious business of dealing with war-damaged buildings, but then of course this wasn’t their home country or their war, Luke thought bitterly, remembering that the American were still neutral and staying out of the war. Given the choice, his pride would have inclined him to turn his back on them and simply pretend that they did not exist. But of course he knew that he couldn’t.

‘OK, you guys, let’s get to work,’ the sergeant announced, stepping away from the machine so that the soldier he’d addressed as Clancy could climb up into the cab and set the thing moving.

The sound of it alone, rumbling down the road, was enough to bring down any unstable buildings, Luke thought sourly as he walked alongside it.

Luke took his role as corporal very seriously. His men, their safety and the proper execution of whatever work they were given to do were his responsibility.

Clancy brought the machine to a halt and then activated the large ‘shovel’ to grab some of the rubble, swinging it over to the waiting truck.

The American soldiers cheered as the claws opened and deposited the rubble into the lorry.

‘Hey, buddy, here’s twenty bucks says you can’t clear the lot in ten minutes,’ the sergeant yelled, as a second load was added to the first, and then a third.

‘He can’t do that,’ Luke protested. ‘There’s a weight limit on those trucks. The axles won’t stand up to them being overloaded.’

Strictly speaking the British driver of the truck wasn’t under Luke’s command and was in any case a civilian. Luke, though, wasn’t about to stand to one side whilst the truck driver was placed in danger, and he could see that that was going to happen.

‘Hey, buddy,’ the sergeant slapped Luke on the shoulder, ‘This is the US Army you’re dealing with now, and we say there ain’t no such thing as can’t.’

The American soldier in the cab of the earth-moving vehicle was grinning as he yelled back, ‘You’re on, Sarge. Watch this.’

Angry now, Luke warned the sergeant, ‘Look, you’ve got to stop this. There’s at least two full loads and maybe three there. It’s impossible to get it all into one truck.’

Ignoring Luke’s warning, the sergeant called up to the driver, ‘Go to it, Clancy. Let’s show these Brits what being American is all about.’

Luke was in danger of losing his temper. ‘Any fool can see that there’s too much there to go in one truck, and that it’s asking for trouble to try,’ he insisted.

‘Hey, buddy, you’re the one who’ll be asking for trouble. See these stripes?’ the sergeant told Luke. ‘They say sergeant in any man’s language. Now go watch how we clear the roads in America – and that’s an order, soldier.’

Luke could feel his face burning with humiliation and fury. They both knew that the American had no authority over him, but the damage had been done and he had humiliated Luke in front of Luke’s own men as well as his own.

Walking away from him Luke went over to where Andy was leaning on his shovel, watching grimly as the lorry was heaped with load after load of rubble.

‘Go and find whoever’s in charge of the nearest ARP unit for me,’ Luke told him. ‘Perhaps Mr Know-it-all back there will listen to him—’ He broke off as suddenly the lorry buckled and then tilted, calling out a warning to its civilian driver, who had been standing a couple of feet away, smoking. But it was already too late and the man’s screams as the lorry fell on top of him were filling the street.

Luke and his men ran towards the scene. The collapsed lorry had disgorged its contents, covering the street in the debris they had spent four hours clearing up, but none of them gave that a second thought as they rushed to the aid of the suddenly silent driver.

Luke had known that there would be nothing they could do – the full weight of the lorry had fallen sideways onto the driver – but he and his men still worked frantically to lift it.

The American sergeant’s voice was thin and strained with shock as he muttered, ‘How the hell did that happen?’

Luke turned to look at him, saying fiercely, ‘You killed him. You know that, don’t you, Sergeant.’

‘It was an accident. We were trying to help.’ For such a big man, now he seemed oddly diminished and very afraid, but Luke was in no mood to show him any mercy.

‘No, you were trying to win a bet,’ said Luke coldly.

Inwardly he was shaking with a mixture of savage fury and despair. Hadn’t the city lost enough lives without this? But what did these Americans know? How could they understand? They weren’t even in the war.

FOUR

Even though it was now late morning, the small rest centre where Jean worked as a volunteer as part of her WVS duties, handing out cups of tea and offering words of comfort to those who needed them, was packed with people who had been bombed out in other parts of the city, and whose local rest centres had been demolished along with their homes.

Jean had to squeeze her way past them, calming the fraught nerves of people queuing, who thought she was trying to jump in front of them by showing them her WVS badge and explaining that she was on her way to the kitchen to relieve one of her colleagues. The heartfelt apologies that followed her explanation brought her close to tears. People were so frightened and so grateful for even the smallest amount of help.

‘Jean, thank goodness you’re here.’ Noreen Smith, who was in charge of their small group, sighed in relief when Jean finally made it through to the small kitchen. ‘We’ve been rushed off our feet, with last night’s bombing. Bootle got hit ever so bad and we’ve got folk coming in from there with nothing apart from what they’re standing up in. I don’t know how the city’s going to cope, I really don’t, what with so many roads blocked, and no proper supplies or outside help able to get in.’

‘Well, my Sam and our Luke will be doing their best to get the roads cleared, along with everyone else on clearing-up duties, that I do know,’ Jean told her stoutly, a small frown creasing her forehead when she remembered that just before he had left for work this morning Sam had told her that there was something he wanted to discuss with her.

‘What is it?’ she had asked him but he had shaken his head and told her gruffly, ‘There isn’t time now. They’ll be waiting for me down at the depot.’ ‘Sam …’ she had protested, but he had shaken his head, making clear that he wasn’t going to be coaxed into saying any more.

‘I don’t doubt that,’ Noreen was saying, dragging Jean’s attention back. ‘We’ve all seen the way in which everyone’s turned to and got on with things.’ She shook her head, her composure suddenly slipping as she added, ‘Even my Frank is saying now that we can’t hold out much longer.’

The two women exchanged mutually understanding looks as Jean removed her coat and hung it up.

Every rest centre had a store of second-hand clothes and blankets it was able to hand out to those in need to tide them over. The rule was that all blankets had to be returned as soon as Government coupons and fresh papers had been supplied, so that they could be put back in store for the next person in need, but as Noreen had pointed out two nights ago, increasingly people weren’t returning the blankets, because they were virtually all they had. The council was doing its best, but the sheer number of people being made homeless meant that supplies were running out.

‘At least we had that convoy of Queen’s Messengers get in from Manchester before the roads got blocked,’ Noreen told Jean.

The Queen’s Messengers was the name given to a mobile canteen service provided by the Queen, with convoys based all over the country, staffed by the WVS and ready to rush to any emergency where food was required.

‘And it’s a mercy that they did. I don’t know how they’d have gone on in Bootle if they hadn’t, from what my Frank’s said.’

Noreen’s husband, Frank, worked for the Gas Company, and like Jean’s Sam he was spending long hours helping to repair bomb damage.

‘From what I’ve heard they nearly got bombed themselves,’ Jean told her.

‘Where’s that billeting officer?’ Noreen continued. ‘She’s normally here by now.’

On the morning after a bombing raid every rest centre that was operational and not bomb damaged received a visit from one of the City Council’s billeting officers, carrying with her lists of available accommodation.

‘It’s all very well the council saying that no one’s ever had to spend a second night at a rest centre on account of them finding them accommodation, but what about all them trekkers?’

In her indignation Noreen’s voice lost its careful gentility, her accent becoming stronger.

‘And don’t tell me that it’s not them that’s responsible for all our blankets disappearing. After all, blankets don’t just walk out by themselves, do they? No. It’s not right, that’s what I say. No decent folk would want to go roaming around the countryside sleeping in barns and that, like that lot do. Stands to reason, doesn’t it, if they choose to do that when the council says it can find them a proper roof over their heads?’

‘I wouldn’t fancy it myself,’ Jean admitted, ‘but then I haven’t been bombed out, and we’ve had some in here that have had that happen to them more than once. I dare say there’s some folk that are just too plain afraid to stay in the city at night.’

‘That’s all very well, but in that case they should stay in the country and not come back here expecting to be fed and taking our blankets.’

Noreen was normally a good-natured soul and Jean suspected that her current snappiness could be put down to the strain they were all feeling.

It was also true that there was some hostility to and suspicion of the trekkers, as they were unofficially called, with some people even suggesting that their number included men who were trying to avoid conscription.

From what Jean had seen, though, they seemed decent enough sorts, albeit from the poorer dock area of the city, which had been more heavily bombed, with a lot of them coming in to work during the day before trekking back out to the country at night.

‘I’ve even heard as how the City’s putting on special trucks and handing out tickets to them for places on them, to get them out at night.’

If that was true surely it must mean that the city was in an even more desperate situation than anyone was saying, Jean thought worriedly. The only reason the council could have for encouraging them to leave at night had to be because they couldn’t provide accommodation for them because so many buildings had been destroyed.

Removing her hat-pin, then taking off her hat and putting it on the shelf above her coat, Jean reached for her apron, ready to relieve the WVS volunteer who was manning the tea urn.

After the first and even the second night of bombing the mood of those who had come to the rest centres had been defiant and determinedly cheerful. Jokes had been cracked and heads had been held high, but now that had all changed, Jean acknowledged as she poured a cup of tea for an exhausted-looking young woman with three small children clinging to her side.

‘’Ere, get a move on wi’ them kids, will yer?’ the woman next to her grumbled, impatient for her own cup of tea, and moving up before the young woman could get out of the way properly, accidentally jarring her arm so that her precious cup of tea was spilled.

Tears filled the young woman’s eyes.

‘Don’t worry, love,’ Jean tried to comfort her, pouring her a fresh cup of tea. ‘The billeting officer will be here soon and get you sorted out.’

The young woman gave a hiccuping sob and shook her head. ‘He’ll be lucky if he can do that.’ She was shaking now.

Catching Noreen’s eye, Jean murmured, ‘Stand in for me for a few minutes, will you, Noreen love, whilst I see what’s to do?’

It was recognised amongst their group that Jean, with her motherly manner, had a way of dealing with situations like this one so Noreen nodded, allowing Jean to leave her post to usher the young woman and her children into the back room, where she offered her a seat on one of its battered hard wooden chairs.

The young woman shook her head again. ‘I darsen’t ’cos if I sit down I reckon I’ll never want to get up again. It’s bin three nights now since we had any proper sleep. Me and the kids were living with my hubby’s mam, but she got fed up, what wi’ the little one crying, and then me and her had words, and she said we had to leave. She’s never liked me. Then we went and stayed with my mam but she’s got our nan and me sisters there with her, and then when I tried to go back to my Ian’s mam’s I found out she’d been bombed. Half the street had gone.’

‘Our nan got killed by a bomb,’ the eldest child announced. ‘Served her right, it did, for throwing us out.’

He was too young to understand, of course, but his mother had gone bright red.

‘I wouldn’t really have wished her any harm, only she didn’t half wind me up and sometimes you say things you shouldn’t. My Ian will have something to say when he finds out. He’s bound to blame me, ’cos she was bad on her legs, you see, and she wouldn’t have gone to the shelter.’

Poor girl. How awful to have to carry that kind of burden of guilt, Jean thought sympathetically.

‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ she told her. ‘And as for your husband having something to say, well, I reckon he’ll be too relieved to see that you and his kiddies are safe, to do anything but give you a big hug. That’s better,’ Jean smiled approvingly when the young woman took a deep breath and stopped crying. ‘You go and wait for the billeting officer, and no more tears.’

The girl – because she was only a girl really, Jean thought – was, plainly relieved to have got her guilt off her chest. Poor thing, Jean thought sympathetically as she ushered her back to the main hall.

But even though she had been listening to what the girl had had to say, Jean had still been thinking about what Sam had said to her this morning about wanting to have a talk with her.

The small knot of anxiety in her stomach tightened. She was pretty sure she knew what it was Sam wanted to say, but she hoped that she was wrong.

‘Charles’s release papers arrived this morning,’ Vi told Bella in a pleased voice, indicating in the direction of the front-room, where an official-looking buff envelope was propped up on the mantelpiece, against the clock. ‘And about time too, with less than a month to go to the wedding. Your poor father hasn’t been home for the last four nights and it will be a relief to him once Charles is out of the army and back here in Wallasey working for him. You’re going to have to get your skates on, Bella, about getting your things moved back here and the house left nice for Daphne and Charles.’

Bella’s mouth compressed. She wasn’t at all pleased about being forced to give up her home to her brother and his wife-to-be.

‘It isn’t as simple as that,’ she to her mother. ‘I’ve got refugees billeted on me, remember.’

‘Haven’t you told them to find somewhere else yet?’

‘It isn’t up to me to tell them anything. Daddy will have to tell the council, and they won’t be very happy, not with Jan being a bomber pilot and a war hero,’ Bella pointed out.

Vi gave her daughter a sharp look. The restrictions of the wartime diet, with its lack of protein and its hunger-appeasing carbohydrates, meant that Vi, like so many of the country’s older women, had put on weight around her mid section. As a family the Firths were luckier than most in that Edwin’s money and his contacts ensured that they were able to buy goods on the black market that others could not afford, when such goods were available, but everyone was beginning to feel the pinch now. Vi’s floral summer dress bought the previous year was straining slightly round her waist. Vi’s mouse-brown hair was also beginning to show touches of grey, although she still had it washed and set every week in the sculptured iron-hard waves she favoured. Her nails were painted with clear nail varnish, bought on the black market. The leader of Vi’s WVS group disapproved of the volunteers wearing nail polish at a time when the country was in such a dire position, although Good Housekeeping magazine was urging its readers to try to look their best to boost everyone’s morale.

Carefully checking one of her rigid waves with her fingertips, Vi warned, ‘There’s no point in you being difficult, Bella. It is your father who owns the house, after all, and I fully agree with him that it makes sense for Charles and Daphne to live there and for you to come home. Your father’s got enough to do as it is without having to sort out your refugees, and if I were you I wouldn’t risk getting on the wrong side of him. He’s been very generous to you, and I do think you might show a bit more gratitude.’

Gratitude for what, Bella wanted to say – taking her home off her? But she had learned some hard lessons these last few weeks, and she knew that she could no longer rely on her mother’s support and indulgence.

She looked at her watch. ‘I must go. We’re having to double up as a rest centre as well as the crèche, and since Laura is still on leave visiting her parents, I’m in charge of everything.’

Laura Wright was in charge of running the government-organised crèche where Bella worked as her deputy.

A note of pride had crept into Bella’s voice. Against all the odds, during these last few days she had discovered that she not only had a talent for organisation but that she was also thriving on the need to get things done and make decisions. She had been up this morning at first light, hurrying out to the school, almost in one way actually rather thrilled to see the line of people forming outside – victims of the bombing in Liverpool who had made their way over the water to Wallasey, prepared to sleep rough if it meant a decent night’s sleep, and now patiently waiting for a hot drink.

Queuing with them had been ARP workers, and fire watchers, and Bella had dealt with everything and everyone with calm efficiency – until the mothers had started arriving, bringing their little ones to the crèche, and amongst them she had seen him, smiling at her as brazen as anything, just as though … as though what? Despite what she had told him he actually still expected her to go off for that weekend with him?

‘Bella, you aren’t listening.’ Her mother’s protest broke into her angry thoughts.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Bella repeated. ‘I only came round to ask if you’d managed to get in touch with Auntie Jean to see if everyone’s all right. I know it was Bootle that got the worse of it last night but they are in Liverpool.’

Bella could see immediately that her mother wasn’t pleased by her remark.

In fact, if she was honest, her concern for her mother’s sister’s family’s safety had surprised Bella herself. She had put it down to the fact that since she was now involved in the war effort herself it was only natural that she should be more aware of what was happening.

‘Well, of course they’ll be all right. Why shouldn’t they be? It’s poor Charles you should be worrying about, after what happened to him, being set on like that and left for dead … Oh, that will be your father,’ Vi announced as they heard the front door being opened. ‘Now you’ll be able to tell him about those refugees, but I warn you he isn’t going to be pleased.’

Her father already didn’t look pleased, Bella acknowledged as he came into the kitchen, not even when her mother announced happily, ‘Charles’s release papers have arrived, Edwin.’

He greeted that news with a mere grunt, before saying that he was going upstairs to get changed and then he was going back to work. ‘And don’t expect me back tonight if there’s another air raid.’

‘Hadn’t you better open Charles’s letter, Edwin? There might be something he needs to sign, and if there is, Bella can go into Liverpool and take it to him. I do wish the hospital would say when he can come home. Poor brave boy. Bella, go and fetch the letter for your father.’

It was easier to comply than to argue, Bella decided, retrieving the envelope and handing it over to her father with an angry swish of the skirt of her cotton dress, thinking to herself: Poor brave boy nothing.

‘I’m so glad that Charles will soon be out of the army. He should never have gone in,’ Vi told Edwin, as she tried to smooth her dress over the curve of her hip. Thank goodness it was May with the summer ahead of them, during which she could try to lose a few pounds. Presenting a smart appearance to the world was important to Vi. Not that a little extra weight would have mattered if she’d been able to buy herself some new clothes, but with Lewis’s bombed there was now a shortage of shops where one could buy smart clothes. Vi certainly didn’t intend to go shopping somewhere like Bon Marche, Liverpool’s more price-conscious and less stylish department store.

‘Well, he did and according to this letter he’s going to have to stay in,’ Edwin announced, causing Vi to gasp and Bella to look at him.

‘But that’s not possible,’ Vi protested, her face flushing with anger. ‘You must have read it wrong, Edwin. He can’t possibly stay in the army. He’s getting married.’

Edwin shrugged, handing the letter over to Vi, saying curtly, ‘Here then, read it for yourself.’

Bella was surprised that her father wasn’t making more of a fuss. It wasn’t like him to take bad news so calmly.

‘You’ll have to do something, Edwin,’ Vi told him when she had read the letter.

‘Like what?’ he demanded testily.

‘Well, surely there’s something you can do,’ Vi insisted. ‘After all, you can’t possibly continue to manage with only that dreadful young woman to help you.’

‘Well, it looks like I’m going to have to, doesn’t it?’ Edwin responded.

‘But, Edwin …’

‘Don’t start, Vi,’ he warned her sharply. ‘I’ve got more than enough to worry about without you carrying on.’

‘But what will Daphne’s parents say? And poor Daphne too – she’s expecting to move up here with her new husband and how can she do that if the army won’t release him?’

‘Well, she’ll just have to lump it or leave it, won’t she?’ said Edwin unsympathetically, opening the kitchen door and disappearing into the hall.

Bella looked at her mother as they heard him going up the stairs.

‘I really don’t know what gets into your father at times,’ Vi complained. ‘I know he’s busy, but you’d think that would make him realise how important it is that he does something about getting Charles out of the army as quickly as possible.’

Vi’s pursed lips and flushed face warned Bella that there was likely to be a row when her father came back downstairs. She didn’t want to be dragged into it, not when Charlie getting out of the army and coming home with his new bride meant that she had to give up her house.

‘Look, Mother,’ she told Vi firmly, ‘I’d better go. We’re going to be inundated with requests to take in more children with all this bombing. I’ve already requisitioned extra supplies and I want to get back to the school and see if they’ve arrived.’

‘Your father is going to have to do something to get Charles out of the army. He’s getting married,’ Vi repeated, plainly still too concerned about the bad news in the letter to pay attention to what Bella was saying.

‘Being in the army doesn’t prevent him getting married,’ Bella pointed out, ‘and there’s nothing to stop Daphne staying where she is with her parents, seeing as Charlie is based closer to them than he is to Wallasey. It’s what plenty of newly marrieds are having to do, after all.’

‘I might have expected you to say something like that,’ said Vi crossly, ‘but I wouldn’t go counting any chickens if I were you, Bella. I’m sure your father will be able to sort something out. It means so much to him to have Charles home and working with him. He’s been looking forward to them working together as father and son ever such a lot. He’ll be dreadfully upset.’

Her father hadn’t looked particularly upset to her, Bella reflected, as she kissed her mother on the cheek, and then paused to ask her, ‘You won’t forget to find out if Auntie Jean’s all right, will you?’

The look of affronted astonishment her mother gave her was well-deserved, Bella admitted, as she stepped out of the back door and into the May sunshine. After all, she wasn’t close to her aunt and uncle and their family – not even to Grace, who was a similar age to herself – and in fact rarely gave them any thought.

A pall of grey across the sky to the south obscured the horizon, and in the air there was a smell that reminded Bella of the scent of the morning after Bonfire Night, only this was much stronger.

She wrinkled her nose. There’d been civil defence workers coming into the newly created rest centre this morning telling tales of bomb blasts that left people covered from head to foot in soot from collapsed chimneys, and Bella had seen for herself the now dispossessed-looking, disgustingly dirty and down at heel. She looked at her own immaculately clean summer frock and gave a small fastidious shudder. She simply didn’t know how she could possibly cope without her lovely clean bathroom and her freshly laundered clothes.

Bella’s comment about Jean had left Vi feeling thoroughly cross. Since when had Bella had any interest in the welfare of her auntie Jean and her family?

The freedoms that widowhood and having her own roof over her head, not to mention an allowance from her father, had given her were encouraging her daughter to get rather above herself, and all the more so since she’d got involved in this crèche, Vi decided. That was the trouble with this war, it was encouraging young women like Bella to do all manner of things they would not normally have been doing. Vi had heard other mothers of grown-up daughters saying exactly the same thing. The war was giving Bella’s generation far more freedom than Vi and her contemporaries had ever enjoyed. Too much freedom, in fact.

It was a great pity that Bella wasn’t more biddable and dutiful like dearest Daphne.

Edwin would have to do something about getting Charles out of the army.

Vi heard her husband coming down the stairs and went into the hall, but before she could say anything he told her irritably, ‘Not now, I haven’t got time.’

Vi opened her mouth to protest, but it was too late: Edwin was already opening the front door and on his way out. She certainly couldn’t say anything to him now when the neighbours might hear.

She’d have to go into Liverpool and tell Charles the bad news herself. Poor boy, he would be devastated.

Grace’s heart sank as the first person she saw when she came back on the ward after her break was her aunt, but it was too late for Grace to avoid her.

‘Poor Charles, I hope you’re looking after him properly, Grace. He has been through a very bad time, you know. Of course he’s been fearfully brave, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t recommended for a medal of some sort. He certainly deserves one.’

He certainly did, Grace thought grimly. She could agree with her aunt on that point, but the medal she would like to pin on her cousin wouldn’t be for bravery. Oh, no, it would be for swinging the lead and flirting with any nurse gullible enough to be taken in by him.

‘He’s just had a terrible shock, you know. I’ve had to give him some dreadful news, but he’s borne it bravely.’

Grace glanced towards the bed where Charlie was lying, his face turned away from them as he watched the new probationer who just happened to have a very good pair of legs.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Aunt.’

‘Well, yes, of course. How is your mother?’

‘She’s fine. I’ll tell her that you were asking after her.’

Asking after her but not making any mention of going to visit Mum, Grace thought critically. But then that was her aunt all over.

As he lay watching the probationer with the good legs, whilst his mother stood talking to Grace, Charlie realised that he was by no means as bothered about having failed to convince the Medical Board to discharge him from the army as he had pretended to his mother he was.

Stationed where he was in barracks with easy access to London, and on home duties, might not give him as much money in his pocket as working for his father would have done, but it gave him one heck of a lot more freedom, and besides, there were always ways and means of making a bit of money if you knew how to go about things. There were always spivs hanging about the barracks ready to buy a chap’s drink and cigarette allowance – every soldier got either a bottle of Scotch or a bottle of gin a week – and anything else that might be going that could be sold on the black market. A brisk business was conducted selling items that had found their way out of the stores, and then there were the card schools, and one or two other wheezes.

Being here in hospital had given Charlie time to think and what he had been thinking was that he might have been a bit rash in letting his mother persuade him into getting engaged to Daphne. Typically for Charlie, it was always someone else who was responsible for those things in his life for which he did not want to take responsibility. He had conveniently forgotten how pleased with himself he had been when it had first occurred to him that proposing to Daphne would be a good way of getting himself into his parents’ good books and getting out of the army.

Now in Charlie’s memory of events it was his mother who had urged him to propose to Daphne, and his father who had urged him to leave the army, whilst he had simply and good-naturedly allowed himself to be carried along by their enthusiasm.

Army life was really a bit of a doddle if you knew how to work things in your own favour, which Charlie boasted to himself that he did. He and a few other like-minded lads had scarcely missed a weekend in London the whole time he’d been at the barracks, and even when he had, there had still been some fun to be enjoyed locally, what with the townspeople eager to entertain them and the prettiest girls in the town eager to dance with them.

Marriage was all very well, and something that a chap naturally had to do at some stage, especially with the country being at war, and a chap’s parents making a fuss, but lying here in hospital with pretty nurses everywhere made a chap think, it really did, and what it had made Charlie think was that he wasn’t sure he was quite ready to get married yet.

The fact of the matter was that he’d actually been thinking about suggesting that he and Daphne put things off for a while. They could stay engaged, of course, but as he’d planned to remind Daphne, her own mother had originally suggested that they should wait. However, when he’d outlined this plan to his mother a few minutes ago, she’d opposed it immediately, getting herself into one of her states, and protesting that it was far too late for him to talk about delaying the wedding now, and reminding him of how lucky he was to have such a sweet girl to marry as Daphne Wrighton-Bude, and how generous his father had been on account of him marrying her.

Listening to his mother had suddenly brought home to Charlie just what his life would be like if he did leave the army and come back to Wallasey to work for his father, which was why right now he was actually feeling rather relieved that his discharge had been refused, and that he was to report back to camp as soon as he had been declared medically fit to leave hospital.

The pretty nurse with the good legs and the knowing smile, with whom he’d already indulged in a bit of harmless verbal flirtation, walked past the end of his bed and, after a quick look to make sure that his mother was still deep in conversation with his cousin Grace, he winked at her and congratulated himself mentally on being one of those people for whom life always had a way of working out well.

‘Well, tell your mother that I was asking after her, won’t you?’ Vi reminded Grace, for all the world, Grace thought indignantly, as though her mother was nothing and her auntie Vi was something very special indeed.

They might be twins but her mother and her auntie Vi were as different as chalk and cheese in nature; you’d never even have thought they were sisters, never mind twins. Privately Grace was glad that her mother’s twin lived in Wallasey and not closer at hand, and that they didn’t have to see much of her or her family. It might have been through her cousin Bella that she had first met Seb, but she and Bella certainly weren’t close and neither were Luke and Charlie, whilst her dad made no secret of the fact that he had no time for Auntie Vi’s husband, Edwin.

‘Yes, I’ll tell her that, Auntie Vi,’ Grace agreed politely, proud of the nurses’ training that enabled her to keep her composure and not give her real feelings away.

‘I dare say your mother wishes she’d listened to me when I warned her to evacuate into the country, especially now. What are those sisters of yours going to do now that Lewis’s has been bombed?’

‘Lewis’s is still going to be doing business, Auntie Vi. They’re moving across into a warehouse.’ Grace smiled serenely but inwardly she was thoroughly irritated by her auntie’s manner.

What she had said about Lewis’s was true, but it was also true that the twins had been told that the department store would have much less floor space, and that with the combination of the fire and the lack of goods to sell thanks to rationing, Lewis’s wouldn’t be keeping on all of the staff.

She had, Grace decided, had enough of her aunt. Perhaps she felt more irritated by her than she should, because not only had she been on nights throughout the bombings, she had also had to come back on duty after only five hours’ sleep to fill in for a sick colleague. At least when she finished this shift, since she was starting days again tomorrow she could go straight to bed and get some sleep before the Luftwaffe started dropping their bombs again. She consulted the watch she wore pinned on a chain to the inside of her dress pocket, and then addressed her aunt briskly in her best no-nonsense voice.

‘Visiting time’s over now, Auntie, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave, otherwise we shall both be in trouble with Sister.’

‘What?’ Somehow, before Vi could voice her indignation, her niece was walking her down past Charles’s bed and through the ward doors, and saying calmly to her, ‘I’ll tell Mum that you were asking after her.’

Really, the modern generation of young women were most disrespectful to their elders and betters. She would certainly have something to say to Jean about her daughter’s behaviour the next time she saw her.

As she left the hospital Vi pressed a handkerchief to her mouth in an effort to keep out the dust. How foolish some people were walking around without their gas masks. Vi never went anywhere without hers. How dreadful Liverpool looked with its bombed-out buildings and its shabby citizens. Thank heavens she did not live here any more. She couldn’t wait to get back to Wallasey. She just hoped there wouldn’t be any delays with the ferry now that one of them had been sunk by the Germans. Such a nuisance, you’d really have thought that someone would have made sure that the ferry boats were properly protected.

Poor Charles. He had taken his bad news so well, even being gentlemanly enough to suggest putting off the wedding for a year to give Daphne time to grow accustomed to the idea of being married to a serving soldier. How noble he was. Fortunately she had managed to make him see that Daphne would not want him to make such a sacrifice. She would have to make sure that Daphne’s mother understood just how noble he had wanted to be, of course, when she telephoned her with the sad news that Charles was not after all going to be discharged from the army.

‘So what do you think we should do then?’

Lou and Sasha had just been told that, reluctantly, Lewis’s was going to have to let them go – news that wasn’t unexpected but that now meant that they would have to find new jobs. Now they were in the cloakroom, changing their shoes and collecting their cardigans.

‘Well, we can’t join the ATS or anything like that. We’re not old enough yet. Dad would have to sign the forms ’cos we aren’t twenty-one and you know that he wouldn’t.’

Sam was a loving and protective father, and it was true that he would not want to see them enlisting and going into uniform, preferring to keep them close to home. Their mother would support him in that decision as well.

‘We could lie about our ages. I heard of someone who did that and—’

‘But they probably looked older; we don’t even look sixteen properly,’ Sasha pointed out to her twin.

It was always Lou who came up with the ideas and Sasha who pointed out the pitfalls in them.

But now it was Sasha who said quietly, ‘We could always try to find out if—’

And Lou who stopped her with a quick, ‘No, we can’t do that. I know we said that we wanted to join ENSA but we can’t now, not after what happened. It wouldn’t be fair to Mum and Dad.’

‘No,’ Sasha agreed.

The twins had been mad on music and dancing for as long as they and their family could remember. They had driven their father to distraction with the music they played upstairs in their bedroom on their gramophone player as they practised the dance routines they had seen at the pictures, adapting them and even making up their own routines – and they were good, they both knew that.

With their mum’s youngest sister, their auntie Francine, already a singer and a member of ENSA, they had reasoned that if they could just get a bit of stage experience themselves then they could end up famous, and even perhaps go to Hollywood and be in pictures themselves.

But things had gone badly wrong, and five nights ago, on the night that should have been their big moment, they had quarrelled very badly. Whilst Liverpool was being bombed they had come close to losing one another for ever, and they both knew they would never forget how that had felt.

‘No more dancing,’ Lou had said fiercely, when finally everyone had stopped fussing and they were on their own together in the safety of their shared bedroom.

‘And no more … boys,’ Sasha had said firmly.

‘So what are we going to do now?’ Lou asked her twin now, straightening her blouse collar in front of the mirror.

‘We’ll have to find war work of some kind,’ Sasha told her as they left Lewis’s premises for the last time.

For a moment Lou’s eyes lit up with their old enthusiasm, but then she shook her head.

‘We’ve just said that we can’t join up or anything, and Mum’s made us promise that we won’t go into munitions.’

‘Mmm, I know.’

They looked at one another again. It was hard not to feel dispirited, especially when everyone else seemed to be busy doing something.

‘Come on,’ Lou announced, linking her arm through her twin’s. ‘Let’s go home. Do you think there’ll be another air raid tonight?’

‘I expect so,’ Sasha answered. ‘Although it doesn’t look like there’s much left to bomb really. No, not that way,’ she told Lou sharply as her twin made to cross the road in the direction of the Royal Court Theatre.

Sasha’s colour was high, and of course Lou knew why. She was afraid that the cause of their quarrel might come walking out of the theatre, and she was afraid because despite what she had told her, really Sasha was keen on Kieran Mallory, the good-looking young man who had been making up to them both behind each other’s back, and whose uncle worked at the Royal Court Theatre.

A feeling of intense pain gripped Lou. She and Sasha had made up their quarrel and outwardly they were, if anything, even closer than they had been before. They had both sworn that they were never ever going to let anything or anyone come between them again, but despite all the effort they were both putting into pretending that nothing had changed they both knew that something had.

The doctor had finished examining Charlie and now he looked down at him, announcing, ‘Well, Private Firth, everything seems to be in order, so I think we can safely discharge you. Go and see the almoner first thing tomorrow morning and she’ll sort you out with everything you’ll need and let your commanding officer know that you’ve been discharged as fit to return to duty.’

He wouldn’t really mind going back, Charlie admitted. He’d missed his jaunts into London and the fun to be had there.

Charlie had quickly discovered that there was nothing quite like the threat of war to weaken a certain kind of girl’s willpower along with her knicker elastic. It was a pity his mother had made such a fuss about his suggestion that he and Daphne should delay getting married. Mind you, marriage didn’t have to stop him having a bit of fun. There was a war on, after all, and having a bit of fun didn’t mean anything; it was just a bit of fun, with no harm done.

Pity there was no chance of him persuading Daphne to come up to Wallasey to live. She’d be safely out of the way up here, but once she knew he wasn’t going to get his discharge she’d insist on staying with her parents. Daphne and her mother were very close. Luckily the Dorset village where they lived was a good two hours’ drive away from camp, so he’d have an excuse for not going down if he felt like doing something else instead – like going to London.

Charlie had no illusions about what he could expect from his marriage. Daphne was a ‘good’ girl. He would have known that even if both she and her parents had not told him so.

But it wasn’t because he wanted to take her to bed that Charlie had planned to marry her. What man in his right mind wanted a wife who knew how to lure a man on and excite him? Not him. That kind of wife could cause a man a lot of trouble. No, Charlie had decided to marry Daphne because of who she was, not what she was. Daphne’s parents had money and status in the small village where they lived and they thought he was wonderful because they believed he had tried to save their son’s life. Initially Charlie had basked in their gratitude but gradually, like Daphne’s adoration, it had become something he had taken for granted.

Daphne had said several times recently that she wished they did not have to live so far away from her parents. Whilst his mother was openly delighted at the prospect of having her daughter-in-law living so close, Charlie suspected that Daphne did not share her enthusiasm. Now she would be able to continue to live with her parents, which would please her, just as much as it would suit him. Talk about having your cake and eating it, Charlie thought happily.

Charlie liked fun and excitement, he liked fast cars and pretty girls, he liked the clubs in London that welcomed young men like him, and understood what a chap wanted and supplied it very discreetly, whether it was a drink or a girl.

Now, he told himself confidently, even though he couldn’t get out of the army his father was bound to make him a decent allowance. After all, he was going to be a married man and his father couldn’t expect a girl like Daphne, whose father was a Name at Lloyd’s, to live on a private’s wages.

Yes, the more Charlie thought about his future the more pleased with himself he felt.

FIVE

Katie could feel the tension in the Campions’ kitchen as soon as she walked in. She was later getting in from work than normal because they had all had to work over to deal with the extra workload caused by the bombs disrupting the delivery service and the girls who had not come into work.

The first thing she’d done was to go upstairs to wash her hands and face, and change out of her office clothes and into an old summer dress, which she could tuck into her siren suit without spoiling it when the air-raid siren went off. Now, coming back down, she glanced round the table and could see how on edge and anxious Jean looked. That alone was enough to cause Katie’s own tummy to tense up. Jean was the mainstay of her family, a loving wife and mother, with a practical calm streak that always ensured that her home and especially her kitchen was an oasis of reassurance and loving warmth. Tonight, though, Jean was quite obviously not herself.

Katie’s first fear, that there must have been bad news, subsided when she looked at Sam, who was calmly eating his tea. Sam was a good father, who would never have been sitting eating a luncheon meat salad if anything had happened to one of them.

Normally the conversation round the tea table in the Campion household flowed easily, punctuated by the twins’ laughter, but tonight only the wireless was producing conversation.

A quick look at Jean’s plate confirmed what Katie had already suspected: that she had no appetite for her tea. What was wrong? Jean was normally scrupulous about not wasting food. She might have a husband who worked hard on his allotment to keep them all in fresh home-grown food, but she still had to queue along with everyone else for all those things that were now rationed: meat and eggs, cheese and margarine, to name just a few.

As soon as they had all finished eating, Sam stood up.

‘You two can do the washing-up tonight,’ he told the twins firmly. ‘Me and your mum are going for a bit of a walk down to the allotment.’

Nothing was said, but Katie could tell from the way the twins looked at one another that they were also aware that something was happening, and that it was upsetting Jean.

‘You shouldn’t have said what you did to the twins, Sam,’ Jean told her husband in a troubled voice as he opened the gate at the back of the garden for her. A narrow lane ran along behind the houses, separating their back gardens from the allotments, which ran down to the railway embankment. Sam had been cultivating his allotment ever since they had moved into Ash Grove, and had even been able to take over a spare patch of land, which he shared with several other allotment holders and on which they had planted fruit trees. Because nothing could be cultivated beneath their branches they had let the grass grow and put hen runs there, and in summer this area was a favourite place for families to gather and have picnics. Now the grass was just starting to be shaded with the bluebells that grew wild in the grass, and that would soon form a rich blue carpet.

Jean blinked away painful tears. Funny how it was the little things that it hurt to think about when you realised you wouldn’t be able to see them.

‘They’ll be wondering what’s going on, and I don’t want them worrying, not after what’s happened.’

‘Aye, well, it’s because I’m worrying myself that I want to talk to you,’ Sam told her heavily, guiding her through the gate into his own allotment, and to the rustic seat in its sunny spot close to the tool shed, where he grew a few flowers because Jean loved them so much.

Now she looked down at the Russell lupins, already fat with cream and brown buds thanks to the shelter of their spot. A rose smothered the shed itself but it was too soon for it to flower yet. It seemed incredible that something as fragile as these plants could survive when buildings so close at hand were being destroyed.

Her emotions brought a hard lump to Jean’s throat. The evening sunshine slanted across Sam’s hands, strong and lean, tanned from his work both on the allotment and with the Salvage Corps.

It wasn’t usual for them to touch one another in public, but now something made Jean reach out to put her own hand on top of Sam’s as she told him quietly, ‘You’ve always had such good strong hands, Sam. They were one of the first things I noticed about you when you first asked me out. That’s partly why I married you, on account of them hands. With hands like that I knew you’d always keep me and our children safe.’

Sam’s expression was sombre as he moved his body to shield her from the bright glare of the dying sun.

‘I can’t do that any more, Jean. I wish I could, but I can’t. Not with what’s going on and this war.’

His voice sounded as heavy as her heart felt, Jean realised.

‘That’s what I want to talk to you about.’

Jean’s body shook. She could guess what was coming – had already guessed.

‘The thing is about my job that you see things others don’t always get to see, and the fact is, Jean, Liverpool can’t hold out much longer. I’ve heard it said by them as should know that another couple of nights like these we’ve been having, three at the most, and there’ll be nothing left to save.’

‘But what about the Government? They must be able to do something. Liverpool has to be saved; there’s the docks and the convoys coming in.’ Jean protested.

Sam shook his head. ‘There’s nowt to be done, lass. I wish there were. The convoys will have to be diverted, or risk being bombed in the water by the Luftwaffe. The city’s a goner, as near as dammit. When the war was first announced I wanted you and the twins to go somewhere where you’d be safe, but you wouldn’t hear of it, and to be honest the last thing I wanted was for us to be separated, but it’s different now. You’ve seen what’s happening and seen the figures in the papers. Jerry isn’t going to stop once he’s destroyed the docks; he’ll be moving inland and dropping more bombs as he does.’ Sam nodded in the direction of the railway embankment. ‘We’ve got the main goods line to Edge Hill right there in front of us. Jerry’s already had one go at destroying it, and he’ll be back to try again. Another couple of nights of bombing and those of us that are still left alive will be lucky if we don’t starve.’

‘That’s silly talk, Sam, with all that you’re growing on your allotment,’ Jean protested.

‘Veggies are all very well but how do you think meat and fish and that are going to get into the city with the roads and the railway lines unusable? There’ll be riots and all sorts.’

Jean wanted to argue that he was wrong but she couldn’t. Only this morning whilst she had been in the local butcher’s where the family was registered with their coupons, the butcher had told her how he’d heard that the bombing had destroyed so many shops and warehouses that those that were left were beginning to run out of supplies. Because the city was a port, receiving goods in and then distributing them to the rest of the country, it hadn’t occurred to Jean before now that they could run out. Feeding her family was the main priority of every housewife in these rationed times, and the thought of her own family going hungry and maybe even starving filled her with fear.

Sam had pulled away from her now and was standing looking towards the embankment, as though he didn’t want to have to face her.

Jean’s heart thudded with misery. She had known that this was coming. Everyone you talked to was saying how much they wanted those they loved to be safe.

‘I want you and the twins to leave Liverpool, Jean. I know the last time we talked about this you persuaded me to change my mind, but I won’t change it this time. I need to know that at least some of my family will be safe. I can’t do owt about Luke. He’s a man now and in the army, and you don’t need me to tell you that I’m as proud of him as it’s possible for any man to be of his son. And as for our Grace …’

He was looking at her now and Jean could see the sheen of his emotions in his eyes.

He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t seem that long ago that she was following me round the allotment, chattering away to me, sneaking the raspberries when she thought I wasn’t looking. And now look at her. She’ll soon be a fully qualified nurse. My heart’s in me mouth every night worrying about Luke and Grace, but they’ve got their duty to do, I know that, just as I’ve got mine.’

‘Sam, please, don’t make me and the twins go away,’ Jean begged him. ‘We’re safe enough up here, everyone says so. You say you’re worrying about us but how do you think it’s going to be for me, sitting somewhere safe, not knowing what’s going on here with you and Luke and Grace? We can perhaps send the twins somewhere safer, but I want to stay. I’ve got to stay – there’s Katie to think of, and you. Who’s going to make sure there’s a decent meal on the table for you, and what’s our Luke going to think if poor Katie has to find somewhere else? A fine thing that would be.’

‘Katie was saying only the other night that she’s owed some leave and that she’d like to go and see her parents. And as for me, I can look after meself if I have to. It won’t be for long.’

He was lying, thought Jean in despair. It could be for ever if what he was saying was true. It could mean that if she did what he wanted, when she said goodbye to him tomorrow that she might never ever see him again, and he knew that as well as she did. But she also knew what that set determined expression meant. Sam was a good man, a kind, loving man, but he could also be a stubborn, prideful man who was sometimes a bit too set in his ways, traits that Luke had inherited from him.

There was no point in arguing with him. That would only drive him into sticking to his guns, and besides, he did have a point, at least where the twins were concerned.

Jean moved closer to him, pretending not to notice when he moved back, indicating that he wasn’t going to let any physical closeness between them change his mind. She put her hand on his arm. There were new lines fanning out from his eyes; he looked tired and determined not to show it, wearied by the nightly bombardment of the city on top of the rigours already imposed on everyone by a war that was ageing them all, including the young. It showed in the stoop of people’s shoulders, and in the anxious frowns that everyone seemed to wear when they thought no one else was looking. Jean had seen it in those poor people who came to the rest centre, and who tried to pull themselves up to their full height and wear a smile when they thought they were being observed. She had seen it too in her own dressing table mirror, but this was the first time she had seen it so plainly in Sam.

‘I agree that the twins should go somewhere safer,’ she told him quietly. ‘But I want to stay, Sam. Luke and Grace are here, after all, as well as you, and I couldn’t bear it if anything was to happen and I couldn’t—’ She had to bite down on her words as the awful thought she didn’t want to voice bubbled inside her head.

‘Don’t you think I feel the same?’ Sam demanded.

‘I’ll be safe enough, Sam. It only takes a minute to get to the shelter.’

‘A minute could be a minute too long and besides, there’s been more than one shelter got hit and them inside never got out. You know that. No, Jean, I mean it: you and the children can’t stay in Liverpool.’

‘Well, we can’t just leave. Where will we go?’

‘I was thinking of your Vi in Wallasey.’

Jean sucked in her breath. ‘You’re never expecting me to go cap in hand to our Vi and ask her to take me and the twins in, Sam Campion?’

‘I’d rather you were somewhere more out in the country, but Wallasey’s a damn sight safer than Liverpool, and your Vi’s honour-bound to take you in, seeing as you’re family.’

His whole manner said that his mind was made up and that he wasn’t going to change it. Sam hated seeing her cry, but Jean just couldn’t stop herself.

‘I never thought I’d see the day when you expected me to go begging to my sister,’ she reproached him. ‘Not after everything you’ve said about her.’

‘Can’t you see that it’s you and the twins I’m thinking of, Jean?’ Sam defended himself. ‘How do you think I would feel if anything were to happen to any of you? How would you feel if something happened to the twins? It was bad enough that to-do on Saturday.’

Jean shuddered. On Saturday night when the twins had gone missing she had been so afraid for them. Sam was right, she would never forgive herself if they ended up being hurt or worse because she had refused to leave Liverpool.

‘If I had my way our Grace would be going with you, an’ all,’ Sam told her, breaking into her thoughts.

‘She can’t do that, Sam. It would mean her giving up her nursing and she wouldn’t do that, not now she’s in her final year.’

She reached into her apron pocket for her handkerchief and felt a surge of fresh tears when Sam pushed his own handkerchief into her hands. The first time he had done that they had been courting and she had started crying over a sad film. How she wished that it was only a sad film she had to cry over now.

‘Come on, love,’ he begged her gruffly. ‘At least I’ll be able to sleep a bit easier for knowing that you and the twins are safe.’

Jean sniffed and blew her nose. ‘And what about me, Sam Campion? How am I supposed to sleep easy from now on? What’s going to happen to us, Sam, if Hitler does bomb Liverpool to bits?’

‘I don’t know, love. All I know now is that I want you and the twins safe. Come on, we’d better get back.’

So that she could tell them what was going to happen, he meant, Jean knew.

She’d been dreading him saying something like this since Saturday night. She’d seen it in his eyes and she’d prayed that the bombing would stop so that they could stay together as a family just as they always had.

‘I suppose Dad’s telling Mum that he isn’t going to eat any more luncheon meat.’

Lou’s weak attempt at a joke barely raised the corners of Sasha’s mouth. Neither of them had stopped watching the back door, which they’d opened ostensibly to let in some fresh evening air but in reality to anticipate the return of their parents, and Katie shared their anxiety.

‘What do you suppose—’ Lou began, only to stop when Sasha gave her a nudge in the ribs with her elbow and warned her, ‘Hush, they’re just opening the gate.’

It was obvious to Katie the minute she saw Jean that she had been crying. Her own heart lurched into her ribs. Was it possible that she had been wrong and there had been bad news? About Luke? Or Grace? Guiltily Katie recognised how much she hoped if one of them had been hurt that it was not Luke.

Instinctively adopting Jean’s own normal manner Katie asked calmly, ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ and received a grateful look from Sam.

‘Aye, lass, if you wouldn’t mind.’

He turned to the twins. ‘Your mother’s got something to tell you.’

Jean bowed her head, waiting for Sam to announce that he was going back to the allotment, but to her surprise he was obviously intending to stay. To support her or to make sure she did what he wanted?

Behind her Katie was waiting for the kettle to boil. Dear Katie, such a lovely girl and so perfect for Luke. Jean worried about her safety as much as if she were one of her own. Hitler was dropping bombs on London, of course, but Katie had already said that it was much safer where her parents were living. If she went to them she’d be safe, and it would only be for a little while. Until the bombing stopped. Until Liverpool had been destroyed.

Jean took a deep breath to try to steady herself. It wouldn’t do to let the girls see how upset she was.

‘Me and your dad have been thinking,’ she began, ‘and we’ve decided that until all this bombing stops you two and me would be better off finding somewhere safer to live outside the city.’

‘But what about Katie?’

That was Sasha, looking quickly past Jean to where Katie was standing pouring the now boiling water onto the tea leaves.

‘There’s no need for anyone to worry about me,’ Katie told them all firmly. ‘In fact I was already thinking of taking my leave and going home to see my parents.’

She caught another approving nod from Sam and a grateful look from Jean. ‘And I think that you and your mum going somewhere safer is exactly the right thing to do,’ she told the twins calmly. ‘In fact, Luke was only saying the same thing the last time I saw him,’ she added, crossing her fingers behind her back. She was sure that Luke would have said that if he had been asked, because he was very much his father’s son and Katie knew instinctively that it was Sam who was insisting on them going rather than Jean.

What a terrible decision that must have been for Jean. She had four children, after all, two of whom would have to remain in Liverpool and face the danger from which Sam obviously wanted to protect her and the twins. Katie could imagine how she would have felt in such circumstances.

‘But how can we leave Liverpool?’ Sasha asked uncertainly. ‘Where will we go?’

‘I know,’ said Lou, as irrepressible as ever. ‘We will have to be trekkers. You know, you go and queue up for the trucks in the evening and then they take you out into the country and you have to find a barn or something to sleep in.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Jean told her. She looked at Sam and then back at the twins. ‘We’ll be going to Wallasey, of course, to stay with your auntie Vi.’

‘What?’

‘No!’

The twins spoke together, their words different but their horrified expressions identical.

‘Mum, you can’t mean that,’ Lou protested. ‘Auntie Vi doesn’t like us and we don’t like her. Well, we’re not going, are we, Sasha?’

‘That’s enough of that,’ Sam told them sternly. ‘You’re going and that’s an end to the matter.’

Katie could tell that the twins knew he meant what he said. They subsided, still exchanging shocked looks.

‘When will we have to go?’ That was Sasha, her voice small and wobbling slightly.

‘Not until tomorrow,’ Jean told them quietly. ‘I’ll have to go over and see Vi tomorrow and … and arrange things with her first.’ She was looking at Sam now as though seeking help, but he wasn’t looking back at her.

Katie had heard all about the relationship between the two families and she knew that it would be hard for Jean to lower her pride and ask her snobbish sister for help.

Jean looked at Sam’s stiff back. The fact that he was prepared to let her go begging Vi for help said how afraid for them he really was. There had never been any love lost between Vi and Sam, and although she had never said so to Sam, in the early days of their courtship Vi had actually tried to persuade her to drop Sam. If she told him that now … But no, she must not do that. Sam was doing this for them, and he had been right when he’d said that she would never forgive herself if they stayed in Liverpool and something happened to the twins.

Just as she would never forgive herself if anything happened to Luke or to Grace or to Sam himself, and she couldn’t get to them.

It was a situation that thousands of families all over the country were facing, especially those living in the cities that Hitler was targeting. And what about the men fighting abroad – how must their mothers and wives feel?

Jean squared her shoulders. ‘It won’t be as bad as you think,’ she told the twins.

‘No, it will be much worse,’ Lou muttered gloomily under her breath.

Wallasey and Auntie Vi’s.

Lou flung herself down on her bed with a grimace of disbelief. ‘I never thought Mum would make us go there.’

‘She’s going as well,’ Sasha reminded her. ‘And I’ll bet it’s Dad who has said we have to go. Did you see how red his ears went when Mum was telling us, and how he wouldn’t look at us?’

‘Well, what about Katie?’ Lou demanded. ‘I’ll bet she doesn’t really want to go and see her parents. She loves our Luke.’

‘She was saying the other day that she felt she should go and see them,’ Sasha felt bound to point out, adding firmly, ‘Look, Lou, we aren’t children any more, are we, and after what happened on Saturday, well, I just think that we shouldn’t make things hard for Mum, that’s all.’

Sasha almost sounded as though she disapproved of what Lou had said. But that was impossible. Hadn’t they reassured one another that their closeness, their twinship, was more important than anything else? Once Lou would have known exactly what Sasha was feeling about anything, just as Sasha would have done her, and this feeling that she did not know what her twin was thinking was unfamiliar territory.

‘Sash?’

Sasha looked at her twin.

‘It’s all right with me and you, isn’t it? I mean, I know there was … Well, I just want you to know that I don’t mind if you do still … Well, it was you Kieran liked best really, anyway.’

Sasha jumped off her own bed and went to stand next to Lou’s, her hands on her hips, her round face flushed with angry colour.

‘How dare you say that, Louise Campion? We both said, didn’t we, that we were going to stick together from now on?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘So why are you keeping going on about a certain person who we agreed we’d never talk about again?’

‘There’s no need to get your hair off with me, Sasha. I was just meaning that if you did think about him, then I’d understand and you can say so.’

Lou didn’t know how to say that she was afraid of losing her twin, and afraid too of the way things seemed to be changing, and not just things but they themselves.

‘I’d hate it if you and me was to end up like Mum and Auntie Vi,’ was all she could manage to say.

The anger died out of Sasha’s face. Although traditionally it was always Lou, the younger of the two, who had taken the lead, just lately Sasha had started to feel older than her twin and as though it was up to her to take charge. Somehow, without knowing how, Sasha had started to recognise that for all her bravado Lou was more vulnerable than she was herself.

She sat down next to Lou and told her firmly, ‘That will never happen to us, unless of course you keep going on about Kieran.’

‘But he liked you.’

‘No he didn’t, he just pretended he did so that we’d earn money for him with our dancing.’

‘But if he did really like you …’ Lou persisted.

‘Oh, stop it, Lou. I just want to forget about the whole thing.’ Sasha gave a fierce shudder, reminding Lou of exactly what her twin had been through when she had become trapped and they had both thought that she might die before help arrived.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ Sasha accepted her apology, before telling her, ‘I don’t want to go to Auntie Vi’s either, you know, but we have to think of Mum, Lou. Just think how awful it must be for her.’

‘What, you mean because she and Vi don’t get on?’

‘No, silly, because Luke and Grace and our dad will still be here.’

Nearly midnight. The rhythmic tick of the kitchen clock made Jean’s heart thud with anxiety. When would they come tonight? Sam hadn’t been pleased when she had refused to leave for Wallasey this evening. But like she had told him, she and the twins could hardly descend on Vi without any warning.

‘Why not?’ he had wanted to know. ‘I’m sure she’d rather be a bit put out and see you safe than find out summat’s happened.’

Not our Vi, Jean had thought. Vi didn’t like unplanned visitors, and she certainly wouldn’t put the welcome mat out for them. And besides, although she hadn’t said so to Sam, Jean wasn’t leaving Liverpool without first seeing Grace, even if she might not be able to see Luke. She could give Grace a message for him. And then there was Katie to think of. It was all very well Sam frightening her half to death by warning her about what might happen but arrangements still had to be made.

It was no good, she couldn’t sit still any longer.

‘Katie, love, I think I’ll put the kettle on.’

Jean got up. They were all ready in their shelter clothes, the twins and Katie in siren suits that Jean had made from some material that she and Katie had bought from a shop that sold off-cuts.

Jean was making do with an old pair of Sam’s pyjamas that she had cut down.

Kate wondered if she would manage to see Luke before she left. They’d sort of made plans to see one another on Saturday if Luke could snatch a couple of hours of compassionate leave. The CO at the barracks at Seacombe was good like that. Katie felt sorry for those men who did not live close enough for them to get home quickly to check that their families were safe, but Luke had told her that the commander was giving those men with the longest distances to travel twenty-four- and even sometimes forty-eight-hour passes in lieu of the unofficial couple of hours here and there those with families living closer were getting.

‘He’s a decent chap – all the lads say so – but he knows how to make everyone toe the line as well,’ Luke had told her, and Katie had known from his tone of voice that he respected his commanding officer. Luke was someone who saw things in black and white, good and bad, with no shades of grey. Sometime that worried her, especially when he was getting on his high horse about something – or someone he thought had done something wrong. He wasn’t always ready to see that there might be extenuating circumstances or to make allowances for other people’s vulnerabilities and the fact that they might not be as morally strong as he was himself.

She did love him though – so very much. Katie’s expression softened.

Jean looked at the clock. Ten past midnight. It had been gone half-past when they had come last night. They did it deliberately, she was sure, letting people think that they were safe and then coming. Sam was on fire-watch duty, of course. He’d volunteered to stand in for someone else down near the docks. Jean’s hands trembled. The docks were the worst place of all to be.

Quarter-past midnight. Luke shifted his weight against the thin hard mattress of his bed. It wasn’t comfortable at the best of times, but tonight when, like everyone else, he was straining to catch the first sound of incoming aircraft, and with his muscles aching still from earlier in the day – but no, he mustn’t think about that and the horror of removing the debris from the lorry driver’s body to find – but he wasn’t going to think about that, was he? Those ruddy Americans. Showing off like they had and then three of them puking their guts up when they had seen what was left of poor old Ronnie. Some soldiers they were, for all their fancy uniforms and boastful words.

‘I ain’t seen no one dead before,’ one of them had whimpered.

Luke swallowed the bile gathering in his throat.

He tried to think about Katie. She’d be waiting like they all were for the air-raid warning, ready to go into the shelter with his mother and the twins. Katie didn’t always understand how he felt or why he felt the way he did. She didn’t understand what being a man meant and how it was up to him to take care of her. That was a responsibility he took very seriously, just as his father did. Luke’s first thoughts as he listened to the all clear were the same as they had been every morning since the blitz had begun, and were for the safety of those he loved, his family, and Katie, his girl.

Just thinking about Katie brought him a confusing mix of emotions: fear for her safety, coupled with a fierce male urge to protect her, delight because she loved him, pride in her because of the important war work she was doing, and yet at that same time that pride was shadowed by a certain fear and hostility to that work in case it somehow took her from him.

Did Katie wish he was more like Seb, Grace’s fiancé? Seb was an easy-going sort, protective of Grace, of course, but Grace wasn’t the kind who would give a chap any cause to worry about her. Did that mean that Katie was? Luke frowned. He trusted Katie – of course he did, and he knew he could – but she didn’t always realise how she might come across to other men; how they might see her smiling at them and think that her smile meant more than it did. He’d tried to tell her about that, but he couldn’t seem to make her understand. Luke didn’t like it when things weren’t straightforward and clear cut. Life had rules and Luke preferred it when people stuck to those rules. Katie was his girl and that meant that he didn’t want to lose her to another man. He wasn’t keen on that job of hers either. Not really, although he’d tried to pretend that he didn’t mind because he’d been able to see that that was what she wanted. And he did want to please her, of course he did, but it made him feel so frustrated when she wouldn’t understand the danger she was putting herself in.

If they were to get engaged then maybe he’d be able to have more say in what she did. He’d certainly not have her working doing what she did once they were married.

Come on if you’re coming, Lena thought irritably, as she scratched absently at a flea bite on her ankle and waited for the sound of the air-raid siren to start up. She didn’t own a watch and there was no clock in the room she shared with Doris. Doris wasn’t here tonight, though. She’d gone out to her boyfriend’s for tea, and his mother had apparently invited her to stay over in case there was an attack.

Lena laughed to herself. What a lie that was. Lena knew for a fact that Doris’s fella’s mother would be spending the evening in the pub where she worked and that she’d use the pub shelter if the siren went off, and Lena knew that because she’d been in the salon in the morning getting her hair done and she’d said so.

No, Lena reckoned, Doris knew perfectly well that she and Brian would have the house to themselves and Lena thought too that Doris wanted to make the most of the opportunity to tie Brian to her. Well, good luck to the pair of them.

When was that siren going to go off? She heard a sound from the room next door – her uncle breaking wind. He didn’t half make a noise when he farted and he was a stinker with it, an’ all.

Bodily functions and the earthy humour surrounding them were part and parcel of life in the city’s slums. How could they not be with several families sharing the same outside lav, and everyone knowing everyone else’s business, right down to when a person opened their bowels?

Lena had been shocked at first to see half a dozen lads peering over the half-door of one of the lavvies whilst, she learned soon after, the girl inside delicately removed her knickers and then bent over to show them her bare bum, but then she hadn’t been able to help laughing when the girl had insisted that all the boys were to pay her a halfpenny each for the treat.

Of course, Doris denied that she had ever done such a thing. Lena knew that she never could have done. Oh, she hid how she felt from everyone because she knew it would make her a target to be tormented and bullied, but she had been brought up better than that, and when her Charlie came for her he’d take her away somewhere decent; somewhere in Wallasey. Her heart began to beat faster. Should she write to him at his barracks and surprise him? She wanted to, but was held back by a memory of her mother telling her that decent girls didn’t go running after boys. Anyway, she didn’t need to write to him. When she’d put her arms round him and asked him when she’d see him again, he’d said, ‘Soon as I can.’

If she closed her eyes she could picture him now. She could always go over to Wallasey, of course, and introduce herself to his family. She’d got their address, after all. She could say something about him leaving his papers with her and her wanting to get them back to him. Her heart jumped a couple of beats. What were they like, his man and dad? Had he got brothers and sisters at home? Well, she’d have to wait and see, wouldn’t she, because she wasn’t going to go pushing herself in on his family until he was there to introduce her to them proper like, as his girl.

How proud she’d be when he took her home on his arm to meet them. Lena gave a blissful sigh, ignoring the hungry rumble of her stomach. Her auntie had been in one of her bad moods and had hardly spoken to her when Lena had come in for her tea. She’d not given Lena much to eat either, claiming that she couldn’t afford to, even though she’d made Lena hand over her ration book – well, not hand it over exactly. She’d taken it from Lena’s drawer when Lena was out at work, as well as making her tip up most of the money she earned to go into the family pot.

Lena had managed to keep her tips back for herself, though. She’d even opened a Post Office account to pay them into. Simone had shown her how, and Lena kept the book hidden in her handbag. Twenty pounds ten shillings she’d saved in it now, Lena thought with pride.

One o’clock. Seb frowned. They were normally here by now. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. What kind of cat-and-mouse game was Hitler playing with Liverpool now? He’d all but destroyed the city. Another heavy raid, certainly two, would be the fatal blow that would mean that Liverpool was done for. The port would no longer be a safe haven for the Atlantic convoys, bringing in desperately needed food and raw materials, as well as equipment under the recently signed Lend Lease agreement with America, which meant that the neutral Americans, not in the war, could provide much-needed military equipment to the financially hard-pressed Allies, with payment being deferred until a later date. The agreement was very complicated, with many of its terms still kept from the general public in the interests of national security. Its existence, though, had had to be acknowledged to account for the sudden influx to the country of American personnel and equipment to help with the war effort.

Seb stretched again and tried to suppress a yawn.

Grace would be lying in her bed in the nurses’ home waiting for the sound of the siren. Seb knew how much nursing meant to her, but increasingly he worried about her safety. The hospital had already been bombed once, and some of the medical staff killed.

He’d sensed her growing fear and desperation when he’d walked her back to the nurses’ home on Sunday. When he’d taken advantage of the privacy afforded by a shadowy doorway, she’d clung to him and kissed him, trembling so much in his arms with her passion that he had started to tremble himself.

If they’d been anywhere half decently suitable, he’d have been tempted to answer the need he had seen in her eyes and truly make her his, whilst they were still both alive to share that special loving intimacy.

It had been Grace who had insisted that she wanted to finish her training and that meant that they couldn’t marry until she had, but he had respected that decision. These last few days, though, with the knowledge that each bombing raid could take Grace from him, Seb had burned with a fierce urge to make her truly his and to know that they had shared something that could never be taken from them. And Grace had wanted that too – he had sensed it in her even before she had told him so, clinging to him, her eyes wet with her tears as she told him how afraid she was of dying without knowing his love.

Bella couldn’t sleep. They’d been promised twenty cot mattresses, and only ten had been delivered. The driver had feigned ignorance but Bella knew she was right to suspect that the other ten would end up on the black market. She moved restlessly beneath her immaculately ironed sheets. Laura had simply shrugged and looked impatient when Bella had complained to her.

‘What do you expect with all this rationing?’ she had demanded sharply. ‘After all, those doing the black market selling aren’t the only ones making money from this war, are they?’

Bella had known that Laura was referring to Bella’s own father whose business supplying and fitting pipes to merchant and naval vessels had become so profitable thanks to the war that Edwin had had to treble his work force. Her father liked a gin and tonic, and after the third glass was inclined to start bragging about the fortune he was making. Not that he shared it with his family, Bella thought sourly, or at least not with her. He was showering money on Charlie, buying him a new car, because his small sports car had been stolen, giving him a job, and her house.

She looked at her alarm clock.

Two o’clock. The bombers were normally here by now, dropping their bombs over Liverpool. Bella moved irritably, frowning as she remembered the knowing look Ralph Fleming had given her when he’d come to collect his children from the crèche earlier in the day, her face starting to burn with angry pride. Did he really think that she would be interested in him now that she knew he was married man, and that he’d lied to her?

What kind of girl did he think she was? Her heart started to thump angrily. Well, she wasn’t that sort, no matter what he might think. Why were people so horrid and mean to her? Especially men. Bella thought of her father, with his impatience and irritable manner; her husband, who had never loved her as surely she deserved to be loved; Jan Polanski, whose mother and sister were her billetees, and who was getting married in two weeks’ time, making out that she had wanted him to kiss her just because he was good-looking, when she hadn’t at all; and now Ralph Fleming, pretending he was free to ask her out and then actually having the cheek to laugh at her and look at her as though he knew something about her that meant she didn’t care that he was married. Well, she did. She cared a lot. She was tired of other people – other women – treating her the way they did. It wasn’t fair that other girls like her cousin Grace ended up with good-looking men and had lots of friends, whilst she, who surely deserved better, was treated so unkindly.

Tears of self-pity welled in Bella’s eyes.

It just wasn’t fair.

That surely couldn’t be dawn, could it, edging slowly and warily up under the darkness, hesitating as though fearing what it might reveal?

Sam rubbed his eyes in case he had got it wrong and he was imagining things. He was tired from being on fire-watch duty. Even though tonight there were no new fires, the acrid smell of smoke still hung in the air and stung the eyes, but no, that was definitely dawn lightening the sky on the horizon.

As he watched, the band of light grew wider, revealing the tired buildings that still remained standing sharply etched against the skyline, black against the dawn sky.

Something – relief, disbelief, gratitude, Sam couldn’t pin down exactly what it was – dampened his eyes and made him want to shout his discovery from the rooftops.

The German bombers hadn’t come. Incredibly, unbelievably, the final death blow had not been delivered.

On other buildings Sam could see other fire watchers now. Like him they were stretching, and looking around, shedding the burden of the night watch, straightening up and standing tall, and it seemed to Sam that the city itself was doing the same thing, that he could feel in the air its pride in its survival through a night when everyone had thought that all must be lost.

It was a miracle, that’s what it was, Harry Fitch, who had shared the watch with Sam, announced, and Sam didn’t argue.

SIX

It was a mistake – everyone was agreed on that – a breathing space, that was all. The bombers were bound to return, and yet there was a lightness of heart as people went about their business, a sense of reprieve even if it was generally acknowledged that it wouldn’t last.

But it did, and finally, by Sunday morning, after three full nights without a raid, even Sam was cautiously agreeing that maybe there had indeed been a miracle and what was left of the city was safe.

‘Mind you, I still think it’s a rum business that Hitler didn’t send the Luftwaffe in to finish us off,’ he told Jean as the family set out for church.

For once the whole family was together, Luke, like the other soldiers who lived locally, having been given compassionate leave, and Grace being off duty.

In with her other prayers this morning there would definitely be one thanking God for saving her from having to go begging Vi for a favour, Jean decided fervently, as she paused to check that her family were looking their best.

The twins must still be growing, she thought, switching her attention from the outer world to her own small family. Their frocks certainly needed letting down. At their age they really shouldn’t be showing quite so much leg, Jean decided with maternal concern, even if their legs were very well shaped. Thank goodness she had asked Mrs Nellis, who had run up their red and white gingham frocks on her machine for them, to put on good hems, disguised with white rickrack braid.

‘Lou, that isn’t a dirty mark on the sleeve of your cardigan, is it?’ she demanded, sighing as she saw that it was. ‘Just keep your arm by your side, then,’ she instructed.

‘I don’t know if I agree with Mrs Braddock saying that the cinemas should open on a Sunday,’ she told Sam.

Bessie Braddock, a local councillor, had been quoted in the papers saying that people needed to be able to celebrate and enjoy themselves, and for that reason the cinemas should be allowed to open on Sundays.

‘Well, to be fair, she did say that them as don’t approve don’t have to go, and there’s plenty who will want to have a bit of a fun after what’s bin happening,’ Sam responded so tolerantly that even if she hadn’t already done so Jean would have known how much these three nights without bombs had lifted his spirits. Even so, as a mother of daughters still at an impressionable age, Jean felt it necessary to protest.

‘Fun on a Sunday?’

‘But remember, Mum,’ Luke and Grace chanted together, laughing, ‘there’s a war on.’

‘Oh, give over, you two, as if I didn’t know that.’

It was hard to remain stern, though, when the sun was shining and everyone was in such good spirits and with such good reason.

No wonder it felt as though the whole city, or those who were left in it, were turning out to give thanks for being spared.

Grace hung back from the rest of her family deliberately, slipping her arm through Seb’s.

‘We are so lucky. I was so afraid, Seb, afraid that something would happen and that you and I would never … But here we are, both still safe and well …’

‘And we still haven’t …’ Seb began teasingly, but Grace blushed and laughed and shook her head at him.

‘None of that kind of talk now. You know what we agreed.’

He should have seized his chance whilst he had the opportunity, Seb thought ruefully, but on the other hand Grace was well worth waiting for, even if her passionate response to him earlier in the week had had him lying awake every night since imagining how things might be.

Good girls didn’t ‘do it’ before marriage, supposedly, only of course sometimes they did, and it was such a long time to wait before Grace would have finished her training and they could get married. And now there was that other matter as well.

Seb frowned. He had been taken completely by surprise when his commanding officer had sent for him and told him that he was going to be transferred to a new Y Section that was being set up in Whitchurch.

At first it would just be him and some other trained operatives, but more operatives would join them once they had received their training. The recent news that one of the Enigma machines and its code books had been captured had sent a buzz of elation and excitement through everyone connected with Bletchley Park, where they were working flat out now on the codes.

Seb had been told that his new post would be a promotion but he acknowledged that he would have been feeling much happier about it if it didn’t mean that he would be moving away from Liverpool and Grace.

He looked at her. The sunlight caught the curls in her strawberry-blonde hair, and revealed a small dusting of freckles across her nose. She was so pretty, his Grace, with her warm smile and those eyes of hers that reflected the depth of both her emotions and her loyalty. If the months since they had first met at the very beginning of the war, and all that had happened during them had brought a certain gravity and even sometimes sadness to her eyes when she talked of the courage of her patients, then Seb loved her all the more because of it. His Grace was more than a pretty face – much more – and he wouldn’t want to change anything about her.

His parents loved her, and he knew that when the war was over and the time came for them to make their lives wherever his work took him, Grace would create a comfortable and a happy home for him and their children, even if that meant she had to move away from her own family to whom she was so close. But for all the maturity she had gained since they had first met, today, in her relief after several nights without any bombing raids, and with her joyous smile, she looked so carefree and happy that he didn’t want to spoil that happiness by telling her that he was going to be moved out of Liverpool.

Grace looked at Seb and smiled warmly at him, increasing his guilt at keeping something so important from her, but this wasn’t the time to tell her. He wanted to wait until they were on their own.

In front of them, neither Luke nor Katie was smiling.

‘Well, I still don’t see why you would want to go and see your parents behind my back and without me,’ Luke was saying, sticking doggedly to the point he had been trying to make ever since Katie had let slip that she was planning a visit to her family.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Katie defended herself unhappily. ‘I’ve already told you how it happened. When I thought that your mum and the twins were going to evacuate to Wallasey I decided I’d take some leave that was owing to me and go and see my parents. I couldn’t tell you because I haven’t seen you, and now that it looks like the bombing raids are over I don’t want to let Mum and Dad down by not going.’

‘But you don’t mind letting me down?’ Luke’s voice was bitter.

Katie suppressed an unhappy sigh. It upset her so much when Luke was like this, although she was trying hard not to show it. Katie hated scenes. They made her feel physically sick with misery and so anxious to get things ‘back to normal’ that she was ready to say anything that would appease him. Sometimes, though, no matter what she did say or how much she tried to agree with him, it just seemed to make matters worse.

Today this mood of Luke’s when he started accusing her of not loving him because in his eyes she was not putting him first, had caught her off guard, making her feel vulnerable and spoiling things between them on what should have been a happy occasion, with the relief of the blitz having so miraculously ceased.

‘If you really loved me you’d wait until I can come with you,’ Luke insisted.

He had no idea what drove him to be like this with Katie, whom he loved so very very much, he only knew that somehow the more he tried to make her be open and straight with him, the more she seemed to withdraw from him to a place where he wasn’t allowed; and the more he wanted to secure her to him, the more elusive she seemed to become, and that hurt and scared him. Not that he could ever admit to that. He was a man, after all, and men had to be strong and in control of their emotions.

Katie looked away from Luke. She couldn’t bear this, she really couldn’t. It reminded her of the awful quarrels her parents had had when she had been growing up and brought back her old feelings of fear and misery.

‘Very well then,’ she gave in, ‘I’ll write and tell my parents that we’ll both go and see them when you’ve got some leave, if that’s what you want.’

Luke frowned. He knew her agreement should have made him feel happy but somehow it didn’t. And as for what he wanted – Luke didn’t know what it was that he actually wanted, he only knew that whatever it was it would make him feel far happier than he did right now. What he wanted ultimately was for him and Katie to be so close to one another that he didn’t have to worry about what she was thinking, or if she really did love him, or was just saying the words because he had pressed her to say them. His mum showed all the time how much she loved his dad. At home his dad’s word was law, not that his dad ever had to raise his voice or make demands for anyone to know that. His mother was the one who made sure that everyone knew that Dad was the boss.

Luke admired his father more than any other man he knew, and now that he was a man himself the two of them were every bit as close as a father and son should be. But Luke had grown up seeing his father always being more openly affectionate and loving with Luke’s sisters than he had been with him, and somehow that had made him feel left out.

He’d seen how, when all three of his sisters over the years had gone up to their father, put their arms round him, leaned their heads on his shoulder, and sat on his lap when they were small, Sam had always laughed and responded. But when he had gone to his father for the same comfort, say with a cut leg or on those occasions when for one reason or another he was hurting inside in a way that he couldn’t explain and had needed his father’s reassurance, Sam had always been brusque and offhand with him, pushing him away.

Sam might say that he loved him and that he was proud of him, but sometimes when he felt the way he was doing now, deep down inside Luke couldn’t help comparing the difference between the way his father had treated him when he was growing up and the open affection he had shown Luke’s sisters.

What did words mean after all? What if the truth was that he just wasn’t someone that could be loved? Words were easy enough to say, but how did you know what was really inside someone’s heart. How could he give his trust and his own heart to another person when he wasn’t sure how she really felt?

Surely if Katie loved him as much as she said she did then she would understand all of this, even though he couldn’t understand it or talk about it himself. Women were, after all, the guardians and protectors of their men’s emotions, or so it seemed to Luke from witnessing the relationship between his own parents. It was always his mother who did the bending and the coaxing and who was at pains to make sure that her husband and her children were happy. She did that because she loved them, but Katie didn’t seem to want to make sure that he was happy.

Luke hated it when these dark moods came down over him. This one had started coming on after the lorry driver had been killed. The sight of the man’s crushed body had shocked and nauseated him so much that he had had trouble controlling his reactions, and had been afraid of showing himself up in front of his own men and the Americans.

That had made him angry with himself. If he was close to crying like a baby because he’d seen one body, what would he be like when the time came for him to go into action? How could he be a proper corporal to his men if deep down inside himself he was worrying that he might be a coward? He had gone through Dunkirk, Luke reminded himself now. But that had been different. They had been running from the enemy then, not fighting them.

How was it possible for him to feel so alone when he was surrounded by his family and when he had Katie at his side?

Luke didn’t know. He just knew that he did. He couldn’t explain why quarrelling with Katie gave him that sore scratchy feeling inside, nor could he explain why he found it so hard to trust her and believe her when she told him that she loved him.

‘It just doesn’t seem right to me that you’d want to go without me in the first place,’ he told her now, returning to the argument like a child worrying at a scabbed knee, even though it knew that the end result of its messing was going to be pain. ‘Unless there’s something you aren’t telling me?’

‘Oh, Luke,’ Katie sighed, pulling her hand from his as the misery inside her grew into despair.

She hated the thought that she and Luke might end up like her own mother and father. What Katie longed for was a marriage like Jean and Sam’s; a contented and placid marriage based on trust. She didn’t want excitement and drama. She wanted the security of knowing that her husband and her marriage would always be solid, dependable and unchanging. She could never for one minute imagine Sam saying the things to Jean that Luke had just said to her, or provoking a quarrel in the way Luke did between them. She knew that Luke had been treated badly by a previous girlfriend, but he had promised her that he would stop being so unnecessarily jealous, and she had thought he meant it. But now …

‘Do you want to try for those jobs at the telephone exchange then?’ Sasha asked Lou.

Lou dragged her foot, scuffing the side of her shoe, a childhood habit to which she still sometimes reverted, especially when she was feeling on edge.

‘I suppose so, only it isn’t very exciting, is it?’ Lou answered as they followed their parents towards the modest church they had attended every Sunday for as long as they could remember.

Ahead of them their parents had stopped to talk to other members of the congregation, the adults faces wreathed in smiles if they had been fortunate enough not to have lost anyone in the bombing raid, or shadowed by their pain if they had.

‘So what do you want to do?’ Sasha demanded impatiently, keeping an eye on their parents as she waited for Lou’s response.

Lou didn’t know. She only knew that she yearned for something more than working in a telephone exchange. But Sasha didn’t. Sasha wasn’t like her. Panic filled Lou. That wasn’t true. They felt exactly the same; they always had done and they always would do. They had promised one another that nothing would ever come between them now, nothing and no one. The very thought of doing something without Sasha filled Lou with misery and despair.

‘I want to do what you want to do,’ she told her twin.

‘So we’ll go tomorrow and see if they’ll take us on then,’ Sasha told her.

Sasha liked the thought of working at the telephone exchange. It was within walking distance of home, and somehow she knew she’d feel safe there. Feeling safe, both emotionally and physically, was important to Sasha. She been so afraid when she’d been trapped in the bomb site, and afraid too when she and Lou had quarrelled over which of them Kieran had liked the best. She never wanted to feel like that again, about anyone or anything.

Her head held high with pride, her best floral silk frock abloom with bright pinks, yellows, reds and greens, and her Sunday best navy-blue straw hat pushed down firmly on top of her head, Emily beamed with delight in response to the smiles of welcome she and Tommy were receiving from the other churchgoers.

Whitchurch was only a small town and already in the few days she had been here she had got to know several people, thanks to her chatty neighbour, Ivy Wilson, whose cousin owned a local farm, and who seemed to know everything about everyone.

‘What you want,’ she had told Emily when they had surveyed the large uncultivated back garden together over a welcome cup of tea, after she had come round to introduce herself and help Emily to unpack, ‘is a man to come and set this to rights for you. I’ll have a word with Linda, our Ian’s wife. Our Ian farms up at Whiteside Farm and they’ve got some of them prisoners of war sent to help out with the farm work. I dare say Ian won’t mind sparing you one to get you some veggies and that in, especially if you was to offer to feed him. Eatin’ her out of house and home, Linda says they are.’

Emily had already registered her and Tommy at the doctor’s, and at the local shops with their ration books. She’d had a visit from the vicar to welcome her to his congregation, and a lady from the WVS had been round to invite her to join their local group. Emily had taken Tommy to the library so that they could get tickets, and all in all Emily was extremely pleased with their new home. She certainly hadn’t missed Liverpool, nor her husband, Con, not one little bit.

All that fresh air and a summer spent playing out of doors would do wonders for Tommy’s thin pale face, especially once he started at school and made some friends.

Emily had no fears now that Tommy might say or do the wrong thing and accidentally let it slip that they weren’t related. Tommy never spoke about his life before Emily had found him homeless, alone and living on scraps, too afraid even to speak at all, never mind talk about how he had come to be in such a desperate situation. Emily assumed that he had been orphaned by the war. She had claimed to officialdom and her husband that Tommy’s mother had been her own late cousin, and that because of that she was duty bound to take him in. She had organised new papers for him giving him that identity. She loved him as though he was her own child and the only thing that would ever make her give him up to someone else would be Tommy’s wish that she do so. Without it having to be said between them, they simply behaved as though they belonged together. They had not discussed the issue, but somehow Emily knew that Tommy understood and wanted them to be looked on as ‘family’. What need was there for her to go asking him any questions after all, Emily thought comfortably. Poor little scrap, there was no sense in reminding him of things he’d rather not think about. Who knew what he had been through before she’d found him?

‘Hang on a minute.’

Emily turned round to see Ivy, her helpful neighbour, puffing up the slight incline in the road, after them.

Like Emily she was wearing what was obviously her Sunday best, a navy silk dress with white spots, the fabric stretched tightly across her ample chest.

‘Well, you two look smart, I must say,’ she said approvingly when she had caught up with them, her face bright pink beneath the brim of her white straw hat. Older than Emily, and widowed, she was obviously determined to take Emily under her wing.

Emily drew herself up proudly to her full height. Tommy did look smart in the grey flannel shorts and shirt and the Bluecoat School blazer she had bought for him in Liverpool from a school uniform supplier who was closing down.

‘I was just thinking,’ Ivy told Emily, ‘I’ll have to introduce you to Hilda Jones. She’s in charge of the local school and you’ll want to get your Tommy registered with her. Teaches them all herself now, Hilda does, since all the men have been called up. A bit of a tartar she is, by all accounts, at least according to our Linda’s girls, but some discipline doesn’t do young ’uns any harm, especially boys.’

Emily could feel Tommy’s hand tightening in her own.

‘Tommy’s a good boy,’ she told Ivy firmly, ‘and clever as well.’

‘Well, I can see from his blazer that he’s bin at one of them posh schools,’ Ivy agreed immediately. ‘And he speaks lovely, an’ all,’ she added approvingly.

Tommy did speak well, Emily agreed. He had hardly any trace of a Liverpool accent.

Since the night he had rushed to her defence when she’d been attacked by thieves who had broken into her Liverpool house, hoping to empty her kitchen cupboards to sell her food on the black market, having previously been mute, he had come on by leaps and bounds, and was turning into a regular little chatterbox.

Every afternoon whilst it had been so nice and warm, they’d gone for a walk exploring their new environment, and it had amazed Emily how much Tommy knew and how many questions he asked. Only yesterday she’d had to ask them in the library if they had any books on birds on account of him wanting to know what the birds were they could see in the garden.

‘My goodness, you can put a spurt on when you’ve a mind to it,’ Ivy puffed as they reached the church gate.

‘Oh, me and Tommy don’t like to hang around,’ Emily laughed. She felt Tommy’s hand tighten in hers again. She looked down at him and saw that he was looking up at her in query.

‘We’re going to be very happy here,’ she told him stoutly. ‘You’ll like it at school and I bet you’ll be the cleverest boy there.’

He had a good sense of humour, with a wide grin that made you want to smile yourself when you saw it. He was smiling now, and Emily smiled back. My, she was going to like it here. It was doing her the world of good to be able to talk with people without looking over her shoulder to see if they were gossiping about her behind her back on account of her gallivanting unfaithful husband. Poor Con, she almost felt sorry for him remembering how shocked and disbelieving he had been when she had told him that she was leaving. Well, it served him right.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a column of men being marched towards the church: prisoners of war, under the eye of army guards. They came to a halt a few feet away from the gathered civilians.

He was certainly a fine well-set-up chap, Emily reflected, her attention caught by the man at the front of the column. He wasn’t particularly tall but he was certainly well built with a good pair of shoulders on him and a look about him that said he was a man who knew his own mind. His fair hair was silver grey round his temples and his skin was tanned a nice brown. Emily sighed enviously. She thought tanned skin looked ever so nice but when she got out in the sun all she did was freckle.

The POW turned his head as though he could sense her interest in him. Blushing as hotly as any girl, Emily looked away, lifting her gloved hand to pat her dress self-consciously.

She must find out if there was someone who was good with a needle. What with all this rationing and the worry of the war, she seemed to have lost a bit of weight and last year’s dress was now hanging loosely on her.

As they stepped through the gate into the churchyard, Ivy exclaimed, ‘Oh, there’s Brenda Evans from the post office, with her mother. You wait here and I’ll go and bring them over and introduce you.

‘Here we are,’ Ivy announced, puffing and panting as she reappeared with a small apple dumpling of a woman with rosy cheeks, her iron-grey hair pulled into a bun that looked like a cottage loaf. Everything about her was round, even her sharp blue eyes.

‘This here is Emily, Brenda,’ Ivy began the introductions.

Emily smiled and shook the post mistress’s hand.

‘Well, now, and what have we here?’ she began in a singsong Welsh accent, and looking down at Tommy, before turning to her mother to say something to her in their own language.

They were both smiling and Emily had no idea what she had said but the effect on Tommy was electric. The minute he had heard the post mistress’s singsong accent he had stiffened, but now with her speaking Welsh Tommy pulled away from Emily, a look of terror on his face as he ignored her anxious ‘Tommy!’ and bolted for the church gate.

Although she was aware of the confusion and the curious and shocked looks his behaviour was causing, it was Tommy and his safety that concerned Emily the most as she hurried after him, begging him to stop but knowing somehow that he was in such a panic that he probably couldn’t even hear her.

And then to her relief, the German prisoner of war she had noticed earlier, moving extraordinarily fast for such a heavily built man, somehow managed to step in front of Tommy, reaching for him at the same time and holding him firmly until Emily arrived.

‘Oh, thank you.’ She was out of breath now, puffing just as Ivy had been, but although she had thanked the POW her attention was all for Tommy, who was shivering and shaking so much he could hardly stand up.

She might be wearing her Sunday best frock but Tommy was her precious boy. Emily dropped to her knees and took him in her arms, cradling him close.

‘Oh, my poor little lad, what’s to do?’

Ivy and Brenda Evans had caught up with them now and immediately Tommy tensed again, pulling away from her, but the POW was still there and his hand on Tommy’s shoulder managed to stay him.

A small crowd had gathered round them. The postmistress looked anxious and concerned but it was Ivy who unwittingly gave Emily a clue to what might be wrong when she joked, ‘It’s you speaking Welsh what did it, Brenda. I reckon the poor lad must have thought the Germans had invaded.’

Everyone laughed, and then someone pointed out that they were going to be late for church, and people started to move away.

Emily reached for Tommy’s hand and squeezed it, telling him softly, ‘It’s all right, Tommy. You and me will be all right, I promise you that.’

She could feel him starting to relax. She looked up at the man still holding him.

‘Thank you.’ She felt self-conscious and awkward, conscious of how she must look in his eyes, a plain fat woman who had nothing about her to appeal to any man, never mind such a well-set-up man as he.

‘You are welcome.’ His English was stilted, the words carefully spaced.

‘He is your boy, ja?’ he asked.

‘Yes, he is my boy,’ Emily agreed.

‘You are a good boy to your Mutter? You take care of her, ja?’ he asked Tommy, who had calmed down enough now to nod his head.

But Emily was still astonished when Tommy asked the POW politely, ‘What is your name?’

‘It is Wilhelm,’ the man told him promptly. ‘What is yours?’

‘Tommy.’ Emily and Tommy both spoke at the same time.

The soldier guarding the POWs gave a command and the column started to march into the church.

Emily drew Tommy to one side to let them pass. Wilhelm had ever such a lovely straight back, Emily noticed, as she hurried Tommy into the church ahead of the marching men.

Well, things could not have worked out better for him if he had planned them that way, Charlie decided smugly as he sang lustily along with the rest of the congregation at the parish church of his in-laws-to-be.

The Wrighton-Budes had their own pew right at the front of the small Norman church, with soft kneeling pads embroidered by Daphne’s mother and her late grandmother as a gift to the Church, whilst to the left of the pew the stained glass had been another family gift.

On the dark oak commemoration board on the opposite wall, the gilding of Daphne’s brother, Eustace’s, name was still bright and fresh. His was the last name to appear on the board, and the first so far from the current war.

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