Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain as Goodnight Sweetheart HarperCollinsPublishers 2006

This edition published 2020

Copyright © Annie Groves 2006

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

Cover photographs © Gordon Crabbe (model), Daily Herald Archive / Getty Images (background)

Annie Groves 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: 9780008395872

Ebook Edition © January 2009 ISBN: 9780007279500

Version: 2020-01-30

Dedication

For Maxine – confidence-builder extraordinaire

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: July 1939

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Two: Christmas 1939

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Part Three: October 1940

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About Annie Groves

Also by Annie Groves

About the Publisher

PART ONE

ONE

‘No! Don’t.’

‘Aw, what’s up with yer?’

‘It’s not right, that’s what,’ Molly announced, keeping her arms folded tightly over her chest to prevent Johnny from making a fresh attempt to touch her breasts. It was a warm July evening and they had decided to walk home from the cinema on Lime Street to Edge Hill, the small tight-knit community of streets clustered together in a part of the Liverpool that didn’t belong to the dockside but wasn’t part of the new garden suburbs like Wavertree either. A few yards ahead of them, she could see June, Molly’s elder sister, locked in the arms of her fiancé, Frank.

‘Aw, come on, Molly, just one kiss,’ Johnny persisted cajolingly. ‘Look at your June. She knows how to treat a chap.’

Molly didn’t really want to look at June because June was with Frank, and just thinking about her sister’s boyfriend always made Molly’s heart ache painfully and her skin flush. But Frank was June’s. And the only smiles he ever gave to Molly were kind and older-brotherly. Agreeing to go out with Johnny was the best way Molly could think of to stop herself from thinking about Frank. Frank belonged to June, and that was that.

‘Come on, Molly, give us a kiss,’ Johnny coaxed. ‘There’s nowt wrong in it. Look at your June and Frank.’

Molly tensed. There it was again – that pain she had no right to have. She had been struggling all evening to evade Johnny’s amorous advances, and the eagerness she could hear in his voice now, as he pressed closer to her, made her feel wretchedly miserable and uncomfortable. What was wrong with her? Johnny was a good-looking lad, tall with thick dark hair. But his bold gaze and knowing smile intimidated Molly. Instinctively, she knew that Frank would not make a girl feel uncomfortable when she was with him; neither would he start pressing her for intimacies she wasn’t ready to give. Unhappiness clogged her throat and tears burned at the back of her eyes.

June and Frank were oblivious to Molly’s plight. Not that June would have had much sympathy with her, Molly knew. It was June who had insisted on her going out with Johnny in the first place – he was a friend of Frank’s and an evening out all together meant June could see Frank and keep an eye on her younger sister at the same time. Like every girl in the country who was walking out with a lad who had just received his call-up papers for the now obligatory six months’ military training, June was anxious to spend time with Frank whilst she still could.

‘June and Frank are engaged,’ was all Molly could think of to say to Johnny to justify her own refusal, her voice slightly breathless as she wriggled away from his embrace.

‘Well, me and you are as good as – leastways we would be if I had me way,’ Johnny told her.

She stared at him with a mixture of dismay and shock. ‘You can’t say that,’ she objected. ‘We aren’t even walking out proper. And besides …’ She looked towards her sister and Frank.

‘Besides what?’ Johnny too turned to look at the other couple, then said sharply, ‘You spend that much time looking at your June’s Frank, you’ll have me thinking you’d rather it were him you were with than me.’

‘Don’t be silly. Frank’s engaged to our June.’ Her heart was pounding now and her face was starting to burn. Her hands felt hot and sticky.

‘Aye, and you could be engaged to me, if you was to play your cards right,’ Johnny told her meaningfully, moving closer. ‘Especially now that I’ve had me papers, and me and Frank have to report for training on Monday.’

To Molly’s relief the other two had stopped spooning and her sister was turning round to face them.

‘What’s up with you, our Molly?’ June demanded when Molly and Johnny had caught up with them. ‘You’ve got a face on you like a wet bank holiday.’

‘Aye, that’s what I’d like to know, an’ all,’ Johnny joined in, ‘seein’ as how I’ve just been telling her I want us to be engaged.’

‘What? You’re engaged!’ June shrieked excitedly.

As usual, June had got carried away and heard only the words she wanted to. Molly groaned inwardly. Now she would really have a job saying no to Johnny.

‘Here, Frank, did you hear that? Our Molly and Johnny have just got themselves engaged. Course, me and Molly know that it’s our duty to do everything we can to keep you soldiers happy.’ She giggled, but her face started to crumple as she added, ‘I was just saying to Frank that him and me should perhaps think about getting married sooner rather than later now that it looks certain there’s going to be a war.’

‘Now don’t go getting yourself upset, June. We don’t know that for sure yet,’ Frank protested.

‘Course we do. Haven’t you seen them leaflets the Government has sent out to everyone?’ she asked him scornfully, before turning to Molly and demanding, ‘Here, Molly, give us it. You did put it in your handbag like I told you to, didn’t you? We’ll have to have it with us when we go to work on Monday, so as we can tell old Harding that we’re going to need time off to go down to Lewis’s and buy that blackout material it says we have to have.’

Molly nodded and obediently opened her bag to remove the notice. She could hardly bear to touch it, let alone read it again. When it had dropped onto the doormat of the little terraced home they shared with their father, she had been innocent of the realities of war. The leaflet’s warnings about air raids, gas masks, lighting restrictions and evacuation alarmed her no end. She couldn’t believe that the familiar streets of her beloved home town might one day be poisoned by gas or blasted by bombs. She could only hope that the Government were being overly cautious and that the war – if it even happened – would be short and not affect the city …

‘See?’ June had triumphantly finished reading the leaflet aloud to the men, jolting Molly back to the present.

‘Well, we still don’t know for sure,’ Frank insisted, ‘but if there is going to be a war, mind, Hitler won’t be able to keep them tanks of his rolling against the British Army. Proper professional soldiers we’ve got,’ he told them proudly.

‘Oooh, Frank, don’t say any more. You’re making me feel right upset,’ June protested tearfully, her earlier glee at being in the know having evaporated, whilst Molly shivered at her sister’s side despite the warmth of the evening.

Everyone had been talking about war for so long without anything happening that it was hard to believe that anything was going to happen, despite the fact that the Government had already put in hand so many preparations. But its threat still hung over them like the dark rumbling shadow of distant thunderclouds. It was on everyone’s minds and everyone’s lips – a tension and anxious expectation that no one could ignore.

‘Well, we’d better get ourselves home and tell our dad that you’re an engaged woman now, Molly,’ June insisted, rallying herself.

‘That she is,’ Johnny grinned, taking hold of Molly and hugging her so tightly that it hurt as he pressed a hot hard kiss on her mouth.

Molly’s eyes stung with tears. She didn’t think she really wanted to be engaged to Johnny, but of course it was too late to say so now. He was fun and so handsome, and she knew she should be happy instead of miserable. It made her feel guilty to think that she didn’t want to be engaged to Johnny when he was going off to war. Besides, she could see how pleased June was. All her life Molly had done what her older sister had told her to do.

There were two years between them, and Molly could hardly remember the mother who had died when she was seven years old, other than as an invalid.

She could remember, though, lying in bed at night and listening to her mother cough. She could remember too the low anxious voices of Elsie from next door and the other women from the street when they came round to visit the invalid and do what they could to help. In the last weeks of their mother’s life, Elsie had come round every day, bringing home-made soup for their mother and some of her elderberry wine for their father. But in the end her mother’s illness had proved too much.

Their father had been devoted to their mother, and Molly knew how much he loved both his daughters. She and June were lucky to have such a good parent, and she was lucky, too, to have June as her sister. June had always been there for her, through good and bad, and Molly loved her deeply, even though she knew that other people sometimes found her sister a bit too know-it-all and bossy.

The four of them crossed the road, Johnny making a grab for Molly’s hand as they did so, and then turned into the street that would eventually take them into Chestnut Close, the cul-de-sac of redbrick terraced and small semidetached houses, where the two girls and Frank lived.

‘Dad will be wondering where we are,’ Molly urged the others on, fearing that Johnny’s sudden lagging behind meant that he was going to attempt to kiss her again.

‘Don’t be daft. He’ll be down at the allotments,’ June corrected her.

Their father, like many men in that community, rented a small allotment. It backed onto the railway line, and there he grew carrots, potatoes, turnips and peas as well as lettuce and tomatoes for salads.

In the summer months the men virtually camped out there to take advantage of the long days, often sleeping in the small wooden huts they had put up, boiling up billycans of tea on Primus stoves and eating sandwiches packed up by their long-suffering wives. And now, of course, the Government was encouraging them to do so. Every spare bit of land was to be turned over to the production of food.

The house their father rented was not one of the larger semis, like Frank’s widowed mother’s, but a small terrace, down at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. The bedroom Molly and June had always shared was a bit cramped now that they were both grown up. June often complained that they needed more space, that the house was a bit old-fashioned and shabby, and their furniture had seen better days, but number 78 Chestnut Close was home and Molly wouldn’t have swapped it for a castle.

‘There’s your mam spying on us, Frank,’ June commented sourly as they walked past Frank’s home. Molly stole a glance at the pristine house; the net curtains definitely seemed to be twitching.

Molly felt a little bit sorry for Frank at times, what with his mother forever trying to tell him how to run his life, vehemently taking against his choice of wife-to-be, and June equally determined to return Frank’s mother’s hostility towards her, but he was an easy-going, big-hearted young man, a right softie, always ready to do others a good turn.

They had all grown up together, although Molly, at seventeen, was younger than the other three. They had shared so much together over the years – including the loss of a parent each. Both Frank’s mother and Johnny’s were widows, but whilst Frank’s mother had been left with a bit of money and a pension, and only one son to bring up, her Bert having been killed in the Great War, Johnny’s mother had been left with three children and no money, her husband having been killed when he had stepped out in front of a tram after drinking too much.

‘If yer dad’s down his allotment then why don’t me and Frank come in for a bit?’ Johnny suggested with a cheeky wink, much to Molly’s dismay. She didn’t want to have to endure any further intimacies with him. His kisses and wandering hands made her nervous.

To her relief, Frank shook his head.

‘We can’t do that, Johnny,’ he protested. ‘It wouldn’t be right. We don’t want to be giving our girls a bad name, do we?’

‘Oh, and what do you think you’d be doing that would give us a bad name, eh, Frank Brookes?’ June giggled teasingly. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing, especially with your mam always waiting up for you,’ she added grumpily. Brightening up, she continued, ‘Look, seeing as how our Molly and Johnny have just got themselves engaged, why don’t we go to Blackpool tomorrow and celebrate? I fancy going dancin’ and having a bit of a good time.’

‘It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ Frank reminded her, ‘and there won’t be enough time to get there and back after church.’

‘Well, we ought to do something,’ June protested, none too pleased at being denied her dancing.

‘I don’t mind if we don’t,’ Molly assured her. When the other three turned to look at her she coloured up and said quickly, ‘I mean … what with everyone talking about the war, perhaps we shouldn’t celebrate …’

They had reached number 78 now, where the girls lived, and were standing by the privet hedge that bordered the small front garden.

‘Oh, Frank …’ June’s bottom lip trembled, her high spirits suddenly evaporating. Her emotions had always been able to change like quicksilver, although Molly wondered if they wouldn’t all become as volatile if war did break out. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go, not so soon. I’ll be glad when you’ve finished with this military training, and you’re back home proper, like. I just hope we don’t have this war. But if we do, you’re not going off to fight without us being married first,’ she warned him fiercely.

‘I think we should have a word with the vicar tomorrow after church, and tell him that we want to be married as soon as we can, instead of waiting until next June. And I’ll have a word with Mr Barker, the rent collector, and ask him to let me know if anything comes empty.’

‘What’s to stop you moving in with Frank’s mam? She’s got plenty of spare room,’ Johnny asked June.

June tossed her head belligerently. ‘I want me own house, thank you very much, and that’s why … oh, Frank …’ There were tears in her eyes and Frank put his arm round her and tried to comfort her.

Tactfully, Molly looked away, but at the same time she moved as far from Johnny as she could, not wanting him to get any ideas. To her relief she saw their father coming up the road, his familiar limping gait caused by the loss of a leg in the Great War.

‘Dad …’ Ignoring Johnny, she hurried towards her father, slipping her arm through his when she eventually caught up with him.

Albert Dearden was fond of saying that it was just as well his two daughters took after their mother and not him, reminiscing about how his wife had been a real beauty, and how, with her lovely naturally curly dark brown hair and her smiling blue eyes, Rosie had won his heart the moment he had laid eyes on her.

‘Here, Dad,’ June told him excitedly. ‘You’ll never guess what. Our Molly’s only gone and got herself engaged to Johnny.’

‘Well now. What’s all this then, lass? You’re only seventeen, you know.’

‘There’s a war on, Mr Dearden, and me being called up for the militia and like as not being sent off to fight—’ Johnny began boastfully.

But Molly’s father shook his head and stopped him, saying grimly, ‘There’s no war been announced yet, lad, and let me tell you, when we were called up to fight, the first thing we thought of was our country, not about getting hitched and leaving some poor lass worrying herself sick about us.’

‘Aw, Dad, have a heart,’ June complained.

‘Perhaps we should wait,’ Molly started to say, relieved a way out was being offered to her – for the time being, at least.

But her father was smiling lovingly at her, and he shook his head again and said, warmly, ‘Nay, lass, I’ll not stand in the way of young love. But mind now, Johnny, my Molly is a respectable girl and there’s to be no messin’ about and getting her into any kind of trouble, and no marriage neither until she’s eighteen.’

Molly smiled wanly, in stark contrast to Johnny’s beaming grin. A year seemed a long way off but it would come round eventually and then she’d have no choice but to marry Johnny. The reality of being engaged to Johnny was so very different from the chaste daydreams of Frank she had blushed over in the privacy of her own thoughts. Frank, with his gentle understanding smile and brotherly kindness, made her feel so comfortable and so safe. She didn’t feel either comfortable or safe with Johnny.

‘What’s up with you?’ June demanded forthrightly later that evening as she and Molly prepared for bed. ‘Anyone would think you’d lost a shilling and found a farthing.’

Molly put down her hairbrush and turned to look at her elder sister. ‘The thing is, June, I’m not rightly sure I want to be engaged,’ she said miserably, too tongue-tied to be able to explain just how confused and worried Johnny’s constant urgings to allow him more intimacy were making her feel. Even with sisters as close as they were, it was unthinkable that she should tell June how little she enjoyed Johnny’s kisses and how alarmed and uneasy they made her feel. June was so lucky to have Frank. Molly could see there was a world of difference in the way Frank treated June and the way Johnny kept on trying to pressure her.

‘Don’t be daft. Of course you do. And besides, you can’t change your mind now. That would be a shocking thing to do with him about to go off and fight. Anyone can see that he’s mad for you, and hundreds of girls would kill to be engaged to someone as good-looking as Johnny. He looks like a matinée idol, he does. But you be careful and play your cards right, our Molly, and make sure you don’t go giving him nothing he shouldn’t be having until after you’ve got his ring on your finger,’ June warned her darkly. ‘Frank’s mam looks down on us enough, without you getting me a bad reputation by getting yourself in the family way before you’ve got a husband.’

Molly gave her elder sister an indignant look. As usual, June’s thoughts were foremost with herself.

‘Of course, that’s not to say that now that you are engaged you can’t let him have a few little liberties, like – especially if he does have to go off to war. A girl doesn’t want to send her sweetheart off to fight without giving him a bit of a taste of what he’s fighting for, does she?’ June giggled. ‘Wait till we tell them at the factory on Monday that you’re engaged.’

The two sisters both worked as machinists at a small garment factory within walking distance of their home. Mr Harding, the factory owner, employed nearly twenty girls. June had got a job there when she left school, having seen it advertised in the Liverpool paper, and she had approached Mr Harding on Molly’s behalf a couple of months before Molly was due to leave school, to ask that her sister be considered for any likely vacancy. It was piece work and unless you were very quick and didn’t make any mistakes the pay wasn’t good, but it was no worse than the girls would have earned anywhere else, and as June often said, at least the small factory was clean, and warm in winter as Mr Harding was well aware that cold fingers didn’t work as nimbly and made mistakes – expensive mistakes for him if his customers rejected the work as not good enough. The other girls were a jolly bunch and, whilst they were all older than Molly, their company meant that there was always someone for her to have a laugh with.

The factory’s main business came from a distributor who provided them with both pattern and fabric and who supplied clothes to the big Lewis’s store in the centre of the city. Sometimes the girls were allowed to buy leftover pieces of cloth to make things for themselves. Two or three times a year, a very important dark-suited gentleman from Lewis’s came up to the long sewing machine-filled room where the girls worked, to inspect their sewing. Molly was happy working there, even if June sometimes grumbled and complained.

Molly started to brush her hair again. Both girls had thick, naturally curly hair. June’s was a mid-brown, but Molly’s was much darker and richer, with a warm chestnut hue.

Pensively, Molly stared into the mirror, her cornflower-blue eyes clouding. Her mouth trembled and she blinked away tears.

‘Now what’s up?’ June demanded, pinching her younger sister’s arm almost crossly.

‘Nothing,’ Molly fibbed.

‘I should jolly well think there isn’t. You don’t know how lucky you are, our Molly. There’s a lot of girls in Liverpool would give their right arms to be in your shoes and engaged to a handsome lad like Johnny. And besides …’

Molly could see that June was looking very determined, and her heart sank. She had been hoping that June would understand her feelings but now she could tell that she wasn’t going to get very much sympathy from her.

‘Besides what?’ she pressed her anxiously.

‘Well, the way I see it, Molly, is that this engagement of yours is a good thing for everyone. Frank has already hinted to me as how his mam will be on her own after we get married and that he feels it’s his duty to have her come and live with us. Well, there’s no way I’m going to have that, but Frank can be that stubborn when he really wants something, and his mam has brought him up to think she’s got a right to tell him what to do with his life! Anyway, like I’ve said to him, with you marrying Johnny that’d leave our dad on his own, and that’d mean that we would have to have both of them to live with us and we can’t do that.’

‘But why would Dad have to live with you? He’s got Uncle Joe at number 63,’ Molly objected. ‘And, anyway, he’s always saying as how, once he’s got us off his hands, Auntie Violet has said as how he’s welcome to go and live with them in Cheshire.’ Their father’s elder sister was married to a farmer who lived near Nantwich.

‘Well, yes, but there’s no call for you to go saying any of that to Frank,’ June warned her sharply. ‘So far as he’s concerned, you marrying Johnny means that our dad will need to come and live with us, because he’ll be on his own just like Frank’s mam. And since we won’t have room for both of them we can’t have either of them,’ she announced triumphantly.

‘You mean you want me to marry Johnny so that you won’t have to have Frank’s mam to live with you?’ Molly protested.

‘Oh, don’t go looking at me like that. Just think how lucky you are to be engaged,’ June told her firmly. ‘And if war does break out, you’ll know you’ll be sending your Johnny off to war knowing he’s got someone of his own here at home waiting for him. That means a lot to a lad, our Molly, and don’t you forget that.’

TWO

‘Oh, Gawd, I’ve gone and laddered my stocking. Here, Molly, you put the roast in, will you – I’ve turned on the gas ready – whilst I go and change them, otherwise we’ll be late for church.’

The girls’ father worked on the railway sidings at Edge Hill station – ‘the gridiron’, as it was called locally – as a track maintenance man employed by the railway company. The work was back-breakingly hard and often dirty, but he never complained. Like many of the generation who had lived through the depression, he simply considered himself lucky to be in work.

Although he didn’t earn much, with June and Molly’s wages, they had enough coming in to be able to afford a joint of meat on a Sunday, to be eaten with the potatoes and vegetables Albert grew on his allotment.

Molly slid the roasting tin into the gas oven and then dashed upstairs to get her hat and gloves.

‘Come on, you two,’ Albert bawled up the stairs, ‘otherwise we’re gonna be late.’

Chestnut Close was a Protestant street, with all its inhabitants attending the parish church of St Michael and all the Angels.

The custom was that everyone filed into church in silence, merely exchanging nods of acknowledgement, and then got together for a good gossip after the service. So although the Deardens could see Frank and his mother walking down the street up ahead of them, June made no attempt to catch up with her fiancé.

‘Look at her!’ she muttered to Molly. ‘Hanging on to Frank’s arm for dear life, acting like he belongs to her. Well, if she thinks that Frank’s going to be taking her to church every Sunday once he’s married to me, then she’s got another think coming. Of course, she thinks that I’m not good enough for him. That’s why she’s been sucking up to that friend of hers who lives on Carlton Avenue, in Wavertree – you know, them as has the laundry on the Scotland Road? Boasting all up and down the cul-de-sac she was at one time about how her Frank and their Angela would be perfect for one another.’ June sniffed disparagingly. ‘Maybe she would have been, an’ all, if she hadn’t got buck teeth and no bust.’

To Molly’s relief, she couldn’t see any sign of Johnny, although she spotted his mother and two sisters.

‘There’s your ma-in-law-to-be,’ June told her, nudging her in the ribs. ‘You’re going to have to watch those sisters of his: always on the cadge, so I’ve heard. Don’t you go letting them boss you around, Molly.’

Despite herself, Molly smiled a little at the prospect of swapping a bossy sister for an equally overbearing sister-in-law.

As they walked to their pew, it struck Molly that the church seemed much fuller than usual, and when they stood up to sing ‘Onward, Christian soldiers’, it was obvious that Sally Walker in the pew in front of them, next to her soldier husband, Ronnie, in his uniform, was crying quietly. They’d only been married a year and their first baby was due in September.

Once the service was over, small groups of people started to congregate outside the church.

‘You and Dad wait here. I’m going to find Frank so as we can have a word with the vicar,’ June announced determinedly.

‘His mam won’t be happy about you wanting to bring the wedding forward,’ Molly pointed out. ‘She wasn’t too keen on the pair of you getting engaged.’

‘Well, she’s going to have to lump it, isn’t she, because me and Frank are going to be wed no matter what she thinks,’ June responded, tossing her head before turning to disappear into the crowd. June usually got what she wanted, Molly thought, but wondered if perhaps she’d met her match in Doris Brookes.

All around her, Molly could see anxious faces, as families clung together, the men looking serious and grim-faced, many of the women crying and those with grown-up sons clinging desperately to their boys. It was easy to pick out Frank’s tall, broad-shouldered frame as he stood with his arm around his mother.

Molly could see that several of the younger men had already gone over to talk to Sally Walker’s husband, Ronnie, who was in the regular army and could tell them what life in the Forces was like.

‘What’s going to happen to us – that’s what I’d like to know.’ One of their neighbours started to sob noisily.

‘Well, I reckon the first thing as is going to happen is that we’re going to have to get used to wearing them ruddy gas masks,’ her husband responded. ‘Else we’ll be having that Alf Davies, the ARP chap from number 14, giving us all a good ticking-off.’

‘At least the kiddies will be safe,’ another neighbour chimed in, ‘seeing as how they’re going to be evacuated.’

‘Aye, and our brave lads will soon sort out that Hitler.’

‘Will it soon be over, Dad?’ Molly asked her father fearfully when he came to join her.

‘I hope so, lass, but there’s no telling,’ Albert answered solemnly, whilst he and a couple of other men who had survived the Great War exchanged concerned looks.

‘Seems we’re going to be needing that ruddy air-raid shelter putting up at the bottom of the cul-de-sac, so we may as well make a start on it this afternoon,’ their next-door neighbour, John Fowler, commented to Molly’s father, adding grimly, ‘They’ll be calling all the young ’uns up, like as not now.’

Molly bit her lip. The Fowlers had a son working for the railways like John Fowler and her father, and a nephew in the merchant navy. Elsie Fowler’s normally happy face looked pinched and strained. Molly reached out and took hold of her hand, squeezing it sympathetically.

Elsie had been a good neighbour to them, taking both girls under her wing, and giving them a bit of mothering after their mother had died. She’d plait their hair, sew them pretty things when she could get the material, and never once forgot to bake them birthday cakes, taking over all those little motherly duties that their father couldn’t do. She’d been a godsend to Albert, who was desperately aware that, though he was doing all he could for his young daughters, they missed a mother’s love and attention. Molly loved Elsie and was grateful to her, but she knew that June, with her more bossy nature, sometimes resented Elsie, claiming that her good intentions were ‘interference’.

It was a good half-hour before June came back. Her eyes looked suspiciously puffy but she was still managing to smile.

‘The vicar has said as how we can have the banns read right off so that we can be married just as soon as Frank gets some leave,’ she told them, adding, ‘There was that long a queue waiting to see him you wouldn’t believe it. Seems like everyone is having the same idea as me and Frank.’

‘What did his mam say?’ Molly asked her anxiously.

A militant gleam sparkled in June’s eyes. ‘Just as you might expect. She was all for us waiting to see what happens, but Frank told her as how we didn’t want to wait. When we go to Lewis’s tomorrow to get that blackout material we can have a look at some wedding dress patterns as well. Frank has just had a word with Ronnie Walker, and he reckons it will be Christmas before Frank gets any leave, but there’s no harm in being prepared.’

Slipping her arm through Molly’s, she fell into step beside her as they headed for home.

By the time they had got back to number 78 and had had their dinner, it was well into the afternoon. Their father announced that he was off to join the other men from the terraced houses at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. Because their gardens weren’t large enough for individual Anderson shelters, they had been told they would have to erect a shared one on the piece of unused land at the end of the cul-de-sac. The corrugated iron for it had already been delivered, but the men had to dig out trenches for it themselves and install it.

‘I suppose we’d better measure up for those blackout curtains we’ve got to put up,’ Molly suggested when she and June had finished the washing-up.

‘Come on then,’ June agreed reluctantly.

‘I don’t see as how we need to do this when we aren’t even at war yet,’ she grumbled ten minutes later as she made Molly climb up the ladders to measure the windows, whilst she wrote down the measurements.

‘But if we don’t, when the ARP warden comes round to check, we’ll be fined,’ Molly reminded her, her forehead pleating into a worried little frown. June hated being told what to do by anyone and wasn’t afraid of saying so, but Molly was much more timid and keen to do her duty.

Half an hour later, when they had almost finished, June complained, ‘I’m fair parched, Molly. Get down off them ladders, and go and make us a cuppa, will you?’

Molly had just filled the kettle when there was a knock at the back door, and Frank came in.

‘June, it’s your Frank,’ she called from the kitchen.

‘About time too,’ June announced wrathfully. ‘I was expecting you’d have bin here before now, Frank, seeing as it’s going to be our last evening together.’

‘I would have been,’ he agreed placidly, giving Molly a gentle smile, ‘but Fred Nuttall from next door asked me to give him a lift putting up his Anderson shelter.’

‘Oh, I see, and of course he comes before me, does he?’

‘Don’t be daft. He’s invited me mam to share the shelter with them, so I felt obliged to give him a hand. Don’t let’s fall out, June, not tonight, seein’ as how me and Johnny have to report for our training tomorrow.’

Tactfully, Molly squeezed past them and closed the kitchen door.

Five minutes later the door opened and Frank told her quietly, ‘Me and June are just going for a bit of a walk, Molly.’

Molly had never seen her lively sister looking so upset. She was clinging to Frank’s arm as they left the house together and he was holding her tenderly as though she was something precious and frail.

What must it be like to love someone like that, Molly wondered. Part of her was glad that she did not know because she didn’t think she could have coped with the pain of watching them go off to war. The thought of Johnny going away didn’t fill her with dread at all. In fact, secretly she was looking forward to not having to evade his advances, or worry about the fact that she didn’t really want him to kiss her or touch her. The truth was that she felt much safer and more comfortable with her girlish and innocent little daydreams about Frank’s kind smiles and gentlemanly ways than she did with the reality of Johnny’s urgent demands. But didn’t that make her a terrible person, she worried guiltily. She ought to feel very different from how she did, she knew that. Perhaps if she just didn’t think about how she really felt, somehow she would change.

June and Frank had been gone almost an hour when there was another knock at the door – the front door this time. Molly went to open it, her eyes widening with surprise when she saw Johnny standing there.

‘Thought I’d come and say goodbye to you proper, like, Molly,’ he told her boldly, winking at her, and then walking into the small hall without so much as a by-your-leave, pushing the door closed behind him. ‘Come here and give us a kiss.’ He grinned, making a grab for Molly as she backed away from him into the front parlour.

‘Johnny,’ Molly began in protest, but he ignored her as he took her hand, led her to the settee and sat her down, all the while kissing the side of her neck.

Frantically, she tried to push him away but he grabbed hold of her other hand.

‘We’re engaged now, remember,’ he told her, ‘so how about showing me how much you love me before I go? I’ve gorra ring for you, look, Molly,’ he added cajolingly. ‘Bought it off a chap in the pub.’

Delving into his pocket, he produced a gold ring set with a small red stone, which he pushed onto her finger.

The slightly sour smell of his beery breath was making Molly feel sick. She didn’t want to be engaged to him because she was afraid of the unwelcome intimacies being engaged would bring. His open hunger for her was too much, too soon, and it repelled rather than pleased her. But she didn’t know how to tell him how she felt, and could only submit mutely to his kiss, longing for it to be over.

When June first started walking out with Frank, Molly, who had already begun to have a secret girlish crush on him, had envied her elder sister, but now she acknowledged miserably that sighing over a tender kiss on the cinema screen was far nicer than actually having to endure being kissed. Did other girls feel like her, or was there something wrong with her, she wondered unhappily as she finally managed to wriggle away from him far enough to warn him breathlessly: ‘Our dad will be back soon, Johnny, and you know what he said.’ She only hoped that it was true. She felt horribly guilty about not wanting him to kiss her, but she was too conscious of the fact that he could be going off to war to be able to tell him that she didn’t want to be engaged to him.

‘How many of us did you say had to fit in here?’ Molly heard June demanding in disbelief as, along with the other women, they crowded into the Anderson shelter the men had spent the afternoon installing.

‘The lorra us from number 56 down,’ one of the men answered her, whilst the women exchanged concerned looks.

When the corrugated iron shelter had been sunk into the ground, the top had been covered with the earth that had been dug out.

‘It will seem more like home once you get some curtains hung in it,’ Brian, their neighbour from number 80, called out to his wife with a grin, whilst he winked at the other men.

‘Curtains? But there aren’t any windows …’ Mavis Leadbetter began, and then shook her head when the men burst out laughing. ‘Go on with you, you’re nothing but overgrown lads, the lot of you. No one would think there’s going to be a war on.’

‘Come on, love,’ her husband chivvied her. ‘It’s either laugh or cry.’

‘Aye, well, there’ll be a lorra crying done before we’re out of this,’ someone else chipped in.

‘We’ve gotta sort the inside of this out yet,’ Brian Leadbetter changed the subject firmly, ‘but at least we’ve made a start …’

‘Well, let’s hope that none of us gets caught short whilst we’re down here,’ Nellie Sinclair, who lived on the opposite side of the cul-de-sac, said pithily.

‘Don’t worry about that, Nellie.’ Molly and June’s Uncle Joe grinned. ‘I reckon the ARP lot won’t miss a couple of those buckets they’ve told us we need to have in case of a bomb dropping. Brian’s a fair joiner and it won’t tek him long to fit a nice polished seat on top of one of them for you.’

‘Go on with yer, you’ve gorra lorra cheek, you have. And we’ll have less of that mucky talk, if yer don’t mind.’ Nellie might be pretending to be shocked but Molly could see that she was laughing.

Uncle Joe was their father’s cousin, not his brother, but the girls had grown up calling him Uncle Joe and his wife Auntie Averil. Following their father’s example, Joe had moved into Chestnut Close shortly after he and Averil had married. He was a tall, well-built man, always ready with a smile and a joke, and much more outgoing than their own father, and so he had soon become a popular figure, not just in the close but also beyond it. He had a fine singing voice, and that, plus the fact that he could play the accordion, made him welcome at every local social event. Joe enjoyed a drink and a laugh, and he was a good father and husband as well as a kind-hearted uncle. He might tease June for being bossy, and make Molly blush with his saucy jokes, but Molly was always glad to see him. June might say disapprovingly that he had a bit of a reputation for being quick with a quip and even quicker with a silver-tongued compliment, but their father always defended him and said that there was no real harm in him.

As different as chalk and cheese was how people described the two men. Where the girls’ father was quiet and self-effacing, Joe was boisterous and ready to put himself forward. Where Albert Dearden liked nothing better than to spend his spare time working on his allotment, Joe preferred to go down to the pub for a beer.

‘What about your mam, Frank?’ Albert asked a few minutes later as they all made their way home. ‘I could go round and give a bit of a hand getting her shelter sorted out.’

‘Thanks, Mr Dearden, but it’s all sorted. She’s to share with next door, and me and Fred Nuttall got it in this afternoon.’

‘Well, don’t you go worrying about her whilst you’re away, Frank. I’ll keep an eye on her.’

‘I’d be obliged if you would, Mr Dearden. It’s going to be hard for her, being on her own …’

‘What about me? It’s going to be hard for me as well, worrying about you,’ June put in crossly. ‘You don’t want to be spoiling your mam too much, Frank.’

‘Leave him alone, lass. Of course he’s worried about her. If she needs a hand putting up them blackout curtains, Frank, you tell her that she’s only got to say,’ her father responded sharply.

‘Never mind that. You remember to find out when you can have some leave, Frank, so that I can tell the vicar.’

‘Ronnie Walker was saying that on account of me being a qualified electrician they might put me into the Royal Engineers.’

‘Aye, and if’n you’d thought of it in time and got yourself a job with the electric company you’d have been in a reserved occupation,’ June reminded him tartly.

Unlike their father, and most of the other men in the cul-de-sac, Frank had been lucky enough to get a proper trade apprenticeship – thanks to his skill and his mother’s determination. And that was yet another reason why Mrs Brookes felt that June wasn’t good enough for her Frank, Molly suspected.

‘Now that’s enough of that, June,’ Frank rebuked her gently, adding too quietly to be overheard, ‘I want to do me bit, and I wouldn’t want anyone thinking any different. Especially not folk like your dad.’

A couple of the women with young children were gathering them up and Molly went to help them.

‘No way am I letting mine be evacuated,’ Pearl Lawson was saying vehemently.

The Government had sent out notices earlier in the year advising people of their plans to evacuate city children out of danger in the event of war, sending them to live in the country along with their teachers, who would make sure that they continued to have their lessons. Pregnant women and mothers with babies were also included in the evacuation plans, but the mothers of Chestnut Close, like many mothers up and down the country, were divided in their feelings about the planned evacuation. Some accepted that it was a necessary decision if their children were to be kept safe but others were openly hostile to it.

‘Aye, well, there’s no way I’m going to let mine stay here and be bombed,’ another said equally determinedly. ‘And besides, I don’t want mine missing out on their schooling and I’ve heard as how the Government will be closing down some of the schools here in Liverpool out of fear that they might be bombed. Why shouldn’t our kiddies have as good as posh kiddies get and be sent into the country where it’s safe?’

Pearl Lawson’s next-door neighbour, Daisy Cartwright, chipped in, ‘It’s different for them. They’ll be going with their schools and not sent off to some strangers like ours.’

It had been in the papers that some of the public schools based in cities were moving out wholesale to safer country locations where their pupils would board.

‘Ta, Molly,’ Daisy thanked her as Molly picked up the small toddler who had been making a determined effort to escape. ‘Is it true that you and Johnny Everton are engaged, only I heard it from his mam that you are?’

‘Yes,’ Molly confirmed, blushing slightly.

‘Well, you’re a bit on the young side, if you don’t mind me saying, and you’re gonna have to watch him. He’s gorra bit of an eye for the girls, from what I’ve heard,’ Daisy told her. ‘Marriage isn’t allus all that it’s made out to be, and once you’ve gorra couple of kiddies to think about it’s too late to change your mind.’

Pearl, sensing Molly’s embarrassment, tactfully changed the subject. ‘Have you measured up for them blackout curtains yet?’

‘Yes, me and June are going to Lewis’s to buy the material tomorrow,’ Molly told her.

‘I’ve told my George he’s gorra make frames for the windows so that we can pin the stuff to them. Catch me mekkin’ curtains when I’ve enough to do as it is! And wot’s all this about not buying in food? Chance’d be a fine thing on what George brings home! Don’t know what we’d do if it weren’t for the allotment.’

Leaving the women to chivvy their children out of the shelter, Molly went to rejoin her own family.

‘Has Johnny been round to see you, Molly?’ Frank asked her in a kind voice.

‘Yes. He called round earlier whilst you and June were out, but he couldn’t stay.’

‘Aye, well, I hope you didn’t go and say anything daft to him,’ June challenged her, adding for Frank’s benefit, ‘Daft thing’s bin saying that she isn’t sure she wants to be engaged, if you please!’

Molly could hear the impatience in June’s voice.

‘Well, if she isn’t sure …’

Molly could feel herself starting to blush guiltily as her heart gave a funny little beat. She liked Frank so much. He was always kind to her, listening to her as though he really cared about what she was saying and treating her like a grown-up, while June was impatient with her. But then that was Frank all over, being kind to folk.

‘Don’t you go encouraging her to be daft, Frank,’ June warned sharply. ‘Of course she wants to wed Johnny – just like I want to wed you,’ she added more softly, before demanding, ‘Don’t you, Molly?’

Obediently Molly nodded her head. What else could she do?

THREE

‘Well, I’ll tell you something for nothing, young Molly, you’re not gonna be the only one sporting a new engagement ring this weekend,’ Irene Laidlaw announced on Monday morning when the other machinists had all finished examining Molly’s ring, ‘seeing as how so many young men have received their papers. Of course, it’s different for me,’ she added loftily, ‘since my Alan was one of the first to volunteer …’

‘Probably because he wanted to get away from her,’ one of the other girls muttered, causing a ripple of giggles to spread across their small enclosed work space, with its sewing machines and air smelling of new cloth.

Although she had no official senior status, it was accepted by the other girls that Irene was their leader. She had been working there the longest and, although opinionated, was a kind soul and the first to befriend a girl new to the factory and help her settle in.

All the girls worked in pinafore coveralls to prevent bits of thread and cotton from clinging to their clothes. And at least Hardings, unlike some of the factories, had windows big enough to let in proper daylight so that the girls weren’t straining their eyes as they bent over their machines.

‘I’ll be glad when we’ve finished this bloomin’ bloomers order, and start workin’ on sommat a bit more glamorous,’ one of the girls complained with a noisy sigh.

‘Aye, I can’t see your Bert getting excited about you tekkin’ home a few pairs of these to surprise him wiv, Janet,’ the girl working next to her grinned cheekily. ‘I’m sick to me back teeth of ’em meself.’ She too sighed as she surveyed the mound of bloomers waiting to be made up.

The girls were three-quarters of the way through a big order for ‘quality undergarments’, which in reality meant enormous pairs of bloomers as favoured by older women, and equally utilitarian brassieres. The kind of corsets favoured by most middle-aged women were supplied and made by specialist mail-order firms so that customers could be measured for them in the privacy of their own homes, and were so expensive that it was rare for the women Molly and June knew to own more than a best corset and a spare.

‘Pity it’s not some of them fancy French knickers we’re mekkin’ up,’ Janet said longingly.

‘Well, there’s nothing to stop you getting a pattern from Lewis’s and making yourself some, Janet,’ June pointed out briskly. She already had her eye on a nice piece of selvedge material. She reckoned she could get three pairs of drawers out of it if she got Molly, with her clever fingers and good eyes, to cut them for her. If she was very lucky she might be able to come by enough fabric to get Molly to make her a matching brassiere as well. There was a strict list that allowed each girl one piece of spare or unused fabric from any one contract, and the only way to get more was to ask one of the other girls to do a swap or to sell off her piece. Perhaps she’d ask Molly to let her have hers, June decided.

‘’Ere, guess what?’ another of the girls demanded breathlessly, as she came hurrying into the room. ‘I was just happening to be standing outside the office and what should I hear—’

‘Come off it, Ruby. Admit it, you was listening on purpose,’ May teased her.

‘Do you want to know what I heard, May Dunning, or do you want to wait until old man Harding tells you?’ Ruby demanded.

‘Go on then, tell us,’ May gave in.

‘Well, old man Harding was talking to his missus, and saying as how they gorra take on more machinists, because of the Government wanting him to make a lorra stuff, like, for the army.’

‘What, you mean uniforms?’ May demanded excitedly. ‘Cor, that will be a change from stitching bloomers. Just imagine the chaps as’ll be wearing them: all fit and handsome, like …’ May was notorious for having an eye for the men and often regaled them with saucy tales on a Monday morning of the latest man she’d met over the weekend.

‘They might be fit and handsome when they first put on their uniforms, but they won’t be for very long. Soon they’ll start coming home dead, just like my Thomas …’ The high-pitched emotional voice that joined the conversation belonged to Hannah Carter, the oldest and normally the quietest of the machinists, a small spare woman who had been widowed at the end of the First World War. Everyone turned to look at her with varying degrees of consternation or accusation.

‘’Ere, Hannah, there’s no call for you to be saying stuff like that, and upsetting people,’ Sheila Williams protested, her already florid complexion turning even pinker.

‘Yes, there is. You don’t know what it’s going to be like, but I do. You don’t know how it feels to send your husband off to war and never see him again.’ Hannah had started to cry in earnest now.

Molly went over to try to comfort her.

‘Watch out. Boss is on his way,’ one of the girls called out, and immediately they all hurried to their machines so that by the time the door opened to admit a grey-haired middle-aged man and the thin-faced woman accompanying him, the room was filled with the sound of treadle machines busily stitching.

Robert Harding rang a small hand bell as a signal to the women to stop work, and then announced importantly, ‘From today we’re going to be making some changes at Hardings, on account of us being called on by the Government to make uniforms for our brave soldiers.’

‘What kind of changes?’ Irene demanded sturdily.

‘Well, for one thing we’re going to be taking on more machinists, and for another, Miss Jenner here is going to be in charge of all you machinists, to make sure that the uniforms are made to the proper standard.’

Molly gave a small shiver as she looked at the thin, hard-eyed woman standing at Robert Harding’s side, surveying them all with unsmiling grimness. There was something about her that sent a chill right through Molly.

‘All right, back to work, everyone.’

The sharp command was given almost before the door had closed behind Robert Harding, and although the girls obediently bent over their work, Molly was anxiously aware that some of them, June included, were not likely to take very well to Miss Jenner’s arrival. It sent another shiver of apprehension all the way down Molly’s spine to know that the supervisor was patrolling the narrow aisles between the rows of machines, standing behind each of them in turn to observe their work. Up to now Molly had liked her job. She was a good machinist, quick and deft, but with the cold censorious weight of Miss Jenner’s gaze on her back she was all fingers and thumbs.

‘So when are we gonna be starting working on these uniforms, then, Miss Jenner?’ May asked boldly, causing a collective sigh of relief to spread through the room at this breaking of the silent tension.

Their relief had come too soon though. Miss Jenner strode towards May and said coldly, ‘In future you will speak only when you are spoken to. And let me remind you that you are all here to work, not to engage in time-wasting chatter. I have already told Mr Harding that I think he would do well to put in place a system of fines for workers who shirk their duties – in any kind of way.’

Molly could see the tide of angry red staining the back of May’s neck.

Without the normal banter between the girls to speed them through the day, time seemed to drag, and Molly could scarcely conceal her relief when the dinner bell rang, signalling the end of the morning’s work.

Immediately, June stood up and called, ‘Come on, our Molly. We’ll have to put a bit of speed on if we’re to get down to Lewis’s and back …’

‘You there, girl. Who gave you permission to stop work?’ Miss Jenner demanded icily.

‘The dinner bell’s been rung and that means that it’s dinner time. And me and me sister have got to get down to Lewis’s and get our blackout material, just like the Government has told us to do,’ June defended herself, raising her eyebrows as though defying Miss Jenner to claim a higher authority than that of the British Government.

‘Very well then. But see that you are back here before the work bell rings otherwise you’ll be docked half a day’s pay.’

‘You gorra be careful with that Jenner, June. It looks to me like she’s going to give us a lorra grief,’ May warned ten minutes later as they all streamed out of the room, heading for the small ‘canteen’ where they were allowed to eat their dinner and make themselves a hot drink.

‘So what? Let her try, if she wants,’ June shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Come on, Molly,’ she instructed. ‘We’ve got to get down to Lewis’s.

‘It’ll be quicker if we walk instead of waiting for the bus,’ June announced once they were outside the factory, but in the end, even though they ran almost the whole way down to Ranelagh Street, it still took fifteen precious minutes.

‘Oh, Gawd, look at the queue,’ June complained when they hurried into Lewis’s haberdashery department. The shop was filled with customers milling around amongst the rainbow-coloured bolts of cloth and shelves of pins, needles and buttons.

Lewis’s was Molly’s favourite store and she could remember the thrill of coming here as a little girl, holding tightly on to Elsie’s plump hand for fear that she might be lost in the crowd of shoppers. Now that she was older, though, one of her favourite treats was to wander round the well-stocked haberdashery department. Unlike June, Molly loved sewing and was a dab hand at making things. She also had a good eye for the right bit of trimming to smarten up an old blouse, or last year’s hat.

‘Look, you go and get the blackout stuff,’ June told her, ‘and I’ll go and look for a pattern for me wedding dress whilst you’re queuing. Here’s the measurements for the windows.’

‘June, we’re not going to get served in time to get back. Wouldn’t it be better if we came back tonight?’ Molly begged her.

‘What, after we’ve gone and run all the way here? Don’t be so soft. You go and get in that queue.’

Half an hour later, when Molly was only three from the front of the queue, June came hurrying up to her, pulling a face and complaining, ‘I was hoping you’d have been served by now …’

‘Did you find a pattern?’ Molly asked her.

‘Yes, but I wanted you to come and have a look at it with me and there won’t be time now. Here, come on, it’s our turn next,’ she warned, digging Molly in the ribs.

‘By, but this stuff is heavy,’ June complained, stopping to push her hair off her hot face.

‘We should have left it until tonight and then gone straight home on the bus,’ Molly told her.

‘Oh, give over saying that, will you, our Molly?’

It was just gone one o’clock when they finally trudged wearily into the factory yard, but when Molly would have made straight for the workroom, June shook her head at her.

‘What are you doing?’ Molly asked worriedly when she saw her sister heading determinedly for Mr Harding’s office.

‘Wait and see. And here, take hold of this lot for a mo, will yer?’ June thrust her own parcel on top of Molly’s, before knocking firmly on the office door.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Harding,’ Molly heard June announcing when the factory owner opened the door, ‘only I thought as how we should explain ourselves on account of us being late back from our dinner break.’

‘You’re late?’ Molly saw him frown as he looked at his watch.

‘Yes,’ June confirmed, ‘and I’m right sorry about it, only I felt it was our duty to go down to Lewis’s just as soon as we could to get our blackout material, what with us getting notices about it from the Government, and all.’

‘Well, yes, quite right. We must all be aware of our duty from now on,’ Mr Harding agreed immediately.

‘Of course we’ll make up the time by working late,’ June continued.

‘No, that won’t be necessary … June, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Mr Harding. And this is me sister, Molly.’

‘Very good, very good … Back to your machines now, both of you.’

‘What did you do that for?’ Molly asked curiously as they hurried away. It wasn’t like June to admit to doing something wrong.

‘By, you’ve got a lot of learning to do, our Molly,’ June told her, shaking her head. ‘Wait and see.’

The unfamiliar silence when they walked into the workroom almost caused Molly to miss a step and cannon into her sister.

All the girls were seated at their machines but none of them was working. Instead, they were all staring straight ahead whilst Miss Jenner stood in front of the machines watching them.

‘And what time do you call this?’ She pounced immediately on Molly and June.

‘I’m sorry we’re a bit late only there was a bigger queue at Lewis’s than we were expecting,’ June apologised.

‘You are five minutes late, and since no work has been done by anyone whilst we have waited for you to return, that means that thirty lots of five minutes have been lost – the cost of that amount of time will be deducted from your wages, just as soon as I have spoken with Mr Harding.’

‘Well, I’ve already seen him and he has said as how it was our duty to go and get our blackout material,’ June told her, ‘and if you don’t believe me you can go and ask him yourself.’

Molly watched as an ugly red flush of anger spread up over Miss Jenner’s thin neck, and then held her breath, fearing that her sister had gone too far. But the new supervisor didn’t say anything, leaving June to give the other girls a triumphant wink behind Miss Jenner’s back before sitting down at her machine.

‘By, June Dearden, you’ve gorra lorra cheek,’ Sheila Williams commented admiringly when the afternoon whistle had gone and they were all getting ready to leave.

‘Aye, and you’ll have made yourself an enemy as well,’ Irene warned her darkly. ‘She’s not the sort who’s gonna forget what you’ve done – she’s gonna have it in for you an’ for your Molly from now on, mark my words.’

‘I’m not walking all the way home lugging this stuff,’ Molly told June as they left the factory carrying the fabric. ‘It’s too hot.’

‘All right then, we’ll get the bus, but you’re going to be doing the paying, mind,’ June warned her. ‘I wonder how long it will be before we get word from Frank and Johnny.’

The boys had been gone only a day but it had already affected the girls – though in very different ways. Underneath her bright exterior, Molly could tell that June was missing Frank keenly, while she herself felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders with Johnny’s absence – albeit with some guilt attached.

‘I’ve told Frank as how he’s got to write to me as soon as he can. I was thinking this afternoon that one of them uniforms we’re going to be making could be for Frank. It gave me a rare old turn, an’ all,’ June admitted.

‘Hannah’s very upset that we’re going to be making uniforms,’ Molly commented sympathetically.

‘Aye, well, she’s got to snap out of that, otherwise she’s going to find herself out of a job and she can’t afford that. All she’s got is that bit of a pension.’

‘It must be awful for her, though, June. I was talking to her for a bit this morning and she was saying as how she’d been married only a few weeks when her husband was killed.’

‘Maybe so, but that was nearly twenty years ago,’ June responded bracingly. ‘Things are different now.’

Their bus arrived and they both climbed on board, Molly paying both fares before slumping thankfully into an empty seat.

‘What you got there, girls?’ the conductor ribbed them jovially.

‘Blackout material, that’s what,’ June answered.

‘Want me to come round and give you a hand putting it up?’ he offered, winking at Molly.

‘Give over with yer cheek,’ June told him firmly, but she was still smiling at him, Molly noticed with amusement.

The bus set them down on the corner of the cul-de-sac and they walked up it together in their normal manner, Molly pausing frequently to admire the flowers growing in the small, neatly tended front gardens whilst June hurried her along, her attention concentrated on reaching home.

As they drew level with Frank’s mother’s house, Molly stopped walking and suggested warmly, ‘Why don’t you give Frank’s mam a knock, our June, and see if she wants a hand with making up her blackout curtains? Those big windows of hers will take a lot of covering and we could easily run the curtains up for her on our Singer.’

‘Why should I put meself out to do her any favours?’ June demanded belligerently.

‘You’d be doing it for Frank,’ Molly said gently.

‘You’re a right softie, you are – just like Frank. But, aye, go on then, we might as well give her a knock,’ June agreed.

Unlike their own, Frank’s mother’s gate did not squeak when it was opened, but Molly did not think that the Edwardian tiled pathway looked any cleaner than their own, nor the front step better donkey-stoned. Their mother had been as house-proud as the next woman, and June and Molly, encouraged by Elsie Fowler, had grown up maintaining those standards.

It was true that their front door did not have the coloured leaded lights adorning number 46’s, nor did they have the advantage of a big bay window overlooking their small front garden, but their father kept their privet hedge every bit as neatly clipped.

‘Come on, she mustn’t be in, and I’m not wasting any more time standing here knocking again,’ June announced, turning round.

Molly had started to follow her when she heard the door opening and stopped.

Mrs Brookes – a former ward sister at the hospital before her marriage, whose discipline and rigidity still remained – was a tall, well-built woman, firmly corseted, with a sharp-eyed gaze that rested disapprovingly on everything and everyone apart from her beloved son. It was certainly fixed less than welcomingly on them now, Molly recognised.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ she declared grimly.

She hadn’t invited them in and quite plainly wasn’t going to do so. Molly quickly realised that June was leaving it to her to speak.

‘We were just passing on our way home and we wondered if you wanted any help with your blackout curtains, only me and June are going to be sewing ours tonight and …’

Was that a small softening Molly could see in the grimly reserved features?

‘Yes, and whilst we were in Lewis’s I had a good look at their wedding dress patterns,’ June chipped in determinedly.

Immediately, Frank’s mother’s hackles rose and her mouth pursed with displeasure.

‘I’m already sorted out with me blackout curtains. My friend on Carlton Avenue and her daughter have invited me round there so that we can make them together. In fact, Angela is going to come round for me tonight in her car. Such a lovely girl. A schoolteacher, she is, and the whole family so refined.’ She stepped back into the house and started to close the door, pausing to add coldly, ‘Oh, and I wouldn’t be making too many plans for any wedding, if I were you. From what I’ve heard, my Frank isn’t likely to get any leave for quite some time and when he does, the last thing he’s gonna want is to be rushed into a wedding.’

‘Well, that’s not what Frank has said to me,’ June insisted angrily. ‘And since it’s him and me that is going to be gettin’ married, it’s our business what we do, and no one else’s.

‘Gawd, she’s got her nose so stuck up in the air it’s a mercy she doesn’t fall over her own feet,’ June complained to Molly as she slammed Frank’s mother’s gate forcefully behind them. ‘So much for your idea, eh, Miss Clever Clogs?’

‘Well, at least Frank will be pleased that you offered,’ Molly told her, trying desperately to salvage something from the situation. Privately, she half suspected that June quite enjoyed her set-tos with Frank’s mother and even deliberately encouraged them, but her loyalty to her sister prevented her from saying as much.

‘It works both ways,’ June replied. ‘So how about you going round and asking Johnny’s mam if she wants a hand with her curtains?’

‘She’s got Johnny’s sisters to help her,’ Molly protested, but she knew her face was burning guiltily.

‘What, them pair of useless articles?’ June sniffed disparagingly. ‘A lot of good them two will be, from what I know of them.’

‘All right then,’ Molly gave in reluctantly. ‘I’ll go round and see her as soon as we’ve had our tea.’

Half an hour later, Molly was standing in her apron, slicing what was left of the Sunday roast for their cold meat salad tea, to be served with hot new potatoes from the allotment, while listening to the wireless, when she heard the sound of her father’s heavy work boots on the back step. Leaving what she was doing, she went to fill the kettle.

‘Kettle’s on, Dad.’

His walk back from Edge Hill railway yard had brought a sheen of perspiration to Albert’s sun-reddened forehead. As always, Molly was filled with a rush of love for him when she saw him. Left with two young daughters to rear alone, he could have opted to hand her and June over to their mother’s family and got on with his own life, but instead he had done everything he could to provide them with a loving happy home. It must have been so hard for him. He had had to work long gruelling hours at the gridiron to ensure there was food on the table, but he had never once missed reading them a bedtime story, nor listening to them recite their times tables, nor checking their spelling homework. Tears pricked Molly’s eyes. She could scarcely remember her mother but she knew from the way he still talked about her that her father had loved her and still missed her.

‘I’ll get washed up, love,’ he called, disappearing into the small back scullery. Repairing railway lines and working on rolling stock was dirty and often heavy work, but Albert took pride in his appearance and was fastidious in scrubbing up the minute he got home. ‘Costs nowt to be clean’ was one of his favourite phrases. Medium height and slightly stooped, he faithfully clung to the small domestic details of family life originally put in place by the girls’ mother. A bath once a week, their hair washed on Sunday night ready for school on Monday, a kitchen that was kept spick and span with the pans, like the family’s shoes, polished so brightly that you could see your face in them. Albert had instilled in his daughters his own respect for cleanliness and neatness. There was another side to him, though, a side that had him cultivating flowers in the tiny back garden.

‘Your mam allus loved them,’ he had once told Molly when she had admired the scent of some roses, his arthritis-damaged fingers gently touching the velvety soft petals.

And he was not the kind of man to go off to the pub of a Saturday night, leaving his young motherless daughters to the care of a neighbour like some men in his position would have done. Instead, in winter the small family had gathered around the wireless after Saturday night’s supper, whilst in the summer the girls had gone down to the allotment with their father.

‘You’ll never guess what’s happened at the factory today, Dad,’ June announced once they were all sitting down and eating.

‘Aye, well, you don’t want to go getting on the wrong side of that Miss Jenner,’ Albert warned his elder daughter after she’d finished telling him with relish how she had outwitted the new supervisor. He knew June could be a firebrand at times.

Molly could see the worry in her father’s eyes and vowed silently to do what she could to keep June from baiting Miss Jenner. No one else would take on a machinist who had lost her job for cheeking a superior.

Once the meal was over and everything cleared away, and their father had set off for his allotment, Molly ran upstairs to comb her hair. She knew she couldn’t put off the visit any longer.

Johnny’s mother and sisters lived three streets away from Chestnut Close, down a narrow backstreet. Its double row of small terraced houses were of poor quality. Unlike the houses on the close, those of Moreton Street did not have gardens or indoor bathrooms, but had to make do with small dank back yards and outside privies.

Two tow-headed little boys, playing in the dusty street, stopped their game to watch Molly until a young very pregnant woman, with untidy hair and wearing a grubby apron, called out to them to get themselves inside.

Moreton Street had a slightly rank smell, and Molly tried not to wrinkle her nose at it. On the cul-de-sac, they had the benefit of more modern housing, the allotments, with their smell of fresh earth and air, and even the scent of roses from some front gardens. Not that some of the residents of Moreton Street didn’t make an effort. Several of the houses had freshly donkey-stoned steps and clean windows with neat curtains hanging in them, but unfortunately Johnny’s mother’s house wasn’t one of them.

Molly climbed the steps and knocked on the shabby door.

She could hear sounds of people talking inside the house, but it seemed an age before the door was finally opened to reveal the elder of Johnny’s younger sisters, Deirdre, her hair in curling rags, and a grubby brassiere strap visible as she clutched at the front of her dressing gown.

‘’Ere, Mam, it’s our Johnny’s fiancée,’ she called back to the darkness of the cluttered hallway.

Molly’s tender heart couldn’t help but pity Johnny’s mother, with her nervous air, her hands disfigured and reddened from her cleaning job at the hospital. It must have been so hard to bring up three children alone with only one wage coming in. It was no doubt because their mother had had to work such long hours cleaning that Johnny’s sisters were the way they were. The fact that their mother was out at work all day and most evenings meant that they had had far more freedom than most girls in the area, whose parents kept a much stricter eye on them.

‘Well, I never … we wasn’t expectin’ you, otherwise—’

‘Give over fussing, Mam,’ Deirdre objected. ‘If she’s gonna marry our Johnny she’s gorra get used to us the way we are, instead of expectin’ us to put on a lorra fancy airs.’

‘Deirdre, you pig, if you’ve bin using my rouge, I’ll skin yer alive.’ Heels clattered on the stairs, barely covered by a threadbare runner, as Johnny’s other sister, Jennifer, came downstairs, her hair carefully curled to emulate the style favoured by the film star Jean Harlow, her flimsy short skirt all but showing off her knees.

‘’Ere, Mam, me hem’s coming down. Have you gorra safety pin, so I can pin it? Only me other one needs a wash, and I ain’t got nuttin’ else to wear, like.’

‘Perhaps it might be better to sew it,’ Molly couldn’t help suggesting.

‘Give over,’ Jennifer laughed, giving a dismissive shrug. ‘I ain’t gor any time for that. I’ve gorra meet me new fella in ten minutes and I don’t want no other girl pinchin’ him from us ’cos I’m late. Gizz us a woodie, will yer, Deirdre?’ she demanded. ‘I’m gasping for a fag.’

‘You’re gonna have to cut that out if we’re going to have a war,’ her mother warned her. ‘Fags’ll be on the ration as well, you mark my words.’

‘Then I’m just gonna have to find a fella to get them for me, aren’t I?’ Jennifer told her, blowing out a cloud of smoke that made Molly’s eyes smart, before asking, ‘So what’s brought you round here then, Molly?’

‘I was just wondering if your mam needed any help with her blackout curtains.’

‘Blackout curtains – just listen to ’er,’ Jennifer laughed. ‘We ain’t gonna be wasting our time messin’ around with nuttin’ like that; brown paper and sticky tape is all we’re gonna be doin’. Bloody hell, Deirdre, have youse been pinching my scent again?’ she demanded, sniffing the air as Deirdre attempted to walk past her.

‘So wot if I have, an’ all?’ Deirdre responded sulkily. ‘You took me last pair of nylons, didn’t yer?’

‘Hurry up and get yerself ready if yer coming down the dance hall wi’ me ’cos I ain’t gonna be waitin’ for yer. Yer want ter come with us, Molly? … Catch me tying meself to one fella like you have with our Johnny … Why don’t yer come wi’ us on Saturday?’ Jennifer asked.

‘It’s kind of you to ask, but me and June are going looking for some material for her wedding dress.’

‘Well, if it’s fabric you’re wantin’, there’s a shop off Bold Street as sells all the best-quality stuff right cheap, on account of it having fallen off a lorry, if yer takes me meaning,’ Jennifer added with a knowing wink.

Molly didn’t make any response. It was impossible to grow up in Liverpool and not know about the brisk black market that existed, with so many goods passing through the docks, but Molly didn’t want to get involved.

She could see through into the back room where the tea things were still on the table. The smell of cheap scent and stale chip fat was making her long to escape, but politeness kept her where she was.

‘They’re good girls really, my Deirdre and Jennifer,’ Johnny’s mother told Molly almost apologetically when both her daughters had gone to finish getting ready to go out, ‘but they’re young and they gorra ’ave a bit of fun, like. Mind you, I’m right glad our Johnny’s going to wed you, Molly. You’re gonna be good for him. Not like some as I could name as would only cause him a lorra trouble.’ Her mouth tightened slightly.

It was a relief to be back in her own home, Molly admitted half an hour later, as she and June worked companionably together. ‘At least we’ve got plenty of light to work in, what with this double daylight saving,’ Molly commented, as they sat on the back step, tacking together the curtains they had cut out, and listening to Max Miller on the wireless.

‘Here, was that the front door I just heard, our Molly?’

Molly put down her sewing and went to see.

Visitors didn’t call on weekdays, and neighbours and friends always came round to the back, so she hesitated for a moment when she saw the shadow of a man through the frosted glass of the inner front door.

‘ARP,’ he called out. ‘Come to mek sure you’ve got your government notice.’

‘You’d better come in,’ Molly told Alf Davies. He looked very official, with his clipboard and stern expression, but he accepted quickly enough when she offered him a cup of tea, and smiled approvingly when he saw that they were already busy making their blackout curtains.

‘Not that I know why we have to do all this stuff, mind,’ June challenged him. ‘Not when there isn’t even a war on yet.’

‘Rules is rules,’ he answered her importantly, puffing out his cheeks and then blowing on the cup of tea Molly had just given him. ‘Gas masks are going to be given out this Saturday at Melby Road Junior School, so mek sure that you go and collect yours. You’ll be given a demonstration of how to use it properly, like. Any children living here?’

Both girls shook their heads.

‘Now what about an Anderson shelter?’

‘We’re sharing with the rest of the end of the cul-de-sac,’ June informed him.

‘Is it true that all the children will be evacuated even if their mothers don’t want them to be?’ Molly couldn’t stop herself from asking him. The words of the government leaflet still haunted her, and she couldn’t imagine how terrifying it would be for a small child to be sent off to a strange place to live with a strange family.

‘I can’t answer them sort of questions, but I can tell you that we are looking for volunteers to help wi’ what’s got to be done, if you twose wanted to help out.’

‘Volunteer? We’ve got enough to do, sewing uniforms for soldiers – aye, and paid next to nuttin’ for doing it, an’ all,’ June informed him sharply.

But for once Molly overrode her sister and asked quietly, ‘Where would we go, if we wanted to volunteer?’

‘You can just come round and have a word with me – you know where I am – number 14. The missus will take a message if I’m not there.’ He stood up. ‘Thanks for the tea, and remember, when the time comes for them curtains to go up, I’ll be coming round to check that they ain’t lettin’ out no light, so make sure youse do a good job.’

‘What’s got into you?’ June demanded when Molly had shown Alf Davies out. ‘What did you want to go telling him you wanted to volunteer for?’

‘Because if there is going to be a war, I want to do my bit,’ Molly answered firmly. She’d been thinking for weeks about how helpless she would feel if – when, she now acknowledged grimly – war broke out, and so jumped at the chance to be able to do something for the war effort.

‘Well, you’re already sewing these blummin’ curtains,’ June grumbled. ‘You’re daft if you volunteer to do any more.’

She repeated her comment later when their father came back in, but he merely smiled and looked tenderly at Molly.

‘You tek after your mam, right enough, Molly lass,’ he told her gently. ‘A right kind heart she had, an’ all.’

‘Now what am I supposed to do with it?’

Molly giggled helplessly as June struggled to put on her gas mask. ‘Oh, give over larking about, do,’ she protested. ‘I’m laughing that much it hurts.’

‘Well, let’s see you put yours on then,’ June challenged her.

They had arrived at the school an hour ago to join the tail end of the queue waiting to receive their gas masks, and now, despite the tension gripping everyone, several other people had joined in Molly’s mirth as she watched her elder sister struggle.

‘You gorra do it like this, love,’ an elderly woman informed June, deftly demonstrating just how the mask should go on, after she had stopped laughing.

‘We gor another of them leaflets come dis mornin’,’ a woman standing close to Molly announced. ‘Full of a lorra stuff about food and rationing, it were, sayin’ as how we gorra have ration books and that, like.’

Immediately the laughter stopped and the women looked worriedly at one another.

‘Rationin’? What’s that when it’s at home?’ a young girl with sharp features and a thin anxious face demanded.

‘It’s wot we had during the last war,’ the older woman who had shown June how to put on her mask answered her grimly. ‘The Government tells yer what food yer can buy and what yer can’t.’

‘That’s all we need,’ June told Molly glumly. ‘Nothing to eat!’

‘It won’t be so bad. At least we’ll have Dad’s allotment – and if it helps our lads …’ Molly tried to comfort her, as she packed her gas mask back in its box and shyly returned the approving smile of a pretty WVS volunteer she had been talking to earlier. June might not like it, but Molly was determined to join up for some voluntary work.

‘Who’s that you were just smiling at?’ June demanded as they left the building, the summer breeze catching the cotton skirts of their dresses.

‘I don’t know her name. She was the one who gave me my mask. I was telling her about wanting to do some voluntary work. She’s told me how to go about it. We could both do it,’ she added hopefully.

‘Huh, you won’t catch me volunteering for anything,’ June told her crossly. ‘All them folk telling me what to do! We get enough of that at work. Daft, that’s what you are. As if we don’t have enough to do, and there’ll be even more if this blummin’ rationing comes in … What time did you say as we would meet the others?’

‘Six o’clock,’ Molly told her.

They had arranged to go to the cinema with some of the other girls from the factory, but despite this promised treat June was still looking glum, and Molly thought she knew why.

‘Frank’s bound to write soon,’ she tried to comfort her.

‘He better had, an’ all, if he knows what’s good for him. How the blinkin’ heck am I supposed to organise a wedding when I don’t know when he’s going to get leave?’ June sounded angry but Molly knew her sister well enough to realise that the anger masked her real feelings. Impulsively she reached out for June’s hand and squeezed it.

Back outside on the street, Molly looked round for their father, who had gone to collect his gas mask with some of the other men from the allotments.

‘It’s our mam’s birthday next week,’ she reminded June.

Every year, on her birthday, among other days, the two girls and their father visited Rosie’s grave to lay flowers on it.

‘Aye, I know.’

‘What was she like, June?’ Molly asked her sister softly. ‘I can’t remember her properly at all.’ She’d asked the question many a time over the years but never tired of hearing her sister describe their mother.

June paused for a moment as though she was thinking hard and then said slowly, ‘Well, you look the image of her, and she was a bit of a softie too, like you, but by, she could give you a fair clout when she got angry. Allus laughing, she was, an’ singing too, like – you’ve got her voice, our Molly. Fair gives me a turn sometimes to hear you singing ’cos you sound just like her. Right pretty she was, an’ all, excepting for them last months.’ Tears filled June’s eyes and Molly was once again reminded of how much harder it must have been for June to see their mother fade before her very eyes. Molly had been too young to appreciate the extent of their mother’s illness but June, two years older, had not been spared the reality of what was happening. ‘Dead thin she went, just bones in the end. She’d been poorly all winter, coughing and the like. We thought as how she would get better when it came warmer weather …’

Molly gave a small shiver and moved closer to her sister. She might not always agree with June’s way of going about things, and resent her control over her sometimes, but she was still her sister, the sister who’d been a substitute mother to her for so many years, and Molly loved her dearly.

‘What about this?’ Molly suggested, directing June’s attention to the bolt of white satin fabric she had found wedged between some brightly patterned cottons.

‘But I’d got me heart set on lace.’

‘Haven’t we all, duck, so mek sure you let on to us if you find any,’ a woman with brassily bleached hair and bright red lipstick, standing close enough to overhear, chipped in. ‘My Harry says as how he don’t care nuttin’ wot me wedding dress is made of just so long as he don’t ’ave to waste a lorra time gettin’ it off us,’ she confided saucily.

‘Common as muck,’ Molly heard June muttering contemptuously, turning her back as the other woman reached past them both and picked up a bolt of bright blue fabric, calling over her shoulder, ‘’Ere, Marge, worra ’bout dis den for youse bridesmaids’ dresses?’

‘Who did you say told you this was a good place to get fabric?’ June demanded, pursing her lips.

‘May mentioned it and so did Johnny’s sisters,’ Molly admitted.

‘Huh, I might have guessed.’

‘The satin is lovely and heavy, June,’ Molly tried to distract her. ‘It would make up a treat and look really elegant. We could always trim it up with some lace …’

‘I don’t know … I’d got me heart set on lace, Molly …’

‘’Ere, Vera, you gorra come and luk at dis satin!’ another female voice exclaimed. Immediately Molly snatched up the bolt of satin, hugging it tightly, and resolutely ignoring the look on Vera’s friend’s face.

‘’Aving that, are youse, lass, ’cos if you ain’t …’ the shopkeeper, who was keeping an eye on the proceedings, demanded.

‘Looks like we’ll have to now,’ June grumbled. ‘How much did the pattern say we needed?’

‘Fifteen yards,’ Molly told her, ‘and that includes the train.’

Once the fabric had been parcelled up, Molly and June headed for Lewis’s where they had arranged to meet the others for a cup of tea before going on to the cinema.

‘It comes to something when you can’t even buy what you want for your wedding dress,’ June complained once they had explained to the other girls what was in her parcel, and ordered their tea.

‘You gorra be grateful you got sommat,’ Irene told June forthrightly, above the sound of Sonny Durband, the resident pianist in Lewis’s restaurant.

‘What I don’t understand is why the Government’s doing all of this, like, when Mr Chamberlain ’as promised that we ain’t gonna be goin’ to war,’ Sheila protested.

‘Are you daft or what?’ Irene challenged her pithily. ‘Of course there’s going to be a blummin’ war. Why the ’eck do youse think we’re mekkin’ all them bloody uniforms? Mind, if I had me way I wouldner be workin’ at Hardings. I’d be down one of them munitions factories, like – Napiers, p’haps. Paying women two pounds fifteen shillings a week, they are, so I’ve heard,’ she informed the others in awe-struck tones, ‘and they get to have a bit o’ fun and a laugh. Not like us – not now we’ve got that bloomin’ Jenner woman spyin’ on us all the time. You two will have to watch it,’ she told June and Molly. ‘Hates your guts, she does.’ Then she added, ‘Come on, you lot, it’s time we was goin’, otherwise we’re gonna be late.’

‘Not much of a film, that, and all them Pathé newsreels got on me wick. As if we don’t have enough of that on the wireless, and with all them leaflets we keep on getting sent,’ Ruby grumbled later, when they left the cinema.

‘I thought it was interesting,’ Molly protested. ‘Especially that bit about the new National Blood Bank, and how the Government’s making sure that the hospitals have plenty of beds and bandages, and building new operating theatres.’

‘Listen to Florence Nightingale, here. Next thing, she’ll be wanting to give some of her own blood,’ June grimaced.

Molly flushed but held her ground. ‘Well, I would, an’ all, if it was going to save someone else’s life,’ she retaliated stoutly, ignoring the derisory look her sister was giving her. Molly felt so passionately about ‘doing her bit’ and she was disappointed that June didn’t share her own urgent desire to do what she could to help with the country’s preparations for war.

FOUR

‘Is that Pete Ridley outside with his milk float and horse?’

‘Yes, Dad,’ Molly confirmed, protesting when her father opened the back door. ‘Where are you going? He’ll leave the milk on the doorstep like always.’

‘’Tain’t the milk I’m after, it’s the horse muck,’ he told her forthrightly. ‘Right good for the allotment it’ll be. And that reminds me, there’s a few of the lads as will be coming round tonight to talk about the allotments. We’re going to be forming a committee, seeing as how we’re going to be part of the war effort and “digging for victory”,’ he told Molly proudly before disappearing through the door to speak to the milkman.

‘Wait up, Molly,’ June puffed. ‘You’re walking too fast.’

‘I don’t want us to be late,’ Molly answered her worriedly as she waited for June to catch up with her. ‘I’m sure that Miss Jenner is going to be looking for any excuse to make trouble for us.’

‘So what? With old man Harding looking to take on extra workers, he’s not gonna want to lose good machinists like us. He’ll have the Government to answer to if he doesn’t get them uniforms made on time.’

Since the other girls had also arrived a few minutes early, Molly suspected that they all shared her wariness of Miss Jenner. A handful of girls she didn’t recognise were huddled together just inside the workroom, looking uncertain and anxious. One of them didn’t look much more than fourteen, her thin arms and legs poking out of her worn dress.

Molly smiled at them as she tucked her hair up and pinned it back, before putting on her overall. Earlier in the year she and June had treated themselves to a new hairdo apiece at Lewis’s, where Molly’s hair had been cut into the style favoured by the actress Vivien Leigh for her role in the much-anticipated Gone with the Wind.

Molly had just seated herself at the machine when the work bell rang shrilly.

Immediately the door opened and Miss Jenner came in, her lips pursed as she silently inspected the rows of expectant machinists.

‘From now on we shall be having a roll call every morning five minutes before you start work. Anyone not here for that roll call will lose a day’s pay.’

An outraged mutter of protest filled the room but Miss Jenner ignored it, walking over to the new girls.

‘Hardings has an important role to play in the war effort and you will find that I run this machine room with the same discipline and dedication with which an army commander controls his men. Since I understand that none of you has any previous experience as machinists, you will each sit beside a machinist and watch her work. Then this afternoon you will be given your own machine and you will start to work properly. Every garment made in this factory will be inspected by me, and if it fails to meet the high standards our fighting men deserve, then the machinist will be fined for the cost of the time and the material lost.’

A gasp of indignation filled the silence.

‘Well, I’m gonna tell her straight I’m not puttin’ up wi’ it. Not for one minute I’m not,’ Sheila fumed later, after the dinner bell had rung and the girls were all clustered together talking, after enduring a morning of silence.

‘I’m tekkin’ meself down to the Metal Box as was, first thing tomorrow morning. Crying out for workers there, they are, so I’ve heard,’ said another girl.

The new girls all looked so exhausted and worried that Molly couldn’t help but feel sorry for them.

‘I’m right worried that they won’t keep me on,’ Jean Hughes, the girl who sat next to Molly, confided whilst they ate their dinner, Molly having surreptitiously given half of her sandwiches to Evie, the stick-thin new girl, when she saw that Evie hadn’t brought anything to eat.

Molly knew that Jean lived down on Daffodil Street, one of the ‘flower’ streets close to the docks, and, after listening to Irene, was worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep a job that she had confided to Molly was a bit of a step up for her.

‘You’ll do fine,’ Molly assured her kindly. ‘It’s just that we haven’t got used to Miss Jenner yet.’

‘I’m sick of this ruddy war already,’ Ruby complained, ‘and it hasn’t even started yet. Our mam’s acting like she’s got ants in her pants ever since we got them blinking leaflets. She’s had us at it all weekend up in the attic, clearing stuff out. ’Ave yer done yours yet?’ she asked June.

‘No. We could have done it tonight, only this one,’ June emphasised scornfully, nodding her head in Molly’s direction, ‘has taken it into her head to go and sign up for the blinkin’ WVS tonight.’

‘Oh, me mam’s in that,’ one of the new girls chirped up, causing June to frown at her.

‘Well, I’m thinking of joining,’ Sheila put in quietly. ‘They’ve bin asking for help round our way with this evacuation of all the kiddies coming up. Me sister’s going mad about it. Seven months gone, she is, with her second, and her husband away in the merchant navy. She wants ter stay here in Liverpool, like, but our mam’s told her as how she should do as the Government wants.’

Throughout every city thought to be at risk from enemy attack, parents had been issued with government instructions, telling them that they were to be ready for the mass evacuation of their children at the end of August. Children were to be taken to their local schools ready to be marched class by class and school by school to designated railway stations, from where they would be evacuated to the country along with their teachers. Parents had been told what clothes and other equipment each child was to have, and local industries and town halls had stepped forward with promises to give each child food and drink for the journey. Volunteers were needed to assist with this process and to help take charge of the children when they arrived at their schools ready for the evacuation.

Those people who would be housing the evacuees were going to be paid by the Government for doing so, and already there was a great deal of resentment being felt amongst the poor of Liverpool about the fact that other people were being paid to look after their children whilst they were denied any such help. The WVS, most of them mothers themselves, had been recruited to help the Government with this evacuation.

June was still in a huff with Molly about volunteering when they got home, but the discovery that the postman had brought letters from both Frank and Johnny evaporated the tension. June, pink-cheeked with excitement and relief, pounced on her envelope. ‘At last. It seems ever such a long time since Frank left, and I’ve missed him that much.’

Late afternoon sunshine poured in through the back door, turning June’s hair dark gold as she sat down on the step to read her letter.

Having put the kettle on to boil, so delaying the moment as long as she could, Molly went to join her, opening her own letter with a heavy heart.

Johnny’s handwriting looked almost childlike. He wasn’t allowed to tell her where he was, or what he was doing, he had written, before going on to complain that he hated the food. Her letter was much thinner than June’s. There was no mention in it of when he might get leave, nor any hint that he might be missing her – but that made her feel more relieved than disappointed, Molly admitted to herself.

‘What’s the return address on yours?’ June demanded.

Molly showed her.

‘They aren’t in the same camp then: Frank’s is different. Does Johnny say when he’s likely to get some leave?’

‘No, does Frank?’

‘He says they haven’t been told anything much and that he’ll let me know as soon as he’s got some news.’

The kettle had started to boil. Molly got up and went to make the tea.

‘Would you believe it?’ June complained. ‘Frank’s put in his letter that he’s worried about his mam being on her own. What about me?’

‘He knows that you’ve got me and Dad,’ Molly reminded her.

‘Yoo-hoo …’

Elsie Fowler edged her way through the convenient gap in the hedge that divided their small back gardens.

‘Seein’ as how I haven’t seen much of either of youse just lately, I thought as how I’d call round, like, with these,’ she told them, handing Molly a bunch of sweetpeas. ‘For yer mam for tomorrow,’ she explained gently.

Emotionally, Molly hugged her and thanked her. She had to remind herself that Elsie must miss her old friend too.

‘How are the boys?’

‘They’re fine, and you’ll never guess what? Remember our Eddie, our nephew what used to come and stay wi’ us when he were a kiddie, before his dad passed away and his mam took him back wi’ her to Morecambe to her family? Well, his mam died last winter, and he called round here last night to ask if he can lodge wi’ us. Took us right by surprise, he did. Not that we wasn’t glad to see him. He’s in the merchant navy now, I think I told you, and with both his mam and dad gone, it makes sense for him to be here in Liverpool wi’ us.’

‘Of course I remember him,’ Molly smiled. ‘He used to protect me when the others tried to put worms down my back. I’m sorry to hear he’s lost his mam, Elsie.’

‘Aye, well, it’s a mercy, if you ask me. She never got over losing our Jack, and she’d bin poorly for a good while, from what I heard. Not that she bothered to keep in touch wi’ us much once she went back to her own folk. Eddie now, well, I’ve allus had a soft spot for him. The spittin’ image of me own dad, he is,’ she added with a fond smile. ‘I told him he could bring his kitbag round here as soon as he liked, just as long as he doesn’t mind sleeping in our boxroom. Have you heard from Frank and Johnny yet?’

‘We got letters today,’ Molly told her, ‘but we don’t know yet when they’ll get any leave.’

‘I dare say they won’t be able to send word right away, but from what Sally Walker was saying, they should get some as soon as their training’s finished, so you’d best hurry and get that wedding dress made, young June.’

‘Well, we won’t be doing that tonight,’ June informed her, giving Molly a black look. ‘Our Molly’s off to join the WVS.’

‘Good for you, love! There’s two or three from the cul-de-sac joined up to it already, and I was thinking of doing the same meself, only with John and Jim working shifts on the gridiron an’ all, it’s a bit difficult.’

Molly looked quickly at her sister, hoping that Elsie’s endorsement might make June change her mind, but she could see from her set expression that she was not going to allow herself to be coaxed into that.

‘I won’t be there very long, June,’ Molly told her. ‘We can have a look at the pattern when I get back, if you like.’

‘There’s no need for you to go putting yourself out on my account. Anyway, I’ve changed me mind and I’m going to spend the evening writing back to me fiancé,’ she added pointedly, going back into the house.

‘Perhaps she’s right, and I shouldn’t join the WVS.’ Molly looked at Elsie unhappily.

Elsie snorted. ‘Tek no notice of your June. If you want my opinion she’s just feeling a bit put out, like, because you’re doing sommat wi’out her having told you to do it. She’ll come round. You wait and see.’

Molly reminded herself of Elsie’s comforting words later that evening in the church hall whilst her head buzzed with all the information she had just been given.

According to Mrs Wesley, who was in charge of their local WVS group, the basic training members of the WVS would have to undergo, and the list of duties they could expect to be called upon to provide, included co-operating with ARP wardens and local authority services; organising and undergoing lectures for women in first aid; anti-gas and fire-fighting skills; manning of incident enquiry posts; co-operating in invasion defence schemes; staffing ARP canteens; feeding civil defence workers after raids; being trained to drive emergency vehicles; assisting in staffing NFS and police canteens; making and sewing sandbags; and all aspects of evacuation, including escorting, sick-bay duties, running communal feeding centres, hotels and social centres. They were to provide staff for mobile office units and train as volunteers for emergency work, and a whole list of other duties so long that Molly was afraid she wouldn’t be able to remember them all. Following the example of the girl standing next to her, she had put her name down for as many of the training programmes as she thought she would be able to do.

‘Molly!’

She turned round, smiling as she saw a girl hurrying towards her in her uniform.

‘So you came then? I’m so glad. I’m Anne – we met at the gas mask collection, remember?’

Molly nodded. ‘I’m never going to be able to remember all that we’re supposed to learn to do.’

‘Yes, you will. I’ll help you,’ Anne told her stoutly. ‘I’m going to go and put my name down for the driving lessons – why don’t you do the same?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ Molly protested. She hadn’t even been in a car, never mind thought of learning to drive.

‘Yes, you can,’ Anne overruled her. ‘Besides, it’s our duty to do as much as we can.’ She added more seriously, ‘It’s like Mrs Wesley just said: we’ve all got to remember that our help could make the difference between life and death.’

Molly looked at her uncertainly, uncomfortably aware of how June was likely to react to the news that she was planning to learn to drive.

‘I won’t take no for an answer,’ Anne warned her. ‘It would be marvellous if both of us could drive, and much more fun than unravelling old jumpers and making sandbags.’ Anne pulled a face, and suddenly Molly found herself relaxing and laughing whilst her new friend dragged her over to sign up for driving lessons.

‘I’m dreading this evacuation business we’ve got to help out with,’ she admitted to Anne later.

‘It will be a bit like jumping into one of the docks at the deep end,’ Anne agreed, ‘but it’s got to be done. We can’t have all those little ones at risk of being bombed, can we?’

The meeting had gone on longer than Molly had expected, and she hurried past the scout hut and across the main road after saying goodbye to Anne, who had explained that she lived in Wavertree. The garden suburb was considered ‘posher’ than Edge Hill, and it was obvious to Molly that Anne came from a better-off family than her own, and that she had had more experience of life. Anne’s father, Anne had told her, had an office job at the town hall, and her mother did not go out to work. Her family home was semidetached, and she had mentioned that she was a member of Wavertree’s tennis club. Molly knew that June would have said she was too pushy, but although she felt slightly awed by Anne, Molly couldn’t help but like her open friendly manner.

Thinking of her sister made Molly wish all over again that June had agreed to come with her. It would help keep her mind off worrying about her Frank. She knew June was a kind person, deep down, but she came across as abrasive to many, especially those who didn’t know her well. Maybe she would be able to persuade her to change her mind when she told her all she had learned, she decided hopefully.

The men were still working their allotments as she cut down the footpath alongside them, the scent of freshly watered earth mingling with that of their Woodbine cigarettes. Molly looked to see if she could see her father, but didn’t stop walking. She was mentally rehearsing what she was going to say to June to persuade her to change her mind about the WVS.

When she got in there was no sign of her sister downstairs; even the radio had been turned off, and the table had been laid for breakfast, a task the girls always did last thing before they went to bed.

‘June?’ she called uncertainly from the bottom of the stairs, and then when there was no reply she hurried up, her initial surprise at finding her sister already in bed giving way to anxiety.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘What’s it to you?’ June demanded truculently. ‘Hours, you’ve been gone, and me here on me own. And me monthlies are giving me a right pain in me belly.’

‘Oh, June, I’m sorry,’ Molly sympathised. Of the two of them, June had always been the one who had suffered more each month. ‘Would you like a hot-water bottle?’

June shook her head, thawing slightly. ‘I’m feeling a bit better now. I’ll come down and ’ave a cuppa, I think. It sounds like Dad’s just come in – you’d better go down otherwise he’ll want to know what’s up.’

Her father was standing in the kitchen, holding a large cardboard box, which he placed almost tenderly on the kitchen floor.

‘What’s in there?’ Molly asked curiously.

‘Tek the lid off and have a look.’

Molly exclaimed in astonishment, as the moment she lifted the lid the kitchen was filled with the sound of cheeping.

‘Day-old chicks, a gross of them, and our Joe’s got another gross as well, and there’s a gross for Pete – seeing as how he’s promised to let us have his horse muck for the allotments. They’re from your aunt’s farm.’

‘What are?’ June asked, coming into the kitchen, her eyes widening as she saw the answer to her question.

‘We’ve clubbed together at the allotments to buy them. With a hundred and forty-four of them we should get a fair few fresh eggs. Only thing is, we need to keep them warm and properly fed for the next few days. I’ve got some mash, to start ’em off, like.’

‘But where will you keep them?’ Molly asked him.

‘We’re going to build a coop for them – I’ve got a bit of wood put by down at the railway yard.’ He winked meaningfully at them and then added, ‘Pete is going to pick it up for us, and once the chicks have grown they can scratch around down the allotments.’ He picked the lid up and placed it over the boxful of chicks, immediately silencing them. ‘And that’s not all,’ he told the girls enthusiastically. ‘We’ve put in to have a pig as well.’

‘A pig?’

‘Aye, it’s a scheme the Government is doing – them as keeps a pig gets ter keep a fair bit of the meat from it, so mek sure you don’t go throwing away any scraps. Oh, and by the way, your Aunt Violet has sent a message to say they’ve got plenty of work down at the farm, if you fancy leaving that factory after all.’

June shuddered. ‘Not likely – remember that time Dad took us there on the train, Molly, and them blinkin’ cows? No, ta! You can keep the country. I’m staying here, even with that Miss Jenner at my throat.’

It was only later, when she was finally in bed and almost asleep, that Molly realised that she hadn’t talked to June about joining the WVS. Oh, well, there was always tomorrow, she decided as she closed her eyes.

FIVE

The bright morning sun blazed down from a cloudlessly blue sky. It was far too hot to wear winter clothes but, nevertheless, the three of them had put on their darkest things and their father was even wearing a collar and tie. People looked curiously at them when they got on the bus but they ignored their sideways looks. They had made this journey five times a year since Rosie’s death: on Mothering Sunday, on the anniversaries of her birth, her marriage and her death, and at Christmas. Now their coming here had gathered its own small rituals: the flowers they brought – daffodils on Mothering Sunday, the roses that bore her name and which she had carried in her wedding bouquet on her birthday and the anniversary of her marriage, violets in February, when she had died, and at Christmas a home-made wreath of holly and ivy to lay on the cold stone – their visit to their own church before they left; their silence like the silence of the cemetery where their wife and mother was buried close to her parents and to her parents-in-law.

This morning, though, the cemetery wasn’t silent. Instead, a group of men were moving and extending its boundary, whilst others were excavating the hard-packed earth.

Molly looked questioningly at her father. ‘Are they going to turn it into allotments, do you think, Dad?’

‘I don’t think so, love. More like they’re getting ready for a different kind of crop,’ he told her heavily. ‘Just in case, like …’

All the colour left her face as she realised what he meant. She looked from him to the bare stretch of land and then at the cemetery, visually measuring the grave-covered earth to the land that lay beyond it – land she now realised was being set aside for new graves.

A mixture of shock, fear and pain filled her insides. It was something she had not allowed herself to think of – the human cost of war. Tales of the Great War seemed from a different age.

‘Surely there won’t be so many,’ she whispered.

Her father’s mouth twisted. ‘This is nowt to them as died last time.’ His haunted expression aged his face. He had never told his daughters of the horrors he had witnessed in the trenches of France: of how he’d had to drink filthy, muddy water just to stay alive; of how he’d had to strip a dead soldier of his ammunition while he was still warm; of how he’d seen his best friend blown to pieces right beside him. ‘A load of cardboard coffins we had shipped in on one of t’trains this week. There was talk as how the ice rink is going to be used as a morgue, if’n Hitler drops his bombs on us. Lorra rubbish. If’n he does it won’t be whole bodies as they’ll be buryin’.’

Molly shivered, her eyes widening in fear. ‘Don’t talk like that, Dad,’ she begged him.

When he looked at her Molly realised that he had momentarily forgotten her and that he had been back in the past and his dreadful experiences of the last war. He squeezed her hand and kissed the top of her head, just like he had done when she was a child and had fallen over and scraped her knee.

‘Don’t you worry, love. With lads like Frank and Johnny to look out for us, we’ll be just fine,’ he assured her, although in his heart he felt mounting anxiety.

Sombrely the three of them made their way along the familiar footpath until they came to Rosie’s grave. For once, even June was silent. The grave was marked with just a simple headstone, but at least she was with those she had loved and who had loved her, and as a child Molly had taken comfort from that knowledge.

One by one they kneeled down and offered up their flowers and their prayers. Molly could see that their father was trying not to cry.

Afterwards, though, when they made their way home, it was the sight of that empty land waiting to receive the bodies of those who were still alive that occupied Molly’s thoughts and tore at her heart. For the first time she knew properly what it was to be afraid of war and death. So many graves; so many people who were going to die. She looked at her father and her sister, anguish inside her. It wasn’t just the men abroad. What if one of them …?

She could taste dust in the August heat when they got off the bus and walked up the cul-de-sac.

‘I thought we’d make a start on turning out the attic tonight,’ she heard June telling her once they were back home, briskly back to business.

Numbly Molly looked at her.

‘What’s up with you?’ June asked her.

‘All those graves, June, so many of them …’ Molly’s voice shook.

Immediately June’s expression softened. ‘Aye … I thought like that meself when I knew that my Frank would be joining up, but we’ve got to keep our chins up, Molly. Don’t you worry about Johnny – he’s a tough one.’

The two sisters looked at one another, both fighting against tears. Molly felt guilty that she was not thinking of Johnny but of every man fighting.

The door opened to admit their father, who had been upstairs to remove his collar. His shoulders were bowed, his expression drawn and sad.

Giving Molly a warning look, June said briskly, ‘I expect you’ll be off down the allotment, won’t you, Dad, after you’ve checked on them blummin’ chickens of yours. All over the kitchen, they are.’

June was so strong, Molly thought admiringly, as she watched their father respond visibly to her goading.

The chickens had escaped from their box and greeted their owners’ return home with excited cheeps as they hopped and jumped all over the place. Their antics broke the sombre mood, and Molly couldn’t help but laugh at them as she gave them their feed.

‘Come on,’ June instructed Molly, once their father had gone out. ‘We’d better go up and make a start on that ruddy attic. Otherwise we’ll be having that fusspot Alf Davies round.’

Molly nodded her head, determinedly putting her earlier despair firmly behind her.

‘I could do with getting meself some new stockings before tonight, seeing as how Irene’s set us all up to go dancing at the Grafton,’ June commented. She and Molly clambered into the loft space and stood looking at the dusty boxes, illuminated by the bare bulb. ‘Gawd, look at all this stuff! Just how long is it since we last came up here? We’ll never get it all sorted out.’

But Molly wasn’t listening. Instead, she was on her knees, examining the contents of a box she had found behind the pile of cardboard boxes stacked one on top of the other, labelled ‘Christmas Decorations’.

‘June, come and look at this,’ she begged her sister. ‘This box has got all my exercise books from Neville Road Junior School, right back to me first year, in Miss Brown’s class, and here’s yours next to it.’

Molly could feel tears prickling her eyes as she saw the careful way their father had written their names on the boxes.

‘Well, they can’t stay up here. Everything that might catch fire has got to be got rid of – that’s what the Government has said – and any glass taped up or removed in case we get hit by a bomb. Mind you, Jerry would have to be daft to be bombing us instead of aiming for the docks,’ June added prosaically.

Reluctantly abandoning her school books, Molly started to help her sister go through the other boxes.

An hour later, Molly sat back on her heels and pushed her hair off her hot forehead with a dusty hand.

‘We’re nearly done,’ June told her. ‘There’s just this box here that some fool has wedged right at the back.’ Panting, she tugged it free, and then started to open it. ‘Gawd knows what’s in it … Oh …’

As June’s voice changed and she suddenly went still, Molly stopped what she was doing and crawled over to her side, demanding, ‘June, what is it?’ And then her own eyes widened as she saw the crumpled, slightly yellowing lace that June was holding close to her cheek.

‘It’s Mam’s wedding dress,’ June said to her in a small choked voice.

The two sisters looked at one another. There were tears in June’s eyes and Molly’s own gaze was blurred with the same emotion.

‘Let’s take it downstairs so that we can look at it properly,’ she suggested quietly.

As carefully and reverently as if they were carrying the body of their mother herself, between them they took the dress down to the bedroom they shared and then slowly unpacked it.

‘Look how tiny her waist was,’ Molly whispered, as she smoothed the lace gently with her fingertips. The dress smelled of mothballs and dust, but also of their mother – the scent of lily of the valley, which she always used to wear.

‘Mam must have put it away up there when she and Dad moved here.’ June’s voice was husky, and Molly was startled at how much finding the dress had affected her normally so assured and controlled sister. It was at times like these that she realised June had a soft centre underneath her hard shell.

‘It’s too small for you to wear but maybe we could use some of the lace to trim your wedding dress,’ Molly suggested.

June smiled with shining eyes. ‘Oh, Molly, could we? I’d feel like I’d got Mum with me.’

‘Does this lipstick look all right with this frock?’ June demanded later that evening, as she scrutinised her appearance in the bedroom mirror. Molly, who had been applying pale pink lipstick to her own mouth, stopped what she was doing and put her head on one side to study her sister.

‘It looks fine,’ she assured her. ‘What time are we supposed to meet up with the others?’

‘Seven o’clock, outside the dance hall. Have you seen my shoes?’

‘They’re over there, by your bed,’ Molly told her, watching as June slipped her feet into her silver dancing shoes and fastened the strap round her ankle.

The two sisters were wearing dresses cut from the same pattern, bought in Lewis’s in the spring and carefully sewn by Molly. But whereas her own dress had a white cotton background printed with flowers in varying shades of pink and red, June had opted for a cotton with blue and yellow flowers, and whilst Molly’s dress had a neat sweetheart neckline and puff sleeves, June’s was a more daring halter-neck style. Both dresses showed off the sisters’ neat waistlines and pretty ankles, though.

It was gone six o’clock before they were finally ready to leave, June complaining that she wasn’t going to hurry anywhere because she didn’t want her face to go all shiny, despite the powder she’d applied.

‘At last,’ Irene greeted them impatiently when they reached the dance hall ten minutes late. ‘We was just beginning to think you weren’t coming.’

‘It was our Molly’s fault,’ June fibbed unrepentantly, as they all hurried inside in a flurry of brightly coloured cottons and excited giggles.

‘It feels like I haven’t bin dancing in ever such a long time,’ June sighed, as they queued up to buy their tickets, even though the factory girls got together to go dancing every month or so.

‘Here, look over there at them lads in their uniforms,’ Ruby giggled happily, nudging Molly.

‘Give over staring at them, will you, Ruby?’ Irene chastised her. ‘Otherwise they’ll be thinking that we’re sommat as we’re not.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ruby demanded, oblivious to the looks the others were exchanging.

Several groups of young men, clustered round the dance floor, looked eagerly at the girls as they walked past, but Irene led them firmly to a table where they could sit down and then said sternly, ‘Just remember that some of us here have husbands and fiancés, and we don’t want to be embarrassed by the behaviour of those of you who haven’t.’

‘Well, if we’re just going ter sit here all night, what have we come for?’ May objected, eyeing up one of the young men.

‘I didn’t say as we wouldn’t dance, only that I don’t want to see none of you behaving like that lot over there,’ Irene told them, nodding in the direction of another group of young women standing by the entrance, boldly eyeing up the men coming in and exchanging banter with them.

To her discomfort, Molly realised that two of the girls were Johnny’s sisters, and when she told June as discreetly as she could, June looked past her to where they were standing and then warned her quickly, ‘Well, don’t say anything to the others. We don’t want to be shown up. You’d best act as though you haven’t seen them.’

The young soldiers the Hardings girls had seen on the way in had come to stand close to them and were quite plainly watching them.

Molly turned away whilst Irene raised an eyebrow as she lit a Woodbine and then told June drily, ‘They’re just a bunch of kids. My Alan would make mincemeat of them.’

‘And my Frank,’ June agreed, taking one of the cigarettes Irene was offering her.

Molly looked disapprovingly at her sister but kept quiet. She wanted them to have a good time – they all needed to release some tension after such an emotional day.

‘June, Molly, I thought it was you two,’ a male voice announced, and Molly’s frown changed to a wide smile of delight as she recognised Eddie. ‘Auntie Elsie said she thought you were coming down here tonight.’

‘Are you on your own?’ June asked him after they had introduced him to the others.

‘I came down with our Jim, but I’ve met up with a gang of other lads off the ship. If you girls fancy dancing with us, I can vouch for them.’

‘Oh, yeah? As if we’d believe that,’ Irene teased him, but Molly could see that she wasn’t averse to the suggestion.

‘Well, just you remember before you go introducing us to anyone that we’re respectable girls and dancing is all we shall be doing,’ June told him sternly.

‘Auntie Elsie would have me hide if I was to say anything else. She thinks of you and Molly as part of the family,’ Eddie assured her, before he disappeared into the crowd of young people now filling the dance hall.

Within five minutes he was back, along with half a dozen other young men, all slightly bashful but very eager to be introduced to the girls.

‘How about you and me being the first up on the floor, Molly?’ Eddie asked her with a big grin.

Molly laughed back at him. It had been Eddie, years ago, when they had all been children, who had been her partner at the dancing lessons they had had at the church hall in preparation for the annual Christmas party.

‘Just so long as you don’t tread on my toes,’ she agreed.

‘Well, I can’t pull the ribbons out of your hair any more, can I?’ Eddie laughed as he led her onto the floor, adding, ‘But I promise I won’t let anyone put any worms down your back.’

‘Oh, do you remember that too?’ Molly asked him eagerly, and then blushed slightly, as she realised that the music had started but she’d been too engrossed in their reminiscences to notice. As though he sensed her self-consciousness, Eddie gave her hand a small squeeze.

‘I remember what a game little kid you were, Molly – aye, and a pretty little thing as well.’

As he swung her into his arms, there was a look in his eyes that made Molly’s heart skip a beat. And when the band slowed into a new number and the lights dimmed, Molly didn’t object when Eddie slipped his arm round her waist and drew her closer.

He smelled of Pears soap, the skin on his hands rough against her own softer flesh, just as the muscles of his thighs felt so much harder than hers as he pulled her into his body.

However, when the dance ended and they returned to their table, June gave them both a baleful look and demanded sharply, ‘Why aren’t you wearing your engagement ring, Molly?’

Molly’s face burned. She had forgotten all about her ring, which she didn’t like wearing because of the greenish mark it left on her finger. But June’s tone of voice made it sound as though she had deliberately chosen not to wear it.

‘It’s all right, June,’ Eddie said promptly and easily. ‘I’ve already heard from Aunt Elsie that you and Molly are both spoken for now.’

Molly gave him a grateful look for rescuing her from her elder sister’s disapproval and her own forgetfulness.

‘I didn’t mean to forget about my ring,’ she told him quickly when he insisted on her getting up for another dance.

‘You don’t need to tell me that, Molly,’ Eddie reassured her. ‘I know you well enough to know you’re not the kind of girl who’d cheat on a lad. I just wish I’d had the gumption to come courtin’ you before Johnny did.’

Molly’s face burned even hotter. He was just teasing her, that was all, she told herself. She had always got on well with Eddie, with his ready smile and twinkling blue eyes. He was fun and he made her laugh, and that was why she felt so much happier and more comfortable being held in his arms than she had ever felt being held in Johnny’s. Eddie, she knew instinctively, was not the kind to press a girl for something she was not ready to give.

Johnny! She almost missed a step, causing Eddie to look down at her.

‘I was just thinking about Johnny,’ she told him honestly when he asked her if she was all right. ‘It’s horrible knowing there’s going to be a war, but not knowing when it’s going to happen. It feels a bit like waking up in the morning used to feel when it was Mr Roberts’s arithmetic lesson that day, only worse. You sort of forget about it for a while but then when you remember …’ She gave a small shiver.

‘Aye, I know what you mean,’ Eddie agreed soberly. ‘The Government is going to be using the merchant navy to carry supplies and we’ve all been warned that Jerry submarines are going to be after us, trying to stop us.’

‘Oh, Eddie …’

‘I shouldn’t have told you that,’ he said gruffly. ‘Not a word to me auntie about it, Molly, promise? ’Cos she’ll worry herself sick about it, and she’s got enough to worry about with Uncle John and our Jim working on the gridiron.’

‘I promise,’ she assured him solemnly, suddenly feeling very grown up and mature, not a girl any more but a confidante and an equal in this war that would soon be engulfing them all.

The Molly she had been last Christmas could not have imagined that the Molly she was now would be learning to drive, and going to first-aid classes, making notes on what to do if she was called upon to help out in an emergency. Being in the WVS wasn’t just a matter of making cups of tea and knitting socks for soldiers, Molly acknowledged proudly. It was proper war work for women, and she was proud to be one of those women.

‘When do you go back to your ship?’ she asked Eddie.

‘Tomorrow,’ he told her, and then added determinedly, as he swung her round into another dance, ‘So tonight I am going to mek sure I enjoy meself.’

‘It’s a good band, but I’m gettin’ hot so shall we sit this one out?’

They had been dancing together non-stop for nearly an hour, so Molly nodded her head, fanning herself with her hand as Eddie led her back to the table.

All around them, Molly could see young men in uniform, holding their girls as tightly as they could, so determined to enjoy every minute they had together that the sight of them brought a lump to Molly’s throat. Some couples were even embracing, something that would never have happened normally in such a public place without the management intervening, but tonight, instead of reacting disapprovingly to such intimacy, onlookers were viewing them with sympathy and understanding.

‘Our Jim seems well taken with that Jean, who works with you,’ Eddie commented to Molly, looking over at his cousin slow-dancing with Molly’s work pal.

‘Jean Hughes? She’s really nice,’ Molly told him.

‘Where’s she from?’ Eddie asked. ‘I’ve not seen her around before.’

‘Her family’s from down near the docks.’ When Eddie started to frown, Molly told him quickly, ‘The flower streets, Eddie, and she’s a very respectable sort. I like her.’

‘A Welshie, is she?’ Eddie nodded his head approvingly.

June came up to join them, flushed and out of breath from dancing.

‘The last time I came dancing here it was with my Frank.’

‘Aye, and you’ll be dancing with him at your own weddin’ soon,’ Eddie replied, trying to keep her spirits high.

‘Yes, I will, an’ all,’ June agreed. ‘I can’t wait for my first dance as Mrs Frank Brookes.’

It was gone eleven when they finally left the Grafton, Molly laughing, her face flushed with the pleasure of dancing and the warmth of the camaraderie and laughter they had all shared, even if at times she had felt as though the frantic giddiness with which they were throwing themselves into the fun of the evening masked an awareness of what lay ahead that none of them wanted to acknowledge. It was almost as though they felt they had to enjoy themselves whilst they still could, Molly admitted to herself uneasily.

Eddie insisted on walking them home – Jim having mysteriously disappeared, along with Jean.

‘Well, I suppose it will be all right walking home with you at this time of night – no one’s going to gossip about it if they do see us with you,’ June acknowledged, ‘seeing as you and Jim are the nearest thing me and Molly have got to brothers.’

‘Come on then, sis,’ Eddie teased her, offering each girl an arm and then pretending to strut along the street like a comic turn, making Molly giggle and protest.

‘Oh, give over, do, Eddie. You’ll give me a stitch.’

‘Fancy stopping at the chippy?’ Eddie asked them, nodding in the direction of Harry Scott’s chip shop up ahead of them.

‘Go on then,’ June agreed.

The three of them waited their turn in the queue whilst Hilda, Harry’s wife, removed a new batch of chips from the fryer, testing one between her forefinger and thumb before expertly shaking them free of fat. The chips were the best in Liverpool and people flocked from the opposite side of the city to get their fish supper.

‘Three penn’orths of mix, please,’ Eddie ordered when it was their turn.

Nodding her head, Hilda placed three portions of chips on separate pages of the Liverpool Echo, then took the huge pan of mushy peas off the gas stove, and scooped half a ladleful out onto each pile of chips.

‘Salt and vinegar?’ she asked.

All three of them nodded.

Quickly wrapping their chips in another sheet of newspaper, she handed them over.

Now intent on eating their chips and peas, they slowed their conversation to match their pace as they headed for Chestnut Close.

The cul-de-sac was in darkness, and their chips long finished by the time they finally reached number 78. Knowing that Eddie was going to be rejoining his ship in the morning, Molly wanted to say something to tell him that she was conscious of the danger he would be facing once war came – that though she may be safe at home at the moment, she knew that things would change for ever for them all once hostilities were declared. But at the same time she was reluctant to spoil the happiness of the evening by reminding them all of what lay ahead.

Whilst she hesitated, not sure what to do, Eddie turned to June and hugged her, kissing her on the cheek. And then, having released June, he turned back to Molly. She had been in his arms for a good part of the evening whilst they danced, so she had no qualms about being held tightly by him now. But when he bent his head to kiss her, it was not with the same brotherly peck on the cheek he had given June, but a lingering kiss on her mouth that took her by surprise.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise and confusion. In his she could see a mixture of emotions. With the shock of an icy cold finger pressed against her spine, she recognised that what she was seeing in his eyes were the feelings of a man about to face the reality of war and death. With a mix of compassion, tenderness and a wholly female response to his need, she kissed him back, shyly and inexpertly, as though somehow her kissing him was a kind of magic talisman that would protect him.

‘I’m off early in the morning,’ Eddie told them both gruffly as he released Molly. ‘Keep an eye on me auntie for me, won’t yer?’

Both girls nodded. Molly hoped it wouldn’t be too long before he was back home again, safe – and in her arms.

‘I really enjoyed it tonight,’ Molly told June sleepily when they were both in bed. ‘Did you?’

‘I’d have enjoyed it a sight more if my Frank had been there,’ June responded, immediately making Molly guiltily aware of the fact that she had not given Johnny much thought at all, apart from when she had spotted his sisters. As for the kiss she had given Eddie … Her face burned afresh, not just because she had given it, but also because she had enjoyed giving it.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.