HEARTACHE FOR THE SHOP GIRLS
Joanna Toye

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2020

Copyright © Joanna Toye 2020

Cover © Gordon Crabbe/Alison Eldred (woman), CollaborationJS/Arcangel Images (front cover street scene), Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com (back cover bombed street)

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Joanna Toye asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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.

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

Source ISBN: 9780008298722

Ebook Edition May 2020 © ISBN: 9780008298739

Version: 2020-04-28

Dedication

For Clara, with love from Shosho xxx

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Author’s Note

Don’t miss the next book in the Shop Girls series

Have you read the first book in the Shop Girls series, A Store at War? Read on for a taste …

About the Author

Also by Joanna Toye

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

August 1942

The writing above the clock on the first floor of Marlow’s read ‘Tempus fugit’. That, Lily had learnt, meant ‘Time flies’. Well, if time was flying this morning, it was a bird with a broken wing, a Spitfire spluttering home with half its fuselage shot away, a bee drowsily drunk on pollen. It might be half-day closing, but with the sale over and many customers away, Wednesday mornings in August could seem longer than full days.

August was the strangest month, thought Lily as she spaced the hangers on the girls’ pinafores the regulation half-inch apart. It had a sleepy, droopy-eyelids feel, and it was still summer, but it often felt as if summer was over, with a blank white sky, shorter days, the leaves crisping and the shadows lengthening on the grass. And things happened in August – not always good things. The Great War had started in August, and so had this one, pretty much, with the wait for Hitler’s ‘undertaking’ that had never come.

She looked across to Furniture and Household, hoping to catch Jim’s eye, but he was with a customer. He was tipping a kitchen chair this way and that, demonstrating its sturdiness. He took his job very seriously. Jim took lots of things seriously – and plenty not so seriously. It was a combination that had first attracted her to him – but whether he was testing her or teasing her, Lily had accepted the challenge.

‘Miss Collins! Customer!’

Lily snapped to attention and smoothed down her dress as Mrs Mortimer approached. She was one of the first customers Lily had served after her promotion from junior to sales, and a kind, tweedy soul so it had been a gentle dunking, not a baptism of fire.

Mrs Mortimer would only be looking – or ‘doing a recce’ as she put it – on behalf of one of her busy daughters or daughters-in-law before she, or they, returned with the essential coupons to make the purchase. But it was all good practice.

Lily began as she’d been taught.

‘Good morning, Mrs Mortimer, how are you? How may I help you?’

On Toys next door, Lily’s friend Gladys was dusting Dobbin, the much-loved Play Corner rocking horse, and thinking much the same about the time. When you had nothing to do on your afternoon off, a long morning didn’t matter, but when there was something you were looking forward to, my, did it drag!

This afternoon there was a little party planned at Lily’s, a welcome home for their friend Beryl’s husband. Les Bulpitt had been invalided home from North Africa, to everyone’s relief and delight, especially Beryl’s, now a proud mother to baby Bobby. Les had been away for Bobby’s birth, so hadn’t seen his son as a newborn. Now he was home they could be a proper family.

Gladys sighed happily. Thoughts of contented married couples always led to thoughts of her fiancé, Bill, and how contented she would be when they were married, and especially when they started their family. A husband and children were all Gladys had ever wanted, and Bill was the answer to years of fervent prayers. Had it been wrong to pray for something like that, Gladys wondered now, when there were bigger things to pray for, like an end to starvation and cruelty and persecution? She probably ought to pray for forgiveness for having been so shallow and selfish, but she was too busy praying for a speedy end to the war and for Bill to be kept safe in the meantime.

On Furniture and Household, Jim had made his sale.

‘If you’ll sign here, please, Mrs Jenkins, I’ll send this up to the Cash Office to get your receipt.’

He stuffed the sheets into the little drum, rolled it shut and inserted it into the pneumatic tube. Off it whizzed upstairs. Jim smiled at Mrs Jenkins, another of the store’s regular customers.

‘I’m not sure when we can deliver, I’m afraid,’ he began. ‘With the new petrol regulations …’

Mrs Jenkins held up her hand. ‘Don’t worry, a few days won’t matter. We’ve been without a kitchen chair for months – I had to give cook one of the dining chairs when the old one got past repairing. I’m grateful you had anything, even second-hand!’

‘The Utility Scheme will help,’ said Jim. ‘We should get more regular supplies.’

Mrs Jenkins looked sceptical.

‘Newlyweds get first dibs, though?’

‘Oh, yes. And anyone who’s been bombed out.’

The tube throbbed as the cylinder plopped back into the little cup at its base. Jim retrieved it and handed Mrs Jenkins her copy.

‘I’ll telephone,’ he promised, ‘with a date for delivery. I hope within the next week.’

‘Marvellous – well, as good as it gets these days! Thank you. Goodbye!’

‘Goodbye.’

Jim closed his sales book and looked across to Childrenswear, hoping Lily was looking his way, but she was with a customer. Lily’s blonde curls bent close to Mrs Mortimer’s grey head as they examined the smocking on a summer dress.

The clock showed half past twelve. Only half an hour to go before all four lights below it would be illuminated, the sign that the last customer had left the store and the commissionaire had bolted the doors and drawn down the blackout blinds.

Thirty minutes, then freedom … or was it? Jim had a funny feeling that there’d be a list of jobs for him ahead of the afternoon’s little party. No change there, then! In a year as their lodger he’d realised that it was Lily’s mother, Dora, who made work for idle hands. The devil never got a look-in.

‘Really, Jim, is that the best you can do?’

‘What? I’m at full stretch here, I’ll have you know!’

‘Come off it!’ Lily scrutinised his efforts. ‘What’s the point of a banner if it looks like a drooping petticoat?’

Jim lowered his arms and the ‘Welcome Home’ banner he’d been holding up slumped dispiritedly to the floor.

‘That’s better.’ He eased his neck and shoulders. ‘My arms were nearly dropping off.’

He might have known he wouldn’t get away with that.

‘How can they drop off when they’re above your head?’ Lily retorted. ‘Drop implies down, doesn’t it? Tch! And to think you’re the one with the School Certificate!’

Jim looked at her, head on one side, mouth twisted. Only a few weeks ago the two of them had finally admitted that their friendship had grown into more than just that. But their fledgeling romance didn’t mean they weren’t still friends first and foremost – friends who teased each other relentlessly.

To show she was on his side really, Lily dragged over a dining chair. Jim was over six feet tall but her mum had been adamant that the banner had got to be thumb-tacked to the top of the picture rail, not the front – she wasn’t having it look as if it had woodworm. To say Dora Collins was house-proud was a bit like saying Hitler had simply got out of bed on the wrong side on the day he’d invaded Poland.

‘Haven’t you two finished yet?’ Dora, pinny wrapped across her slender frame, hair bound up in a turban, appeared from the scullery, sounding stern, but only concerned that everything should be just so. ‘There’s lettuce to wash and tomatoes to slice, sandwiches to make …’

She was carrying a sponge cake on the best cut-glass stand. The icing and the little silver balls that Beryl had requested had of course been impossible, but it still looked delicious. Dora Collins wasn’t to be beaten in the cake-making stakes, and thanks to the hens they kept in the yard, cakes in this house didn’t have to be made with foul-smelling dried egg, either, even if it meant sacrificing sugar in tea.

Jim and Lily exchanged a ‘that’s told us’ look and Jim scrambled up onto the chair, having first, of course, removed his shoes. Dora might have been turned away, setting the cake in the middle of the table, but she had more eyes in the back of her head than a whole platoon of snipers. Lily passed up the tacks, and soon the banner was in place to everyone’s satisfaction.

Ivy and Susan, Beryl and Les, Gladys – Dora checked she’d set out enough plates. That was five, plus the three of them – yes, eight in total.

Banner fixed, chair replaced, Dora marshalled Lily and Jim into the kitchen.

‘Now,’ she instructed. ‘Let’s get a bit of a production line going. If I slice the bread—’

‘Jim can spread the marg, and I can fill.’ Lily finished the sentence for her.

Jim smiled to himself.

‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ was one of Dora’s many favourite sayings and it certainly explained where Lily’s organisational skills – he wouldn’t have dared call it bossiness, not to her face, anyway – came from.

‘Aw, you shouldn’t have!’

‘But we did! And it’s all for you, Les!’

Beryl hung on to her husband’s arm as they stood in the doorway, Les grinning at the spread. But he wasn’t the Les that Lily remembered. He looked very different; thinner, and paler than you’d expect after months in the desert. But she’d been silly to expect him to look brown, Lily realised – most of his tan would have disappeared in the weeks he’d spent in hospital and a further few getting home on a troop ship. He looked older somehow.

‘Me and Susan made the banner, Ivy and Dora’s done the tea …’

Beryl steered Les into the room as his sister, Susan, carefully carrying baby Bobby, came in behind them.

Beryl had scribed the ‘Welcome Home’ in big fat letters, but she’d let Susan do the colouring, which was why it was all wonky and went over the lines. Les’s sister was thirteen, but she’d been born with all sorts of difficulties, including a weak heart and poor eyesight. Co-ordination wasn’t one of her strong points, and as the doctor had gently put it, Susan would always be backward in her development.

‘How are you?’ Jim was enthusiastically shaking Les by the hand, but Lily could tell he was just as shocked as she was by Les’s appearance.

‘He needs feeding up, that’s what!’ clucked Ivy. Still in her shapeless duster coat and even more shapeless hat, Les’s mother was adding her contributions to the table – a plate of sausage rolls and a dish of junket.

‘That’s right,’ Les agreed. ‘Nothing a bit of home cooking won’t put right.’

‘Was it awful, the food out there?’

Lily was keen to know, as the story back home was that they had to do without to keep the Army marching on its stomach. Though frankly Les looked as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks.

‘Not bad. A bit repetitive, that’s all.’

‘Sounds like here,’ said Gladys. She’d arrived earlier and was helping Susan, still holding the baby, settle herself in an easy chair. ‘Anyway, it’s lovely to see you home. And congratulations on being a dad!’

‘Isn’t he a little smasher?’ Les beamed at his son. ‘Hasn’t Beryl done wonders?’

Beryl glowed as everyone showered praise on her, the baby, and the general miracle of creation.

‘Don’t you want to sit down, son? It’s nearly wiped him out walking over here.’

As she spoke, Ivy was removing her coat and lowering her own sizeable behind onto the luckless dining chair that had drawn today’s short straw. Dora nodded in agreement. Physical opposites, Ivy large and expansive, Dora neat and trim, they’d become fast friends since Les and Beryl’s marriage, united by their unswerving devotion to their families.

‘Pull him up a chair, Jim.’

Common sense and a desire to appear manly tussled in Les’s face, but he gave in to the inevitable.

‘Maybe I will.’ He took the chair. ‘Just for a minute or two. I’m a lot better than I was!’ he added bravely.

‘I think he looks awful, don’t you?’ Lily asked Jim under the hiss of the kettle. They’d been sent out to the kitchen to make the tea.

‘Not great.’

The worry about Les had started after the battle for Tobruk back in June. Nothing had been heard of him, or Lily’s brother Reg who was also out in North Africa, for weeks. Finally, Reg had managed to send a wire saying he was OK. From Les, though, there’d been nothing till Beryl got a letter saying he’d been in hospital – and nowhere near the fighting! He’d been taken with something called West Nile fever – from a mosquito bite.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Lily. ‘Do you think it was more serious than he let on?’

Jim shrugged.

‘I can’t think why else a simple fever case would mean him being shipped home and discharged for good.’

Lily sighed.

‘Oh, Jim. This war! If so, where does that leave Beryl and Bobby?’

Chapter 2

It wasn’t till after tea that Jim got the full story out of Les. Under the pretence of giving Bobby, newly fed and changed, some air, they went out into the yard where the hens scratched tirelessly if pointlessly in their run. Les was already looking a bit less peaky. He’d certainly eaten a giant tea.

‘So, this fever …’ Jim began.

Beryl had already told them with a hint of pride that Les’s records had gone to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London as an interesting case.

‘I’d never heard of it,’ answered Les, shifting his body slightly to protect the baby’s eyes from the bright sky. ‘It’s not that bad in itself. But I had complications.’

‘Right …’ So there had been something else – just as Jim and Lily had suspected.

‘I carried on, see, thought it was gippy tummy or heatstroke – they were always warning us about that. By the time I came over real queer, it had taken hold. I had this kind of seizure, woke up in hospital and my legs had gone all floppy. You know how they hit you with that little hammer? Not a thing.’

‘My God, Les. Scary.’

‘It was. I thought it was polio or something. But they said … let me get this right … the fever had gone to … encephalitis, is it?’

Now Jim understood. Without telling anyone, even Lily, he’d gone to the library and read up on tropical fevers back when they’d first had the news that Les had been in the isolation ward. Encephalitis was a swelling of the brain.

‘But you got the feeling back?’

‘Yes, thank God, bit by bit. And I’m better now.’

‘Are you? Really?’

‘Well …’ Les looked shifty. ‘I get the odd headache. My heart races a bit. But I’m properly on the mend.’

‘They still invalided you out.’

‘Yeah. And compared to some blokes, lost a leg, blinded, burns and what have you, I’m darn lucky. But the Army can’t have me driving or handling machinery, let alone a gun. They can’t take the risk, “in a theatre of war” was how they put it.’

‘No, I should think not.’

‘But I could kiss that mosquito!’ The mosquito being unavailable, Les kissed the baby’s head. ‘Giving me a free pass home!’

This was more like the old Les.

‘Well, maybe it’s for the best,’ Jim said thoughtfully. ‘At least Bobby’s going to grow up knowing his dad. There’s plenty of kids who won’t have that.’

They both looked down at the baby. At four months he hadn’t quite mastered getting his thumb into his mouth but was happily sucking his fist. Les stroked his silky hair in disbelief and wonder.

‘What was it like out there, Les? Really?’

Les puffed out a breath.

‘What can I say? Like everyone tells you: heat, dust, sand, flies, more sand, more heat … What they don’t tell you is wearing the same clothes for days, soaked in sweat, drinking water that tastes of petrol from a rusty can, lying in a scrape in the sand being strafed by the Jerries, seeing the truck ahead of you hit a mine … and the things you see … fellers blown apart, bits all over the place … digging them a grave …’

Gently, he touched Bobby’s head again.

‘But at the same time, the lads, we had such a laugh – you had to. And the guts of some of them – injured and carrying on, could have got a Blighty pass no trouble, but raring to get back to it – and that’s officers and men. And not just us Brits. Indians and Aussies and New Zealanders … they’ve fought like lions.’

Jim was silent. He’d tried to join up when he’d turned eighteen but had failed the eye test. He still felt guilty about it, despite the fact that he did his ARP duty three nights a week and took his turn fire-watching on the roof of Marlow’s.

‘They should have kept you on – recruiting officer!’

‘No thanks! But, look, Jim, I want to talk to you about that. What’s the chance of my old job back?’

Until he’d been called up, Les had worked as a delivery driver at Marlow’s. Beryl had worked there too. It was how they’d all met.

Jim had been waiting for the question and he knew the answer would disappoint. Les had never been replaced and the store was hardly going to create another driving job now, with petrol rationed even more strictly.

‘Les. Be realistic. You can’t go back to driving. The Army have got a point.’ Les opened his mouth to object, but Jim carried on. ‘No, listen. There is a job coming up. Not driving – it’s warehouseman-cum-porter. I know it’s a step down for you. It wouldn’t be quite as well-paid, and you’d still have to convince them you were fit enough … Would you be up for that?’

‘With a wife and kiddy to support?’ Les nearly bit off not just his hand, but his whole arm. ‘I’d be up for anything! And I’ll work on getting myself A1 fit. Get my chest-expander out!’

‘Don’t overdo it!’ warned Jim. ‘One step at a time. I’ll have a word with Staff Office and try and get you seen. I should think they’d be glad not to have to advertise, and wade through a load of useless applications.’

‘Thanks, Jim. I appreciate it.’

Lily, Gladys and Beryl trooped out now, Beryl saying they ought to get going and get Bobby to bed. She, Gladys and Les formed an admiring circle round the baby as Lily squeezed in next to Jim on the wall of the veg bed. He put his arm round her.

‘Still on for the cinema?’

‘You bet!’

They were going to see The Magnificent Ambersons. Lily had been all for seeing Mrs. Miniver again, which was still playing at the Gaumont, but they’d tossed a coin in the end and Jim had won. He was a big fan of Orson Welles. In truth, Lily didn’t much care what they saw. It would just be a treat to be on their own, walking to the cinema, arms entwined, and having a quick smooch before the picture started – being Jim’s girl.

When Lily had first shyly confessed to her friends that she and Jim had finally moved things on from being friends, Gladys had leapt ahead to suggest cosy double dates with herself and Bill, as Lily had known she would. Gladys and Bill were going to get married on his next leave, though when that would be, neither of them knew. Bill’s ship was on escort duty in the Northern Passage so it might not be till well into next year. If the war lasted that long, of course.

Before Gladys could get to double weddings, though, Lily had firmly had to tell her that she and Jim were happy to let things unfold slowly – very slowly.

‘We’re no age, Gladys,’ she’d protested. ‘I know you and Bill aren’t much older, but just because marriage and babies is right for you, it doesn’t mean it’s right for us. I mean, can you see me as a full-time wife and mother, honestly?’

It was generally agreed that Lily’s attempts at knitting would have been useful colanders; Dora despaired of her daughter’s anything-but-light touch with pastry.

Gladys had looked baffled by Lily’s reluctance to swoon at the whiff of orange blossom and the idea of a ring on her finger, but Beryl, forthright as always, had weighed in on Lily’s side.

‘Look,’ she reasoned. ‘We all know Lily and Jim are marked out for something a bit better than the shop floor at Marlow’s. It wouldn’t affect Jim, but Lily could kiss goodbye to any idea of promotion if she got married, let alone up the duff.’

‘Rubbish!’ Gladys defended herself. ‘There’s loads of married women working now, and ones with children. In Marlow’s and everywhere else.’

‘Only because the men are away fighting! When they come home, they’ll take back their jobs and shove us women straight back in the kitchen, you wait and see!’

Lily nodded, grateful for the support, but then Beryl wasn’t a full-time wife and mother herself. She couldn’t be called up for war work now she had the baby, and her old job in the Toy department at Marlow’s, even if she’d wanted it, had been filled by Gladys. So, starting in a small way with her own wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses, she’d set herself up in business hiring out bridal wear from home. Les’s picture of himself as the family’s sole breadwinner was a complete illusion: Beryl had a five-year plan for Beryl’s Brides that would have had Stalin stroking his moustache.

‘Did you get much out of Les?’ Lily asked Jim quietly now. The adoring acolytes weren’t listening, still worshipping the wonder child.

Jim kept his voice low, even so.

‘It may not be quite as bad as we thought. He had a horrible infection, but it sounds as if he’s going to be OK. Like he said, he just needs to build his strength up.’

‘Thank goodness for that. Did you tell him about the job?’

‘He jumped at it.’

‘Good.’

Lily sighed contentedly. The worry had mostly subsided; there was still the cinema to look forward to. After the long, dull morning, and the concern over Les, what a perfect end to the afternoon.

It was getting on for six by the time everyone had gone, the last of the crocks were put away and the banner could come down. Jim was shutting up the hens.

‘It hasn’t got Les’s name on it,’ Lily said as she folded the banner carefully. ‘We can use it for Reg.’

She really was starting to think, or at least hope, two things – first, that the war might be over soon, and second, that both her brothers might get through it unscathed.

Reg was a mechanic with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, attached to the Eighth Army. General Montgomery was leading them now, experienced, energetic, determined: everyone was hoping against hope that he was the one who’d finally drive Rommel into the sea. Lily had an even better reason to hope for the safe return of her other brother, the middle one of Dora’s children. Sid had joined the Navy but an injury picked up in training meant he’d had to settle for a desk job. He was up in Scotland at a place called Largs, and though he wasn’t thrilled at being a penpusher instead of a fighting man, he’d had to acknowledge that it took away some of the worry back home.

Dora, though, wasn’t one to cross bridges or to count chickens: hope for the best but take what comes was nearer the mark for her. She changed the subject.

‘Hadn’t you better get a wriggle on if you two are going out?’

‘Yes! You’re right. We should.’

Dora smiled fondly at her daughter. She was thrilled that Lily and Jim were courting. They were always discreet about it in front of her, but no one could fail to notice the even readier smiles, the even more affectionate teasing, the sneaked glances, the surreptitious squeezes. Lily had always been bright and strong-minded; she needed someone like Jim to catch her, and then to match her. He might seem the quiet type but he was no pushover. He was quick and clever too – Lily needed that.

‘Off you go then. But see to your hair before you do!’

Lily’s blonde curls, as strong-minded as she was, had a tendency to resist arrest, and the fact that her few precious hairgrips had long since lost their grippiness didn’t help.

‘Beryl says I should get a permanent, now I’m a salesgirl proper, but I’m not sure … Jim?’ Lily broke off as Jim came in from the kitchen. He was ghost-white.

‘The bucket,’ he said blankly. ‘I was taking it to the pig bin and I met him in the street. The telegram boy.’

Oh no, not Reg! Please, not Reg! Not today – not any time, but especially not today!

Dora held out her hand for the telegram, but Jim shook his head.

‘It was for me,’ he said. ‘It’s my mother. She’s had a stroke.’

Chapter 3

Wasn’t that just like life, thought Lily, as she stood and watched Jim fling a few things into a bag. At the start of the afternoon they’d been worrying about Les, and when she’d heard the word ‘telegram’, she’d automatically assumed it must be about Reg. Even then, when Jim had said it was for him … of his parents, the one you’d expect to get bad news about was his father, gassed in the Great War and left semi-invalided with a bad chest. Yes, just like life, to creep up and sandbag you from behind when you were looking in the other direction!

Jim zipped up his holdall and turned to face her.

‘I’m sorry about the cinema.’

‘Don’t be silly. I’m sorry for you. And your mum. Will you go straight to the hospital?’

Jim’s family home was in Worcestershire, in a small village, Bidbury. The telegram had said his mother was in the Cottage Hospital at Pershore.

Jim spread his hands.

‘I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve got to get there first.’

You couldn’t count on the trains, when or if they’d run, and there was no direct train. Jim would have to go from Hinton to Birmingham, change there for Worcester, then for the branch line, a slow, jolting journey in a blacked-out carriage with long waits in between.

Lily put her hand on his arm.

‘They wouldn’t let you see her in the middle of the night anyway. Perhaps you’d be better going home to see to your dad. He can’t manage on his own, can he?’

Jim pushed his hands through his hair, making it stick up in the way that flipped Lily’s heart.

‘Can you tell them at work? I haven’t got time to write a letter.’

‘Of course. Don’t worry about that. Come here.’

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. He rested his chin on top of her head and sighed. They both knew what this latest development meant.

The situation with Jim’s parents had been complicated enough already. He was an only child, and was only here in Hinton because his mother, Alice, had traded on a never-before-exploited family connection to write to the store’s owner, Cedric Marlow. She’d hoped that he’d help Jim through Agricultural College, but she hadn’t dared to ask outright and instead Cedric Marlow had offered a Jim a position at the store. With neither of them feeling that he could turn it down, Jim had moved away to the town, and Marlow’s – and Lily. His mother, frustrated at losing him, had spent the entire time since hoping that he’d return. In fact, she’d done more than hope – she’d as good as schemed to get him back.

Just a few weeks earlier, seeing that looking after his dad, the house and the garden was getting too much for her, Jim had started going back to Bidbury every other weekend, leaving after work on Saturdays and taking Mondays off unpaid to make the lengthy journey worthwhile.

The new regime had coincided with Lily and Jim confessing what they felt for each other, and if it was a brake on their relationship, at least it was better than the screeching full stop that Lily had feared. She’d had moments when she’d genuinely thought Jim was going to leave Hinton for good, and the fact that he was still there at all felt like deliverance.

But now this.

Jim pulled away and looked sadly down at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘We’ll make things work, Lily, I promise.’

Lily stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

‘I know.’

Jim held her tight and kissed her back. ‘I’d better go.’

‘You had.’

Lily saw him to the front door. He kissed her again, for longer this time.

‘I don’t know when I’ll be back.’

‘I’ll see you when I see you,’ she said, as brightly as she could. ‘Give your mother my best, won’t you?’

Jim smiled thinly. He knew that Lily’s good wishes were the last thing that his mother would want and in her heart of hearts, Lily knew it too. The two of them were gambling for Jim’s affections, and, though a stroke was hardly something you could fake, or plan, and she felt wicked for thinking it, it still seemed to Lily as though Alice had played an ace.

‘Poor Jim!’ Gladys, the next day, was sorry to hear the news. ‘His poor mum, of course. And poor you, Lily!’

Lily shrugged the sympathy away.

‘Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not the one in hospital.’

‘And the telegram didn’t say how bad it is?’

‘No.’

Gladys pushed a bit of potato round her plate, trying to robe it in the thin gravy. The friends had managed to get off to dinner together, and the clatter of the Staff Canteen was all around them. The meat dish of the day was roast heart, which Lily couldn’t fancy – a bit too much like her own. She was doing her best with a lump of grey fish in a heavy sea of white sauce.

‘Who sent it anyway?’ Gladys managed to transfer the dripping chunk of potato to her mouth. ‘His dad never leaves the house, does he?’

Lily paused, knife and fork arched.

‘I never thought. I never asked. A neighbour, perhaps?’

Gladys nodded. She was such a sweet soul; she was really feeling for Jim, Lily could see.

‘I suppose so. Oh dear. And we’d had such a lovely afternoon.’

It was early afternoon by the time Jim got to the hospital. He hadn’t got back to Bidbury till dawn, trains cancelled or diverted, stuck in a siding in Birmingham to let troop trains pass, then the sirens going, hearing planes overhead, straining to hear if they were German Dorniers, then realising they were Lancasters, probably on their way back to base from a raid of their own.

Exhausted, he’d had to walk the last few miles, letting himself into the darkened cottage to find his father asleep in the chair with the dog loyally at his feet. Jim had a couple of hours’ sleep, washed and shaved his father and himself, and at nine had walked back into the village to get some food in. From the shop-cum-post office he’d telephoned the hospital to hear that his mother’s condition was unchanged, and that visiting was from two o’clock till four.

Now he was standing nonplussed in the ward with its shiny lino and tidy beds, trying to see which pale figure, pinioned by the bedclothes, was his mother. A nurse came by with a cloth-covered tray, so he asked.

‘Far bed on the left,’ she said, swishing off on rubber heels to the sluice room.

Head down, uncomfortable and feeling out of place, Jim made his way past the other patients, who, apart from one jolly woman surrounded by a tribe of relatives, seemed to be largely elderly and unloved, or at least unvisited. But as he neared the end bed, he realised that wasn’t the case with his mother – there was someone there already. A young woman was sitting at the bedside with her back to him.

‘Margaret?’

The girl spun round and stood up rapidly, rattling the chair back. She looked almost as out of place as Jim in her cord breeches and shirt, with tanned arms and her brown hair cropped close into her neck.

‘Jim! You made it!’

Jim caught the chair as it rocked.

‘Yes, finally. How is she?’

He could see straight away there was no point in addressing the question to his mother. She was asleep, or seemed to be, her face white and her lips a thin mauve line.

Margaret motioned him to one side. She kept her voice low.

‘The doctor was leaving as I got here. They’ve given her something to calm her down – she was getting what he called “agitated”. She hasn’t said much, so they can’t really tell about that, but it’s taken her movement, Jim, down her right side.’

‘Oh, God.’

On the long journey Jim had speculated about how the stroke might have affected her. A mother, especially his mother, who could get about but not communicate was as bad as one who was physically impeded but still had the power of speech. Now it seemed his mother might have lost both. He reached for the only possible straw.

‘People do get better, though, from a stroke? With exercises …?’

Margaret lifted her shoulders minutely.

‘It’s too early to say. But the doctor did say the stroke was a relatively mild one.’

‘That’s something.’

It still left him with a heck of a problem, he knew.

‘Look, Margaret,’ he offered. ‘I’ll sit with her now. I can stay till she wakes up. It’s good of you to have come. And thank you so much for sending the telegram.’ His father, who seemed bemused by the whole thing, had told him that much. ‘I’ll give you the money.’

‘Don’t be silly. That’s all right.’

‘How did you … how did you even know it had happened?’

‘Oh,’ said Margaret. ‘But I was there. I was with her.’

His mother showed no sign of stirring, so they went outside to talk. There was a small garden with a sundial and some benches where recuperating patients and their visitors could sit. Jim was too tense to sit down, so they walked round and round the narrow crazy-paved paths.

‘I’ve been dropping in when I could,’ Margaret explained. ‘I know you’ve been coming at weekends, Jim, but I think your mum was lonely. Your dad sits in the chair dozing most of the day. She asked me to call if I had time, so I did. I think she just wanted company.’

‘I see.’

That wasn’t all his mother had wanted and Jim knew it. Margaret was the daughter of a local farmer. Both her brothers had been killed in the war and, unbeknown to her, she was part of Alice’s scheme to get Jim back. If Alice could pair Jim off with Margaret, that was not one, not two, but three birds with one stone. Jim would be back home, with a wife on his arm and running the farm down the lane, country trumping town, her son secure and with a promising future.

Jim knew his mother felt she’d been dealt a rotten hand in life. Now it seemed to have turned into a winning one, because if she didn’t make a good recovery – and who knew? – he’d surely have no option but to come back to Bidbury for good.

While Jim had been thinking, they’d continued their aimless circuit of the garden, Margaret brushing her hand against the tall spines of lavender and releasing their scent. Jim’s mother had claimed that Margaret held a torch for him – always had – and there was no doubt she’d make a wonderful wife for a farmer. She was milking her father’s herd by herself these days, butter-making, delivering the churns, delivering and looking after the calves, too – and she had other talents. She’d wanted to go to Art School, but that had been scotched by the war and she’d taken on her new role uncomplainingly. Jim liked her very much, admired her, even, and felt sorry for what she’d had to give up. All in all, Margaret was a thoroughly nice girl and, if things had been different, they might even one day have made a match. But things were different. He had Lily now.

When Lily got back to her department after dinner, Miss Frobisher was waiting for her. Lily instinctively looked at the clock but Miss Frobisher held up a reassuring hand.

‘You’re not late, don’t worry!’

‘Good! Did you want me for something, Miss Frobisher?’

‘Yes, I do. Not now, but on Monday. I want you to come with me to Ward and Keppler.’

Lily’s mouth made a fair imitation of her dinnertime fish being landed.

Ward and Keppler were big manufacturers of children’s and babywear – their Robin Hood brand was top quality and they chose their outlets very carefully. The only shops in Hinton favoured with their goods were Marlow’s and their big rival, Burrell’s.

‘You may well look surprised,’ Lily’s boss went on. ‘I was due to go with Miss Naylor, but she has to be at home that day for the ruins recorder.’

Miss Naylor was the buyer on Schoolwear. Her house was in a terrace that had been part-destroyed when a bomb had dropped on Hinton the previous year. The council’s inspector had to make regular visits to make sure the houses still standing were safe to live in.

Poor Miss Naylor – but lucky Lily! Lucky Miss Frobisher too, though she’d never have let on. She and Miss Naylor were not the best of friends and Miss Frobisher had always felt her presence on the trip, on the basis of girls’ gym knickers and boys’ rugby socks, was superfluous.

‘The expenses had already been cleared and the tickets bought,’ Miss Frobisher went on, ‘so rather than waste one …’

Her eyebrows signalled it might be a good idea if Lily made some response, and she found her voice.

‘Miss Frobisher, that would be wonderful!’ she managed. ‘Thank you!’

‘It’s intended to be instructive,’ said Miss Frobisher firmly, in case Lily thought it was to be a jolly day out – which she hadn’t. ‘Selling’s only one aspect of running a department. This will show you where and how it all begins – the buying process.’

Lily knew she should be listening as Miss Frobisher explained how she’d cleared Lily’s absence with the first floor supervisor, Mr Simmonds, when they’d need to leave and when they’d get back, but her mind was running ahead.

‘One aspect of running a department?’ Of running a department? Lily knew she wanted to progress and she knew Miss Frobisher thought she had it in her … but buying? Was her boss really implying she could see Lily going that far at Marlow’s?

Things really did happen in August – and they weren’t all bad, either!

Chapter 4

Lily hugged the news to herself for the rest of the day. She told Gladys about it as they left the store but made sure to talk it down as much as she could.

‘I expect she just wants company,’ she explained. ‘You know what the trains are like.’

Lily knew from past experience – look at the way Gladys had reacted to Lily and Jim getting together – how her friend loved to build things up and she didn’t want her reading any more into it than she only half-dared to herself.

She had to tell her mum as well, naturally, because who knew when she and Miss Frobisher would get back and she didn’t want her to worry. But Dora wasn’t to be fooled.

‘She must think something of you, Lily!’

‘Oh, well, maybe.’

Dora wiped her hands on her apron – she’d been peeling potatoes – and came to give her daughter a hug. She hadn’t been very free with her hugs when Lily and the boys had been growing up – too busy keeping them fed and clothed after she’d been widowed. Her life was hardly any easier now she was living through the second world war of her lifetime, and she missed and worried endlessly about her sons – but if that had made her more demonstrative to the child she did have at home, Lily wasn’t complaining.

‘I did promise when I started at Marlow’s that I’d try my hardest. But I’m so lucky with Miss Frobisher. Not all the buyers are like it, but she wants to help me along.’

‘And up, by the sound of it!’ Dora had a sudden thought. ‘Lucky you got that jacket at the rummage the other week. And if you want to borrow my horseshoe brooch for the lapel, you’ve only to say.’

The only person Lily could really confide in about her hopes was Jim, but when he came back on Sunday, he was understandably preoccupied.

‘Flying visit,’ he said, surprising Lily and Dora by turning up as they were finishing their meagre, virtually meat-free stew.

Dora immediately fetched him a plate and served out the rest – so much for Monday’s planned cottage pie – and Jim answered their questions between mouthfuls. The answers weren’t encouraging.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ he confessed. ‘Mother’s hardly been out of bed, but they’re chucking her out tomorrow.’

‘That can’t be right!’ Dora protested.

‘No, that’s not quite fair. Someone’s been coming to walk her up and down – her leg’s not too bad, though she needs someone to lean on. But she can hardly move her arm. Still, they need the bed, apparently.’

‘What are you going to do? You’ll have to stay on, won’t you?’

Jim turned to answer Lily, but she knew what he’d say.

‘There’s nothing else for it, till I can sort someone out to look after her and my dad. I’m only back to collect some clothes.’

He’d finished his stew in what seemed like seconds and Lily trailed upstairs after him to watch him pack for the second time in five days.

‘I wish there was something I could do,’ she said.

‘There is,’ said Jim. He produced a letter from his pocket. ‘Take this in to work; it’s telling them I’ll need a bit more time off.’

He gave a huge sigh and sank onto the bed, pulling Lily down beside him.

‘What a mess it all is.’

Lily put her arms round him and pulled him close.

‘It’ll get sorted,’ she said, trying to sound convincing. ‘Things do.’

Jim smiled thinly. He didn’t tell her that Margaret had instantly offered to help, though he’d rebuffed that straight away – she had a more-than-full-time job on the farm. No, he’d have to find someone else in the village, though the only available candidate so far was Mrs Dawkins, a rather chaotic woman who cleaned – and frequently drank – at the pub. Jim couldn’t see her meeting with his mother’s approval. Still, she might have to put up with it.

Within the hour he was off again for another wearisome journey. Lily saw him to the door. It didn’t seem the right time to start going on about her day out with Miss Frobisher, and what it might mean, but when Jim kissed her briefly, Lily did mention that she’d been invited on a buying trip with her boss.

‘Oh, good,’ said Jim distractedly. ‘You’ll still be able to get that letter to Staff Office, though, won’t you?’

Lily didn’t say that she and Miss Frobisher were meeting at the station, so she’d have to set out early to divert to Marlow’s first. But it was the least she could do.

‘Good morning! You’re looking very smart.’

Lily, already a little pink from her detour with Jim’s letter, blushed some more. She hoped it wasn’t too obvious that her jacket was a black and white bird’s eye check – Miss Frobisher had a bird’s eye suit in navy – or that her black barathea skirt was not unlike the skirt of Miss Frobisher’s black barathea costume with its back pleat. Fortunately her boss wasn’t wearing either of them today, but a camel coat and skirt, and court shoes the colour of conkers. Lily surreptitiously wiped the toes of her own black lace-ups on the back of her legs to buff them up a bit. If only she could be as polished as Miss Frobisher.

Miss Frobisher flourished the tickets.

‘Platform three. And wonder of wonders, they’re not predicting any delays.’

Wonder of wonders, ‘they’ were right for once. Settled smugly in the train – they even managed to get seats – Miss Frobisher began to fill Lily in on what to expect.

‘I deal with Mr Ward directly,’ she explained as the train pulled out in a hiss of steam and a shower of smuts. ‘It’s a relationship I’ve built up over many years – in fact, I was the one who persuaded him to sell through Marlow’s. I dealt with him when I was at Marshall and Snelgrove’s.’

Lily gaped. ‘I had no idea you’d worked anywhere but Marlow’s!’

‘I started out at Marlow’s as a junior like you.’ Miss Frobisher put out a hand against the window as the train jolted on the tracks. ‘In Ladies’ Fashions. Ran around unpacking boxes and ironing out creases and picking up pins. Then gradually worked my way up through sales.’

That explained it! Miss Frobisher always looked like a fashion plate. How she did it on clothing coupons had always fascinated Lily; perhaps she still had contacts in the trade.

‘But at the time – before the war, before the staff shortages we have now – there was no movement above me. No progress that I could see in any department. And then … one of the reps recommended me and I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Junior buyer – in London.’

‘London!’

‘I only came back to Hinton because of the war. I … well, I had my son by then, I didn’t want to risk it.’

Lily knew Miss Frobisher was married: it was one of the store’s quainter conventions that its women employees were addressed as ‘Miss’. Her son, she also knew, was only about four – a neighbour looked after him during the day. As for her husband, he was serving abroad. That was all anyone knew. Miss Frobisher never talked about him and she was hardly the kind of person you could ask. It wasn’t their place, Lily and Gladys had agreed, and it wasn’t uncommon; it was the way some women coped with the separation. But at the same time they’d convinced themselves that he couldn’t be talked about anyway because he was engaged on some kind of secret hush-hush work – he’d obviously be doing something glamorous, in keeping with his glamorous wife.

Now Lily knew Miss Frobisher had lived in London, which was presumably where she’d met him, it turned the speculation into certainty. London was another world, exciting and different. Anyone Miss Frobisher might meet there – over champagne at the Café de Paris, no doubt – was bound to be too.

But Miss Frobisher had gone as far as she intended with her personal revelations – further perhaps – and she drew the subject to a close.

‘We’re not here to talk about me. Let me show you some figures.’

She produced a sheaf of papers from a small attaché case and spread them out on the little table between them.

The miles and the minutes flew by hand in hand as Lily tried to absorb costings and profit margins and sales by volume. She asked scores of questions – how did you decide what to buy in the first place? How could you ever estimate demand? Though that was easy these days – it always outstripped supply.

Before Lily knew it, the train clanked in to Nottingham. On the jostling platform, Lily kept her eyes fixed on the back of Miss Frobisher’s smooth French-pleated head as they threaded their way through soldiers, airmen and civilians, women porters yelling ‘mind your backs’ and guards blowing their whistles. Outside, Miss Frobisher hustled her into a taxi – the extravagance! Dora would have died! – which wove through the streets and dropped them at a huge red-brick building; a proper old Victorian mill, long and low with tall chimneys.

Inside, Mr Ward’s secretary led them up to the management offices, built on a sort of platform on cast-iron pillars overlooking the massive factory floor. Lily blinked in wonder. Not just the platform but the air itself seemed to vibrate. Looms rattled and clattered as the shuttles wove from left to right and back again, transforming loose skeins of thread into smooth sheets of cloth. The noise was deafening and it was a relief when the secretary left and closed the office door behind her.

Miss Frobisher made the introductions: it had been Lily on the train, but she was Miss Collins again now. Mr Ward, small, bald and so stout he looked as if he’d been blown up with a bicycle pump, shook her by the hand.

‘Pleased to meet you! You couldn’t have anyone better than Miss Frobisher here to teach you what for, but I expect you know that already!’

He kept up the merry chat as tea was brought in and poured. He didn’t get much of a response – Miss Frobisher wasn’t one for small talk – but it didn’t seem to bother him. He answered his own questions about the trains and the weather and the state of the war while Lily surreptitiously eyed the plate of ginger biscuits. She’d never seen Miss Frobisher eat, nor heard her stomach rumble, as her own often did so humiliatingly during a long morning and, as she expected, Miss Frobisher politely waved away the plate when Mr Ward wafted it in front of her. Lily had no such qualms. She knew Miss Frobisher was keen to get down to business, but surely one wouldn’t hurt? She extended her hand and Mr Ward beamed.

‘Take two!’ he urged. ‘Spoil yourself!’

Lily didn’t need telling twice. Aping Miss Frobisher’s clothes and trying to copy her poise was one thing, but there were limits.

Miss Frobisher was flourishing her sheets again, and as Mr Ward squeezed himself into the chair behind his desk, she produced another on which she’d logged all the customer requests for Robin Hood babywear that she’d been unable to fulfil.

‘I realise you’re under pressure with government orders, but …’

‘Long Johns and combinations,’ Mr Ward confirmed. ‘Bandages, blankets, and now they’re talking about webbing and camouflage nets.’

Busy trying to eat her biscuit as unobtrusively as possible, Lily looked up; Miss Frobisher seemed shocked.

‘Goodness! That’s a lot more than I realised.’

‘A lot more. In fact, things have got so bad that …’ Mr Ward sat back, light through the taped-over window glazing his bald head. His tight waistcoat had a big gold watch inserted even more tightly into the pocket. ‘Mr Keppler and I have discussed it and we’ve decided to stop producing Robin Hood babywear altogether.’

Shot with a poisoned arrow, Miss Frobisher reeled back in her chair.

‘You can’t be serious!’

Lily had never seen her so discomposed.

Mr Ward held up a podgy, but pacifying, hand.

‘Raw materials are so hard to come by, there’s no choice. We can’t guarantee the quality and we don’t want to compromise the name.’

‘But … you can’t do that! If you can’t send us your best, can’t you at least send us something? And … well … call it something else?’

Genius, thought Lily admiringly. That’s where Miss Frobisher’s years of experience came in.

Mr Ward beamed.

‘I knew you’d think of that – and it’s exactly what we plan to do. And keeping with the Sherwood Forest theme, we thought we’d call the different lines after trees. Maple for underwear, Olive for baby blankets and pram covers, and so on.’

And so on? thought Lily. Maple, maybe, but since when were there olive trees in Sherwood Forest? What next? Coconut palms?

Privately she and Jim had joked about the Robin Hood name – robbing people with their exorbitant prices – but surely the point was for customers to make the connection with a label they’d trusted in the past? On top of which, not using native trees was hardly patriotic!

Miss Frobisher had emphasised that Lily was there to observe, not to intervene, but as always, she couldn’t help herself.

‘Why those trees, Mr Ward?’ she asked.

Now she was the one pierced with a poisoned arrow – a poisonous look, anyway – from her boss. She scrambled to apply an antidote.

‘I only thought, Miss Frobisher, that if a customer happened to ask, it’d be good to know.’

Mr Ward beamed again.

‘That’s a fair point,’ he said. ‘It’s personal, really. My son’s doing pilot training in Canada, hence the maple. And olive was Mr Keppler’s suggestion, for the homeland his people have long wanted in Palestine. But if you’re worried about them not being thoroughly British, we’ve got oak, beech and pine as well.’

‘Does that answer your question, Miss Collins?’

Lily nodded dumbly, but Miss Frobisher didn’t seem cross really. She was too relieved, probably, that she was going to have something to sell.

‘So when will the new lines be ready?’ she asked. ‘And in what quantity?’

Before Mr Ward could answer, there was a rat-a-tat on the door and a head poked round.

‘You asked me to pop by, Mr Ward. If it’s convenient …?’

‘Perfect timing, Frank. Come in.’

Mr Ward extracted himself from his chair – not an easy process – and Lily swivelled in her seat to get a better look at the arrival as he crossed the room. He had a broad, open face, a head of dark curly hair, very blue eyes, and a cheeky smile.

‘Miss Frobisher, I presume?’ he said in a soft Irish accent, speaking as if he was greeting Dr Livingstone in the jungle. ‘Frank Bryant.’

Miss Frobisher shook the extended hand without a word.

‘And this is …?’ Frank turned to Lily.

‘A colleague,’ replied Miss Frobisher coolly.

‘Miss Collins,’ Mr Ward supplied helpfully.

Frank shook Lily’s hand too.

‘How do you do?’ he said formally, obviously noting that the temperature in the room had dropped by ten degrees.

Mr Ward, insulated perhaps by his fleshy covering, seemed oblivious.

‘Frank’s our new Midlands representative,’ he beamed. ‘Of course, he won’t be calling as frequently as Mr Harris did.’ Mr Harris had been the previous rep, now a stores orderly in the RASC. Lily wondered why Frank wasn’t in the Forces himself, but Mr Ward was continuing. ‘Petrol and so on. But he’ll be round as often as he can to check you’re happy with the goods and to let you know in advance of any new lines.’

Lily stole a glance at Frank. He was straightening his tie and trying to look serious, but not succeeding very well. He caught her looking at him and winked.

Lily looked away rapidly, but though Miss Frobisher seemed to have her head bent over her paperwork again, Lily could tell from the set of her shoulders that she was more Queen Victoria than Dr Livingstone. Definitely not amused.

Chapter 5

Frank excused himself after that, (‘Invoices!’ he said with a comical grimace), and Miss Frobisher and Mr Ward began an intense round of haggling. Lily watched, intrigued, as they danced around each other like hares boxing before Miss Frobisher yielded slightly on quantities and Mr Ward gave a little on price. Lily could see that it was important that neither of them lost face, but the handshakes at the end were warm enough, and as they left, Mr Ward even pressed a couple more biscuits on a delighted Lily. She secreted them in her gas mask case, knowing she should take them home for another day, but knowing too that she was bound to give in and eat them on the train.

‘Were you happy with how it went?’ she ventured as she and Miss Frobisher waited for their taxi.

‘Reasonably,’ was all Miss Frobisher said, but Lily could tell the meeting had been a success because at the station bookstall Miss Frobisher bought two fashion magazines and a bar of chocolate. On the train, she broke the bar in two and handed one half to Lily. As the train clanked and swayed, Lily munched happily – she could save the biscuits after all – and they leafed through the magazines together, Miss Frobisher pointing out how even proper couturiers like Hardy Amies and Norman Hartnell were adapting to Utility requirements. She even unbent enough to eat a square of chocolate in front of Lily: the remainder she tucked away – presumably a treat for her little boy.

When they arrived back in Hinton, so late that the station was half deserted, Lily thanked her profusely.

Miss Frobisher simply smiled her measured smile.

‘Look and learn, Lily. And don’t be distracted. That’s all I ask.’

On Wednesday, just a week after the excitement of the party and the dismay of Jim’s telegram, Lily was seated at the kitchen table sorting silver paper for salvage. Gladys had suggested their usual half-day treat of a cheese roll at Peg’s Pantry and a matinee, but Lily had had to disappoint her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she told her. ‘I can’t. I just want to be at home – in case.’

‘In case Jim comes back,’ was unspoken but understood – and dear Gladys did.

‘I’d be the same,’ she said, ‘if I thought there was half a chance of Bill turning up off his ship. Some hope! But I still want to hear all about Monday – I know you haven’t told me the half of it!’

‘You will, I promise,’ said Lily, but she knew it wouldn’t mean much till she told Jim. He’d understand the significance of it all.

She’d almost finished with the bottle tops – some people hadn’t even bothered to wash them, disgustingly – when she heard the latch on the back gate click. Could it be …? She jumped up, bottle tops skittering to the floor, and skidded to the back door, flinging it wide. There he was. She’d have flung herself at him too but, pale and pinched, he looked as though the force would knock him flying. Instead she took his hand and led him inside.

‘Sit down,’ she ordered. ‘You look all in. Tea and toast coming up.’

Lily was her mother’s daughter, all right – and as always, Dora’s prescription was right. As he ate, Jim revived enough to tell her what he’d left behind.

‘A right lash-up,’ he sighed. ‘But it’s the best I can do. Mrs Dawkins is coming in early, to help Mother wash and dress. She’ll make breakfast for her and Dad, do some chores, make them a sandwich, then come in again at night to help Mother make some kind of meal—’

‘Help her? I thought she could only move one side of her body?’

‘Her leg’s not too bad. It drags, and she won’t use a stick, of course. She can sort of get around by holding on to things.’

‘With her good arm, so how can she possibly do anything else?’

‘She’s got exercises to get the muscles in the bad one working again.’

‘Is she doing them?’

Jim pulled a face.

‘What do you think? Says she’ll only get better by actually doing things.’

‘Oh, Jim! She should! It’s going to be very frustrating – the things she can’t do. And if she overdoes it—’

‘Do you think I haven’t said? You try telling her she can’t do things for herself in her own house. I’d rather argue with an angry rhino. Or you!’

Lily grinned – even a fed-up Jim could make her smile. Jim grinned too, but sadly. He took his plate and cup to the sink and spoke facing away from her.

‘Look, Lily. I’ll have to go back every weekend now. I’m not going to be much fun. If you want to call it a day – between us, I mean—’

‘What?’

He came back to the table, sat down and took her hand.

‘This isn’t how I thought it would be. If you wanted me to – what’s the phrase? – release you from your obligation—’

Lily burst out laughing.

‘Hah! Nice try, but if you think you can get rid of me that easily, think again!’

‘Really?’

‘For goodness’ sake, Jim! We’re not in the nineteenth century! You’ll still be here most of the time, anyway!’

‘Yes, but we’ll be at work all day, in the evenings there’s ARP and fire-watching, and all these ideas I’ve still got to work up with Mr Simmonds—’

Jim had been given a project by Cedric Marlow. As a result, the staff were doing more for the war effort, and to compensate, there were sports and social clubs to boost morale. The next phase was to think up ways to bring in more custom.

‘Jim!’ Lily took his face in her hands and made him look at her. ‘Stop it! We’ll be fine.’

He leant forward and touched his lips lightly to hers.

‘Thank you. Thank you. And I promise I’ll try and put my folks out of my mind the days I am here. Because there’s one good thing … Margaret says she’ll keep an eye.’

‘Margaret …?’

‘You know,’ said Jim. ‘Ted Povey’s daughter from Broad Oak Farm.’

Broad Oak Farm had come up in conversation on the one occasion Lily had visited Bidbury.

‘Oh, I remember. That’s good of her.’

‘It is. It’s some reassurance anyway.’

There was no more to say. It was how things were, and how they’d stay till Jim’s mother improved. The alternative – that she didn’t – was something Lily didn’t want to think about. For now, Jim would be here some of the time, and that was lots more than most people had of the person they cared for. She leant forward into his hug.

Later that afternoon, across town, Dora was settled in at Ivy’s enjoying one of what Sid called their ‘tea-and-tattle’ sessions.

Dora had dispensed the news, such as it was, on Jim’s mum; now it was Ivy’s turn.

‘There’s some good news, anyway,’ she announced. ‘Les has been for an interview – and it looks like he’s got that job at Marlow’s!’

‘Oh, I am pleased!’ exclaimed Dora. ‘That’ll put a spring in his step!’

‘Already has! Him and Beryl were straight out to the pictures last night, and a drink afterwards at the White Lion, if you please!’

The White Lion was Hinton’s smartest hotel.

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Dora sipped her tea, wondering why Ivy sounded a little sour. ‘He must be feeling better. He certainly looks it.’

‘Oh, he is, twice the lad who came home. And in his oil tot about the job; all smiles! And her!’ Ivy sniffed. ‘Not home till gone eleven, if you please, and me up and down to the babby all evening, and only half an inch of gripe water in the bottle! My legs are killing me!’

‘Ivy …?’

Ivy inserted two thumbs in the top of her corset and loudly expelled some air.

‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Oh, take no notice of me, Dora. I’ve got one on me today.’

‘Come on. What’s up?’ Dora persisted.

‘It’s this business of Beryl’s,’ sighed Ivy. ‘Taken over the entire front room, she has. Taken down my Stag at Bay and the sampler my mum made and instead we’ve got wedding dresses hanging from the picture rail. Display, she calls it! And to cap it all there’s a notice in the front window, didn’t you see? “Beryl’s Brides – Wedding Dresses, Bridesmaid Dresses and Occasion Wear for Hire—”’

‘Occasion Wear?’

Ivy took a long gulp of tea and clattered the cup back on the saucer.

‘You know what Beryl’s like for wearing a high hat. Says she’s branching out. And you haven’t heard the best. Then it says, “Enquire Within”! The liberty!’

‘What about when she’s out?’ Dora frowned. ‘Taking Bobby for some air, or to the clinic?’

‘It’s Muggins here that has to answer the door! And I’m to be polite, mark you, she’s told me all the patter. Name and address, telephone if they’ve got it, all got to be written down in a little book!’

‘She’s very business-like, Ivy. You have to hand it to her.’

‘Do I? I could show her the back of my hand sometimes.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ chided Dora.

Despite their forceful personalities, Ivy and her daughter-in-law had got on surprisingly well when Les had been away, but with him coming home and Bobby getting bigger – he’d be crawling soon – the house was obviously starting to feel crowded. Ivy’s husband, Eddie, was in the Merchant Navy, and rarely, if ever, at home, but there was Susan to think of as well, of course.

‘It’s all for the good, isn’t it, Beryl’s little enterprise?’ Dora soothed. ‘Les has got a job again, and the more she can make, the sooner they can get a place of their own. Then they’ll be out from under your feet and she can do what she likes with her own picture rails and front windows.’

‘And when will that be?’ challenged Ivy. ‘You seen many houses going begging round here? Or flats? Rooms, for that matter? They’re all full of people that’s been evacuated! There’s folk come from Croydon and Mitcham and Hackney – lots from Hackney, they’re over the back from us. A right rowdy lot, they are, and all.’

‘Well, yes, but when they’ve been bombed out and got nothing, and London’s the mess it is, what’s the authorities to do? They’ve got to go somewhere. We’re lucky still to be under our own roof.’

Even in the worst of the Blitz, Hinton had got off pretty lightly – it had no major factories to bomb. They’d had their fair share of incendiaries, of ‘tip and run’, but serious damage had been limited to a few high explosives that had landed near a smallish factory making aircraft parts, and a hit on a row of houses and a pub. Of course the sirens still went off at night, and it was a toss-up whether to head for the miserable damp darkness of the Anderson in the neighbours’ garden or to crouch under the kitchen table or under the stairs. Dora was too superstitious ever to stay in bed with the covers pulled up, like some people, or to let Lily or Jim do the same. Whatever you did, there was the straining of your ears for the planes, let alone the shrill whine of a bomb, the dropping off exhausted and jerking awake seconds later, the bone-weariness the next day … but for all that, they still had a home to call their own. Some of these displaced families had been bombed out not once but twice, buried alive, their houses wrecked then looted, even their poorest possessions gone.

But Ivy tossed her head and swirled the dregs of her tea.

‘Perhaps we’d better change the subject,’ she said. ‘Heard from your Reg lately? And how’s Sid getting on?’

September was usually one of Lily’s favourite months with its gentle warmth, but not this year. She was still delightedly pinching herself at the thought of having a young man of her own, but he was hardly ever there. They managed an occasional walk or night at the pictures around work and ARP and fire-watching but it wasn’t the same. He wasn’t the same. It seemed to take all his time in Hinton for Jim to unwind and for Lily to draw him back to her after his weekends with his parents, and just when she had, it was time for him to head off again.

She knew it must be grim, his father uncomplaining but his mother finding fault with everyone and everything. Alice had been as proud a housekeeper and as good a cook as Dora, so every slapdash dish, every non-dusted surface, every grimy window she must see as a reproach. And as Lily had predicted, trying to do things herself, with or without help, only meant that she got more frustrated and cross. There was no improvement in her mobility. If anything, Jim reported glumly, her arm seemed weaker.

He was preoccupied at work, too. He’d talked Cedric Marlow into a monthly staff newsletter, The Marlow’s Messenger, and had produced it in his spare time. Except now he didn’t have any.

‘Hand it over to someone else,’ Lily urged him. She wouldn’t have minded having a go herself, but Jim was as stubborn as his mother, she was discovering.

‘Not likely!’ he said, though he did let her choose the ‘Suggestion of the Month’ (every employee to get a day off for their birthday – controversial stuff) and to write up the triumphant rounders match between Marlow’s and Timothy Whites in which Lily had scored four rounders.

Then he was back to poring over plans of the store, deciding where best to site the escalators he was hoping for once the war was over, and wondering if he could use the Timothy Whites match to revive his campaign to shunt Marlow’s into the twentieth century by dropping the apostrophe from the name.

Every Monday evening, though, Lily pinned on her brightest smile as she left the store in case Jim should have come back early and be waiting for her. She knew how important it was to present a cheerful face to your young man whatever you might be feeling – that’s what Beryl’s Woman’s Own kept telling her, anyway. Jim tried just as hard, but how could he be cheerful when the situation at home was so gloomy?

Then one Monday, there was a boy with a big grin waving to her when she emerged from the staff entrance. Lily waved back automatically – but it wasn’t Jim.

It was Frank Bryant.

Chapter 6

‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped as Frank took her elbow and steered her to one side so that the departing swell of Marlow’s staff could get by.

‘This is my patch, remember?’

‘Yes, but … Miss Frobisher didn’t say you’d been in today.’

The reps never came to the sales floor. They saw the buyers in the management offices or, if there was a problem, in the stockroom.

‘Very good, Miss Marple!’ Frank wagged his finger at her. ‘I’ve been in Birmingham, at Rackhams and Lewis’s, if you must know. I’ll be calling on Miss Frobisher tomorrow.’

‘Oh! Right. Do you want me to give her a message?’

Frank shook his head, laughing.

‘No! Of course not! I want you to come and have something to eat with me.’

‘What?’

‘It’s no good pretending. I know you eat. Someone had been at those ginger nuts in Mr Ward’s office. It can’t have been him because he’s got sugar diabetes and he’s not allowed. And Miss Fro doesn’t look the type to smudge her lipstick. So, call me Sherlock, but I conclude, Miss Lily Collins, that it was you.’

He had some nerve. And talk about the gift of the gab!

‘I can’t just go off with you!’ she protested. ‘I don’t know you!’

‘So let’s get to know each other over a nice cup of tea and … hmm, I could rather fancy a Welsh rarebit. At Lyons. See? All perfectly harmless and innocent. Not some backstreet dive, not a pub – where’s the harm?’

Lily frowned. There was no harm, of course. The reality was that Jim wouldn’t be back till midnight at the earliest, because he never was. Monday was Mrs Dawkins’s day off, so he cooked the evening meal for his parents, ate with them and, though it was highly embarrassing for both of them, helped his mother into bed. Only then could he begin the long trek back to Hinton.

‘Oh, come on,’ wheedled Frank. ‘Take pity on me. A new boy in town … all on my lonesome, you’re not going to consign me to a miserable supper and a lonely evening reading a penny dreadful in my digs, are you?’

Lily relented.

‘All right then. A cup of tea. A quick one.’

‘Don’t do me any favours, will you?’ said Frank, but he was grinning. ‘Good girl. Come on.’

Lyons wasn’t one of Lily’s regular haunts. She and Gladys favoured Peg’s Pantry, which was cheaper – if nothing like as swish. As they queued for a table, Lily looked around – in part for the atmosphere, but mostly checking for anyone from Marlow’s – she didn’t particularly want to be seen with a stranger. Thankfully, there was no one she recognised. Then Frank spotted a couple leaving a table for two by the side wall and pointed it out to the hostess, which meant they could leapfrog two groups of four ahead of them.

‘Got to have your eye to the main chance,’ he said as they sat down. The waitress was still laying the new top cloth. Frank smoothed it and helped her to reposition the cruet and the little vase.

‘While you’re here,’ he said to her, ‘you may as well take our order. Save your legs, eh? Tea and Welsh rarebit for two, please.’

The elderly waitress gave him a ‘Get on with you!’ look but was clearly charmed as she scribbled the order on her pad. Lily was dumbfounded.

‘When exactly did I say I was going to eat with you?’ she demanded as the waitress walked away.

‘Oh, don’t start all that again,’ said Frank, leaning forwards with his elbows on the table and chin on his hands. ‘Tell me something interesting about yourself. I’m sure there’s lots.’

‘I’m not in the least interesting,’ said Lily. ‘Like everyone else, I get up, I go to work, I go home to my mum …’

‘Right,’ said Frank. ‘Tell me about that, then.’

Exasperated but amused, Lily told him about Dora and Sid and Reg, and how long she’d been at Marlow’s, and how she loved it.

‘I can see you do.’ Frank sat back, pulled down his cuffs and adjusted his cufflinks. They were oval with a blood-red stone. ‘You’re a bit in love with Miss Fro as well, aren’t you? Still, Mr Ward thinks a lot of her, so as a role model, you could do far worse.’

‘She’s taught me a lot,’ said Lily frostily, annoyed at being so transparent. ‘And I’ve got lots more to learn yet. But what about you?’ she probed. ‘Why are you repping? Are you filling in time till you’re called up?’

‘That’s a sore point,’ said Frank. ‘I tried to join up. Last year, the minute I could. But they didn’t want me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Promise you won’t laugh? You’ve got to promise.’

Lily nodded.

‘Flat feet.’

Laugh? Trying not to, Lily spluttered.

‘Oh dear!’

‘Yes, yes, I know, it’s like a music hall joke! They’d never been a problem, not once! I hadn’t a clue till I went for the medical.’

Lily was about to say it had been the same with Jim and his eyesight, but somehow she didn’t. Frank was carrying on anyway.

‘They’ll get desperate enough to take me in the end and I hope they do! My feet are fine – football, running, the lot; I was regional under-sixteen boxing champion!’ He extended an arm. ‘Want to feel my muscles?’

‘No, thank you!’

‘Your loss.’ Frank was unperturbed. ‘Ah, here’s our tea. Are you going to be mother?’

And so it went on. Frank might say he’d rather be doing something different – he didn’t see himself as a babywear rep all his life, he declared – but there was no doubt he was in the right job. He was so persuasive and talkative – cheeky, too. Lily had to laugh at some of his stories – he could have sold sand to the Arabs.

Try as he might, though, as they left Lyons, having insisted on paying for them both, he couldn’t persuade Lily to join him for a drink.

‘I don’t mean some spit and sawdust pub,’ he coaxed. ‘You’re worth more than that. The White Lion’s the place to go, isn’t it, round here?’

The White Lion was utterly respectable, but Lily stood firm.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Oh, come on. Not even a Tizer? Or a cordial? Would that be demure and ladylike enough for you?’

‘That’s not the point. I’m late as it is. My mum will worry.’

‘All right, you win,’ Frank conceded. ‘I’m not in the business of putting girls’ mums’ backs up. Not when I hope to see them again.’

This time Lily didn’t falter.

‘It’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ said Frank easily. ‘Someone as attractive as you. Away in the Forces, is he?’

‘No, actually—’

Her reply was irrelevant. Frank was continuing, smoothly, smiling.

‘Well, whatever. He’s obviously not around at the moment, or not all the time, or you wouldn’t have entertained the possibility of spending the evening with me.’

‘I did try my best not to!’

‘Well, I’m glad you changed your mind.’ Suddenly he sounded sincere. ‘Very glad. I am grateful, Lily. It’s the bit of the job I don’t like, the evenings on your own in some strange place.’

‘Hinton’s not that strange.’

‘Well, it is if a girl can’t go out for an innocent cup of tea and a bite of cheese on toast with a colleague, don’t you think?’

A colleague … was that what he was? She supposed so. And maybe … there were things she’d learnt from him tonight, like making yourself think up good points in an item you don’t think much of, and what he called ‘linking the benefit to the customer’. There was a lot more she’d be interested to find out about his side of the business. Then perhaps she could really impress Miss Frobisher.

Frank could see her mind working and he let it work. He wasn’t a salesman for nothing.

‘I have to go,’ she said finally. ‘But … maybe. When you’re next in town.’

‘Attagirl! It won’t be for a while, you heard what Mr Ward said. But think of me in the wilds of Wales with the autumn gales blowing.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll survive.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Get some of those Army combinations that Ward and Keppler are making.’

Frank threw back his head and laughed.

‘You’ve got a very strange image of me if you think I’d be seen dead in those!’

Lily blushed and turned her face away. She wasn’t sure she wanted to have any image of Frank Bryant, let alone one of his muscled torso in his underwear.

‘Bye, then,’ she said. ‘Thanks for my tea.’

‘You’re very welcome,’ grinned Frank. He tipped an imaginary hat at her. ‘Till next time, Miss Collins.’

Jim spooned the stew he’d made onto plates. His father had already shuffled to the table, but his mother was hovering behind him, watching critically as Jim pulled the scraps of meat apart and mashed down the vegetables into the gravy. Both his parents needed soft, mushy food; almost what you’d feed a baby. Jim thought, not for the first time, how dreadful it was – for everyone – when you had to parent your own parents.

‘Go and sit down, Mother, I’ll bring the plates through.’

With a grunt, his mother obeyed – she was more compliant at the end of the day, when she was tired. In the mornings she was querulous and demanding, and barely a month into the new regime, Mrs Dawkins had twice threatened to walk out. Jim didn’t think she was serious – the money was too useful – but it was another pressure. He wondered if he dared to ask his mother to be a bit more patient with her.

The meal dragged. No one spoke, both his parents laboriously eating. Jim’s father had never been a talkative man, and nowadays breathing was so much of an effort that he had no energy for using his voice. Jim had one eye on the clock, wondering if he’d make the 9.35 from Worcester. If he struck lucky and thumbed a lift straight away, he might. Last week it had been nearly two when he’d got back to Hinton, and he’d had to be up at seven for work the next day. But, Army life, Navy life, certainly life in the RAF was far more demanding, night after night with little or no sleep, and no break in sight, which at least Jim got from Tuesday to Friday. Count your blessings. Like everyone, he’d become practised in making the best of things.

His mother put down her spoon and tugged at the napkin Jim had tied round her neck.

‘Like a two-year-old!’ she muttered, or something like it. Officially her speech had been unaffected; in reality it was indistinct because the whole side of her face now drooped.

‘Come on, Mother, you’ve hardly touched it. It’s got to be better than Mrs Dawkins’s offerings!’

His mother gave a snort.

‘You get with Margaret, we’d be rid of that slut!’

Jim winced. The stroke hadn’t taken his mother’s powers of speech, but it had certainly made them cruder. The old, proper, Alice would never have used a word like that.

‘That’s not going to happen,’ he said firmly. ‘Margaret’s a very nice girl, but as I’ve told you, Mother, Lily and I are courting.’

His mother mumbled something under her breath which Jim feared was ‘hussy’, then pushed her plate away as if it was something from the cesspit.

‘Bed. Now.’

Jim sighed and stood up. At least once she was in bed, he could safely go. She still insisted on sleeping upstairs, painful as it was to see her haul herself up. His father slept on the settee, the stairs being too much for him. He was a much more compliant character, and Jim thanked his stars for that.

In her room, he settled Alice, looking away as he stripped off her dress and petticoat and handed her the flannel to wash herself, then quickly slipped her nightdress over her head before unrolling her stockings. She fell heavily back on the pillows, and Jim made sure she had a glass of water and her stick beside her to bang on the floor if she needed anything.

‘I’ll pop up again before I go,’ he told her, as he always did.

With any luck she’d be asleep and he could avoid having to kiss the grooved forehead, see the distorted mouth. Alice turned her face away.

Downstairs, his father was already unwinding the first of the mufflers he wore, the start of his bedtime preparations. Jim smiled ruefully at him and got on with clearing the table. In the scullery he scraped the leftover stew into a dish and put a plate on top of it while a kettle boiled for the washing up. There was something infinitely depressing about the greasy plates and he shook more washing soda than was needed into the sink, plunging his hands in the too-hot water in penance.

He was drying his stinging hands when there was a tap on the back door. No one ever called at night, and Jim stiffened. Not long ago the navigator from a crashed German reconnaissance plane had knocked on a cottage door in a neighbouring village, tied up the occupants and then stole money, food and clothes before being captured.

‘Who is it?’

‘Only me!’

‘Margaret?’

‘I came to see how you were getting on,’ she explained as he let her in. ‘I thought if I put your mum to bed, you could get off a bit earlier.’

‘You’re very kind,’ said Jim, moved. She was a nice girl, turning out like this after a long day of her own. ‘But she’s gone to bed early, thankfully.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m leaving myself soon. I’ll walk you back. You shouldn’t be out on your own.’

‘It’s all right. Dad’s going to pick me up, he’s gone to an NFU meeting. So I’ll stay anyway and sit with her. And – look – I wanted to give you this.’

From the pocket of her old mac she produced a brown paper parcel.

‘For me?’

‘It’s nothing. Honestly.’

As she was talking, Jim was unwrapping the parcel. He brought out a dark blue knitted scarf, beautifully made with a tasselled fringe.

‘That’s … you shouldn’t have!’

Margaret blushed.

‘I noticed the one you had was a bit … tatty. In fact, your mum said it was a disgrace, and as she can’t knit any more …’

Jim grimaced. There was some truth in his mother’s opinion, but if she or Margaret thought the holes were wear and tear, they were wrong. That was just Lily’s knitting.

‘Now the nights are getting colder,’ smiled Margaret, ‘it’ll be chilly on those station platforms. I don’t like to think of you catching cold.’

‘I’ll wear it tonight,’ said Jim. ‘Thank you.’

He leant forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. She really was a very nice girl.

The journey back was no more lengthy or tedious than usual, but Jim’s mood was low. From what she’d said at supper, he knew his mother would never give him and Lily her blessing, and as her only son, that mattered to him, especially now she’d been robbed of so many other things in life.

As he sat on the final train, with Margaret’s scarf tucked against his chest, he felt complete despair. Even if Margaret had made it in all innocence, his mother had goaded her into it and made her a partner in her conspiracy. With every turn of the wheels, Jim worked himself up into a frenzy of guilt. He should never have accepted it. It was deeply disloyal to Lily. But it was very warm …

Exhausted, he dropped off to sleep, only woken by the train slamming against the buffers when they arrived in Hinton. Outside the station, he tore off the scarf as if it was choking him and stuffed it in the inside pocket of his coat. He extracted Lily’s holey offering from his knapsack and wound it round his neck. He felt the difference straight away: it was spitting with rain and the night air pierced his throat, but he set off walking smartly and swung his arms to keep warm.

Chapter 7

‘Who was that well-set-up fellow you swanned off with last night?’ demanded Gladys the next morning as she and Lily put their things away in the staff cloakroom. Gladys had been deep in conversation with Brenda from Books on their way out the previous evening, but Lily had felt her friend’s eyes on her like searchlights as she’d set off with Frank. She’d been expecting an interrogation.

‘His name’s Frank Bryant,’ she answered evenly. ‘He’s the new Ward and Keppler rep. I met him – well, he introduced himself – when Miss Frobisher and I went over there.’

Gladys made saucer eyes, agog.

‘You never said!’

‘Yes, I did. I said the new rep had looked in.’

‘You didn’t say he wasn’t much older than us! I thought you meant someone about fifty!’

‘Well, if that was your assumption, I’m sorry.’

Lily spoke more tartly than she’d meant to. But why hadn’t she said, actually?

‘So what was he doing looking you up here?’ persisted Gladys.

‘He’s on his rounds,’ shrugged Lily. ‘He’s seeing Miss Frobisher today. And calling on Burrell’s as well.’

‘So what did he want with you?’

Honestly, some days Gladys could have given the Secret Intelligence Service a run for their money. Lily shoved her gas mask case so fiercely into the back of her locker that the whole row rattled.

‘A bit of company, that’s all. We went for a cup of tea at Lyons.’

‘Company? Well!’

Gladys managed to invest the final ‘Well!’ with amazement, admiration, curiosity and a large pinch of scandal. Lily turned on her.

‘There’s no need to say it like that! He was on his own in a strange town. He simply wanted a friendly face.’

‘Are you sure that’s all he wanted?’

Enough was enough. Lily slammed the locker door.

‘Gladys! Not long ago you were walking me up the aisle with Jim! Who do you think I am, Mata Hari? We just went for a cup of tea, I’m telling you.’

‘He’s very good-looking.’

‘Is he?’ said Lily offhandedly. ‘Well, if he is, he knows it. He’s certainly rather cocky. Not my type at all.’

‘Even so. Are you seeing him again?’

‘I doubt it! I expect he went on to the pub. Someone like him’ll have hundreds of friends in Hinton by now.’

‘Hmm!’

‘There you go again! Why don’t you fold your arms and put a scarf over your curlers? Then you can really act like some scandalised old biddy. I’m not going to keep it from Jim, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘I’m surprised you went in the first place, that’s all. What time did Jim get back?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lily firmly, beginning to move away. ‘Middle of the night, I suppose. He’d already left for work when I got up this morning, but his things were downstairs. Now come on, or we’ll be late on to the floor.’

Gladys followed obediently as they joined the throng making their way up the worn back stairs that the staff used, but still she wasn’t letting things drop.

‘Why did Jim have to get here so early this morning?’ she asked, trotting up a step behind.

To the annoyance of the staff surging up behind them, Lily stopped dead on the half landing.

‘He’d got stuff to do on The Messenger, all right?’ she said. She was fed up about it herself: she’d hoped they’d walk to work together. ‘He left me a note. Now you know as much as I do, OK?’

‘I was only asking!’

Shocked by her friend’s vehemence, Gladys went quiet, leaving Lily feeling guilty, needled and resentful. It was the closest she and Gladys had ever come to having words. And over something completely innocent! That’s what was so unfair!

Jim was trying not to yawn as his boss, Mr Hooper, droned on about developments in the Utility Furniture Scheme. On another day Jim would have been alert to the possibility of a piece for the next Messenger, but after typing up the final article of this month’s onto a stencil, then turning the handle of the mimeograph in the tiny cubby hole with the stink of printing ink, and all before his working day had begun, Jim never wanted to think about The Messenger again. He’d change his mind, he knew, and next month’s edition would have a tantalising piece entitled ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably?’ but for now, all he wanted was to do was crawl into a corner and sleep till kingdom come.

What’s more, his uncle was on his rounds.

Cedric Marlow toured the store every day. He greeted customers as they came in at the doors, then made his way through every department, speaking to staff, giving praise where it was due and withholding it when it was not. Rumour had it he’d once written his name on a cosmetics counter that hadn’t been properly dusted after a spill of face powder.

Worse still, today he had his son, Jim’s cousin Robert, with him. Robert had been first floor supervisor before Peter Simmonds but had left to work in the Birmingham stockbroking firm owned, conveniently, by his fiancée, Evelyn’s, father. He still occasionally popped back ‘for old times’ sake’ he said, but as he’d had no feel for shopkeeping, Jim always felt it was to keep an eye on his inheritance.

Jim watched out of the corner of his eye, but from Gramophones, Cedric and Robert proceeded to Radiograms so the fact that Jim hadn’t had time to polish his shoes to the mirror brightness his uncle required might not be noticed.

As soon as Mr Hooper had finished his tale, Jim signalled to Lily, who’d been watching for a sign since she’d arrived on the sales floor. Armed with a boy’s jacket she could claim to be brushing, she sidled over to where their departments butted up against one another.

‘Thanks for your note. How are you?’ she asked quietly.

She could see he looked drained, but that was standard after two days at home.

‘Ever felt like your eyeballs have been rolled in sand and put back upside down?’

Lily tutted sympathetically.

‘How were things?’

‘The usual.’

‘I’m sorry. You got The Messenger sorted?’

‘Thankfully. It should be coming round with the afternoon post.’

‘Well done. Early night for you tonight.’

There’d be no walk along the canal in the twilight, no scramble down the railway embankment for the clutch of blackberries she’d spotted on Sunday, no stroll to the cinema while the starlings circled.

‘I’ve got ARP.’

‘Oh, Jim … can’t you get out of it?’

‘I can’t let them down. I’m still paying back the nights I missed when Mother was first taken ill.’

He was so conscientious, drat him! But would she have wanted him any different? Not really.

‘If you say so,’ she conceded. ‘Look out, Mr Marlow and Robert are heading this way. We’d better get back. I’ll see you at half five.’

At least they could walk home together.

There’d been rain all afternoon, or so various damp customers told Lily, but it was mercifully dry when at last the long day was over and Lily and Jim could step into the street. Jim wound Lily’s scarf round his neck.

‘That’s a bit of luck, anyway,’ said Lily, determined to be cheerful. She tucked her arm through his. ‘Another rib on my umbrella broke at the weekend. I’ll have to see if I can get it mended, though I don’t hold out much hope.’

Jim gave a grunt of acknowledgement and Lily fell silent. She’d looked forward so much to seeing him, his lanky frame and his thoughtful face, but he was obviously tired out, and she couldn’t think of much to say. She didn’t think he’d want to hear about the only thing that had happened at work in his absence, a delivery of shampoo that had caused such a stampede in Toiletries that the commissionaire had had to come inside to keep order.

‘Nothing much to report at home,’ she said as they walked. ‘Not a peep from Sid or Reg.’

Another grunt.

‘Monty doesn’t seem to be making much difference in North Africa yet. That push to retake Tobruk came to nothing.’

Silence.

Of course, there was one other thing that had happened at work, or through work, but somehow Lily didn’t feel the time was right to mention her encounter with Frank.

They passed a jeweller’s, a tobacconist’s, a grocer’s. The shopkeeper was pulling down the blinds and it obviously reminded Jim of something.

‘Drat. There was some butter I meant to bring back.’

When she’d been well, Alice had always sent Jim back from the country laden with largesse – jams and jellies, rabbits, pigeons, cream. That was another thing that had disappeared at a stroke, so to speak.

‘Never mind,’ said Lily reassuringly. ‘We’ll live!’

They stopped at the corner to cross the road into the park and Lily noticed a fresh poster on a hoarding. ‘Is Your Journey Really Necessary?’ it barked. It gave her an idea.

‘Look, Jim. Why don’t I come with you next time?’ she suggested. ‘I could book the Monday off. I’d like to—’

‘No,’ he said abruptly, starting to cross. ‘It wouldn’t work.’

‘Why not?’ Lily hurried to keep up. ‘I’m sure there’s something I could do for your mum – and take the pressure off you. Anything. Clean the windows, scrub the floor, pick the apples, they must be past ready—’

‘No, Lily.’

They were inside the park now – or rather, the allotments it had been turned into – and he stopped to face her, unlinking their arms. A gust of wind shook the chestnut tree above them and a clutch of conkers thudded to the ground. Their cases looked, Lily thought, like naval mines.

‘I’m sorry,’ he went on. ‘It’s not a good idea. I … I don’t think it would help.’

‘Really? Why not?’

Jim looked as if he was about to say something, then he turned his face away. Lily felt something boiling up inside her, something she’d felt for ages.

‘Your mum doesn’t like me, does she?’

Jim turned back to face her.

‘It’s not that—’

She’d started now, so she might as well spit it out.

‘I think it is. I’ve been to your home precisely once, and that was a year ago. I don’t think I did anything to offend her – I don’t see how I could have – but I’ve never been asked back.’

Jim lifted his shoulders.

‘She wouldn’t want you to see her like she is.’

‘But she doesn’t mind Margaret seeing her?’

Where had that come from? Lily hadn’t thought about Margaret Povey since Jim had mentioned her weeks ago!

He looked startled.

‘Margaret?’

Suddenly he had a hunted look and Lily scented blood.

‘Did you see her?’ she asked. ‘Did you see her when you were home?’

‘Yes, I did as a matter of fact.’

He sounded almost shifty. Lily went in for the kill.

‘So she’s welcome, and I’m not.’

‘Lily, she called round. I didn’t invite her.’

‘Oh, that makes all the difference!’

‘You know she offered to keep an eye on my parents.’

‘Yes, when you weren’t there! She’d got no business being there when you are!’

‘What? Now you’re being ridiculous! What am I supposed to do, put her under curfew?’

‘Well? What’s the answer? What was she doing, coming round then?’

‘You answer me! I’m not going to tell her when she can and can’t call in, all out of the goodness of her heart!’

‘Oh, I get it! I’d been seeing her in the dairy, in a white coat and a hairnet. But she’s Saint Margaret in a white robe and a halo! No wonder I don’t measure up! No wonder you don’t want me to come!’

‘Lily— Lily, please.’ Jim reached out and touched her arm. ‘Why are we arguing? I don’t want to. You coming home with me or not has got nothing to do with Margaret. It’s just … trust me … it’s better if you don’t get involved.’

Trust him. She always had, implicitly. But …

She looked at him and his eyes held hers, pleading. He moved as if to reach out and hug her but she flinched away. Silly, maybe, stubborn, certainly, but she couldn’t let him touch her, not while she felt like this.

Suddenly it began to rain; big, fat drops that spattered on the leaves. It was a shock, but it was a relief. Now, thought Lily, they’d have to shelter under the tree and Jim would put his arms round her and tuck her inside his coat and tell her she was being silly, which she was, and everything would be all right again.

‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to run for it.’

‘What?’

‘ARP. I can’t be late.’ Jim spread his hands. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’

‘Fine. Of course you must,’ she said stiffly. ‘Off you go.’

She stretched her mouth into a shape that was like a smile but wasn’t. Jim gave another hopeless little lift of his hands. He made no attempt to kiss her or even to touch her. Sadly she watched him lope off, his hair getting plastered to his head.

She hadn’t told him about Frank Bryant. And something told her she wouldn’t, now.

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