ANNIE GROVES
The Grafton Girls

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely 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.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2007

1

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007

Copyright © Annie Groves 2007

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

Set in Sabon by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Grangemouth, Stirlingshire

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Source ISBN-13: 9780007209675

Ebook Edition © September 2008 ISBN:9780007279517

Version: 2017-09-12

Epigraph

To the readers for their generous reception to the first of my World War Two books. I hope they will enjoy this one as much.

Annie Groves

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

EPIGRAPH

PART ONE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

PART TWO

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

PART THREE

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PART ONE

ONE

‘My station’s coming up next, and then it’ll be Lime Street, luv, tek it from me. Done this ruddy train journey that many times, I have, since this bloomin’ war began, I can tell the stops practically in me sleep. That is, of course, if a person could manage to get any sleep with the trains being that full and noisy. Not that I’m complaining, like, not about the overcrowding nor about all the place names being teken down from the stations so as to confuse any of Hitler’s spies wot manage to land. Aye, and if I were your age, I’d be in uniform too. WAAF isn’t it?’ Diane Wilson’s new-found friend said knowingly, referring to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, studying Diane’s airforce-blue-clad frame admiringly.

‘That’s right.’ Diane smiled politely enough to be pleasant but not so warmly that she would be encouraging the woman to ask her too many questions.

‘A right ’andsome lot them fly boys are. By, if I had me time again…’ the older woman chuckled.

Now it was harder for Diane to force a responsive smile. Automatically, and despite the fact that she was wearing gloves, she placed her right hand over the bare place on her ring finger. The pain she thought she had under control could sneak up on her to catch her unawares and stab her with such agonising sharpness. She ought to be over it by now. After all, it had been three months. Three months, two days and ten hours, an inner voice tormented her. Resolutely Diane ignored it. She had known other girls, any number of them, who had been stationed with her at Upwood, Cambridgeshire, who had gone from being desperately in love with one chap to clinging happily to the arm of another when they had lost him. So there was no reason why she shouldn’t be doing the same. Only she wouldn’t be clinging – not to any man – not ever again. There was no danger of her repeating that mistake. Sometimes, when she was at her lowest ebb, the horrid thought wouldn’t go away, the thought that it might have been easier to accept things if Kit had been killed instead of…

‘You’ll be heading for that Derby House, then, like as not?’ the woman leaned towards her to whisper, interrupting her reverie. ‘Saw Mr Churchill himself standing outside of it one morning, I did. Smiled at me, an’ all. Hitler might have ’is ruddy SS but just so long as we’ve got our Mr Churchill we’ll be sound, mark my words,’ she added stoutly.

She was a good sort, Diane recognised, a bit shabbily dressed, but then who wasn’t these days, with the war in its third year and new clothes only available if one had enough coupons with which to purchase them. Luckily she had joined the WAAF before clothing coupons had come in, and so she had not had to part with any of her own precious coupons in exchange for her obligatory WAAF uniform of black lace-up shoes, grey lisle stockings, which none of the girls wore during the summer months if they could help it, a skirt, a tunic, a peaked cap – which the girls loved as much as they hated the lisle stockings –an overcoat, which came in jolly useful in the winter, and even regulation underwear, with its horrid bubble-gum-pink ‘foundation garments’, although none of the girls wore these either if they could get away with wearing their own underwear instead.

More seriously, the whole country was now feeling the effect of the food rationing that had been brought in at the beginning of the war, but if Hitler had hoped to destroy the fighting spirit of the British by attempting to sink the ships struggling across the Atlantic to bring in the supplies on which the country depended, he had omitted to take into account the sturdiness of the nation’s spirit, Diane recognised proudly.

Her recent request for a transfer was responsible for Diane’s presence on this train to Liverpool and her new post at Derby House, the headquarters of the combined forces protecting the convoys coming into the port. Her life in Liverpool would be very different from that in Cambridgeshire, she knew. Several of the pals she had been leaving behind had expressed doubts about the wisdom of what she was doing.

‘Liverpool!’ more than one of them had exclaimed, pulling a face. ‘You wouldn’t catch me wanting to transfer up there. Not for anything.’

Diane had affected not to notice the sharp nudge another of her friends had given the speaker, knowing that the warning was kindly meant and intended to protect her feelings. Her broken heart.

She could feel the burning threat of tears at the back of her eyes, and was thankful for the diversion of the sudden hiss of the train’s brakes and the noise of escaping steam, plus the bustle of her travelling companion getting ready to leave the train.

‘Well, here’s my station.’

Diane forced herself to return the woman’s smile.

‘Good luck, lass,’ the older woman said, giving Diane a grateful look as she helped her out of the compartment with her bags. ‘You’ll like Liverpool once you get to know it. Of course, it’s not the place it was, not since that ruddy May bombing back in ’forty-one. A whole week of it, we had, and it ripped the heart out of the city, and no mistake. There was hardly a family in the city that didn’t lose someone, and there were thousands evacuated who didn’t come back. But it takes more than a few bombs to knock the stuffing out of Liverpudlians, as you’ll soon find out.’

The bright summer sunshine was surely enough of an excuse for her to blink, Diane reassured herself as the train pulled out of the station. And if she was also blinking away those threatening tears then who was to know but her? No one here knew anything about her or her situation. That alone was enough to make her glad that the transfer she had begged for had brought her here.

‘HQ Western Approaches won’t be what you’re used to here, Wilson,’ she had been warned when she had been called to the office to receive her new orders from her commanding officer.

‘But I’ll still be working as a teleprinter operator, won’t I, ma’am?’ she had asked, uncertainly.

‘Well, as to that, I dare say that yes, you will. But Derby House is a joint effort run principally by the Senior Service,’ she told Diane, referring to the British Navy, ‘unlike here, where it’s all RAF. It will be part of your duty as a WAAF to make sure that you create the right impression on those you’ll be working with.’ When her CO had added, straight-faced, ‘The Senior Service takes a pretty dim view of flighty behaviour,’ Diane hadn’t known whether or not she was cracking a joke.

‘The CO joke?’ one of her pals had scoffed when she had related the incident to her. ‘That’ll be the day!’

Diane hadn’t really needed her CO’s warning. Everyone in uniform knew about the rivalries between the various services, and that the Senior Service in particular tended to look down somewhat on the upstart RAF.

She could practically hear Kit’s voice now -strong and filled with good humour as he laughed, ‘The trouble with those Senior Service lot is that they’re jealous of our success.’

‘You mean because of the Battle of Britain?’ Diane had asked, thinking he had meant that the navy men envied the victory the RAF had had over the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940, when men like Kit had driven back the incoming German fighters.

‘No,’ she remembered Kit had told her, his eyes – fighter pilot’s far-seeing eyes – crinkling up at the corners with amusement as he had leaned forward and told her boldly, ‘I meant because of our success with the fairer sex.’

She had pretended to be dismissive, tossing her head as they stood together at the small bar of the packed Cambridgeshire pub on that breathlessly hot summer night, but when a careless airman, overeager to get to the bar before the beer ran out, had accidentally bumped into her, she hadn’t complained when Kit had made a grab for her waist. ‘To protect you,’ he had assured her guilelessly, but he hadn’t been in any hurry to release her, and the truth was that by that stage she had been too entranced by him to want him to. With Kit, over six foot tall, broad-shouldered, with a shock of thick wavy dark hair, and the kind of good looks and easy charm that had already got him a nine out of ten rating in the WAAF canteen, there was barely a girl Diane knew who wouldn’t have fallen for his charms.

But there had been another side to him, or so she had believed. A side that…

The sudden jerk of the train’s brakes brought her back to the present. Already the corridor outside her carriage was packed with passengers wanting to get off. Diane reached up to the overhead luggage rack to remove her kitbag, ready to join the stream of people disembarking at Lime Street.

So this was Liverpool. The voices she could hear all around her certainly had very different accents from those in Cambridgeshire, although the Liverpool accent wasn’t the only one swelling the noise in the busy station, and Diane’s eyes widened a little when she saw – and heard – how many Americans there were clustered around in large groups.

They would, of course, be the ‘Yanks’ from the American base at Burtonwood, which her fellow traveller had mentioned. American bases were being established in Lincolnshire, and at Bomber Command, in High Wycombe, and there had been American personnel at the Cambridgeshire base as well. Diane had heard from some of the other girls about the attractions of the American male and the American PX – as the stores on the newly established American supply bases were named -both generous providers of much that was unavailable or rationed, including chocolate and stockings.

The station platforms were busy with men in uniform, with the distinctively dressed women of the Women’s Voluntary Service also very much in evidence with their tea urns. Diane would not have said no to a cuppa herself, but it had already gone five in the evening and she still had to find her way to her billet near Wavertree.

One of the friendly WVS women was happy to explain to Diane how to get to her billet on Chestnut Close, which was in what she described approvingly as ‘a respectable part of the city’.

‘It’s a fair walk, but you could take the bus.’

‘No, I’d prefer the walk,’ Diane assured her.

The summer sunshine had enough warmth in it to make her walk a pleasant one, and to allow her to pause to stare in shocked compassion at the blitzed and bombed-out centre of the city. She could see huge gaps where it looked as though whole streets had disappeared, and smaller ones, where only a single house had gone, leaving the rest of the street intact.

The city was very different from the pretty Hertfordshire village where she had grown up, Diane acknowledged. Her parents were far from well off, but their semi was one of several on a quiet leafy lane opposite the village green and duck pond. Diane had grown up knowing virtually everyone else who lived in the village. She couldn’t help contrasting the pretty comfortable calm of her home village with the devastation of this powerful northern port city. Her parents had been proud but anxious when she had announced her intention of doing her bit and joining up, and they had been even more anxious when she had told them that she was seeing an airman, insisting that she took him home with her so that they could meet him. Although at first they had been cool towards him, by the time Diane and Kit’s forty-eight-hour pass was up, Kit had completely charmed them. Diane had been so thrilled and proud, both of him and her parents. Of course, the minute her mother had discovered that he was virtually an orphan, having lost his mother shortly after his birth, she had taken to fussing over him. They had laughed about it together later, Kit teasing Diane that once they were married she would never be able to run home to her mother because she would always take his side. She had laughed too, telling him with the assurance that falling in love brought that she would never ever want to run anywhere other than to him.

She had been so deliriously happy, living in a world coloured by her hopes and dreams for the future, even if her heart had been in her mouth during every mission Kit flew, her fear always that he might not make it back. Too happy, she knew now. And her fear should not just have been for Kit’s survival but for the survival of their love.

She had been so busy with her own thoughts whilst she was walking that she hadn’t really observed very much of her surroundings, and it came as a surprise when she realised that she must have passed the hospital she had been told to look out for and that she could now see the Picton Clock landmark she had been warned meant that she had gone too far and missed her turning.

An elderly woman, obviously having noticed her looking around, came over to her.

‘Lost your way, have you?’ she enquired.

‘I’ve been billeted to Chestnut Close,’ Diane explained, ‘but I think I’ve missed my turning.’

‘Well, as to that,’ the other woman sniffed, ‘you have, yes. This is Wavertree, not Edge Hill.’ The way she stressed what she obviously considered to be the superiority of ‘Wavertree’ would normally have made Diane smile. A similarly petty type of snobbery existed in Melham on the Green, the village where she had grown up, with one end of it being considered ‘better’ than the other. Kit had enjoyed teasing her about her mother’s pride in the fact that their well-cared-for semi was just over the invisible border that separated the ‘better’ end of the village from the ‘other’ end. ‘And, of course, we aren’t supposed to give out directions to strangers,’ the elderly lady added pompously.

‘No, indeed,’ Diane responded with suitable gravity. ‘Actually, I do have the directions, but I’ve wandered off track. I believe that I should have turned off left for Chestnut Close before I got here.’

‘There’s some folks that live there that like to claim that it’s in Wavertree, on account of it being on the border, but even if they are right, the better part of Wavertree is further up the road, past the tennis club and that. I expect you play tennis, do you? I used to play myself when I was younger.’

Diane made her excuses as tactfully as she could. The older woman’s question had brought a fresh wave of painful memories. The previous summer she and Kit had just managed to snatch the mixed doubles trophy from the previous year’s winners at the Cambridgeshire courts where they and other members of the RAF squadrons based locally played.

It had been at the tennis club, on a warm September night just after the Battle of Britain, not yet two years ago, that Kit had proposed to her.

If they had got married straight away then, instead of deciding to wait, would things have been any different?

It didn’t take Diane long to retrace her steps and find the turning into Chestnut Close, which turned out to be a neat collection of small semidetached homes and terraces of four interlinked red-brick houses, with low red-brick front garden walls and privet hedges.

Number 24 was about a quarter of the way down Chestnut Close, and Diane suspected that she saw several sets of net curtains twitching as she walked up its tidy gravel path.

The front door was opened the moment she knocked.

‘Come in, dear,’ she was instructed by the small, plump woman in her fifties who greeted her, whom Diane assumed to be her landlady. ‘I’ve bin expecting you. Tired, are you, and parched too, I’m sure? I’ll put the kettle on and then I’ll take you up and show you the room. You’ll be sharing, did they tell you that? Another young lady who’s working at Derby House. I told them when they asked me if I’d have some lodgers that with me being a widow and liking things just so, I’d only take young ladies. Not that some of them I’ve had have been what I’d call “ladies”, but then I can tell that you’re a decent sort. I’m Mrs Lawson, by the way. It’s a good-size room, the largest in the house. It was me and my Herbert’s room but seein’ as I’m on me own now I moved out of it, like, and I got rid of the double, had a pair of single beds put in – there was that many young couples wanting to have it, what with the furniture shortage an’ all, and there’s much more space in the back room now with only a single in it. It’s funny, isn’t it, some folks don’t like sleeping in a single after they’ve shared, but me, I don’t mind at all. I like me own space, you see, and men and marriage -well, they aren’t allus what they’re made out to be, take it from me. It’s this way,’ she continued without pausing for breath, as she started up the stairs, leaving Diane to follow her.

‘Now I’m very fussy about the state of me bathroom – I won’t have no makeup nor any of that fake leg stuff all over everything. Baths are once a week, unless you want to pay for extra. You’ll get your breakfast, and a meal before you go out when you do your night shift. But there’s to be no food taken upstairs to your room. And no followers neither,’ she added firmly. ‘I won’t have no truck with any of that kind of goings-on.’

They had reached the landing and Diane reflected ruefully that beneath Mrs Lawson’s soft outer plumpness lay a core of pure steel.

‘The lady wot you’ll be sharing with is married. Only bin here a couple of weeks herself, she has.’

‘This is the room.’ She gave a small knock on the door and called out, ‘It’s only me, Mrs Stone, duck, bringing up the new lady.’

Diane heard the sound of the door lock being pulled back, and then the door opened.

‘I’ll leave you two to get to know one another whilst I make you both a cuppa,’ Mrs Lawson announced.

‘Not for me, thanks, Mrs L. I’ve got to go soon,’ said the room’s occupant.

‘Right you are, duck,’ said the landlady, leaving Diane and the girl now seated on one of the room’s two narrow single beds to study one another surreptitiously in the slightly awkward silence that followed her exit.

‘I’m Diane – Di,’ Diane introduced herself.

‘Myra Stone,’ the other girl responded.

Diane had never seen a more stunningly beautiful nor sensuously voluptuous-looking young woman. She had the kind of looks that would have turned men’s heads in the street. She had glossy brown curls, and brown eyes that should have looked warm but which instead held an expression of cynical brittleness that both shocked Diane and made her feel wary. Somehow that voluptuous body and those cold eyes just did not match up with one another.

‘You’d better come in and shut the door. I’ve already bagsied this bed,’ Myra told her, indicating the better positioned of the two beds. ‘And I’d better warn you now that there’s next to no wardrobe or drawer space left.’

‘I dare say I’ll be able to manage,’ Diane responded lightly. ‘It can’t be worse than we had at camp. I haven’t lived out before.’

‘Well, you won’t have to bother about curfews or anything like that,’ Myra told her, ‘and the social life’s pretty good up here, especially now that the Yanks have arrived. Have you dated any Yanks yet?’

Diane stiffened. Already a certain amount of competitive hostility had developed between the RAF flyers and the newly arrived Americans. The readiness of some girls to accept ‘dates’, as the Americans called them, from the newcomers had resulted in them being branded as ‘disloyal’, and there had even been incidents of outright hostility, with them being accused of favouring the Americans because of the luxuries they could provide.

‘You’ll be working at Derby House, I expect?’

‘Yes,’ Diane agreed, as she removed her gloves and her jacket, and then lifted her hand to make sure that her blonde hair was still smoothed neatly into its chignon. Her fingers were slender and fine-boned, her wrist blue-veined under creamy skin. Her colouring was more Nordic than English rose, and her father had always teased her that her blonde hair and blue eyes, together with her height and slender frame, were a throwback to some Viking ancestor on her mother’s side of the family. Diane had learned young that her looks made her stand out from the crowd and that sometimes other girls could be wary of her because of them. That in turn had led to her developing an initial defensive calm coolness of manner with people. ‘My Ice Princess’, Kit had called her. Diane knew that she did tend to hide her own shyness away behind a protective front with new people.

‘So what happened to him, then?’

Myra’s question caught her off guard, causing the colour to rise in her face. ‘What happened to who?’ she responded as soon as she had recovered her equilibrium.

‘The chap who gave you the ring you’ve taken off.’ Myra gestured towards Diane’s left hand and then waggled her own ring finger. ‘See, I’ve got the same telltale white mark. I always check out other girls’ ring fingers. It takes one to know one,’ she told Diane drily. ‘Husbands, eh…’

‘We weren’t married, only engaged,’ Diane told her sharply.

‘Lucky you,’ Myra drawled. ‘I just wish I could say the same. But, more fool me, I went and married mine, and you know what they say about marrying in haste? Well, take it from me it’s true.’ She paused and gave Diane a speculative look before demanding, ‘So what happened to him, then? Bought it, did he?’

Diane could hardly believe her ears. For sheer callousness Myra’s question couldn’t be beaten. If Kit had lost his life – or ‘bought it’, as Myra had so casually enquired – Diane knew she would have been overwhelmed with grief by Myra’s nosy probing. She looked angrily across and saw that Myra was waiting almost eagerly for her response. Diane had met women like Myra before, women who were so unhappy in their own lives that they fed off the misery of others. She had always taken care to avoid such types and her heart sank at the realisation that being billeted here meant she was not going to be able to now. Well, she might have to share a room with her, but she certainly wasn’t going to play along and give Myra the satisfaction of seeing her upset, Diane decided firmly.

Lifting her head she told her crisply, ‘No, actually, if anything, it was our relationship that “bought it”.’ Diane forced herself to give a small dismissive shrug. ‘These things happen in wartime.’ Not for the world was she going to allow Myra to guess at the pain that lay beneath her casual dismissal of her broken engagement.

Even so, she was surprised when Myra immediately pounced on her words and told her openly, ‘Don’t they just. Like I said, you want to be thankful that all you did was get engaged. An engagement’s easily got out of, not like marriage. I can’t believe now that I was such a fool. If I had my time over again, I’d know better. Three years I’ve been married, and I knew within three months I’d made a mistake. I told him last time he was on leave that I wanted to end it, but he wouldn’t agree, so it looks like I’m going to have to hope that the war does the job for me.’

Diane couldn’t conceal her shocked revulsion.

‘You needn’t look at me like that,’ Myra told her sharply. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. Worst mistake I’ve ever made – not that it doesn’t come in handy sometimes, like when a chap at a dance gets a bit too forward. I just tell him I’m married and that my hubby is serving abroad, and nine times out of ten that’s enough to make ’em back off. Not of course that I always want to say “no”. Not now we’ve got all these Yanks over here. Really know how to treat a girl, they do, not like our own lads. You should see them – tall, they are, and that handsome in those uniforms of theirs…What’s wrong?’ she demanded, obviously sensing Diane’s disapproval.

‘Nothing,’ Diane lied, and then admitted, ‘Well, if you must know, I think it’s a pretty poor thing for you to be praising American men. It seems disloyal to our own boys.’

‘Oh, I see, you’re one of them, are you? Have you ever met any Yanks?’ she challenged Diane.

‘As a matter of fact, yes I have,’ Diane told her coolly. It didn’t do to give away information, even to a colleague in uniform, so she wasn’t going to tell Myra that she had been based in Cambridgeshire and so had had any amount of opportunity to observe ‘Yanks’.

‘Oh, hoity-toity now, is it!’ Myra mocked her. ‘Well, you can do as you please because I certainly intend to, and when it comes to a handsome chap wanting to take me dancing and offering me nylons and other little treats, I know where my loyalty is going to lie, and that is to meself! You can disapprove all you like,’ she added determinedly. ‘I’ve had enough of this ruddy war, and I want to have a bit of a good time whilst I still can. If you had any sense you’d do the same. After all, what have you got to lose? Anyway, I’m going now. I’m on duty at eight.’ She pulled on her jacket and crammed her cap down onto her curls, then headed for the door.

Diane watched her go, relieved but feeling sorry that they had not got off to a better start. How many weeks of Myra’s carping could she stand?

When she reached the door, Myra stopped and turned round. ‘Look, there’s no sense in you and me not getting on,’ she announced, making Diane warm to her more. ‘There’s a dance on at the Grafton Ballroom Saturday night. It’s the best ballroom in Liverpool and they have some smashing bands playing there. Why don’t you come along with me and see for yourself how much fun you can have?’

Diane was about to refuse when Myra added perceptively, ‘If this chap of yours has broken things off, then there’s no sense in coming here and moping about, if you want my opinion. What you should do is show him what you’re made of and have a darn good time. That’s certainly what I’d do. There’s no point looking back over your shoulder for a chap who doesn’t want you when there’s plenty around who would.’

‘What make you think that he was the one who broke the engagement?’ Diane demanded, her pride stung by Myra’s caustic words. ‘As a matter of fact, having a good time is exactly what I do intend to do,’ she added nonchalantly.

‘Good. You’ll be on for the dance, then?’

‘Of course.’ The acceptance was out of her mouth before Diane could summon the good sense to refuse.

‘Wait until you see them Yanks. You won’t be moping over your chap then, I can tell you, not if you’ve any sense,’ Myra told her enthusiastically as she opened the door.

‘I’m not moping…’ Diane began but it was too late, Myra had gone, clattering down the stairs.

Half an hour later, having thanked Mrs Lawson for her cup of tea and the Spam sandwiches she had made her, Diane dutifully listened whilst her landlady went through her house rules.

‘You’ll be well fed, or as good as I can manage,’ Mrs Lawson assured her. ‘All the chaps round here have allotments and, knowing I’m widowed and that I’m doing me bit having you girls here, they mek sure that I get me fresh veggies and fruit. Mind you, you’ll get some of your meals at the Derby House canteen, as well, so you won’t be going without.’ She gave a small sniff that wasn’t quite a criticism, but Diane took the hint.

‘If there’s anything going spare, I’ll make sure I bring it back with me, Mrs Lawson.’

She was rewarded with an approving smile.

‘You’re a sensible type, I can see that,’ the landlady told her. ‘Now, I’ll give you a key, ’cos I know you’ll be working shifts. I’m off out in a few minutes, once I’ve washed up, as it’s me WVS meeting night.’

‘I’ll give you a hand with the washing-up, shall I?’ Diane offered dutifully, earning herself another approving smile. She realised she would have to adapt so that she could get on well with both Mrs Lawson and Myra Stone if she was going to cope with life at number 24.

TWO

Left to her own devices, Diane decided that she might as well explore her new surroundings rather than stay cooped up in the room she was sharing with Myra.

She changed out of her uniform, taking care to hang it up neatly, before unpinning her hair. The trouble with being a natural blonde was that there were so many unnatural blondes around who had taken the maxim that blondes have more fun so enthusiastically to heart that one was judged automatically as being the same. It was part of the reason why she preferred to wear her hair up instead of down. But only part, Diane admitted. The other part was the fact that Kit had loved to smooth her hair back off her face and run his fingers through it, and now she just couldn’t bear to look in the mirror and see it falling softly down onto her shoulders. It was horrid to love someone so much when they no longer loved you back. Diane had never imagined she would feel like this. She had grown up in a happy loving environment, with parents married nearly thirty years now, and from the moment Kit had proposed to her she had simply accepted that he loved her and that he always would do.

She wasn’t to think about him any more, she reminded herself fiercely. He wasn’t worthy of her tears or her thoughts, and she had had a lucky escape. Better to have found out now what he was really like…

She had said these words to herself so often these last few weeks that they had become a litany that ran ceaselessly through her head. It had been very hard to maintain the pretence of their deciding on a mutual end to their engagement in front of her colleagues, especially those young women who, like her, had RAF boyfriends and with whom she and Kit had often socialised.

Not letting the side down had become not letting herself down, just as keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of the hardships of war had become making sure that she didn’t let others see how she really felt.

It wasn’t unknown for engagements to be broken, and though the ending of hers had been greeted with a few raised eyebrows, the camp was a large one and everyone there knew young women who had lost fiancés and husbands to the war, and who because of that were far more deserving of sympathy than Diane.

Out of Kit’s squadron only just over half of the original young pilots were still flying. One of Kit’s closest pals in the squadron had been shot down and killed, leaving a distraught young widow, so distraught in fact that she had tried to take her own life. Diane shivered, remembering poor little Amy. But it didn’t do to dwell on such things -the war taught everyone that. Amongst those pilots who weren’t flying were the dead, the injured and those who were presumed to be prisoners of war. Diane gave another shiver. She must not think about that now, nor about the nights she had lain awake, wondering if Kit would make it back safely. That life was over now. This was meant to be a fresh start for her here in Liverpool, where no one knew her or her history.

She looked down at her left hand and her bare ring finger. When Kit had broken their engagement she had taken off her ring and handed it back to him. He had shrugged dismissively, telling her that she might as well keep it, plainly unconcerned about either it or her any more. The following weekend, having given in to a friend’s suggestion that she join them at a dance, she had had the heart-stopping experience of seeing Kit dancing with another girl, holding her close as he crooned in her ear. But she couldn’t think about that again. The familiar pain was building up. She must not let it take hold of her. And she would not. Girls like Myra, with her cynical determination to make the most of the opportunities the war offered, had a far better time of it than girls like her, and if she had any sense she would model herself on Myra and have a good time herself. What, after all, had she got to lose now that she had lost Kit? He plainly was enjoying himself without her, and now that she had no heart left to break she would not be in any danger of having hers broken a second time, would she? It was all very well being good and loyal, and loving one man and one alone, but when that man said he didn’t want you any more where did that leave you? Diane took a deep breath. After all, hadn’t she already told herself that from now on things were going to be different and that she herself was going to be different? Sharing with someone like Myra was going to make it easy for her to keep that promise to herself. From now on she was going to go out and dance and laugh, and take all the fun that life was prepared to offer her. She reached up and tugged the pins out of her hair…

Ten minutes later, freshly dressed in ‘mufti’, as those in the forces referred to their non-uniform clothes, she let herself out of the house.

She might as well walk back into the city and find out the best way to reach Derby House, she decided when she had walked as far as Edge Hill Road. It was a light evening with a pleasant breeze, and she set off briskly in the direction she had come earlier.

The bombed buildings looked no less shocking this time than they had done earlier. Instinctively she wanted to look away. People had lived in those houses and worked in those buildings. Where were they now? Rehoused safely somewhere else, or had their lives been destroyed along with their homes, Diane wondered sadly, standing uncertainly at the crossroads she had come to and wondering which way she should take.

‘Summat up, is there, lass?’ a woman with a chirpy Liverpudlian accent asked her.

‘I’m just trying to get my bearings,’ Diane told her. ‘I’ve only just arrived…’

‘Aye, well, with that blonde hair of yours you’d better take care no one mistakes you for a German spy,’ the woman told her forthrightly. ‘I don’t hold wi’ bleaching, I don’t…’

Diane forced herself to smile, rather than correct her.

‘So what is it yer looking for then? If it’s them Yanks, yer won’t have to go far; they’ll find you soon enough. Not that I’d let any daughters of mine tek up wi’ one, not for all the fags and nylons in the world,’ the woman avowed firmly.

‘Actually, I was trying to make my way to Derby House,’ Diane told her.

‘Derby House, is it? Got business there, have yer?’

Diane had had enough. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a policeman walking towards her. Excusing herself, she hurried over to him, asking him determinedly, ‘I wonder if you could point me in the right direction for Derby House. I’m in the WAAF and I’m on duty there tomorrow.’

‘Got your papers with you, have you?’ he asked her.

Diane dutifully produced her identity documents for him to see.

‘Come with me. I’ll show you the way,’ he told her once he had studied them and handed them back to her.

Derby House turned out to be a disappointingly dull-looking new office block behind the town hall, but as Diane had learned from her briefing before leaving Cambridgeshire, the government knew that Hitler would seek to target the place that was the headquarters of the Western Approaches Command, so they had protected the real heart of the operation by building it underground.

The policeman had returned to his duties, leaving Diane to study the building on her own. Liverpool was so very different from the airfield where she had worked before, but then her whole life was going to be different from now on, without Kit and their plans for the future. A huge lump formed in her throat as desolation swept over her. She forced herself to swallow back the threatening emotions. There was no point feeling sorry for herself. She had to meet this head on and stiffen her spine against her own weakness. After all, she had asked for her transfer so that she could have a fresh start away from people who had known her and Kit, away from the whispered conversations and sidelong looks to which she had become so sensitive.

She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. On the other side of the road she could see and hear a group of girls giggling as they linked arms. Diane watched them, envying their happiness as they strolled out of sight.

And then, just as she was about to cross the road and make her way back to her billet, out of nowhere – or so it seemed – an army Jeep filled with American soldiers came roaring down the road.

‘Hey, guys,’ Diane heard one of them, who was hanging out of the window, yell, ‘I see dames…’

The girls Diane had been watching made their escape, breaking ranks to run off up an alleyway, laughing and squealing, whilst the Jeep skidded to a halt, then did an abrupt U-turn. Immediately Diane stepped back into the shadows. She had seen enough of the kind of high-spirited behaviour indulged in by young servicemen desperate for female company in their off-duty hours, and did not want to draw attention to herself. But it was too late: they had seen her and, deprived of their original prey, the driver of the Jeep pulled it up across the pavement, blocking off Diane’s exit.

‘Hey, pretty girl, how about we have some fun together?’ one of the men called out to her. ‘We got nylons, we got chocolate, we got gum…’

‘Yeah, and we got jackass hard ons like you’ve never seen…’

Somehow Diane managed to stop herself from going bright red as she heard the explicit description yelled out by one of the other men.

‘Hey, Polanski, leave it out, will ya?’ another voice joined in, before its owner urged Diane, ‘Come on, blondie, we could have a good time together. What d’ya say?’

Things were threatening to get out of hand, Diane recognised. She could smell the alcohol on their breath from where she was standing, and she was now alone in the street with them.

She forced herself to remain calm as she said as firmly as she could, ‘I say that you boys are going to get in big trouble if your military police find you in this state.’

‘Hey, will ya listen to that?’ another of the men drawled admiringly. ‘A ballsy dame. I like that…’

‘But not as much as you’d like it if it was your balls she was playing with, eh, Dwight?’ another man laughed.

Whilst it wasn’t true to say that she was scared, Diane knew she was feeling apprehensive. She was a sensible young woman who had no intention of reacting in the kind of silly way that would cause the situation to escalate but she was also aware that she was out of uniform and thus could not command the same kind of respect wearing it would have gained her. She decided she had to get away from these men.

‘If you’ll excuse me…’ she told them, stepping forward so that she could skirt past them.

But they wouldn’t let her go, and to her shock one of them jumped down from the Jeep and started to walk towards her.

Now she was scared, Diane admitted as another GI jumped down onto the road.

‘Come on, sweet stuff,’ the first one coaxed. ‘All we want is a bit of fun. We won’t hurt you, will we, guys?’ As he spoke he was reaching out to grab hold of her arm.

It was foolish to panic, Diane knew, but she couldn’t help it. Backing off from them, her voice high-pitched with tension, she demanded, ‘Stop this and let me go.’

‘Sure we’ll let you go, honey, once we’ve had our fun…’

She could hear them laughing as they started to crowd her, her fear giving them the power to be more insolent. Anger and shocked disbelief fought for supremacy inside her. This could not be happening. Not in broad daylight in the middle of the city.

‘Come on, blondie. You’ll enjoy it…’

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ The authoritative voice of the uniformed officer who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere acted on them like a physical barrage, making them fall back and suddenly look more like scared boys than young men.

‘Sorry, Major…’

‘Gee, Major…’

Muttering apologies and excuses, the men piled back into the Jeep, leaving Diane facing the tall, broad-shouldered and obviously furious officer.

‘Now, I don’t know who you are, but if you’ll take my advice, you’ll think yourself lucky that I came by when I did, and maybe next time you’ll think twice about encouraging my men to—’

Diane’s self-control snapped. ‘Encouraging them? I’ll have you know, Major, that I was doing no such thing. Your men were behaving in a way that would have got them court-martialled had they been British,’ Diane told him bitingly.

‘You must have encouraged them—’

‘I did no such thing! Their behaviour was inexcusable and it’s no wonder that parents are telling their daughters to keep away from Americans. Your men were behaving more like some kind of occupying force than allies.’ Diane had the bit between her teeth now and all the bitterness and misery of the last few weeks, as well as the fright she had had, were fuelling her fury.

The major was equally incensed. He took a step towards her, and Diane had a momentary impression of reined-in temper and sheer male physical strength as he towered over her. His hair was thick and very dark, and his eyes, she noticed, were a brilliantly intense shade of blue.

He could quite easily have been a film star, and the uniform he was wearing, so much smarter than the uniforms of the British forces, only served to add to that impression. For some reason that infuriated Diane almost as much as his accusations had done.

‘My men—’

‘Your men behaved like wild animals and you should be ashamed of them, not defending them. All I was doing was simply standing here.’

‘Oh, yeah? Then you can’t blame them for thinking you were waiting for business, can you?’

It took several seconds for his meaning to sink in through her anger, but once it had she drew herself up to her full height and told him icily, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked in view of the behaviour of your men, but somehow I am. You see, in this country, Major, we expect our officers to know better. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to return to my billet. I’m on duty at eight, and by on duty,’ she told him pointedly, ‘I mean that I shall be serving my country – in uniform, just so there isn’t any misunderstanding.’

Diane had the satisfaction of seeing the slow burn of colour creeping up under his skin.

‘OK, my boys may have made a mistake—’ he began grudgingly.

‘There was no “may” about it, Major. Perhaps you should invite them to tell you about the group of girls they were pursuing and lost when they charged down here in their Jeep – or maybe that’s acceptable behaviour for American servicemen?’

Without giving him the opportunity to respond, Diane stepped past him, keeping her head held high as she virtually marched up the street, away from him. Outwardly she might look fully in control but inwardly she was quaking in her shoes, she admitted, as she refused to give in to the temptation to turn round and see if he was watching her. It made her feel physically sick to think of what could have happened to her if he hadn’t turned up when he had, and it made her feel even more nauseous to recognise what he had thought of her and how he had condemned her without bothering to check his facts. She knew that there was already a lot of antagonism in some quarters towards the American soldiers who had arrived in the country, but until now she had felt that they were being treated a bit unfairly. Feeling superior because they had better uniforms and equipment was one thing, but behaving as they had towards her was something else again, Diane decided angrily. Did they really think they were so important that they could get away with treating decent British women like that? By the time she had reached Edge Hill Road, she had walked off some of her temper and was feeling calmer, but it wasn’t until she had closed the door of her bedroom behind her and dropped down onto her narrow bed that she realised how shaky the incident had left her feeling.

‘Oh, Kit,’ she whispered, wishing he could take her in his arms and comfort her. But it was no use crying for her ex-fiancé. He had made it plain that she meant nothing to him any more.

THREE

‘Come on, girls, we’d better get back to work. We’ve overrun our break by five minutes as it is.’

‘Another few minutes won’t do anyone any harm, Janet,’ Myra protested. ‘I haven’t finished my ciggy yet.’

‘Huh, you’re lucky to have any ciggies to finish,’ sniffed the third Waaf gathered round the canteen table in the Navy, Army, and Air Force Institute – or the Naafi as all the canteen facilities provided for the armed forces were affectionately nicknamed. ‘I suppose you’ve been cadging some off them Yanks again, have you? I saw you talking to that handsome corporal earlier on.’

‘He’s only a bit of a kid and he looked half scared to death,’ Janet Warner, the most senior member of their small group, said drily, adding under her breath, ‘Watch out – here comes Sergeant Riley.’

‘What’s this then, a mothers’ meeting? Haven’t you lot got any work to do?’

There was a sudden clatter and the scrape of chairs being pushed back as all the girls apart from Myra reacted to the sharp voice and hurried to the exit.

‘We’re just on our way, Sarge,’ Janet assured the thickset, sharp-eyed RAF sergeant who was surveying them before turning away to head for the counter.

‘Come on, Myra,’ Janet urged in a hissed whisper from the doorway as Myra took her time crushing out her cigarette before starting to stroll insolently towards her friends. ‘Sometimes I think you go out of your way to wind up Sergeant Riley I really do,’ Janet muttered crossly.

‘It gets on my nerves the way he throws his weight around and thinks he can tell us what to do.’

‘He’s a sergeant, Myra; he doesn’t “think” he can tell us what to do, he knows he can.’

‘Stone, over here.’

Myra hesitated just long enough to make the anxiety sharpen further in Janet’s eyes and to have the satisfaction of seeing the red tide of anger starting to burn up the sergeant’s face, before obeying his summons.

‘It’s your kind that give women in the services a bad name,’ he told her when she eventually reached him. ‘And if I had my way—’

‘But you don’t, do you, Sarge?’ Myra taunted him. ‘Have your way, I mean. We all heard about that little Wren turning you down. Shame. She’s dating an American now, I hear. And who can blame her? Good-looking lot, they are, and generous.’

‘You’ve got a husband who’s away fighting for his country.’

‘So I have.’

‘It hasn’t gone unnoticed that you’ve been carrying on like you are single.’

‘Hasn’t it?’ Myra gave a shrug. ‘So what?’

‘You ought to be ruddy well ashamed of yourself.’

‘Jealous, are you, Sarge, ’cos other people are having a good time and you aren’t? Well, I’ll tell you something, shall I? I don’t blame your little Wren for turning you down in favour of her Yank, not one little bit. In her shoes, I’d have done the same.’

‘Sarge, your tea’s going cold,’ the Naafi manageress called out.

The sergeant turned his head, giving Myra the opportunity to escape.

She and the sergeant had clashed from the moment they had set eyes on one another. He reminded her in many ways of her father. A small shadow darkened Myra’s eyes. How her mother had stuck him for so many years Myra didn’t know. Part of the reason she had married so quickly had been to escape her home. She hadn’t known then, of course, that her father would have a seizure in the middle of one of his furious outbursts of temper and die three months after the wedding.

Men! Once you let them get the upper hand they thought they could treat you how they liked. That was why she was determined that no man would ever control her life the way her father had controlled her mother’s and had tried to control hers. She wished passionately now that she had not been stupid enough to get married and land herself with a husband hanging around her neck and thinking he could tell her what to do. Well, he could write as many letters as he liked telling her he did not want her going out whilst he was away. They weren’t going to stop her doing a single thing that she wanted to do.

FOUR

Ruthie tensed as she opened the front door, her shoes gripped tightly in her free hand as she glanced fearfully over her shoulder into the blackout-shrouded darkness of the silent house, terrified of making the slightest sound that might wake her sleeping mother. If that happened…but no, she mustn’t think about that.

Once she was safely outside in the cold dawn air she slipped on her pair of Mary Jane shoes, polished over and over again to make them last as long as they could. It was summer now, but in the winter, wet shoes had to be stuffed with paper and left to dry out, not always successfully. Mothers did their best, warming their children’s thick hand-knitted socks on fire guards in an attempt to send them to school with warm dry feet, whilst young women submitted to the sensible habit of wearing thick lisle stockings, even though they itched dreadfully…

All Ruthie had to do now was make sure she reached the appointed place in time.

Her mother would never forgive her for this; she would tell her truthfully how shocked and upset her father would have been.

Her father! Ruthie paused outside the gate of the neat red-brick semi, not daring to risk putting the gate on the latch just in case the noise might alert her mother to her departure. It hurt so much to think about the way Dad had died, crushed beneath the masonry blown apart by the German bomb that had devastated the Durning Road Technical College in the autumn of 1940. He had been on duty there as an air-raid warden. Her mother, Ruthie knew, would never recover from his loss; it hung over the small house like the pall of smoke and dust that had hung over the destroyed college. When the news had come her mother had insisted on them going down there, even though she had been advised not to do so. The rescue work had still been going on when they had arrived – what could be salvaged of once living, breathing human beings, tenderly and respectfully brought out of the carnage. Ruthie knew she would never forget what she had seen that night: a human hand and wrist – thankfully not her father’s – the watch on it still going, a baby’s rattle, a woman’s torso, images too horrible for her to want to recall.

Ruthie had reached the Edge Hill Road now and she continued down into the area of terraced streets that lay below it, once filled with people’s homes but now ravaged by Hitler’s bombers’ assault on the city during the first week of May 1941, when Liverpool had endured a week-long blitz that had destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed so many people.

Had she come to the right place? She wasn’t sure and she started to fret, her hazel eyes darkening with anxiety as she pushed a nervous hand into her soft mousy brown hair. How long would she have to wait? She stared into the half-light, her heart thudding. She still couldn’t believe she was actually doing this. Her mother would be so shocked and so unforgiving. She could almost see the sad, gentle look her father would have given her if he knew.

She could hear the sound of a bus coming up the road towards her. Automatically she stiffened. She flagged down the driver and it pulled to a halt.

‘Is this the bus for the munitions factory?’ she asked anxiously as she stepped onto it.

The interior of the bus was packed with women, and one of them called up sarcastically, ‘Course it bloody is. What does it look like – a ruddy chara trip to Blackpool?’

Ruthie blushed bright red as the women burst out laughing. A pretty redhead with a mass of curls and smiling eyes looked Ruthie over and then said determinedly, ‘Give over, Mel. The poor kid looks half scared to death. Just starting, are you, love?’ she asked Ruthie, making room for her on the seat next to her.

Ruthie nodded, feeling tongue-tied and uncomfortable.

A lot of people said that it was only the poorer sort of women who signed on to work at the munitions factory at Kirby, and Ruthie suspected from the coarse language and dress of those on the bus that it was probably true. But she needed a job, and not just because now that she was nineteen it was compulsory for her to do war work. She and her mother needed the money, and she had heard that the munitions factory paid good wages, even to unskilled, untrained workers like her.

‘I must be daft in me head tekin’ on a ruddy job like this,’ the woman who had mocked Ruthie grumbled. ‘Up at four and working ruddy long shifts, and tekin’ me life into my hands every day.’

‘Come on, Mel, it isn’t as bad as that,’ the redhead that had offered Ruthie a seat objected. ‘The wages are good, and then there’s them concerts that the management put on for us, and these buses…’

‘Oh, trust you to say that, Jess Hunt. A right little ray of ruddy sunshine, you are. What about the danger then? There was that girl last week had all of her fingers blown off, she did. You could hear her screaming three sheds away,’ Mel announced with relish, whilst Ruthie sucked in her breath and fought back the nausea cramping her stomach.

It had been three days before they had found her father in all the rubble. Her mother had been too distraught to identify his body so Ruthie had had to do it. There hadn’t been a mark on his face – he looked like he was asleep – but where his feet should have been there had been nothing. Ruthie’s had been a innocent childhood, her parents loving and protective, but that single act of identifying her father’s body had stripped that innocence from her.

‘So what’s your name then,’ the redhead asked.

‘Ruthie Philpott,’ she responded.

‘Well, I’m Jess Hunt, and that there is Mel, and sitting next to her there is Leah, and behind her, Emily.’

‘Tell you what to expect, did they, when you went up for your interview?’ Mel asked.

Ruthie nodded her head.

‘Aye, well, it won’t be owt like that,’ Mel told her sourly. ‘A right rough lot some of them as works there are. I know of girls who’ve had to walk home in their bare feet on account of having their shoes pinched from them bags they give you to put your stuff in. That lot you’re wearing won’t be there when you go looking for it at the end of your shift,’ she warned Ruthie unkindly. ‘That’s why we allus wear our oldest stuff.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Ruthie faltered.

‘Stop scaring her, Mel,’ Jess chipped in. ‘It’s all right, Ruthie, it’s just that when you have to get changed into the coveralls they make you wear, you have to put your own stuff in this bag they give you and then you hang it up on a peg, next to the locker they give you for your purse and that. Most of the time your things are safe enough until you come off shift but there’s a few there that aren’t as honest as they should be and it has been known for someone to find their bag’s empty. That’s why we all wear our oldest things.’

Ruthie was too shocked to be able to conceal her feelings.

‘Gawd, just look at her face,’ Mel said derisively. ‘A right know-nothing, this one is and no mistake. Green as grass, she is. You might as well get off the bus now ’cos you won’t last a day.’ Turning her back on Ruthie she added to one of the other girls in a voice easily loud enough for Ruthie to hear, ‘If you ask me they shouldn’t be tekin’ on folk like her, and time was when they wouldn’t have. She’s the kind that would have turned up her nose at our kind of work. There’s too many of her sort coming wanting jobs in munitions now on account of them having heard that the pay is good.’ She gave a derisive sniff. ‘Seems to me that whilst her sort thinks they’re too good to mix with the likes of us, as soon as there’s a sniff of a bit of money to be had they can’t wait to change their tune.’

Ruthie tried to pretend she hadn’t heard what Mel was saying and to look unaffected by it, but she could see from the quick look Jess was giving her that she hadn’t succeeded.

‘Come on, Mel, there’s a war on, remember,’ Jess broke into her complaint. ‘We’ve all got to do our duty.’

‘Oh, aye, but I’m not daft, and if you ask me it isn’t just doing their duty that’s bringing her sort into munitions. Like I just said, she wouldn’t be wanting to work wi’ the likes of us if it weren’t for the good wages.’

Ruthie could feel her face burning with self-consciousness and guilt. It was true that the only reason she had been able to steel herself to apply for a job at the munitions factory was because of the high rate of pay and because it would mean that she didn’t have to leave her mother living on her own, like she would have had to do if she had joined the ATS or one of the other women’s services. To her relief she realised that the bus was pulling up to the factory gates.

‘Come on,’ Jess said. ‘We all have to get off here.’ A little uncertainly Ruthie followed the other girls towards the small opening in the factory gates. Her instructions were that she was to present herself at the factory as a new worker, but as she watched the women, who all seemed to know exactly what they were doing, streaming towards the gates from the buses, Ruthie began to panic. She had lost sight of the girls she had been on the bus with already, and even though she had only known them half an hour and had not exactly been welcomed amongst them, she would have liked the comfort of their presence. She looked desperately towards the gate, trying to remember what exactly she was supposed to do and where she was supposed to go. Why had she done this? Mel was right: she did not fit in here with these girls, she was an outsider amongst them – and right now she felt sick with nerves and misery. She tensed as she felt a quick tug on her sleeve, remembering Mel’s warning and half fearing that her top was going to be torn from her, but when she turned round it was Jess, her eyes crinkled up with a reassuring smile.

‘It’s bloody bedlam here this morning,’ she puffed as she managed to stop them from being parted by the press of girls making for the gate. ‘I just came back to tell you that you’ll have to tell them on the gate that you’re new. There’ll be other girls who’ll be starting today and they’ll keep you back and then get you sorted out. Ta-ra, now, and good luck.’ Jess wriggled back through the crowd.

‘Wait, please…’ Ruthie begged her. There was so much she didn’t know, and Jess’s jolly manner had been comforting in the alien surroundings of this frightening new world. But it was too late: Jess had already disappeared into the mass of women milling around.

‘Here, you. New, are you?’ a brisk voice demanded sharply, as a stern-looking woman gave Ruthie a sharp dig in her arm.

‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ Ruthie confirmed.

‘Name?’ the official demanded, making ready to write it down on the clipboard she was holding.

‘Ruthie…’ Ruthie answered her, flushing when the woman demanded witheringly, ‘Ruthie what? Lord save us, my cat’s got more nous than this one,’ she announced to no one in particular. Some of the other women, waiting by the gate, laughed.

‘Ruthie Philpott.’

‘Right. Next…?’

‘OK, are you? Only I heard her over there mekin’ fun of you, when we was waiting to be let in.’ Ruthie blinked away the tears that were threatening, to focus on the young woman who had just addressed her. She was a well-built girl with small pale eyes, and a sharp glance that seemed to be looking everywhere but directly at her, as though she was looking around for someone or something more interesting, but Ruthie was too grateful for her kindness to be critical.

‘Not giving her my surname was such a stupid thing to do.’

‘Aye, well, we all do daft stuff at times and anyone can see that you’re a bit out of yer depth, like. Couldn’t get into any of the services, like, could yer not? Same here. Tried for the ATS, I did, but they wouldn’t have me on account of me having flat feet.’

‘I needed work that would let me stay at home. It’s my mother, you see,’ Ruthie heard herself explaining.

‘Wanted yer to tip up at home and give her wot you was earning, did she? My mam’s like that, an’ all. Seems to me like you and me ’ave got summat in common and we should stick together.’ She gave a disparaging sniff. ‘There’s some right common sorts working here. Thieving and Lord knows what goes on, so I’ve heard.’

Ruthie could only nod her head. She wasn’t used to having her friendship courted. Suddenly her new life didn’t seem as threatening as it had done. ‘I’d like that,’ she offered shyly.

‘Aye, well, my name’s Maureen, Maureen Smith.’

‘Ruthie…’ Ruthie began, but Maureen snickered and shook her head.

‘Aye, I know I heard you telling it to her wot’s in charge, didn’t I? Live on Chestnut Close, you told her. So where’s that when it’s at home?’

‘It’s between Edge Hill and Wavertree.’

‘Oh ho, you’ll be a bit posh then, will yer, living up there?’

‘No, of course not,’ Ruthie denied. There was something about the way Maureen was looking at her that made her feel slightly uncomfortable.

‘Course you are. Anyone can tell just by looking at yer. Them nice clothes you’re wearing. Got much family, ’ave yer?’

‘No. It’s just me and my mother.’

‘Well, you’re the lucky one then and no mistake. Our house is that full wi’ me mam and da, and me and me sisters, two of them with kiddies of their own, living in it, a person doesn’t have room to breathe. I’m going to be looking for a new billet just as soon as I’ve got a bit of money together from working here.’

‘Right you lot, this way…’

‘Let them others go first,’ Maureen advised Ruthie with a warning nudge as she prepared to obey the overseer’s command. ‘Then we can tag on at the end, like. It don’t do to get yerself too much noticed by them wot’s in charge. Yer don’t want ter seem too eager.’

Ruthie allowed her new friend to take the lead. She gulped as she took her first step into her new world, wondering what on earth she had let herself in for. Far from being exciting, right now this new life of hers threatened to be alien and frightening.

FIVE

Her presence on the streets of Liverpool was certainly being treated with a good deal more respect this morning than it had been last night, Diane admitted, as she walked briskly past the town hall, heading for Derby House. No doubt the fact that she was wearing her uniform had something to do with that. It was a sunny morning but cool enough for her not to feel uncomfortable in her tailored skirt and jacket. Her hair was rolled into a neat French pleat and, unlike some of the girls she knew, she was wearing her cap at the correct angle and not some jaunty and flirtatious version designed to attract male attention.

As she reached the building, the night shift was just coming out, their faces stiff and pallid from the long hours of concentration.

‘Keen, aren’t you? The next shift doesn’t start for another half-hour yet.’

Diane stopped in mid-step when she realised that the question had come from Myra, who was leaning back against the wall of the building, lighting up a cigarette.

‘Yes. I thought I’d get here a bit earlier, just to be on the safe side. I’ve got to report to a Group Captain Barker.’

‘Nanny Barker. She’s OK but a bit of a fusspot. You’ll have to watch out for her sidekick, though, Warrant Officer Whiteley – hates good-looking girls, she does.’ Myra pulled a face. ‘She’s got a real down on me.’ She stifled a yawn. ‘I’m for my bed. I’ve got a hot date with a GI this afternoon. He’s taking me to a matinée. He should be good for a box of nylons if I play my cards right.’

Diane smiled noncommittally.

‘I could fix us up with a double date for later in the week, if you fancy it?’

‘No, thanks.’ Diane refused, adding when she saw Myra’s expression begin to darken, ‘I’m up for going dancing and having a bit of fun, but I don’t plan to date.’

‘Well, it’s your loss,’ Myra shrugged. ‘And it means more men for me!’

‘Glad to have you on board, Wilson. Know much about our ops here, do you?’

‘Nanny Barker’ had turned out to be a sturdy-looking woman in her early forties, with a hearty no-nonsense manner. Without waiting for Diane to reply she continued, ‘According to your previous CO, you’re a quick learner, so I’m going to put you on one of the new teams we’ve set up. I’ll show you round first and explain to you what we’re doing.

‘In January of this year Captain Gilbert Roberts established the Western Approaches Tactical Unit here. It’s based officially on the top floor of the Exchange Building, which is close to here. Captain Roberts and his team study U-boat tactics and then develop effective countermeasures. The unit runs six-day training courses for Allied naval officers to help them improve the tactics they use in their escort groups.

‘Over here in Derby House the Senior Service and the RAF work together on joint Atlantic ops along with some of our American allies to protect the convoys crossing the Atlantic. Senior Service has overall control, but we have an important part to play. It’s our RAF reconnaissance planes that provide vital forward information – as a Waaf you’ll be involved in working on that info. Follow me,’ Group Captain Barker instructed Diane, leading the way to a flight of stairs.

‘Down here is the nerve centre of the ops. It’s bomband gas-proof,’ she told Diane with evident pride as she led her down to what Diane guessed must be a large basement area. ‘We’ve got all the regulation emergency areas, just in case – dorms, ablutions, the Commander-in-Chief’s private quarters, in addition to the telecommunications room, and a couple of off-duty areas.’ She paused to return the salute of a pair of naval ratings on guard duty in front of a large door.

‘You won’t be permitted to come down here without your pass, so don’t forget to carry it with you whenever you are on duty,’ she warned Diane as the guards opened the doors for them.

Diane had, of course, seen operations rooms before and was familiar with their set-up, but the sheer size of this one took her aback. A huge map of the North Atlantic dominated one wall, whilst filling the centre of the room was a massive table holding an enormous situation map. Around it Wrens were busily moving models of the various convoys to show their deployment. There must have been nearly fifty Wrens working in the room, as well as a good-size bunch of Waafs, Diane calculated as she watched them for a few seconds before switching her attention to the wall bearing a map of the waters around Britain. More Wrens were perched on ladders, updating the maps and the reports chalked on large blackboards.

‘Over there is the Aircraft State Board,’ the Group Captain told Diane, nodding to the rear of the room, where a board showed the readiness of all the RAF stations displayed, as well as up-to-the-minute information about on-going air operations, brought in from the teleprinter rooms close at hand. There was also a weather board, and the noise from the different orders being called out was so deafening that at first it made Diane wince. It would take some concentration to learn to listen only to her own instructions and blot out the rest, she acknowledged, as she watched the control room’s busyness.

‘We’ve just lost a couple of our ops room operatives, so you’ll be working down here to start with, instead of going into the teleprinter communications room, which is where we usually put the new girls to start off with. Normally we don’t put girls down here until we’ve had time to assess them, but since the powers that be have seen fit to poach some of our best girls we don’t have much option. I’m prepared to take a chance on you.’

Diane tried to look suitably gratified, but the truth was that she was feeling slightly intimidated by the activity of the ops room and would have welcomed a more gradual introduction to it.

‘One of your duties will be to show our training groups how the system works. We’re getting a lot of American service personnel coming along to see how we do things here at the moment. Any questions?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Good-oh. I’ll hand you over to Corporal Bennett, then. She’s in charge of the team you’re going to be on.’

To Diane’s relief the young woman the captain introduced her to looked a sensible sort, around her own age, Diane guessed, although the light in ‘the Dungeon’ – as Myra had informed her the ops room was nicknamed – didn’t do her pale skin any favours. She was also, Diane saw with a sharp pang, wearing a gleaming wedding ring. Lucky her. Her chap hadn’t changed his mind, then.

‘Good to have you with us, Wilson,’ the other young woman welcomed her after the Group Captain had introduced them. ‘Done much of this sort of thing before, have you?’

‘No, I’m afraid not, Corporal Bennett,’ Diane admitted. ‘I was working as a teleprinter before I came here.’

Out of the corner of her eye Diane caught the resigned looks exchanged by the other four girls making up the team of which she was now to be part. Instantly she pulled herself up to her full height and said firmly, ‘I’m willing to learn, though.’

‘You’re going to need a keen eye and be quick off the mark. Men’s lives will depend on you. We can’t afford any mistakes, not with so much at stake,’ Corporal Bennett warned her. ‘You’d better partner me so that I can show you what we do and keep an eye on you. I’m Susan, by the way.’

‘Diane.’

Diane carefully memorised the names of the other girls on the team as they were introduced to her. Liz, Jean, Pauline and another Susan, this one to be addressed as Sue, she reminded herself as she mentally catalogued them all. Liz was the one with the serious, almost mournful expression and the short dark straight hair. Jean was tall and thin, and rather earnest-looking, with prominent blue eyes, and she was wearing an engagement ring. Pauline was small with brown curls. Sue was also engaged. Diane promised herself that she would remember them all. She sensed that these young women took their work very seriously and that they would be quick to consider her less than able if she couldn’t manage to do something as simple as remember their names.

Three hours later, despite her initial reservations, when Susan gave an approving nod of her head and told her crisply, ‘You’ll do,’ Diane felt a real glow of pride. Kit would laugh when she told him…Just in time she caught herself up, the small thrill of her success obliterated. Just for a few minutes she had been so engrossed in what she was doing she had forgotten that her engagement was over, her heart was broken. She instinctively reached for the place on her left hand where she had worn Kit’s ring.

‘Ooh, look who’s just walked in,’ she heard Pauline announcing happily in a soft whisper, ‘and he’s coming over here.’

‘Stow it, Pauline,’ Susan advised firmly. ‘We all know you think a certain American major is the best thing since Clark Gable, but there’s a war on, remember.’

‘No, I don’t. Major Saunders is ten times better-looking than Clark Gable,’ Pauline replied, unabashed. The others laughed. Diane joined in, willing to be a part of the little group, and then turned her head to get a better look at the subject of the conversation. A tall, dark-haired man in the distinctive uniform of the United States Army was striding determinedly towards them, accompanied by a rather youthful-looking RAF flight lieutenant. An unpleasantly familiar tall, dark-haired man, Diane acknowledged, her heart sinking as she recognised that the major was the man she had crossed verbal swords with the previous evening. Instinctively she shrank back into the shadows, trying to conceal herself behind the other girls. It was unlikely, surely, that the major would recognise her. She had the advantage over him of having seen him last night in uniform whereas he had only seen her in mufti. However, although she tried to make herself as unnoticeable as possible, Diane could feel the major’s sharp-eyed gaze falling and resting on her. Her face started to burn.

It was the flight lieutenant who broke the tension, saying cheerily, ‘Thought I’d bring the major across so he can take a look at how we keep tabs on things. Major, you’ll—’ He broke off as he saw Diane and exclaimed admiringly, ‘You’ve got a new recruit to your team, I see, Susan. Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

The major had recognised her, Diane realised, as she was subjected to a second and very chilling visual assessment, which, unlike that of the young flight lieutenant, did not contain any scrap of male approval.

‘I’m sorry, Flight Lieutenant,’ Susan began formally, but to Diane’s astonishment the young officer burst out laughing and then said cheerfully, ‘Oh, I say, sis, give a chap a chance, won’t you, and introduce me to this lovely girl?’

‘Wilson, I apologise for my brother,’ Susan told Diane ruefully. ‘Teddy, I am sure that Diane does not want to have some barely-out-of-short-pants and still-wet-behind-the-ears, just-made-up flight lieutenant pestering her.’

‘Oh, I say, that’s not fair, is it, Diane? I’m sure you’re just the kind of girl who is kind enough to take pity of a poor young officer.’

Blond-haired, with laughing blue eyes and an engaging smile, he was very amusing, Diane acknowledged, and a type she knew very well from Cambridgeshire. Helplessly young and brave, hopelessly full of high spirits and idealism, he couldn’t be a day over twenty-one, Diane guessed. She had seen so many of them, and seen them too after the reality of war had driven the youth from their eyes and replaced it with desperate bleakness. Her own Kit had been one – once.

Susan rolled her eyes. ‘Diane, once again, I do apologise for my ridiculous little brother.’

Diane laughed and shook her head, exchanging an understanding look with Susan. ‘I know all about younger brothers from my time in my previous posting,’ she assured her, deliberately not naming her previous post, in accordance with wartime regulations. As the posters had it, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives.’ Not, she suspected, that there were likely to be any German spies here.

‘You promised the folks you’d take care of me and here you are refusing to introduce me to the most stunning girl I’ve ever seen.’

‘What happened to that redheaded Wren you were raving about last week?’ Susan teased him, relaxing when she saw that Diane was neither going to take offence nor read anything into his flattery.

‘What Wren?’ he demanded, looking injured.

‘I don’t want to break up the party, Flight Lieutenant, but if you don’t mind .. .’ The major’s voice had a hard edge to it for all the softness of his American accent. Susan looked uncomfortable and her brother crestfallen, whilst Diane was conscious of the condemning look the major was giving her. Well, let him think what he liked. She didn’t care. She knew the truth about herself. Diane lifted her chin and returned his look with one of her own – the kind she used to make it plain to overeager young men that she was not interested.

To her satisfaction she could see first disbelief, then incredulity followed by anger in the major’s eyes. That would teach him to look down on an Englishwoman, she decided sturdily.

‘Thanks for letting my wretched brother down lightly, Diane.’ They were in the canteen, having their break. Susan offered Diane a cigarette, which she refused. Diane had been horridly sick the first time she had smoked a cigarette – illicitly, of course, behind the church after Sunday school – and she hadn’t really smoked very much since apart from the odd social cigarette.

‘Bill, my husband, swears that Teddy is a danger to himself. None of us can believe he’s actually been made up to flight lieutenant. His CO must see something in him that we can’t.’

‘Is your husband in the RAF as well?’ Diane asked her.

‘No, Senior Service. But Dad’s an ex-RAF man – that’s why Teddy and I joined up. Bill’s posted to convoy duty. It doesn’t always do to be working so closely. I’m always on edge when his convoy is due back. The two girls we’re missing at the moment both had husbands in the navy. They were on the same ship – we were all here when we got the news that she’d been torpedoed. The girls kept on going until the end of their shift, even though they knew what had happened. It broke them, though. One asked for a transfer, the other…’ Susan sighed. ‘She was expecting their first baby. She lost it three days after we heard the news that he’d been killed. I hate this war so much sometimes.’

There was a small pause – the kind Diane was familiar with – during which one mentally paid silent respect to those comrades lost, and then Susan rallied, saying determinedly, ‘That’s enough about me. What about you?’

‘Oh, there’s nothing to tell. I’m single and fancy-free, and that’s the way I intend to stay,’ Diane told her lightly. And meant it.

Myra took a slip of her drink and then leaned back in her seat, pretending to be absorbed in studying her fingernails.

‘Aw, come on, doll, I brought you the nylons, didn’t I, and there’s plenty more where they came from. You play ball with me and I’ll play ball with you, right?’

Myra took her time about lifting her gaze from her nails to the face of the young American seated opposite her. ‘Wrong,’ she told him, then stood up. They had gone to the matinée, which Myra had sulked through when her date had tried to get fresh with her, and in an effort to ‘make it up to her’ he had suggested they go on to Lyons’ Corner House for something to eat.

A brisk assessing glance round the chandelier-lit room had quickly informed Myra that there were some far better options open to her than remaining with her dull date.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ he demanded when she started to walk past him.

‘To the ladies’ room, and then back to my billet. I’m on duty in an hour.’ She had to raise her voice to make herself heard above the orchestra. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that a slightly swarthy-complexioned, very handsome GI, who looked both older and more experienced than her present companion, was leaning against the opposite wall, lazily surveying the room and its female occupants. He was, Myra saw, staring straight at her, very meaningfully, making it obvious that he was attracted to her. Not that she was surprised by that. Myra was used to her stunningly voluptuous figure and her dark lush beauty attracting male attention. Men’s desire for her normally left her cold. She was not a highly sexed or even a moderately sensual woman. Her childhood had left her with a deep-seated need to be in control within a relationship, rather than be controlled by it. Knowing that a man who had something she wanted desired her gave her a feeling of power. She was bored with the raw young GI seated opposite her. She noted the silver cigarette case the man watching her was using, and his expensive wristwatch. He was American; he had money; he wanted her and he had the confidence to let her know it.

‘You can’t just walk out on me like that,’ her companion was objecting loudly.

‘No? Watch me,’ Myra told him.

Angrily he made a grab for her, banging into their white-clothed table as he did so, sending some of the cutlery flying.

‘Let go of me,’ Myra hissed. She hadn’t been prepared for this. Bloody Yank. Was he really stupid enough to think that a girl like her would drop her drawers for a box of stockings?

‘Having trouble, ma’am?’

The other GI had levered himself away from the wall and was now standing in front of them.

‘Your countryman doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of the words “get lost”,’ Myra complained. Her date had released her wrist but she made a play of rubbing it as though it was hurting her a good deal more than it actually was.

‘I gave her a whole box of nylons,’ he was complaining loudly to the newcomer, ‘and now she’s making like she doesn’t want to know!’

‘Like the lady just said, pal – get lost. Unless of course you want I should call in the MPs.’

Cursing under his breath, her date flung some money down on the table and then took himself off.

‘Thanks for rescuing me.’ Myra batted her eyelashes and gave him a limpid-eyed look.

‘My pleasure.’ Now he was close up she could see that there was a hardness about this GI, an echo of something she instinctively recognised without having to put a name to it. And he wanted her. She could see that too. He wanted her and if she played her cards right he might be the man who could provide her with what she wanted. What a fool she had been to tie herself up to Jim, who could never make her dreams come true, but then she hadn’t known that men like this one would be coming into her life. Men who could give her the life she longed for in the country where she longed to live. America. Just thinking the word was enough to make her heart thud with longing and excitement. She gave the young nippy who was inexpertly clearing the table and who had bumped into her a scalding look. Catch her waitressing, Myra thought contemptuously. At least when you were in a services uniform you got a bit of respect.

‘Pity you’re going on duty. Otherwise I’d have asked you out to dinner,’ her new acquaintance was saying.

Myra gave a him a slow smile. Did he think she was going to fall over herself with gratitude and drop everything to date him? His sort enjoyed the chase, even if they didn’t normally have to do very much of it.

‘Oh, well, if you want to see me again, I’ll be going dancing at the Grafton this weekend,’ she told him airily.

Pity she wasn’t already wearing her new nylons, she thought regretfully as she sauntered slowly towards the exit, mimicking the slinky walk she had seen film stars like Vivien Leigh, Rita Hayworth and Greta Garbo using to such good effect. She had better make sure that that new billetee kept to her promise to go dancing with her. Myra wasn’t very popular with the other girls, who tended not to include her in their off-duty outings. Not that she cared about that. But she could hardly turn up at the Grafton on her own. She’d wear that sateen halter-neck top that set off her creamy skin and dark hair. Jim had complained that it was cut too low, but so what, she would wear what she wanted now. With a last coy look over her shoulder, she walked out of the tearoom, eagerly anticipating Saturday night.

Ruthie was exhausted. She could feel her head dropping down towards her chest as she sat on the bus. Her nostrils were still full of the now familiar distinctive metallic smell of TNT from the munitions factory. It seemed to cling to her like an invisible extra layer of skin, even though she had changed her clothes. She had found everything so frightening and overwhelming. All the more so when she had discovered she had been posted to work in one of the most dangerous areas of the factory, where shells were filled with liquid TNT. The workers had been given a brisk no-nonsense lecture about the rules and the danger of breaking them. Ruthie had learned that the danger areas were known as ‘cleanways’ and were subject to strict regulations. She had also learned that everyone working in the TNT sheds was served with a glass of milk and a bun shortly after starting their shift, because the milk put a lining on their stomach that prevented it from being damaged from TNT fumes. Nothing metallic of any kind was allowed anywhere within the cleanways because it could cause the TNT to explode if it came into contact with it, and this included such things as hairpins and even metal rings on shoe lace eyelets. For this reason those girls working in cleanway areas were provided with special leather shoes.

The day had seemed to go on for ever, filled with confusing instructions and experiences. Ruthie had been set to work on a production line filling shells. Initially she had been told to watch the other girls working, and the speed with which they filled the shells had dizzied her. She had felt almost sick with fear at the thought of trying to copy them, knowing that she would be all fingers and thumbs and terrified of arousing the foreman’s ire.

When eventually one of the girls had told her comfortingly, ‘Don’t worry you’ll soon get the hang of it,’ she hadn’t recognised Jess at first, under her overalls and with her red hair concealed by the protective cap she was wearing.

‘Who was that you was talking to?’ Maureen had demanded to know when they had finally been told to stop work for their dinner break.

‘She was on the bus this morning,’ Ruthie had answered her.

‘Well, just remember that you’re my friend, not her’s,’ Maureen had told Ruthie sharply.

‘Jiggered, are yer, Ruthie?’ Jess asked Ruthie sympathetically as the bus made its way slowly along Edge Hill Road. ‘It gets everyone like that on their first day.’

Ruthie forced her eyes open, nodding her head. ‘I’ve been trying to memorise the rules they told us this morning,’ she said tiredly, repeating, ‘No jewellery of any kind but married women can wear their wedding rings so long as they are bandaged up, no hairpins or metal hair adornments, no cigarettes, matches or lighters, and nothing that could ignite or cause an explosion.’ She knew she ought to feel more scared about the work she would be doing, only she was far too tired.

‘Like milk, I hope, only yer going to be drinking a lot of it. I reckon if I’d knowed in time I could ’ave told them I can’t stomach milk. Then they would have put me somewhere else,’ Jess told her with a grin.

‘I don’t mind the milk,’ Ruthie admitted, ‘but I don’t know how you can pack the shells so quickly.’

Jess laughed. ‘Oh, you’ll soon get the hang of it. You wasn’t too bad at all – better than that girl you was chatting with over dinner. Bit of an odd sort, if you ask me. Know her well, do you?’

‘No. She was new today too. She said that we should pal up because we’d both started together on our own.’

‘You wasn’t on your own, you’re with us,’ Jess told Ruthie stoutly. ‘Look, we all go down the Grafton Ballroom on a Saturday night – why don’t you come along with us?’

‘Oh, that’s very kind of you but I couldn’t…’

‘Don’t be so daft. Of course you can. We meet up outside at about half-past six, then we can get in early and get a decent table. And we allus stick together so that none of them lads start thinking they can get away with any funny business. Having a dance is all right, but that’s as far as it goes.’

‘Sez you,’ one of the other girls chipped in. ‘Like you wasn’t smooching wi’ that soldier the other week.’

‘What? Charlie?’ Jess tossed her curls. ‘I’ll have you know that him and me was at school together. Like a brother to me, he is. Gone off to serve abroad, he has now.’

Wide-eyed, Ruthie listened to the talk. She would have loved to have gone to the Grafton. She had never been to a dance hall, but it was impossible for her to go. How could she leave her mother? But she couldn’t tell anyone about her mother, of course. It would be disloyal.

Half an hour later, having got off the bus, Ruthie turned the corner from Edge Hill Road into Chestnut Close. She could see the slim figure of a young woman several yards in front of her. Sighing enviously over the smartness of her WAAF uniform, Ruthie realised that she must be one of Mrs Lawson’s billetees. Mrs Lawson had complained vociferously at first when she had learned that she was to have service personnel billeted on her, but Mrs Brown, Ruthie’s mother’s neighbour, had confided to them that Mrs Lawson was doing very nicely indeed out of her billetees.

‘It’s not just the money – they bring her all sorts of extras from the Naafi canteen, they do.’

Mary Brown was a bit of a gossip but she had a kind heart and Ruthie was grateful to her for the way she tried to cheer up her mother. She was standing in her small front garden when Ruthie walked past, so Ruthie stopped to say hello to her.

‘How did it go, Ruthie love?’ Mrs Brown asked. ‘Only your mam got a bit upset at dinner, like, wondering where you was.’

‘Oh dear, I was worried that something like that would happen. I’ve bin explaining to her all week about all women between the ages of twenty and thirty being called up by the government to do war work, and that with me coming up for me twentieth birthday I needed to get meself a proper war work job so that I could stay at home with her, instead of being sent away to work somewhere or go into uniform, but I could tell last night, when I was talking to her about it again, that she didn’t really understand. I thought there’d be ructions. I’m really sorry that you’ve had to deal with it, Mrs Brown,’ she apologised guiltily.

‘There, Ruthie lass, there’s no need for you to go feeling bad about anything,’ Mrs Brown told her firmly. ‘You’ve bin a good daughter to your mam, and I’d have summat to say to anyone who tried to say different. Not that folks round here would do that. They can all see how hard you’ve had it with your mam since your dad died.’

Ruthie gave her neighbour a grateful look, but she couldn’t relax.

‘You didn’t…you didn’t say anything to Mum about me working on munitions, did you?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Only, with Dad dying in the way he did…’

Her neighbour’s vigorous shaking of her head stopped Ruthie continuing.

‘No, Ruthie, you needn’t worry about that. The minute your mam started fretting and asking why you hadn’t come back from getting in the rations, I did what you’d said and reminded her that you’d had to go to work because Mr Churchill had said so, but I didn’t say nothing about it being in munitions.’

‘Oh, thank you. Mum thinks such a lot of Mr Churchill that I was hoping that that would stop her from worrying,’ Ruthie admitted. ‘It’s difficult for her to understand the way things are.’

‘No, she’s not bin the same since she lost your dad. Took it hard, she has, and no mistake. I’ve done a bit of bubble and squeak for me own tea and there’s plenty left, if you fancy some. It will save you having to cook.’

Ruthie smiled her thanks. All she wanted to do was crawl into her bed. She hadn’t realised how tired she was going to feel but she would have to get used to it, she told herself firmly.

‘You’re a good girl, Ruthie, like I just said, but you should be having a bit more fun, like other girls do, going out dancing and that,’ Mary Brown told her kindly.

‘I’ve been asked out dancing by some of the girls I’m working with,’ Ruthie told her quickly, not wanting her to feel sorry for her.

‘Well, I’m right pleased about that.’

‘I won’t be able to go, though,’ Ruthie felt bound to point out. ‘Mum wouldn’t understand and she’d fret.’

‘Well, I can go and sit in with her for you, don’t you worry about that. It will give us both a bit of company, what with my Joe going off and doing his ARP stuff.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that, Mrs Brown,’ Ruthie protested.

‘Who said you was? It’s me as is doing the offering, not you doing the asking. And don’t you go telling me that you don’t want to go. Of course you do – any young girl would. And if yer mam was in her right senses she’d be wanting you to go as well. There’s a war on, Ruthie, and you young ones have to have your fun whilst you can, that’s what I say. It’s different for us; we’ve had our lives, but you…’

Ruthie shivered as she heard the sadness in their neighbour’s voice. It was true that she longed to go out and have fun as she saw other girls doing but she felt that it was her duty to take care of her mother now that her father was dead.

As though she had guessed her thoughts, Mrs Brown said gently, ‘It would break your dad’s heart if he could see you and your mam now, Ruthie. Thought the world of you, he did, and the last thing he would want is for you to be tied to your mam like she was the little ’un.’

‘Mum doesn’t understand…about the war,’ Ruthie defended her mother quickly. ‘She thinks if I’m not there that I might not come back like…like Dad.’

‘I know, lass. I’ve heard her crying and calling out when she’s having one of her turns. It’s just as well sometimes that we don’t know what life holds for us. And that’s all the more reason why you should do as I’m telling you. The more you mollycoddle your mam, the worse she’s going to be when you aren’t there. Settles down quite happily wi’ me once I’ve given her a cup of tea wi’ drop of Elsie Fowler’s special home-made elderberry cordial in it. Calms her down no end.’

Ruthie managed to give their neighbour a brief smile, but the last thing she felt like doing was smiling. Was it her imagination or was her mother getting worse? Was she becoming more and more like a small frightened child who could not understand the workings of the adult world? Some days she could be so much like her old self – the self she had been before Ruthie’s father’s death, that Ruthie couldn’t help but feel her hopes lifting that her mother was returning to full normality, but then something would happen, like Ruthie having to do her bit for the war effort, and her mother’s reaction would force her to recognise that her hopes had been in vain.

It was her screaming, sobbing fits of despair that were, for Ruthie, the worst times, when her mother called out again and again for the husband she had lost, like a small child crying for a parent. Ruthie felt so afraid herself sometimes, not just because of the war, but also for the future, after the war. What would become of her mother and herself in that future?

Sometimes Ruthie felt as though that fear was all she was ever going to know of life.

After saying goodbye to Mrs Brown, Ruthie hurried up the front path and unlocked the door. She found her mother sitting in the back parlour, listening to the wireless. The moment she saw her, her mother’s face lit up.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.

Immediately Ruthie went over to her and hugged her lovingly. ‘Just let me get my coat off and then I’ll put the kettle on, and then we can settle down and listen to the wireless together,’ she told her.

‘I didn’t know where you’d gone.’

Ruthie’s hands trembled slightly as she filled the kettle when she heard the almost childlike confusion in her mother’s voice.

‘I’ve missed you too, but I had to go to work to help with the war effort,’ she told her gently.

‘Yes,’ her mother agreed. ‘Mary Brown told me. She said I should be proud of you, and I am, Ruthie. I’m very proud of you and I know that your dad would have been as well.’

Only now, hearing her mother refer to her father in the past tense, could Ruthie allow herself to relax a little bit.

‘Mary Brown said that she knew that I’d be pleased that you’d be working with girls of your own age, with there not being many of them living here on the Close. And I am pleased, Ruthie. Pleased and proud.’

‘Oh, Mum,’ Ruthie responded, her voice muffled as she left the kettle to go over to her mother and give her another gentle hug.

SIX

‘Shift’s over, girls, thank goodness. My Bill’s back -walked in this morning just as I was walking out.’ Susan stifled a yawn. ‘Said they’d been waiting out over the other side of Liverpool bar for the pilot boats to bring the convoy in for unloading for nearly five hours, on account of them not letting them into the docks until the early hours just in case the ruddy Luftwaffe takes it in their heads to come over and bomb them.’

‘Has he got a decent leave this time, Susan?’ Jean asked.

‘No such luck. Forty-eight hours, that’s all. He should have had more but he’s got “new orders”.’ She paused significantly. All the girls knew better than to ask what those orders might be. All round Derby House notices were pinned up, as they were everywhere throughout the whole country, warning people ‘Walls Have Ears’ and the like. It was strictly forbidden for there to be talk about troop movements, even between close friends and family. ‘But at least he’s home and we can have some time together. Have you got any plans for the rest of the weekend, Diane?’

Diane was grateful to Susan for going out of her way to be friendly towards her, and encouraging the others girls to do the same.

‘Not really,’ she answered her. ‘I’ve promised to go dancing at the Grafton tonight with my fellow billetee.’

‘Who’s that then?’ Jean asked.

‘Myra Stone, one of the teleprinters. You may not know her.’

‘Everyone knows Myra,’ Jean told her drily. ‘She’s got a bit of a reputation for having a sharp tongue and an even sharper eye for the chaps. You want to be careful about how friendly you get with her, Diane. I don’t want to be a gossip but she isn’t very well thought of around here. Has she told you that she’s married?’

Diane took this as a warning and suppressed a small sigh. She really wished that she hadn’t agreed to go out with Myra. She could only spell bad news.

Thank heavens the summer nights, with their extra daylight-saving hours of light, meant that she could walk to and from work every day without having to worry about the blackout, Diane reflected, as she stepped out of the shadow of Derby House and into the warmth of the early evening sunshine. The natural light and fresh air felt wonderful after being underground for so long. Sometimes some of the girls scared one another by coming up with ghoulish stories of what it would be like if the citadel, as it was sometimes nicknamed, was ever bombed and they were trapped inside. Diane didn’t join in these conversations. She had her own nighttime horrors to haunt her.

She looked up at the clear sky, remembering how, in the late summer of 1940, the September skies over the south of England had been speckled with squadrons of RAF fighters, the sound of racing engines all too quickly interspersed with the stomach-churning rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire as the RAF pilots engaged in fierce battles with the Luftwaffe. It was then, shortly after she had first met Kit, that she had started to have terrible nightmares of a blue sky raining blood and destroyed aircraft. She had witnessed at firsthand the devastation caused by the fierce battle fought overhead in the British skies. Twenty-nine British planes had been lost – a terrible toll of young lives, but nowhere near so terrible as the sixty-one planes lost by the Germans. Diane had seen things then she never wanted to see again: the shattered bodies and white lifeless faces of the young men who only hours before she had seen alive and well, familiar to her and yet horribly unfamiliar in their death. When she had confided her bad dreams to a friend, her friend had told her that nearly every woman who worked at the airfield in a supporting role had her own version of the same kind of nightmare.

In the end the RAF had won the battle for England’s skies. Diane knew that the reason that Susan’s young brother had been made up to flight lieutenant was probably because of the number of men that had been lost. Kit had been made up to squadron leader in the space of a few short months that summer. She had been so proud of him, but he had told her bitterly that his promotion had come at the cost of the lives of his friends and comrades.

‘Diane, do you mind if I have a word with you?’

Diane swung round at the sound of Susan’s voice, glad to be brought out of her sombre reverie.

‘Of course not.’

‘I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but if I were you I really wouldn’t get too involved with Myra Stone. It’s bad enough that she behaves as though she isn’t married, but there was a bit of an incident a while back; a silly young newly married chap who fell for her hook, line and sinker. She’d encouraged him, of course, but his poor little wife was heartbroken. The chap was transferred, and Myra got a ticking-off, but these things leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and as a result the other girls have tended to give her a bit of a cold shoulder. I appreciate you’re in a bit of a difficult position with the two of you sharing a billet, but I thought I ought to let you know the way things are. For your own sake you might want to consider not getting too pally with her.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ Diane hesitated. ‘I appreciate you telling me. The problem is that I’ve already agreed to go dancing with her tonight, but if she were to suggest it again…’

‘There’s nothing you can do about tonight now, I agree, but it’s something to bear in mind next time. We’re a close-knit bunch in the Dungeon, working as closely as we do, and I don’t want members of my team being at odds with one another. You see the thing is, that silly young fool I was telling you about, well, he was Jean’s cousin and his wife was her best friend. Jean asked Myra to back off, but she just laughed at her. Anyway, I’d better get on. Bill will be wondering where I am.’

She could now understand why Myra wasn’t popular with the other girls, Diane acknowledged as she walked up Edge Hill Road. After tonight she would have to put as much distance between them as she could, otherwise the other girls were going to think she and Myra were two of a kind.

Mrs Lawson was just coming out of the front door as Diane walked up the front path.

‘I’m off to my WVS meeting so I’ve left you a bit of summat keeping warm on top of the oven. Oh, a couple of letters came for you. I’ve left them on the hall stand.’

‘Did Myra mention to you that we’re going out tonight?’ Diane asked after she had thanked her.

‘Yes.’ Mrs Lawson’s mouth pursed disapprovingly. ‘Going dancing, she said you was. It don’t seem right to me, not with her married, but she said as how she felt she ought on account of you asking her and you being on your own.’

The sly cat! Diane reflected grimly as she stepped into the hall, picking up her letters from the oak hall stand as she did so. One was from her parents. She recognised her mother’s handwriting immediately. The other was from Beryl, a girl who had been one of her closest friends at her previous posting. She had written her name on the back of her envelope.

Pushing wide the kitchen door, Diane started to open her mother’s letter, wrinkling her nose at the smell of boiled cabbage emanating from the stove.

‘There you are. We’ve got to be ready to go out at seven, you know, otherwise we won’t get a table. I reckon you won’t get much of a hot bath. Mrs L must have turned off the geyser, mean old bat.’

Diane didn’t bother looking up from her letter. If she did have to have a cold bath it would probably be because Myra had used all the hot water, she suspected. Her mother’s letter was cheery and loving, wanting to know how she was settling in and when she thought she would have enough leave to come home for a visit. The notepaper was scented with her mother’s favourite rosewater scent, and Diane felt a wave of nostalgia sweep over her. How much simpler and safer her life had seemed when she had been a young girl still living at home.

‘Gawd, I’m not staying down here. What’s that stink?’ Myra complained.

‘My tea, I expect,’ Diane answered, refolding her mother’s letter and putting it in her bag before she opened her friend’s.

‘Can’t you leave that until tomorrow?’ Myra said irritably. ‘You’re going to have to rush as it is, unless you’re planning on going out in uniform.’

‘No…I’m not…I’m on my way,’ Diane assured her.

Beryl had written that she was missing her, but that she understood why she had felt she had to go.

‘To be honest, I think you’ve done the right thing. I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but you might as well know the truth.’ Diane gripped the letter tightly. Her stomach had started to churn in anticipation of a blow to come.

Kit isn’t the man I thought he was, Di, dropping you to go chasing after one girl after another, and getting them and himself talked about by keeping them out late, driving them all over the countryside. You’re better off without him and that’s a fact. I’ve heard that he never dates the same girl twice and it’s been all over the camp that, last weekend, he was found rip-roaring drunk in a country pub with a girl he’d picked up from somewhere. The landlord threw them out and threatened to call the police, and it was only because of his pals that Kit managed to get back to camp safely. Seems that someone asked him about you and where you were and he said he neither knew nor cared, and that he wanted to have some fun with the kind of girls who knew what fun was. He’s getting himself a reputation for being a real party man, if you know what I mean. You were right to give yourself a fresh start.

Diane closed her fist over the letter, crumpling it up, willing herself not to give way to her emotions in front of Myra. So Kit didn’t care about her, did he? Well, she already knew that and she certainly didn’t care about him. And when it came to having fun, they would see which of them could do the most of that, she decided fiercely, as she headed for the stairs.

SEVEN

‘Do you think I’ll be all right going dancing like this, Mrs Brown, only I haven’t got anything else?’ Ruthie asked uncertainly as she stood in the kitchen waiting for her next-door neighbour’s verdict. Her mother was in the parlour listening to the wireless, lost in the world to which she had retreated. Ruthie did not know which she dreaded the most: her mother’s blank silences when she hardly seemed to know her, or her tearful clinging pleas not to leave her.

‘I don’t look right, do I?’ she guessed as she saw the uncertainty in the older woman’s face as she studied her heavy shoes and ankle socks teamed with the only pretty dress she had, a school-girlish pink gingham cotton with white collar and cuffs.

‘Well, you look very nice, love, but p’raps more like you was going to Sunday school than a dance. But there,’ she continued hastily when she saw Ruthie’s face fall, ‘I’m sure it doesn’t matter what you wear. They go in all sorts these days, so I’ve heard – uniforms an’ all. You just go and enjoy yourself.’

Ruthie was the last to reach the Grafton, anxiously hurrying down the queue waiting for the doors to open, when a hand suddenly came out and grabbed hold of her.

‘Oh!’ she exhaled in relief when she realised it belonged to Jess.

‘Where’ve you bin?’ Jess scolded her good-naturedly. ‘We was just beginning to think you wasn’t coming.’

‘Well, whatever she was doing, it wasn’t worrying about what to wear,’ one of the other girls quipped quietly, causing a ripple of laughter to run through those near enough in the queue to hear her. ‘Did you tell her it was fancy dress or summat, Jess?’

‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ Jess comforted Ruthie. ‘They don’t mean any harm. You’re frock’s a pretty colour. Suits you, it does.’

‘I didn’t know what to wear. I haven’t got…’ Tears filled Ruthie’s eyes.

‘There now, don’t go getting yourself all upset. Your frock isn’t that bad, and if you had a different pair of shoes and took off them ankle socks and put a bit of rouge and lipstick on…’

‘And took them slides out of her hair and undid that plait and tried to look like she were eighteen and not fourteen. They’ll never let her in looking like that, Jess,’ Mel warned sharply.

‘Of course they will. If she’s old enough to be working on munitions then I’m bloody sure she’s old enough to go dancing,’ Jess defended Ruthie stoutly, adding, ‘Here, Polly, you always bring a spare pair of shoes wi’ you. Hand ’em over here, and let’s see if they fit Ruthie.’

‘I’m not giving her me best heels,’ a pretty blonde girl with large blue eyes protested sulkily.

‘Well, give me them you’re wearing now and you put the heels on,’ was Jess’s response, and somehow or other, Ruthie found herself persuaded out of her lace-ups and ankle socks and into a pair of scuffed white sandals.

‘Now for your hair. Lucy, you’re a dab hand with a comb. Come and see what you can do,’ Jess commanded.

There was no use her objecting, Ruthie could see that; a crowd of young women had gathered round her giggling as they enthusiastically offered their advice.

‘Anyone got any scissors?’ Lucy called out. ‘Only if I’m to do a decent job, I’m going to have to cut her hair.’

‘I’ve got a pair,’ someone called up. ‘Allus tek ’em wi’ me when I go out just in case some chap tries to get too fresh.’

‘Go on with yer,’ another girl laughed. ‘What yer going to do wi’ ’em – cut it off?’

Ruthie could feel her face getting redder and redder from a combination of trepidation and embarrassment.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jess assured her, giving her hand a small squeeze. ‘My, but I bet you never thought this’d be happening to you when you decided to go working on munitions,’ she laughed. ‘You’d have run a mile if you had, wouldn’t you? How come you’re still going out dressed like a Sunday school kid, anyway, Ruthie?’

It was impossible to resist her questions or to be offended by them, and somehow or other Ruthie discovered that she was telling her what she had thought she would never be able to tell anyone.

‘My dad was killed in the May bombing and…well, my mother…’ She paused, feeling guilty about discussing her mother to someone who was still relatively a stranger, no matter how easy she was to talk to.

‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.’

‘Hold still, will yer?’ Lucy was complaining. ‘How am I expected to give her a decent style if she keeps moving her head around, Jess? See, that fringe I just give her has gone all lopsided.’

‘You’d better get a move on, Lucy; they’re opening the doors,’ someone further down the queue warned.

Ruthie looked so apprehensive that Jess couldn’t help but laugh. She was such an oddity, so obviously not the sort to be working on munitions, that Jess’s tender heart had gone out to her the minute she had seen her.

Jess might be an only child but she had grown up surrounded by the busyness of a large extended family. Her mother was one of ten and her dad one of thirteen. The whole family lived close to one another on the same narrow streets off the Edge Hill Road, but nearer to the city centre than Chestnut Close, where Ruthie lived and which was considered to be a ‘better’ working-class area, because of its proximity to Wavertree. But although there may not have been much money around whilst Jess had been growing up, there had been plenty of love. Her father had been a jolly, good-natured man, always ready for a joke and a laugh. He and his brothers were rag-and-bone men, and he’d been proud of the fact that his patter had housewives favouring him rather than anyone else.

‘Got to ’ave the right touch, our Jess,’ he had often told her, giving her a saucy wink. ‘That’s how I managed to steal your mam away from under your Uncle Colin’s nose. Mad for her, he was, but it were me she married.’

‘Give over, do, Samuel Hunt,’ her mother had always chided him. ‘Don’t you go filling her head with all that nonsense. And as for your Colin -all he ever did was ask me out the once.’

There had always been a lot of banter between her parents, both of them able to give as good as they got, but it had been good-natured, and when her father had fallen ill after he had slipped on an icy street and broken his leg, her mother had become as thin and sick-looking as he.

Jess had been taken away to stay with one of her aunties when the doctor had said that her father was going to die.

‘Got poison in that broken leg of his, he has, lass,’ her Uncle Tom had told her. ‘Can’t do nowt about it.’

She had been taken to see him one last time, but he hadn’t looked like the dad she remembered, lying there in bed, his face oddly swollen and his breathing harsh.

She had been ten then, and could well remember walking behind the coffin when they went to bury him, and she could remember the wake afterwards as well, when his brothers, her uncles, had got drunk and started telling tales about when they had been lads together.

Her Uncle Colin had never married, and a year and a day after they had buried her dad, Jess’s mother had told her that she was going to marry him and that they would be going to live in his house. That was the way things were done in their community, and both sides of their extended family had looked approvingly on the marriage because of the security it gave a widow and her child. But, conscious of the child’s feelings both Jess’s mother and her new stepfather to be had been at pains to explain that her dad would never be forgotten and that the love all three of them had for him would never die, but would always keep him alive in their hearts.

Her uncle had provided her with as loving a home as her father had done and, as a child, just as her father and his brothers had brought home the flotsam and jetsam of their trade, sifting through it to rescue and nurture the ‘treasures’ they found, so Jess had learned to rescue her own flotsam and jetsam, normally in the form of some living thing. A singing bird that someone was throwing out because it wouldn’t sing, a stray kitten with a piece of string round its neck tied to a brick, a dog with three legs and cross-eyes -whatever it was, it only had to present itself to Jess as unloved and in need for her to take it to her heart and embrace it. There was nothing Jess liked more than bringing a smile to people’s faces, and happiness to those who didn’t possess it. She had an unerring instinct for those in need of her special touch, and she had recognised Ruthie as one of them the minute she had set eyes on her. Not that Jess analysed things as practically as that. She just knew that something made her feel sorry for Ruthie.

When the other girls took her to task for inviting Ruthie to go out dancing with them, Jess had told them firmly that Ruthie needed bringing out of herself a bit.

‘Have you done yet, Lucy, ’cos if you haven’t we’re going in without you? Otherwise we’ll lose our place in the queue and we won’t get a decent table,’ Elsie Wiggins, one of the older girls, who hadn’t wanted Jess inviting Ruthie along, shouted up.

‘We’re coming now,’ Jess responded, turning to smile at Ruthie. ‘Quick, have a look at yourself.’ She dived into her bag and produced a small mirror. ‘Proper smashing, you look. All you need now is a bit of lipstick. I’ll lend you mine when we get inside, and you’ll be turning all the lads’ heads and no mistake.’

Ruthie wasn’t listening to her. She was staring instead at her reflection in the mirror. She lifted her hand to touch the short fringe curling onto her face, her eyes widening. She looked so different, so grown-up.

‘Come on…Jess.’

Grabbing hold of Ruthie’s hand, Jess put the mirror away and hurried her along the street. Ruthie could feel the prickle of bits of hair sticking to her skin inside her frock. How much had Lucy cut off at the back? She had been snipping away for a very long time. Ruthie had never had her hair cut, always wearing it scraped back off her face in its neat plait. She reached behind her head and froze when her fingers encountered a soft mass of loose hair. Short loose hair.

‘Got a real nice wave to it now,’ Lucy was saying. ‘Though I say it meself, I’ve done it really nice. Mind you, them scissors I was using was that blunt it was like cutting it wi’ a knife and fork.’

‘All right, girls, how many of you are there then?’ one of the men on the door asked jovially

‘Eight,’ Jess answered him. ‘Eight of the best-looking girls in Liverpool. In fact, we’re that good-looking you should be letting us in for free,’ she told him, winking at Ruthie. ‘’Cos once the fellas see us they’ll be paying double just to get a closer look.’

‘Oh aye, well, you can tell that to the boss, if you like.’

‘I don’t know why you bother. It’s the same every week,’ a chubby ginger-haired girl protested.

‘Well, you never know, Andrea, one week he might let us in for nowt. It’s always worth a try. Him wot don’t ask don’t get – that’s what my dad allus used to say,’ Jess responded cheerfully, still holding Ruthie’s hand she led the way up the stairs to the ballroom.

Ruthie’s eyes widened as she followed Jess inside.

‘It’s Ivy Benson’s lot playing tonight,’ Lucy commented, glancing up at the gallery from which people could look down on the dance floor, and where the band played. ‘Ever so good, they are. They’ve got a good dance floor here too. Properly sprung, it is, not like some. Modelled it on some Russian dancing place.’

‘I think I remember reading that the building was designed after the Kirov Ballet Theatre,’ Ruthie supplied timidly, causing them all to stare at her.

‘Coo, proper schoolbook learning you’ve got, Ruthie, and no mistake,’ Lucy exclaimed admiringly.

‘Hmm.’ Carmen, another of the girls, with smouldering dark eyes and equally dark hair, pouted, unimpressed. ‘I like a proper band with a proper male singer.’

‘That’s only ’cos you want to give him the eye whilst you’re dancing,’ Elsie chirped up.

‘Look at them GIs over there,’ Lucy breathed. ‘You have to hand it to them, they look really well turned out. Ever so tall and handsome, they are…’

‘Aye, and ever so keen to get into a girl’s knickers, from what I’ve heard,’ a girl whose name Ruthie thought was Cathy sniffed.

‘Well, that good-looking one over there can try getting into mine any time he likes,’ Lucy answered her back.

‘Oooh, Lucy…’

‘I only said he could try,’ Lucy pointed out. ‘Come on, let’s go and grab that table over there, right by the dance floor, before anyone else does.’

‘I knew we should have got down here earlier,’ Myra complained as she and Diane joined the end of the queue. ‘Pity you haven’t got something a bit more dressy to wear,’ she added critically, before glancing down smugly at her own red sateen halter-neck top, obviously comparing it to the plain dark blue taffeta dress that Diane had on. Diane didn’t say anything. She was still brooding on the content of Beryl’s letter. She might not have dolled herself up like Myra, with her tight-fitting top and her red lipstick, but tonight she was going to show the world that she could have as good a time as anyone – especially Kit.

‘I knew it,’ Myra grimaced as soon as they were inside the ballroom. ‘There’s not a free table to be seen.’

‘We can share with some other girls, can’t we?’ Diane responded.

Myra gave her a withering look. For all her good looks it was plain to her that Diane knew very little about the art of attracting men. If they went and sat at a table with plain girls they’d be overlooked along with them, and if they went and sat at one with pretty ones, then they’d be vying with them for the best-looking men, which was why…She searched the room with an expert eye, and then dug Diane in the ribs.

‘Come on, over there, three from the band, and be quick about it in case someone beats us to it.’

She was pushing her way through the crowded ballroom before Diane could say anything, leaving her no option than to follow her. But when Diane saw the table she was heading towards, she stopped and made a grab for Myra’s arm.

‘What is it?’ Myra demanded impatiently.

‘We can’t sit there.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s full of men.’

‘Oh – so it is. Fancy me not noticing,’ Myra agreed, making big round eyes and then giving Diane an exasperated look. ‘Of course it’s full of men. Why do you think I’m heading for it? Come on.’

‘No,’ Diane told her firmly.

Myra’s mouth hardened in a thin line. ‘All right then. Wait here.’ Determinedly she made her way to the table, saying something to the eager-looking GI who turned to her, and then calling out to Diane, ‘Come on, these nice boys are going to give us two of their spare chairs, so that we don’t have to sit at a table with men we don’t know.’

Diane was so angry with Myra for the way she had drawn attention to her that she was tempted to turn on her heel and walk out, except she felt that doing so would make her look even more foolish. She would have something to say to her later when they were on their own, though – like she wasn’t going out with her again.

The Grafton was obviously a popular venue, the tables set round the dance floor all filled and men standing several deep at the bar. The tables in the part of the ballroom Myra had made her way to seemed to have been taken over by the Americans, whilst the men seated at the tables on the other side of the room were wearing British uniforms or civvies. As she made her way to join Myra, Diane felt almost like a traitor. In Cambridgeshire she would never have gone to sit with a crowd of Yanks. The young women she could see sitting with the Americans seemed to have no qualms about making them welcome, though. There was a desperation in the eyes of some of the girls, which made Diane look away quickly. What was it they were desperate for? The luxuries that their American boyfriends could give them? Or did their need go deeper than that? The country had been at war now since 1939. Some women had not seen their men for a very long time; some women would never see them again. Was that the cause of the angry, bitter hunger Diane could see in their eyes? Despite the heat of the ballroom Diane gave a small shiver. The war had turned so many girls into women, its urgency breaking down all the old rules that governed relationships between the sexes. Girls who would never normally have let their young men give them more than chaste kisses had become desperate to send them off to war with ‘something to remember them by’. What did preserving one’s virginity for tomorrow mean when there might not be a tomorrow, when all one might have was tonight? And then with their men gone and their senses awakened, was it any wonder that those girls-turned-women yearned for the warmth of a pair of male arms to hold them?

Diane shivered again, remembering the stolen nights of pleasure she and Kit had shared under the thatches of remote quaint village pubs, where the landlord had been prepared to turn a blind eye and accept their self-conscious claim to be a married couple. Would her body, deprived of what it had known, eventually fill her with a hunger and an anger that would take her into the arms of a stranger to seek oblivion? Pushing her disturbing thoughts aside, she made her way towards Myra.

Myra patted her hair and cast a discreet look over her shoulder. Not that she was looking for anyone in particular, of course. She leaned down and pretended to check the seam of her stockings. She was pleased with the amount of attention she was attracting. The red halter-neck top showed off the smooth skin of her bare arms and shoulders, although it was on the shadowed valley between her breasts that she could see male glances lingering. She hid a triumphant smile. Next to her Diane looked nothing special at all, despite that blonde hair. That frock she was wearing was the dullest thing she had ever seen and you wouldn’t catch her wearing something so boring. Her own skirt followed the curves of her hips and her bottom; she had had it altered, to make it tighter and shorter, determinedly ignoring Jim’s comment that he didn’t like her wearing her clothes like that. ‘Supposed to be saving on fabric, aren’t we?’ she had told him, tossing her head. ‘At least that’s what the government says. Shorter skirts, we have to have.’ Jim had shaken his head but he hadn’t said any more. He was a real softie.

Myra’s smile disappeared at the thought of her husband. The British Government had done her a favour sending him out to fight in the desert, and Hitler would be doing her even more of one if he never came back. She checked the surrounding tables again. Where was he? Hadn’t he picked up on her message? She’d made it plain enough, telling him where she was going to be and when. It wasn’t as though he wouldn’t be easy to spot either, never mind that the Grafton was packed out tonight. Not with those good looks of his.

The young fair-haired GI who had found her the chairs on which she and Diane were seated was gazing at her like a dumb puppy, all pleading eyes and eagerness to please. Myra put out her cigarette. She might as well dance with him. At least that way she’d get away from disapproving Diane and her haughty looks. Who did she think she was? Sticking her nose up in the air and refusing to let the GIs buy her a drink. Myra shot Diane a baleful look. She was sitting facing the dance floor, nursing a glass of lemonade.

Myra looked at the fair-haired GI. ‘Well?’ she asked provocatively. ‘Who’s going to ask me to dance then?’

It had been a mistake to come here with Myra, Diane admitted as she watched her dancing with a young GI who looked as though he couldn’t believe his good luck. The GIs had been drinking heavily, passing around a bottle of what Diane suspected must be spirits and adding some of its contents to their beer, as a result of which they had started yelling out encouragement to their friend. Already the table was attracting hostile looks from the British servicemen on the dance floor. The initial mood of the evening, which had been one of high but good-natured spirits, had somehow developed a darker, unpleasant undertone. Some of the comments being called out by the GIs as they assessed the girls who were dancing were going well beyond what was acceptable, and Diane was not totally surprised when a short, red-faced man in civvies left the dance floor, dragging his uncomfortable-looking partner with him and marched self-importantly up the table to remonstrate with them.

‘Hey, bud, if you don’t like it then go tell Uncle Sam. Seems to me you should be treating us with a bit more respect, seeing as how we’ve come to win your war for you.’

The slurred voice of one of the GIs caused a surge of angry mutters from those near enough to hear it.

To Diane’s relief Myra was returning to her seat.

Standing up, Diane told her, ‘I think we should find somewhere else to sit.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t like the way things are developing.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a bore. They’re only having a bit of fun.’ Myra said tetchily. Where was he? She had been so sure he would be here. She’d been depending on it. The only reason she’d danced with the clumsy farm boy with two left feet had been to make sure that she was seen. ‘Relax and have another drink,’ she advised Diane. If they moved away from this table right beside the dance floor she’d have no chance of catching his eye. The Grafton was well and truly packed with an influx of fresh American troops from their camp at Burtonwood, and naval men on twenty-four-hour leave from their convoy escort duties.

‘You can do as you please, Myra, but I’m not staying here,’ Diane replied sharply.

Myra looked over her shoulder. She had sent her dance partner to get them fresh drinks and she could see him weaving his way back through the crowd. Like Diane, she had seen the bottle being passed round the table, and she too had guessed it contained spirits. There was no way she intended to leave, but she knew she couldn’t stay without Diane. Somehow she would have to find a way to make her stay. An idea suddenly came to her.

‘Clem’s bringing us some drinks. We can’t just walk off,’ she protested, standing up herself. ‘Stay there, and I’ll get them.’

She intercepted Clem a few yards from the table, taking the tray from him and telling him, ‘Go and get some of whatever it is your pals are putting in their drinks, will you, Clem? My friend wants to try it.’

‘Are you sure? It’s pretty strong. Not a lady’s drink…’

‘She isn’t a lady,’ Myra told him sweetly. ‘Go get it.’

He was back within a few seconds, brandishing a bottle.

‘What is it, anyway?’ she asked him when he removed the top.

‘It’s genuine American bourbon,’ he told her proudly.

‘Give me the bottle,’ Myra demanded, pouring a good measure into one of the glasses.

‘Hey, not so much,’ Clem objected. ‘That stuff’s lethal. It fries your brains. It’s not for girls,’ he protested, but it was too late.

Myra handed him back the bottle and walked towards Diane, carrying their drinks.

‘Goodness, it’s hot, isn’t it?’ she commented as she handed Diane one glass whilst taking a drink from the other one.

‘Yes. Yes, it is,’ Diane agreed, lifting her own glass to her lips.

‘Drink up,’ Myra urged, ‘then we can have a dance together, seein’ as how you don’t want to stay here.’ She could see that Diane was looking for somewhere to put her glass. ‘You’ll have to finish it,’ she told her quickly. ‘There’s nowhere safe to leave it, not with this crowd. Someone’s sure to pinch it.’

She didn’t really want to dance with Myra, Diane admitted, but in view of Myra’s attempt to pacify her, she didn’t feel able to refuse. Myra had already finished her drink and was waiting for her so Diane hurriedly swallowed her own.

‘That didn’t taste like shandy,’ she told Myra.

‘Didn’t it?’ Myra gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Maybe Clem misunderstood. Shandy was what I told him to get. Mine was OK. Come on, let’s go and dance.’ She grabbed hold of Diane’s wrist, almost pulling her on to the dance floor.

Heavens, but she felt dizzy, Diane admitted. Her head was spinning. It must be the heat and the noise. She really felt quite odd; not herself at all.

Myra looked uncertainly at Diane. All she had wanted to do was get her to loosen up a bit, and relax, but instead, Diane was swaying unsteadily on the dance floor and there was a unfocused look in her eyes. People were beginning to stare pointedly at her but Diane was oblivious to their disapproval. She had lifted her hand to her forehead as she stopped dancing and simply stood in the middle of the dance floor. Myra began to panic. Why on earth was she behaving like this? She hadn’t poured that much spirit into Diane’s drink, she reassured herself. It wasn’t her fault if Diane couldn’t take her drink, was it? She couldn’t have been expected to know that! As she struggled to wriggle out of any blame, she felt a tap on her shoulder.

‘You dancing, gorgeous?’

She whirled round, her eyes widening in recognition, only too happy to push her guilt about Diane to one side as she smiled up into the eyes of the man from Lyons’ Corner House.

‘I might be,’ she told him coquettishly. ‘It depends how good you are.’

‘Oh, I’m very good, honey. In fact, I’m better than good, I’m the best,’ he told her.

‘Says you,’ Myra returned.

‘Well, there’s only one way you’re going to find out if I’m right, isn’t there?’ he told her boldly, as he stepped towards her, taking her acceptance for granted. Right on cue the music changed to a slow smoochy number. Myra hid her feeling of triumph as he pulled her into his body, one hand caressing her back whilst the other made its way down to the curve of her behind, making it plain how attracted to her he was.

‘So what’s your name then?’ she asked him.

There was something about all Americans, but this one in particular that made her long to be different, and increased her frustrated resentment of her own life and marriage. They came from a different world – a better world – and it was one she herself longed to be part of. She had seen it in films at the cinema: sophisticated elegant women living lives she could so easily see herself living. She had grown to feel so envious of those women; and, through them, of all American women. She hungered for a life in which she hailed New York ‘cabs’ and drank ‘martinis’, a life in which she shopped on Fifth Avenue, and went to shows on Broadway. She had studied the actresses on the screen, bitterly convinced that her own beauty was just as great as theirs if not greater, becoming increasingly discontented and resentful. Until the Americans had joined the war all she had been able to do was dream, but now, with American servicemen coming over to England, she wanted more than just dreams. Now she had a definite ambition she wanted to fulfil, which was to become what the newspapers and magazines were referring to as ‘a GI bride’. Magazines such as Good Housekeeping might caution young British women to recognise the problems they would encounter if they decided to marry their American sweethearts; so far as Myra was concerned the only problem she would be encountering was that of her now unwanted existing husband. What could Jim have to offer her, she asked herself with inward contempt for her husband, compared with this man she was now dancing with? She greedily noted his beautifully laundered uniform, his clean-smelling skin, his knowing eyes and equally knowing way of dancing, not to mention his obviously superior financial status as evidenced by his watch and the gold ring, with its small diamond, he was wearing on his little finger. ‘Nick,’ he answered her question. ‘What’s yours?’ ‘Myra.’ She refused to let him see just how much he impressed her, or what she was thinking. Myra was no fool: she knew that men liked to do the chasing and that they valued what they couldn’t get easily far more than what they could.

‘Well, Myra, what’s a smart broad like you doing in a place like this?’

Where was Myra? Diane stared at the dance floor, trying to focus on the dancers. The music seemed to be roaring inside her head in waves, mingling with the sound of people’s voices. She wanted to go to sit down but she couldn’t seem to find her way off the dance floor. She blundered into a dancing couple, earning herself a disgusted look.

‘Some people,’ the girl muttered.

‘Looks to me like she’s had too much to drink,’ her companion commented.

Diane didn’t hear them. Her head was beginning to pound. She felt hot and sweaty and decidedly unwell. Where was Myra? She could see couples dancing cheek to cheek all around her. Just like she had once done with Kit. Kit…It was his fault she was here on her own without him. Her alcohol-muddled emotions filled her eyes with tears.

‘Kit…’ She had no awareness of saying his name out aloud as she twisted and turned on the dance floor, looking for a familiar face. Myra was forgotten; it was Kit she wanted. Through the blur of her tears she could see the back of the familiar RAF uniform in front of her. Unsteadily she made her way towards it, reaching out to put her hand on the arm of the airforce-blue jacket, as she pleaded, ‘Kit…’

‘Hey, what the…?’ The man looking at her was a stranger. An angry-looking stranger. Diane backed away from him, cannoning into another couple.

‘Well, really. How disgraceful.’ The woman’s coldly disapproving voice made him turn to look at her. She was dancing with a man who looked vaguely familiar. He was wearing an American uniform. His gaze flicked disparagingly over her.

‘I think you should go and sit down,’ he told her curtly.

‘I can’t find Kit,’ Diane told him, hiccuping loudly.

‘Ignore her, Lee. She’s drunk. Her sort brings disgrace on all of us. She ought to be made to leave.’

‘Can’t leave,’ Diane answered her, her voice slurred. ‘Not without my friend…I know you and I don’t like you,’ she told the man, suddenly recognising him. ‘You’re that American major that I don’t like…’ She hiccuped and staggered away into the middle of the crowded floor. Her eyeballs hurt and so did her head and her stomach. She needed to go somewhere cool and quiet and lie down. Unsteadily she started to make her way to the edge of the dance floor.

‘Just look at that woman,’ Emily commented contemptuously. ‘She can hardly stand up straight.’

‘Poor thing,’ Jess commiserated. ‘She doesn’t look at all well.’

‘She’s drunk,’ Emily said sharply.

‘Oh, no, look, if she’s not careful she’s going to fall over.’ Jess pushed back her chair and hurried to where Diane was on the point of collapsing. ‘Come and give us a hand,’ she called out to the others. ‘We need to get her into the ladies’.’

Immediately Ruthie rushed to join her.

‘You get under that arm, Ruthie, and I’ll take this one…’

‘Why don’t you leave her? Why should we help her?’ Emily demanded.

‘Well, it doesn’t look as though anyone else is going to, poor soul. Come on, Em, and you too, Lucy. She’s in a bad way.’

‘Well, it’s her own fault.’

Somehow between them they managed to get her into the ladies’ – and only just in time.

‘Gawd, if she don’t stop heaving soon, I’m going to be doing the same meself,’ Lucy complained.

‘Go and tell them at the bar that we need some water, Lucy,’ Jess commanded.

‘It’s all right, you’ve just had a bit too much to drink, that’s all,’ she tried to comfort Diane, who was now moaning weakly.

‘A bit too much!’ Emily muttered firmly. ‘More like a bloody hell of a lot too much.’

Diane shivered. Her stomach and her throat ached from being sick, but her head was starting to clear. She heard what Emily said and she shook her head. ‘All I had was a shandy,’ she told her.

‘A shandy? Give over, a shandy never got anyone in the state you’re in, staggering all over the dance floor and then trying it on with that RAF chap. No wonder that GI was giving you a right dirty look.’

Diane stared at her. She had no memory of any of that. ‘I can’t…are you sure it was me?’ she protested.

Emily laughed. ‘Hark at her. Of course it was bloody you. Why the hell do you think Miss Save the World here,’ she nodded in Jess’s direction, ‘forced us to bring you in here?’

‘You and your friend was sitting with a table of GIs and they was passing a bottle around,’ Jess offered, seeing how distressed Diane was becoming. ‘Maybe they slipped summat into your shandy.’

‘I…I don’t know. My friend brought me the drink…’

‘Here, I’ve got her some water,’ Lucy announced breathlessly, bursting into the cloakroom. ‘There’s a real to-do going on out there, wi’ some folk saying as how she ought to be told to leave, and others saying it were them GIs fault for giving her the drink in the first place.’

Diane looked apprehensively towards the door. How could she show her face out there? She was so ashamed.

‘How are you feeling now?’ Jess asked her as she handed her the glass of water.

‘A lot better.’

‘We came here to have a good time, not stand around in the cloakroom playing at nurses,’ Elsie complained.

‘If you’re feeling a bit better, then why don’t you come and sit wi’ us for a while? Your friend must be wondering where you are.’

The last thing Diane wanted was to go back into the dance hall, but she didn’t have the energy to protest.

Five minutes later she was being urged into a chair, with Jess standing protectively at one side of her and Ruthie uncertainly at the other.

‘Mind you drink plenty of water to flush your insides out. That’s what my dad always used to do when he’d had a skinful,’ Jess told her firmly. ‘And no dancing neither.’

Diane shuddered and closed her eyes. She never wanted to see a dance floor again, never mind take to one, not after what she had been told she had been doing. Vague flashes of memory were starting to seep back: an RAF uniform, an angry male face, an angry American male voice. The major…

Jess reached across and gave Ruthie’s hand a shake. ‘There’s a GI on that table over there bin watching you for the last five minutes, Ruthie. Bet you he comes over and asks you to dance.’

‘No,’ Ruthie protested in a panic. ‘No, he mustn’t. I can’t dance.’

‘Don’t be daft, of course you can. He looks a nice lad, an’ all.’

The girls turned to look at the table in question, where upwards of a couple of dozen GIs were crowded together, either seated or standing.

‘Give him a bit of a smile, Ruthie,’ Jess urged her.

Tongue-tied and blushing, Ruthie could only shake her head.

‘Well, he’s coming over anyway,’ Jess laughed.

‘And he’s not on his own. He’s bringing another chap with him as well,’ Lucy announced.

Ruthie could only make a small breathless sound when she realised that Jess was right, and the earnest-looking young GI in front of her, with his clean scrubbed face and tow-coloured hair was actually asking her to dance.

‘Of course she’ll dance wi’ you. She’s just a bit shy, that’s all,’ Jess answered for her before turning to smile warmly at his companion.

‘If you’d be kind enough to do me the honour, ma’am…?’ he asked Jess hesitantly.

Jess smiled at him with almost maternal approval. His manners were as meltingly flattering as the look in his eyes.

‘I certainly will,’ she told him.

Diane watched as one by one the other girls were asked up to dance. One of the men looked as though he was about to ask her, but Jess told him pleasantly, ‘She isn’t feeling very well – no offence.’

This was her chance to slip away unnoticed, Diane decided, if only she could find Myra to tell her that she was leaving. Where on earth was she?

‘What do you mean, no?’

Myra looked up into Nick’s face. When he had suggested they slip outside ‘for a bit of fresh air’ she had nodded her head, letting him take her down a quiet side street, where, in its shadows, he had placed his hands on her arms and pushed her back against the wall. Now those hands were resting on the wall either side of her head, virtually imprisoning her. She smiled inwardly. Nick might think he knew all the moves and had the advantage, but she wasn’t stupid enough to let him have what he wanted out here up against a wall, like some floozie. Oh, no, all he was going to get tonight was a little taste of what he was after. Just enough to keep him eager for more, Myra decided smugly.

‘I’d better go back. My friend is going to wonder where I am.’

‘Let her wonder,’ Nick told her as he moved closer to her and bent his head towards hers.

Quick as a flash Myra ducked under his arm and moved away from him.

‘What the…?’ he began angrily.

‘Like I said, I’d better go back. After all, we only came out for a breath of fresh air, didn’t we?’

‘What is this?’ Nick demanded roughly, trying to grab hold of her arm. ‘Don’t you go playing games with me, honey. You were coming on to me like there was no tomorrow.’

‘Coming on to you? Is that what you thought?’ His anger had her body tensing warily but Myra wasn’t going to let him see that. ‘No such thing,’ she told him, shaking her head. ‘I was just being friendly, that’s all.’

‘Like you were being friendly to that sucker who gave you the stockings,’ Nick challenged her.

Myra drew in her breath. This wasn’t the way she had expected things to go. She had expected her refusal to encourage Nick to press her for a proper date, not make him angry.

‘Like I said, I was just being friendly,’ she insisted. ‘It’s our duty to welcome our allies.’ Conveniently she was choosing to forget just how she had come by her stockings. They didn’t matter now, nor the man who had given them to her, not now that she had met Nick. But he mustn’t be allowed to think she was some sort of pushover. Men like Nick didn’t respect women they thought would give them everything they wanted the first time they asked. That was something she knew instinctively.

‘I’m going in,’ she told him.

She started to walk away from him, knowing he would catch up with her and prepared for him when he did, softening in his hold as he grabbed hold of her and swung her round to face him.

‘Just a kiss,’ he said.

‘No,’ Myra refused. ‘It’s too soon. I don’t give my kisses out so freely.’ She could see a look in his eyes that was a mix of resentment and grudging respect.

‘Tell that to all the guys, do you?’ he demanded.

‘Yes I do,’ Myra agreed tartly. She knew that she wanted to see him again. A quick glance at his companions had told her what she had already guessed – that he was very much their leader -and Myra had already decided that the rightful place in the new life she dreamed of for herself was as the wife of just such a man, rather than as the wife of one of those he led. But she knew too much about men to go openly chasing after him, no matter how tempted she was to do so, to make sure that no other girl got her hooks into him.

Ruthie could hardly believe what was happening and that she was here dancing with an American. An American, what was more, who had lost no time in telling her earnestly that he had been watching her all evening and that he thought she was ‘real cute’.

‘I’d like to walk you home,’ he began awkwardly, ‘but, see, we’ve been told not to do that.’

‘Oh, no, you couldn’t anyway,’ Ruthie told him, both horrified and excited by the suggestion.

‘Well, will you let me see you again then? I mean here, perhaps…or I could come and call on your folks…introduce myself to them…’

Ruthie stared at him whilst her heart turned over inside her chest.

‘What I mean is that, well, I can see you’re not the sort of girl…that is…’

‘Hey, buddy,’ another GI called out in a loud voice. ‘Quit whispering sweet nothings in her ear and get your ass over here. Sarge says we’ve got to leave in five. And you can go and tell Walter over there,’ he jerked his head in the direction of Jess and her partner, ‘the same.’

‘Oh, poor you,’ Jess was saying sympathetically to the young GI who had asked her to dance. ‘You must miss her so very much.’ He had spent virtually the whole time they had been dancing together telling her about his ‘girl back home’ and how miserable he was about the fact that he hadn’t had the courage to propose to her before ‘shipping out’.

‘You can write to her, though,’ Jess tried to comfort him.

‘Yeah, I know that, but it ain’t exactly the same. A guy can’t tell a girl he loves her nearly so well when she ain’t there for him to hold. Would you like to see her photo?’ he asked Jess eagerly.

Nodding, Jess peered dutifully at the photograph of the pretty but very young-looking brunette.

‘Her folks kinda hinted to me that they thought we was too young to get serious.’ Walter was telling her, when Jess saw Ruthie hurrying over with her partner.

‘Jerry said to tell you it’s time to go,’ Ruthie’s partner told Walter.

‘Poor boy,’ Jess commented to Ruthie as they watched the two men go to join their comrades. ‘He misses his girl at home.’

Diane glanced at her watch. Her head was throbbing dreadfully.

‘Isn’t that your friend over there?’ Jess suddenly asked her, nudging her and pointing to the other side of the dance floor. ‘Wi’ that GI who looks like he thinks he’s God’s gift.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Diane confirmed.

Myra was laughing at something her companion had said and looked in no hurry to leave, Diane noted. Nor did she seem at all concerned about her whereabouts. Somehow Diane wasn’t surprised. Her instincts had told her right from the word go that Myra was only striking up a friendship with her for her own benefit.

‘I’d better go over and join her,’ she told Jess, adding warmly, ‘I really am grateful to you all for helping me the way you did. Heaven knows what would have happened to me if you hadn’t. Something tells me that I certainly wouldn’t have made it back up Edge Hill Lane in one piece.’

‘Up Edge Hill Lane? Is that where your billet is?’ Jess asked. ‘Only Ruthie lives up there, don’t you? That’s good, then. You can walk back together.’

‘I don’t know how far up you live, but we’re on Chestnut Close,’ Diane told Ruthie.

‘Yes, that’s where I live as well.’

‘There you are then. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?’ Jess beamed, looking as pleased as though she personally had arranged for them to live so conveniently close to one another.

‘There you are. Now you’ll have someone to walk home with,’ she told Ruthie happily before telling Diane breezily, ‘Ruthie here’s not so used to looking out of herself as me and the others. Looked like she was scared to death, she did, when she got on the bus for the munitions factory for the first time.’

Diane gave Ruthie a sympathetic smile. Her head still hurt but she was beginning to feel much better than she had done.

‘We don’t stay on until the end,’ Jess continued informatively, ‘on account of the way some of the lads hang around looking for a girl. It gives them the wrong idea, if you know what I mean.’

Diane knew exactly what she meant.

‘I’d better go over and tell my friend that I’m ready to leave then,’ she told Jess.

‘Oh, I thought you must have left,’ Myra greeted her unenthusiastically, immediately turning her back on Diane to move closer to the GI standing next to her. Myra said something to him and when he turned round to look at her, Diane recognised immediately what sort he was. He might be tall and good-looking but he was also a thoroughly unpleasant type, she decided as he subjected her to open appraisal, whilst draping one arm casually around Myra. It wasn’t just Myra who was hanging on his every word, Diane noticed. He also seemed to be the ringleader of a group of noisy GIs.

‘We must go, Myra,’ Diane told her crisply. ‘I’ve arranged to walk home with another girl, and I don’t want to keep her waiting.’

‘Well, don’t then,’ Myra told her sharply. ‘You go ahead and leave. Nick here will walk me home, won’t you, Nick?’

‘I sure wish I could, doll, but the MPs will have me by the balls if I did. Uncle Sam doesn’t want us getting ourselves into trouble with you Brits.’

‘You get into trouble?’ Myra pouted.

‘Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it, guys?’ he demanded.

Diane winced as she heard the loud chorus of assent.

‘Sarge says to tell you the transport is about to leave.’

There was something about the coldly venomous look that the man with Myra gave to the young GI who had approached them that shocked Diane back to full sobriety. Poor boy, what on earth had he done to provoke a look of such openly vicious dislike? She watched in silence as Myra’s companion turned on his heel without saying a word and strode off in the direction of the other GIs, leaving the now red-faced younger man to trail behind him.

What on earth, Diane wondered, could Myra possibly see in a man like that?

EIGHT

‘So you walked home with young Ruthie Philpott last night, did you?’ Mrs Lawson commented as she poured Diane a cup of tea, and then continued without waiting for Diane to answer her. ‘Feel sorry for her, I do. Well, you can’t not do really, not after what happened to her dad, and then her ma taking it so badly, like. Tell you about that, did she?’

‘She said that her mother was a widow,’ Diane answered, ‘but she didn’t go into any details.’

‘No, well, she wouldn’t. She’s not that sort of girl. Her dad was in the ARP; got killed in a bomb blast, he did. A real shame it was ’cos they was a nice little family. Kept themselves to themselves, mind you. You’d see them walking to church together every Sunday. But Ruthie’s ma, she took her husband’s death real bad. Not bin the same person since she lost him, she hasn’t. One minute she’s out looking for him and won’t have it that he’s gone, and then the next she’s crying her eyes out and refusing to let young Ruthie leave her side. Dr Barnes has had to come out to her a fair few times, to give her something to calm her nerves. I’m surprised young Ruthie went out and left her. Not like her, that isn’t.’

‘I think, from what Ruthie said, that a neighbour was with her mother.’ Diane felt obliged to defend the other girl.

‘Oh, yes, that’d be Mary Brown. Her hubby, Joe’s, in the ARP as well. You was in later that I was expecting.’

‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ Diane apologised automatically.

Mrs Lawson gave a small sniff. ‘Well, as to that, I’m a martyr to not being able to sleep, I am, and that’s no mistake. Still, at least you’re up at a decent hour this morning. Unlike some people,’ she added, giving a significant look towards the ceiling.

‘Myra should be down soon.’

‘I should hope so. In my day a married woman didn’t go out dancing for all the world like she didn’t have a husband. I suppose there was a lot of them Americans there, was there?’

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