My Sweet Valentine

ANNIE GROVES

Copyright

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

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

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2012

Copyright © Annie Groves 2012

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2012

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

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Ebook Edition © December 2012 ISBN: 9780007419401

Version: 2017-10-09

Dedication

For Annie Groves’ readers

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Acknowledgements

Coming from Annie Groves in 2013

About the Author

Also by Annie Groves

About the Publisher

One

30 December 1940

‘Tilly, no! Stop! Don’t go any further. It’s too dangerous.’

‘I’m all right,’ Tilly Robbins assured her boyfriend, Drew, as the crowd surging towards St Paul’s Cathedral parted them. All around, the air was thick with smoke and the dusty aftermath of the previous night’s heavy bombing. Buildings were still burning, the acrid smell stinging the throats and the eyes of the onlookers. Even now, hoses were still being directed at the most intense fires.

The general noise of the Londoners, coming to see for themselves that St Paul’s was still standing, added to the rattle of fire engines’ wheels on cobbled road and the roar of persistent fires, made it almost impossible to hear oneself think, never mind hold a conversation, Tilly thought. Her earlier sense of adventure had been a little dissipated as the crowd swept her away from Drew and carried her along with it. Of course, she would never want Drew to think she was the helpless kind who couldn’t look after herself, but already she was missing his protective presence at her side and the warmth of his hand in hers. Soon, however, she managed to battle her way out of the crowd to stand in the shelter of a doorway whilst she waited for Drew to catch up with her. Turning, she waved and smiled at him. Relieved to see that Tilly was waiting for him, Drew waved back.

Then suddenly, a shower of burning sparks fell onto the crowd, followed by a piece of smouldering timber from a building. People started panicking, pushing and elbowing others to try to escape. Trapped in her doorway by the crush of bodies, Tilly couldn’t move. Several bricks fell to the ground nearby, one of them hitting her arm, whilst Drew struggled helplessly to get to her against the surge of the crowd moving the other way.

‘Watch out, the whole building’s going to go,’ Tilly heard someone yell.

People scattered in every direction. Frightened herself now, Tilly too started to push forward, trying to escape. Her chest was pounding; the air she was trying to breath was thick with dust and heat. Her nose was stinging from the burning smell. She had no idea where to run for safety as the bricks showered down. Right next to her a man was hit on the head by one of the bricks, staggering and then falling to the ground, blood pouring from his forehead. Automatically Tilly crouched down to try to help him.

Drew had been fixing his gaze on her as he fought to get to her side. Her sudden disappearance from sight had his heart slamming into his chest, until the crowd parted and he could see the cream knitted beret she was wearing on her dark curls.

‘Drew!’ Tilly knew she was trembling with relief as Drew reached her and pulled her close. Another fall of bricks had her ducking her head into his shoulder whilst he raised his arm protectively around her.

‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here before the whole building goes,’ he urged her.

The man who had fallen was being helped to his feet by his friends. Drew was right, they needed to get away, but still Tilly hesitated, wanting to make sure the injured man was all right.

She had just pulled a couple of yards away from Drew when she heard him yelling frantically, ‘Tilly, no!’

The thunder of the fresh fall of bricks was terrifying. It held her paralysed where she was, right in their path. They were going to hit her. She was going to die, but still she couldn’t move. A terrible sense of the ice-cold inevitability of her fate gripped her. This was it. This was her time. It was no good trying to avoid it. She couldn’t escape.

She could hear Drew crying out, ‘Tilly! Tilly!’, his anguish making her heart beat faster but he was too far away to reach her.

Tilly looked towards him, all her love for him in her eyes.

Drew knew only that he had to save her. Miraculously, by some superhuman power he hadn’t known he possessed, he reached out for her, somehow finding the strength to pull her bodily out of the path of the falling debris, and away to safety. His grip on her was so hard that Tilly could feel the sharp pain of the force he had used right through her shoulder.

It wasn’t that pain, though, that was making her cry, as Drew held her tightly, whilst the bricks thudded down onto the pavement behind them. It was relief, Tilly recognised.

Drew had just saved her life.

She was trembling so much in the aftermath of her shock that she knew she was incapable of standing by herself. As he held her, she could feel his heart thudding, and hear his harsh straining for breath.

‘Oh, Drew, you saved me. You saved my life. You put your own life at risk for me,’ Tilly whispered, unable to hold back her tears.

‘My life is nothing without you in it, Tilly,’ Drew whispered back. If he’d lost her … It didn’t bear thinking about. He loved her so much. She was everything to him, this pretty little Londoner who had stolen his heart so completely.

Thankfully they clung together, both aware how close to death Tilly had been, silently sharing their own small miracle, looking at one another with all that they felt for each other in their eyes. There was no need for words. They were together, they were safe. At least for now. Held tight in Drew’s arms, Tilly felt vulnerable for the first time. Suddenly she was anxious to claim every second of life she could – to spend that time with Drew; to be with Drew. To be married to Drew, and soon, though she knew that her mother did not want that for her. Until this moment she had been relatively happy to accept her mother’s plans for her, but now that she had come face to face with the reality of loss and death, now when she was still shaking inside with the fear of what could have been lost, Tilly knew that somehow she must find a way to change her mother’s mind.

The incident, so potentially fatal for Tilly and Drew, was just another everyday wartime event in the lives of London’s citizens. A salvage team was already piling out of the truck that had pulled up close to the unstable building. Men were cordoning off the pavement and getting to work to make the building safe. The brief moments of panic and danger were over.

‘Come on,’ Drew said gruffly against Tilly’s ear. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘I still want to see St Paul’s,’ Tilly told him. ‘We said we’d meet the others there, and Mum will worry if we don’t turn up.’

‘She’d worry even more if she knew what I know,’ Drew told her grimly.

Tilly was right, though. Olive, her mother, would worry if they didn’t meet up, and then Olive wouldn’t trust him to take care of Tilly, and that was the last thing Drew wanted. He knew already that Tilly’s mother thought she was too young for a steady boyfriend, and he could understand why. It was up to him to prove Olive wrong and to show her that Tilly would be quite safe with him.

But there were things about him that Tilly still didn’t know. Things he hadn’t been able to bear to tell her in case they changed how she felt about him. He hated keeping secrets from her. He wanted her to know everything, but with every day that passed since they had declared their love for one another it got harder both to tell her and to not tell her. His guilt was an increasingly heavy burden on his conscience. He guessed exactly how Tilly’s mother would feel if she knew the truth about him. She would not like it at all.

‘Come on, then,’ he agreed, making himself focus on the present as he gave in to Tilly’s insistent tug on the sleeve of his sturdy Burberry mackintosh – a staple in the wardrobe of all serious Fleet Street newshounds. ‘But this time you stay right here at my side, and to make sure that you do …’

Drew took hold of Tilly’s hand and held it tightly in his own, earning himself a speaking look of tenderness and love.

Darling Drew. She was so lucky to have met him, Tilly thought happily. Her American was the most wonderful man, the most wonderful boyfriend … he would be the most wonderful husband. Tilly tried to squeeze down the happiness and excitement she felt at the thought of Drew as her husband … and herself as his wife. And they would be husband and wife, just as soon as she could convince her mother that she wasn’t too young to get married. Just because her mother had married young during the last war, and had then been widowed when Tilly had been a baby, that did not mean that the same thing was going to happen to her. She understood why her mother wanted to protect her, but she wasn’t a girl any more, she was a woman now. A woman who was deeply in love and desperate to spend every minute she could with the man she loved. Life was so precious. How strongly that had been brought home to her. They had so much to look forward to: their love, and the life they would share, the book that Drew planned to write about Londoners living through the war, the children they would have … She couldn’t wait for her life with him to start.

Standing waiting anxiously at the bottom of the street, with her back to St Paul’s, Olive spotted the young couple from several yards away. The sight of them openly holding hands caused her heart to sink. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Drew Coleman – she did – but Tilly was so young, too young, in Olive’s eyes, for the pain that she knew could come from loving someone in wartime if that love turned to loss. Drew might not be in uniform but in his job he was often out and in the thick of it, reporting on the air raids on London.

Initially Tilly had respected Olive’s wishes about not getting too involved with Drew, but since Christmas something had changed, and every day – or so it seemed to Olive, watching Tilly so anxiously – Tilly was making it plainer that she considered Drew and herself to be a courting couple. Olive only had to look at her now, openly holding Drew’s hand in the street, where she knew that Olive would see her, to know that.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t see that Tilly thought herself in love. It was just that she wanted to protect her from the pain that that love could bring if it was lost to her, and war brought the prospect of that kind of loss so much closer.

Now that mother and daughter had found one another in the crowd, Olive’s pretty face, so like her daughter’s, was creased with anxiety.

‘I don’t think we should have come,’ she told Tilly. ‘It’s so dangerous out here with all these buildings still burning and unsafe.’

‘We had to, Mum. We couldn’t not do,’ Tilly protested. ‘We all want to see for ourselves that St Paul’s is really still standing. We all said the same thing, even you.’

‘That was before I realised just how dangerous it was going to be,’ Olive Robbins replied.

Tilly’s ‘all’ referred to the three girls who lodged at Olive’s house in Holborn, and Olive’s friend Audrey, whose husband was the vicar at the church they attended.

‘And at least they didn’t get St Paul’s.’ Tilly looked towards the cathedral, her heart filled with a rush of pride and love. There was something so special, even mystical, about the sight of Wren’s masterpiece rising above the pall of smoke that must surely touch every Londoner’s heart. It was a wonder that the cathedral had been spared whilst so much had been destroyed and damaged around it. Fire crews had fought all night to save it, and Londoners had come out in their thousands to pay their own often silent tributes to its endurance and the bravery of their fellow citizens.

There was no need to say anything to her mother about what had happened earlier, of course, Tilly reflected. She worried so much about her as it was.

Hearing the note of determined cheerfulness in Tilly’s voice, Drew tucked her gloved hand into the pocket of his raincoat and held it firmly in his own, giving it a small private squeeze. In return Tilly looked at him with eyes luminous with emotion. Witnessing their small exchange Olive’s heart sank even further.

Drew was a good man; he would listen to maternal reason, she felt sure, but Tilly was a different matter. Olive was normally proud of her daughter’s spirited independence. She knew from her own experience of life that a woman sometimes needed to be independent, but Tilly could be very strong-willed and fearless. She had the courage that came from never having had to face the really bitter cruelties of life. Olive wanted her to keep that courage. She wanted to protect her from the pain of life’s cruelties. Marriage at eighteen in the middle of a world war would do the opposite of protecting her. Not that Tilly had said anything to her directly about marrying Drew, but Olive suspected that it was only a matter of time before she did. And when she did Olive knew that she was going to have to stand firm and refuse her permission.

Marriage … a child … widowhood – Olive knew for herself all about the pain and loneliness that brought.

Loneliness? She hadn’t been lonely in her widowhood. She had had her mother-in-law and father-in-law to live with and then later to care for. She had had Tilly to love and cherish. She had had a busy life and one that now, with the war and her WVS work, was even busier. Indeed, it was thanks to the WVS that she had made what was turning out to be such a good growing friendship with Audrey Windle, the vicar’s wife.

It was a life without the kind of love that came from having a husband, though; a man to turn to, to share things with, to laugh with, to love …

Olive could feel her face starting to burn at the dangerous direction of her private thoughts.

Mother and daughter looked at one another, Tilly’s chin lifting with determination – which to Olive looked like defiance – before she deliberately moved closer to Drew and nestled into his side.

Once, not so very long ago, it would have been her side that her daughter would have run to, Olive reflected.

Standing with Drew, Tilly surveyed the scene. Whilst the Germans hadn’t managed to destroy St Paul’s, the fires resulting from the bombing raid had damaged much of the heart of the city. Those streets with their ancient religious names – Paternoster Row and Curie Street – the solid guildhalls built by its rich merchants, its learned seats of justice, all had suffered damage.

Initially it had been the photograph in the Daily Mail of St Paul’s seeming to float above the smoke of the fires that had drawn Olive and Tilly, along with so many other Londoners, to come to see for themselves that the cathedral was indeed still standing and not just a mirage.

In the dull light of the grey day Tilly could still see the fairer tips of Drew’s mid-brown hair, a legacy of the outdoor life at American summer camps during his growing-up years, Drew had told her. They had lived such different lives; grown up in such different circumstances. She was an only child; Drew had four sisters. She had only her mother; Drew had both his parents. But the differences between them didn’t matter. What mattered was how they felt about one another. Their love was still new enough for Tilly to feel almost giddy with a mixture of joy that they had met and horror at the unimaginable awfulness of them never having met at all.

‘At least Article Row has escaped being bombed,’ Drew offered comfortingly now.

‘Yes, thank heavens,’ Tilly agreed. She didn’t know by what good fortune her own home at number 13, and in fact the whole of Article Row, had been spared the conflagration. She was just glad that they had.

Prior to the start of the war Article Row had been an immaculately neat-looking and well-cared-for row of houses that wound its way between closely interweaving streets. Chancery Lane lay to the west of the Row, Farringdon Road to the east, Fleet Street to the south and High Holborn and Holborn Viaduct to the north.

The residents of Article Row still did their best to keep it looking as it should, of course, especially Nancy Black, Tilly’s mother’s next-door neighbour, and the sharp-tongued busybody of the Row, but Hitler’s bombs had destroyed so much of the city that even those buildings that weren’t damaged had been afflicted by brick dust and greasy smuts, making everywhere look careworn and down at heel.

Article Row comprised only fifty houses, built by the grateful eighteenth-century client of a firm of lawyers in the nearby Inns of Court, whose fortune had been saved by the prompt action of a young clerk articled to those lawyers. The three-storey houses curved down one side of the Row facing the rear of the ivy-clad windowless walls of the business premises that backed onto Article Row, making it something of a quietly genteel backwater, its status much prized by those residents, such as Mrs Black, to whom such things were important.

It wouldn’t have taken much for the flames of nearby burning buildings to be driven towards Article Row, and to consume the buildings there as they had done so much else, Tilly reflected. She gave a small shiver at the thought of suffering the loss of her home. She knew how much number 13 meant to her mother. There was something special about Article Row and the small close-knit community who lived there. Tilly felt even more fond of it now, with Drew living there as well, lodging as he did with one of the neighbours, Ian Simpson. Ian’s wife and their children had evacuated to the country at the start of the war. Ian was a print setter, working for the Daily Express on nearby Fleet Street, which was how he had originally come to meet Drew.

This new bombing raid on the city was a dreadful end to a dreadful year, and by all accounts they had an even bleaker new year ahead of them as wartime hardship bit ever deeper into their lives.

It had been trying to snow slightly on and off all day, forlorn white flakes outnumbered by the soot and cinders still raining down from the sky. Now one of them landed on Tilly’s face to lie there for a second before it was washed away by the tears she barely knew she was weeping.

‘That’s right, missie, if they’d hit St Paul’s it would have taken the heart out of everyone in London, and not just the city itself,’ said an elderly man emotionally, leaning heavily on his walking, stick, medals from another war barely gleaming on his chest in the grey late afternoon light.

It was that kind of day: the kind when complete strangers spoke and turned to one another in comfort and in hope that somehow, like St Paul’s itself, they would be saved – delivered from the awfulness of war.

A heavy pall of smoke and the darkening sky combined to create the illusion that even those buildings still standing were as fragile as cardboard, shifting on every shocked breath of the onlookers. Watchers and workers alike were pulling scarves up round their noses and mouths to block out the raw throat-burning smell and taste of smoke-filled air.

‘I shall never forget this as long as I live,’ Tilly told Drew. ‘And not just the way everything looks, but the awful, acrid, destructive smell too. I’ll remember it for ever. First Coventry’s cathedral and now this. Do you think Hitler is deliberately targeting our cathedrals?’

‘I think he’s getting desperate enough to know that the only way he’s going to win this war is to destroy the spirit of the British people,’ Drew told her, his arm tightening round her when she moved closer to him.

Tilly reached up to touch the chain hidden beneath her plum-coloured polo-necked sweater, from which hung the ring Dew had secretly given her on Christmas Eve – Drew’s own graduation ring from his American university. She might only be eighteen, Tilly thought rebelliously as she felt the comforting weight of Drew’s ring against her skin, but the war meant that people her age were growing up fast. Surveying the full horror of the aftermath of the air raid, Tilly’s heart ached for those whose lives would be changed for ever. The very thought of anything happening to her Drew made her heart pound with anxiety.

In an attempt to distract herself she asked him, ‘Will you write about this in one of your newspaper articles?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘And about how brave you all are.’

‘You’re brave too, because you’re here with us when you don’t need to be, when you could be safe in America,’ Tilly reminded him.

‘No,’ Drew said softly, shaking his head. ‘There is only one place I can be, Tilly – only one place I want to be – and that is here with you.’

‘Oh, Drew.’

For a few precious seconds the intensity of their love wrapped a protective coat around them that excluded everyone and everything else. Within that protection Tilly gave Drew a look of burningly passionate love that made his heart turn over – with male desire for her, yes, but also with a need to protect her from that desire.

To distract herself from her anxiety over Tilly, Olive turned towards her friend Audrey Windle, who had stood back when Tilly and Drew had first appeared. She had seen the look on Olive’s face and guessed she was anxious about her young daughter and the handsome American reporter.

Now as they stood side by side in their WVS uniforms, Olive asked Audrey with genuine concern, ‘Have you had any news from your nephew?’

‘Yes, thank heavens,’ the vicar’s wife responded. ‘His plane was shot down over the Channel, as you know, Olive, but we heard only this morning that, miraculously, a naval vessel saw his parachute and was able to rescue him. He’s got a broken leg, mind, so he’ll be out of action for a while.’

She paused and then offered, ‘Tilly’s young man seems nice. I know the children at the Christmas party were all thrilled with the presents he gave them when he played Father Christmas.’

‘He is nice,’ Olive felt obliged to confirm truthfully. ‘And generous. It was lovely of him to think of doing that for the children.’ Her maternal anxiety couldn’t be abated, however, and before she could stop herself she was saying anxiously, ‘Tilly is so young, though, and there’s a war on. Even if there wasn’t, he’s American; ultimately he will go back there. It’s his home, after all.’

Audrey Windle gave Olive a sympathetic look. Then, in an effort to distract her, she gestured towards a WVS mobile canteen, which was parked close by and manned by three very busy WVS workers.

‘Do you think we should offer to give them a hand? They look very busy.’

‘Yes. I was just going to ask you the same thing.’ Olive knew hard work was always a good antidote to worry. She’d still be able to keep an eye on Tilly from the mobile canteen, and it went against the grain with Olive not to offer to help fellow members of the Women’s Voluntary Service if she thought she could be useful.

‘Want some help? I should say we do,’ the woman behind the counter told Olive and Audrey fervently. ‘It’s the firemen I feel the most sorry for. Parched, they are, after the fires they’ve had to put out.’

Olive nodded, quickly getting to work alongside Audrey. It was a small enough thing to do, set against what the fire and rescue services were doing – the providing of cups of hot tea – but everyone who worked in the WVS knew how much that homely brew meant to both the bombed-out and frightened, and those who were desperately trying to protect and save them.

‘Ta.’ One of the firemen took the cup of tea Olive had just poured for him, his helmet pushed back to reveal his soot-smeared face.

After draining the tea almost in one gulp he told her grimly, ‘He’s good at planning, Hitler is, you’ve got to give him that. Coming in at night when the Thames’s tide was at low ebb and then knocking out one of the main pumping stations first so that there wouldn’t be enough water pressure for our hoses. Lost a hell of a lot of buildings we could have saved, that did, never mind the poor souls that was in them that’s now under them. We’ve had to send one of our lads home. Found a couple of kids in one of the buildings – both of them gonners – same age as his own kids. He wouldn’t have it that we couldn’t do anything for them. Had to be dragged off in the end …’

‘Those men are saints,’ Audrey breathed fervently to Olive once the firemen had gone.

‘Most of them are, but sadly there are some bad apples. Sergeant Dawson told me that they’ve had to investigate cases of fire and rescue workers – and men in the Home Guard – helping themselves to things from damaged buildings.’

‘Yes, I’d heard that as well,’ the vicar’s wife said sadly. Then, changing the subject: ‘It’s such good news, though, isn’t it, about Sergeant and Mrs Dawson giving that young boy Barney a home?’

‘Yes it is,’ Olive agreed warmly.

Barney was a bit of a tearaway, and worse – at least according to Olive’s complaining neighbour, Nancy. After the death of his mother and grandmother Barney had been roaming the streets and constantly escaping from official care because he was afraid that when his father got leave from the army, he wouldn’t be able to find him. His parents had been separated, and Olive had been able to tell from the start that Sergeant Dawson, who lived at number 1 Article Row, had a bit of a soft spot for the boy.

When Barney had run away from the second children’s home that had taken him in and had been found begging in the streets with a group of older boys, at Sergeant Dawson’s suggestion and with the agreement of the local authorities it had been arranged that Barney would move in with the Dawsons until such time as Barney’s father was able to take charge of his son once again.

‘I just hope that Mrs Dawson will be able to cope,’ Audrey continued with some anxiety. ‘I wouldn’t say that to anyone else, Olive, and especially not Nancy, knowing how unkind she can be.’

‘You needn’t worry that I’ll say anything to anyone else,’ Olive assured her, ‘but it’s no secret to those who lived in Article Row when the Dawsons’ son was alive that it hit Mrs Dawson particularly hard when they lost him.’

‘The vicar and I came here after their little boy’s death, but Mrs Dawson was so much of a recluse I remember that I didn’t even realise that Sergeant Dawson was married at first.’

‘It’s going on for ten years now since they lost him. So sad … He was always very poorly, and Mrs Dawson devoted every minute to him. But I’m sure that Sergeant Dawson wouldn’t have offered Barney a home if he felt it would upset his wife in any way.’

‘You’re right,’ Audrey agreed. ‘I hope it works out well for them all. Sergeant Dawson is such a good sort – look at the way he taught you and Anne to drive so that we could take up Mr Lord’s offer of his son’s van for WVS use.’

Olive nodded vaguely. She was listening to Audrey but her attention was really on Tilly and the rest of ‘her girls,’ as she had come to think of her lodgers.

Sally, in her nurse’s cape, no doubt thinking of her young man, George, a doctor working under the plastic surgeon Mr Archibald MacIndoe in a hospital in East Grinstead, where they did their best to repair those men who had been burned in the course of duty. Agnes, the orphan who had come to lodge at number 13, now newly engaged to Ted Jackson, who, like her, worked on the London Underground; she was still at the stage of gazing dreamily at her pretty little engagement ring. And then of course Dulcie, from Stepney in the East End, with her brash bold cockney ways and chippy exterior, which, as Olive knew, concealed an inner vulnerability. They had all three come to be extra daughters to her over the months they had lodged with her. It seemed odd to think now that she had viewed the thought of taking in lodgers as an unwelcome necessity. Now she wouldn’t have wanted to be without her girls for anything, and the house would seem empty without them.

Another straggling line of firemen was snaking across the water hoses and dangerous mounds of rubble that had once been buildings, towards the WVS mobile canteen, their needs commanding her attention.

‘Just look at all this mess,’ Dulcie complained, picking her way with distaste over the grimy rubble, so that she could join Sally as she went to meet Tilly and Drew.

As always Dulcie was dressed up to the nines, looking more as though she was going out on a date than coming to make a silent tribute to the strength of St Paul’s and the city, Sally thought ruefully. Dulcie was a game soul, and loyal to those who mattered to her, though you might not think that from looking at her.

‘You’re better watch that ankle of yours in those shoes on all this rubble,’ Sally warned, glancing down at the ankle Dulcie had broken at the beginning of the Blitz in September. ‘If I were you I’d wear a pair of shoes with lower heels than those, Dulcie.’

‘Well, you aren’t me, are you?’ Dulcie retorted in typical fashion. ‘You’d never catch me wearing them ugly black things you’ve got to wear,’ she added disparagingly, looking down at Sally’s sturdy shoes.

‘Try telling me that when you’ve been walking miles up and down hospital corridors and wards,’ Sally responded. She worked as a theatre sister at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

‘And besides,’ Dulcie continued, ‘for all I knew Wilder could have turned up with Drew and the last thing I want is for him to see me not looking my best. I just hope this doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to go to the Hammersmith Palais’s New Year’s Eve dance,’ she added, as she and Sally met up with Tilly and Drew. Not even her scowl or her sharp tone of voice could hide the fact that Dulcie was a stunningly beautiful young woman, with her blond curls and her perfect English rose complexion. She had the figure to go with her face as well, and Tilly wasn’t surprised that the young American pilot Drew had introduced to Dulcie should be so keen on her.

‘I’m sure that nothing will prevent Wilder from getting up to London to take you to the dance, Dulcie,’ Drew assured her.

‘It’s all very well you saying that, but there’s been talk of leave being cancelled, and there not being any trains running.’

‘If that’s the case then he will just have to fly here in a fighter plane,’ Drew teased Dulcie, who pulled a face at him.

Wilder, the young American she was dating, was a member of the American Eagles, the fighter pilot unit that was attached to the RAF. These brave young American pilots, ignoring the fact that their country had not joined the war and was insisting on remaining neutral, had nevertheless come over to Britain and offered their services to the RAF. Their ‘uniform’, such as it was, consisted of well-worn ‘pants’ to fly by the seat of, a swagger, fiercely chewed gum, and well-worn heavy-duty flying jackets. Needless to say they attracted girls like honey attracted bees.

‘I know one thing that does mean,’ Dulcie grumbled, ‘and that’s that they’ll be making even more fuss at Selfridges about having us up on the roof doing fire-watching duties because of this lot, especially Miss Cotton, since she’s the one always going on about it.’

Every business in the city was supposed to provide fire-watchers from their staff to make sure that any falling incendiaries were extinguished before the flames could take hold. So far Dulcie, who worked in the cosmetics department of the luxury store on Oxford Street, had managed to wriggle out of doing any fire-watching herself by claiming that her broken ankle was still too weak for her to risk clambering about on the roof. Though it was not, of course, too weak for her to go dancing on it. Of course not!

‘We ought to be getting back now that the light’s starting to go,’ Olive told Audrey Windle with an anxious look towards the girls. ‘I’d hate for us to be caught out in the open if Hitler decides to come back again tonight.’

‘You’re right,’ her friend agreed. ‘We’ve got WVS tonight and I thought we’d go through those bags of second-hand clothes Sergeant Dawson brought in to the church hall on Saturday. I feel guilty about taking them. They must belong to someone … even if …’

Even if their owner was no longer alive to wear them, Olive knew that Audrey meant. They had an arrangement with a local laundry that had offered to launder the clothes they brought in for a very modest amount paid for out of the funds they raised, as and when they could, which at least meant they handed out clean and fresh clothes to those in need.

It was growing darker by the minute, only thankfully small fires now illuminating the nightmare scene of destruction surrounding them as Olive gathered together her small brood.

‘It’s all right if Drew comes back with us for supper, isn’t it, Mum?’ Tilly asked, tucking her arm through Olive’s.

‘Yes, of course,’ Olive agreed, earning her arm a small squeeze before Tilly dropped back, no doubt finding a much more romantic place to tuck her arm with Drew, Olive guessed. She might be thirty-seven but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t remember what it was like to be young and in love, which was why she was so concerned for her daughter. She knew the intoxication that came with true love. Sometimes even now she’d wake up in the early hours, vulnerable with sleep, aching inside for the warmth of loving male arms to turn to, and a loving husband to love her back.

They all had their torches but it made sense for them to use only one of them, to save their batteries. Olive and Audrey led the way, coming to an abrupt halt when they nearly walked into a wooden barrier blocking off a side road, a notice pinned to it warning, ‘No Access – Unexploded Bomb’. Olive played her torch carefully to either side. On one building, its windows bombed out, the holes gaping blackly like rotting teeth in a dusty red-brick mouth, they all saw someone had chalked, ‘London can take it.’ Fiercely Olive blinked away her emotion.

Down the next street they passed a group of men still searching quietly in the filthy soot and dust-coated rubble of what had once been a row of buildings but that was now a line of jagged roofless outlines against the darkening sky.

Olive started to walk more quickly, hissing to the girls to ‘keep up’, not wanting to raise her voice in case the sound disturbed the men listening so carefully at those still mounds of rubble, just in case there might be someone inside them still alive.

‘Ugh. Look, I’ve got soot and grease on my gloves,’ Dulcie complained once they were all standing together in the safety and warmth of number 13’s hallway. Holding up her hands, she displayed for everyone else’s inspection the pretty gloves that had been a Christmas present from Olive, who had knitted a pair for each of the girls from wool she had unravelled from old jumpers and the like, handed over to the WVS for reuse. The money she’d paid for the items and the work she had to do, not just in the knitting but also in unpicking and then washing the wool in the first place, was rewarded every time she saw her girls go out with their hands warmly wrapped in their gloves.

‘Give them to me. It will wash out with a bit of Dreft,’ she assured Dulcie, in the general bustle of coats, scarves and hats being removed and hung on the hall coat stand, prior to everyone hurrying into the warmth of the cosy family kitchen at the back of the house.

Olive’s kitchen, with its duck-egg-blue and cream colour scheme, gave her a thrill of pride every time she walked into it. Her late father-in-law had bought the kitchen units for her, having had them copied by someone he knew after Olive had seen and fallen in love with them at a furniture exhibition the year before he had died.

Number 13 had been Olive’s in-laws’ home and she had inherited it from them. It had been her and Tilly’s home all Tilly’s life, and Olive loved it dearly.

Tonight, with thoughts of the destruction they had all just seen, she was more conscious than ever of how precious her home was to her. They had been lucky so far that no bombs had fallen near Article Row. The previous night’s air raid was the closest the falling bombs had come so far. Now, looking round, Olive felt a pang of something approaching guilt because her home was standing when so many weren’t; that those she loved and cared about were safe when so many weren’t, she acknowledged.

It was Sally, with her practical nurse’s manner, who was putting the kettle on and lighting the gas, whilst Tilly got out the mugs, handing them to Drew, the two of them exchanging tender smiles as their fingers touched.

‘Come on, you two lovebirds,’ Dulcie, whose sharp eyes never missed a thing, teased them. ‘I’m gasping for a brew after being out in all that dust and smoke. I dare say there’s all sorts in them cinders we were breathing in,’ she added darkly.

‘What do you mean?’ Agnes squeaked. When Dulcie gave her a meaningful look she demanded, turning slightly green, ‘You mean bodies and things?’

‘Well, what do you think happens when people get burned to death? There’s bound to be summat left,’ Dulcie insisted.

‘That’s enough of that kind of talk, thank you, Dulcie,’ Olive warned her lodger, then sent Agnes to get the milk from the larder.

Hurrying back into the warmth, Agnes reflected on how lucky she was. Abandoned as a baby outside a local orphanage, she’d been terrified at seventeen when the matron had told her that she’d found her a job on the underground and a room to rent. She’d dreaded having to leave the only home she’d ever known. But now number 13 was her home, and the other girls her best friends, especially Tilly, whose bedroom she shared. And it wasn’t just the other girls who’d changed her life. She’d met Ted, a young underground train driver, at work, and she loved him with all her heart, even if the two of them couldn’t even think of getting married for years. Ted had a widowed mother and two young sisters to support, so they wouldn’t be able to marry until Ted’s sisters were grown up and settled. Ted was, after all, the sole breadwinner in their small household. Agnes understood and respected that. In fact, she admired her Ted more than ever for wanting to do his duty by his family.

But …

But Ted’s mother did not want her to marry Ted. Agnes was sure of it, even though Ted told her that she was being silly.

Agnes gave a small sad sigh. She had longed all her life to be part of a proper family, but Olive, her landlady, showed her far more warmth and kindness than Ted’s mother. The reason for that was that Agnes had been left on the orphanage doorstep with nothing to indicate anything about her parentage, or who or what her family had been. Ted had explained to her that his mother’s own mother had grown up in poverty with the threat of the poorhouse always hanging over her. Because of that, respectability – the kind of respectability that came not just from being able to pay one’s way in life but, just as important, from knowing who one’s antecedents were – was very important to Ted’s mother. She had strong views about bad blood being passed on to her grandchildren. These were views that Ted did not share. Agnes knew that Ted loved her and sometimes she thought that she was being very greedy indeed to want Ted’s mother to love her as well, but Mrs Jackson’s animosity was a hurt she could not put aside.

The tea brewed, they all settled down around the table, the lack of chairs for everyone allowing Tilly to perch on Drew’s knee, determinedly ignoring the look Olive was giving her as she did so.

‘Do you think it’s true what that fireman told us, about the Germans deliberately planning things so that the firebombs would land at the lowest point of the tide, so that the fire engines couldn’t get a proper water supply?’ Tilly asked Drew.

‘I guess so. Wouldn’t you say so, Ted?’

‘It certainly looks like it,’ Ted agreed. ‘And it worked as well.’

‘It definitely has,’ Sally joined in grimly. She’d been on duty when they’d started bringing in the first of the casualties. Two firemen had died in one of the ambulances before they’d even got them to Barts. She’d thought briefly of George, her young man, whilst they’d worked as swiftly as they could in the hospital’s operating theatre, moved down in the basement for the duration – not because she knew he’d be concerned about her but because they knew all about treating badly burned patients at East Grinstead. They dealt with the young airmen who had survived their burning planes, as well as other disfigured patients.

It wasn’t just burns the patients being brought into Barts had suffered, though. Some had lost limbs, some had been badly crushed, and there’d been dreadful tales of the fate met by some of the dead: flesh and fabric melted together, and blown off bodies by the force of the bombs, terrible, terrible things that you just did not want to think about but that you couldn’t help but think about later, trying to sleep.

Sally had come to London originally because she had needed desperately to escape from her home in Liverpool. As a young nurse in training in Liverpool she had befriended another young nurse, Morag. Following the deaths of their parents in a boating accident Morag and her older brother, Callum, had moved to Liverpool when Callum had secured a job as a teacher in the city. Right from the very start Sally had been attracted to tall, dark-haired and good-looking Callum. However, it had been Callum’s good nature, his concern for his sister, his care for his pupils and his gratitude to her own parents for the friendship they had extended towards the siblings that had turned Sally’s semi-infatuation into something much stronger.

When Callum had hinted that he had equally strong feelings for her and that they had a future together, Sally felt she was the happiest girl in the whole world. But then her mother had become fatally ill with cancer. Sally had been devastated. Morag had insisted on helping Sally to nurse her mother, sharing the duty of care with her, just, so Sally had naïvely thought, as though she too were a daughter of the family. Sally had also believed that Morag’s care for her father had simply been the care of a loving daughter. But then her eyes had been brutally opened when, after her mother’s death, she had found Morag and her father in an embrace that had shown her quite clearly the true nature of their relationship.

Worse was to follow. Sally’s father and Morag were to marry, and Callum, far from condemning his sister, had taken Morag’s side, accusing Sally of being unfair to both her father and his sister.

Sally had left Liverpool in the grip of almost unbearable anger and misery. Work, the kindness of Olive, her landlady, the friendship of Tilly and her fellow lodgers, and most of all the love she now shared with another and far more worthy young man, had done a great deal to make her feel once more that life was worth living. But there was still a hard kernel of anger and pain inside her because of what Morag had done. The death of her mother, followed within months by her father’s remarriage to the girl Sally had thought of as her best friend had been something she could never accept.

Sally looked at the mince pie she had just put on her plate and pushed it away. Now her father and Morag had a baby, Callum had told her, when he had found out where she was and come here, to number 13, in an attempt to persuade her to ‘make up’ with his sister. Sally, of course, had refused. How little he had known her, and of her love for her mother, to dare to ask that of her. How unworthy he had been of her mother’s kindness, and the love she herself had once believed she felt for him. Not that any of them cared about what she felt. Not one little bit. They had proved that …

Sally’s throat closed up. She could well imagine the happy Christmas they would all have had. Her father, putting up for his new daughter the same Christmas lights he had once put up for her. No doubt Callum would be there too, if he was on leave from the navy. Traitors all of them – yes, even her father – to her and, even worse, to the kindness and love her mother had shown them. They didn’t deserve a single second of her thoughts. She had a new life now. A happy life, with a job she loved, working as a theatre nurse at Barts Hospital, and a new love in George Laidlaw, the young New Zealander from Christchurch who had come to London to train as a doctor and who was now working in Sussex.

She shouldn’t – mustn’t – think about the past any more. She had locked the door on it and left it behind. George knew nothing about her past. It hadn’t been necessary for her to tell him when they had first met, and by the time she had realised that George had assumed that both her parents were dead, Sally had felt that there was no point in resurrecting the past and all the pain that it contained. She hadn’t fallen in love with George overnight. Their love had grown at a quieter deeper pace. Dear George. He loved her so much. She was safe with him. He would always put her first. And she loved him too. The past was best left where it was – in Liverpool.

Thinking of George reminded Sally that she had promised to go down to the hospital in the new year once she had some decent leave that would allow the two of them to have a few days together. Her appetite returning, Sally picked up the mince pie she had pushed away earlier and tucked in to it, unaware that Olive had noted her distress and was relieved now to see that it had passed.

Life brought enough problems and upset for young hearts, especially young female hearts, to worry about, without their having to carry the added burden of the war and Hitler’s bombs, she thought protectively.

Still seated on Drew’s knee, even though she could tell from the looks her mother was sending her that Olive wasn’t entirely happy about their public intimacy, Tilly gave him a tender, loving look. She was in no mood to comply with her mother’s unspoken wishes. Her close brush with death hadn’t just left her feeling more shaken and vulnerable than she wanted to admit, she had been brought face to face with the possibility of her own death. In those few seconds she had grown from a girl to a woman. And now as that woman she was filled with a fierce hunger to live every single moment of her life to its fullest capacity with the man she loved. Drew had saved her. Drew had kept her safe and made her feel safe. Tonight, instead of saying good night to him she wanted to be with him. Tonight she wanted to lie in his arms and be close to him, to share with him everything that there was to share.

The girl she had been such a very short time ago would instinctively have retreated from that kind of intimacy, shying away from it, and a little afraid of it. The woman her near miss with death had created had no such fears. Instead she wanted to embrace that intimacy, whilst they both still could.

‘Quick, switch the wireless on, someone, otherwise we’re going to miss the six o’clock news,’ Olive instructed, as she filled the kettle for a fresh pot of tea. They’d eaten at five o’clock after their return from St Paul’s and, like everyone in the land, Olive wouldn’t have wanted to miss the regular early evening news bulletin from the BBC, even if that meant she’d be all in a rush afterwards to get washed and changed for her WVS meeting.

It was Dulcie who responded to her request. Dulcie had proved surprisingly adept at tuning in the wireless, even though she complained that if she wasn’t careful the mesh on the front, close to the tuning dial, scratched her nail polish.

Olive loved her wireless. She often listened to it when she was alone in the kitchen after the girls had gone to work, humming along to popular songs as she did her housework, listening carefully when Elsie and Doris Waters were in charge of the popular Kitchen Front programme with its tips for housewives anxious to make their rations stretch as far as they could. Both Olive and Audrey Windle agreed that they hated missing Mr J.B. Priestley’s Postscript broadcasts. Nancy, being Nancy, said that listening to music made housewives lazy and that she wouldn’t have a wireless in her house at all if it hadn’t been for her husband insisting.

The kettle was boiling. Tilly and Agnes had got the teacups.

‘You sit down here, Mrs Robbins, then you can hear the news properly. Tilly and I will sort out the tea,’ offered Drew.

He really was everything that any mother could want in a prospective son-in-law – should she be wanting to see her daughter married – but the problem was that Olive did not want to see Tilly married, not for a long time yet.

Right now, though, Olive wanted to concentrate on listening to the news.

Accompanied by various ‘shushings’ and, ‘It was you wot spoke, not me,’ from the girls, the newsreader, Alvar Lidell tonight, began his broadcast in a very hushed tone as he reassured the country that, despite Hitler’s attempts to destroy the spirit of Londoners, the city was standing firm, and with it St Paul’s. Olive suspected that this wasn’t the only home in which a small cheer went up at this announcement. There was also an announcement confirming the news that a full corps of Canadians would be stationed in Britain.

‘So many people from the Commonwealth coming to help – Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, and Canadians – it’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ Olive murmured, ‘especially when many of them have never even been to this country before.’

‘What’s not wonderful is the way in which America is holding back,’ said Drew grimly.

‘That’s not your fault,’ Tilly assured him loyally. ‘You’ve been sending articles back to Chicago, that tell what it is really like here, Drew.’

There was also a brief mention of the Greeks’ offensive against the Italians in Albania, plus an even more carefully worded announcement about the ongoing situation in the Middle East, before the news bulletin came to an end.

War! No wonder they all crowded round the wireless to listen to the news. Those dry, dusty facts translated for so many of them into events affecting the lives of loved ones both at home and abroad, Olive thought sombrely as she went upstairs to wash and change into her smart WVS uniform ahead of her meeting.

Two

‘Who on earth can that be knocking on the front door at this time of night?’ Olive complained, as she was hanging up her coat in the hallway. She had only just got in from her WVS meeting and was looking forward to what she hoped would be an uninterrupted night’s sleep in her own bed without any air-raid sirens going off. She’d made the air-raid shelter, at the bottom of the garden, as comfortable as possible but there was nowhere like your own bed, even though Olive made sure that the shelter beds had immaculately washed and ironed linen and cosy blankets.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll go,’ she called into the kitchen where the girls were making cocoa and toast, the smell of this homely but appetising fare making her empty stomach rumble.

Automatically she switched off the hall light as she reached the front door to make sure that the house didn’t contravene the blackout regulations.

The sight of a man in army uniform standing on the doorstep, his face shadowed by his cap, had her asking uncertainly who he was, recognition only dawning when the visitor announced cheerfully, ‘It’s me, Rick, Dulcie’s brother, Mrs Robbins. I’ve come to see Dulcie.’

‘Rick!’ Dulcie exclaimed excitedly from the dark hallway, obviously having recognised her elder brother’s voice, rushing past Olive to throw herself into his arms. ‘I know you said you’d got leave and you’d come and see me, but I thought that you wouldn’t be able to get here, with London being out of bounds to servicemen on leave because of the bombing.’

‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ her brother told her, tapping the side of his nose in a knowing way. ‘I’d have been up in London before now, but Mum was a bit pulled down so I stayed on there longer than I’d planned.’

‘Dulcie, let Rick get inside so that we can shut the door and put the light on,’ Olive protested.

It was Rick himself who took charge in a nicely masculine way, smiling at her and then bundling his sister inside before calmly closing the door, at the same time managing politely to remove his cap.

The conversation in the hall could be heard through the open kitchen door, and Tilly felt her stomach muscles tense. She’d had a huge crush on Rick when she’d first met him. He’d made it clear, though, that he wasn’t interested in her, and he’d hurt her by doing so.

But things were different now. She’d been a girl then; she was a woman now, and more importantly, since then she’d met and fallen in love with Drew. But she’d never said anything to Drew about Rick or her silly crush on him.

Drew. She pressed closer into the curve of his arm, whilst the five of them, Drew and herself, and Agnes and Ted and Sally, looked towards the hall door.

Once he was in the kitchen and the introductions had been made Rick allowed himself a second look at Tilly. She’d been a pretty girl and now she was an even prettier young woman, and one who’d got herself a steady bloke, by the look of things. Pity that; he’d been looking forward to seeing her and dancing with her on New Year’s Eve. In fact, he recognised, he’d thought rather a lot about Tilly recently, imagining and anticipating that pretty giveaway blush of hers when she saw him. Only she wasn’t blushing and she wasn’t interested in him at all. Rick was an easygoing good-natured young man with a philosophical outlook on life. There were plenty of other pretty girls. But Tilly had been that little bit special, even if his sister had warned him off her, telling him that she didn’t want him flirting with the daughter of her landlady, who was a very protective mother.

Once again Sally went to fill the kettle. Now it was Dulcie’s turn to perch on a male knee as she sat close to her brother.

‘Desert was it, mate?’ Ted asked with a nod in the direction of Rick’s well-tanned face.

‘North Africa,’ Rick confirmed, adopting the same brisk economical way of speaking.

‘Sidi Barrani?’ Drew guessed, removing his cigarettes from his pocket to offer them around.

Rick nodded as he lit one and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs, the kitchen light illuminating the angles of his battle-hardened desert-tanned profile before he blew it out again.

‘Which reminds me,’ he told Dulcie, ‘I met up with a friend of yours in the desert – that Italian guy from Liverpool. Good chap. It can’t have been easy for him, seeing as it was the Italians we were fighting, but he never hesitated for a minute. He’s on leave as well. He’s gone home to see his parents in Liverpool.’

Dulcie tossed her head. It was a pity that Wilder hadn’t been here to listen to Rick’s comment. She’d have to get her brother to repeat it in front of him. The good-looking Italian she’d flirted with at the Hammersmith Palais in an attempt to make some of the other Selfridges girls jealous didn’t mean anything to her, but it wouldn’t have done Wilder any harm to hear that another attractive man was keen on her.

Olive, who had been watching Tilly closely, knowing how she had once felt about Rick, wasn’t as relieved as she once would have been to see how uninterested in him Tilly was. Olive wasn’t at all happy about the way Tilly had been behaving tonight. She had sensed a new, almost reckless determination in her strong-willed daughter, and she was relieved that Tilly lived at home under her own watchful maternal eye.

‘How are your parents, Rick?’ Olive asked politely ‘Have they settled down all right in Kent?’

After the death of Dulcie’s younger sister, Edith, Dulcie and Rick’s parents had moved to Kent to get away from the bombs.

‘I suppose Mum is still going on about Edith, is she?’ Dulcie asked before Rick could answer Olive. ‘She always was Mum’s favourite. I expect she thinks she’s up there in heaven caterwauling along with the angels now.’

‘Dulcie,’ Olive protested, but Dulcie simply tossed her head. ‘Well, it’s true. She was Mum’s favourite and that is what she will think.’

Everyone at number 13 knew about the rivalry that had existed between Dulcie and Edith when they had both been living at home before the war. Edith had been their mother’s favourite and favoured child, a fact about which Dulcie had vigorously complained for as long as they had all known her. Initially Olive had believed that Dulcie must be exaggerating. It seemed impossible to her, as the parent of a much-loved only child, that any mother could favour one child to the extent that Dulcie had claimed. However, after Dulcie had damaged her ankle during an air raid, Olive had visited Dulcie’s mother to alert her to the fact that Dulcie was in hospital. She had discovered then that Dulcie’s mother did indeed favour her younger daughter above her elder, and the compassion that Olive now felt for Dulcie, despite her often brash manner, dated from that visit. Not, of course, that she would ever hurt Dulcie’s keen pride by letting her know that. Hence her chiding comment.

Dulcie ignored Olive’s gentle rebuke. She wouldn’t want anyone else to know it for the world, but deep down inside her there was still a small, scratchy, sore place that hurt every time she thought about the way her mother had favoured – and loved – Edith more than she had done her.

Edith had been their mother’s pride and joy right from the minute she had been born, and that pride and joy had only grown once Edith had developed a singing voice that, according to the agent who’d taken her under his wing, would give her a career that would rival that of Vera Lynn.

Their mother had been devastated when Edith hadn’t returned home from a singing engagement when the Blitz had been at its worst. Her body, like so many others, had never been recovered, and they had been told by local officials that they must assume that Edith had been killed. The horribleness of there being no body and everything that implied – there were the most awful stories about absolutely nothing being left of people apart from what looked like a patch of sticky toffee on the ground – meant that their mother had been unable to bear to continue to live in London. Edith had been everything to her, whilst she …

Seeing his sister’s expression and guessing what she was thinking, Rick swiftly changed the subject.

‘John’s home on leave as well,’ referring to the son of the builder for whom their father worked. ‘I left him down in Kent with his mum and dad. He said to give you his best.’

Making a speedy recovery, Dulcie preened herself. John had always been sweet on her, right from their shared schooldays.

‘Dad’s settled in Kent really well. John’s dad and uncle have got a nice little business going down there and Dad reckons they did the right thing moving out of London. You should go down and see them if you get the chance.’

‘What, and have Mum going on about how much better than me Edith was?’ Dulcie scoffed. ‘No, thanks. You are coming to the New Year’s Eve dance, aren’t you?’ she demanded.

‘Of course I am. There’s no way I’m going to miss out on the chance to dance with all those pretty girls,’ Rick laughed.

‘Deserve a medal, you lot do, for showing them what’s what in the desert,’ Ted chipped in, giving Rick an approving look. ‘Read about it in the papers, I did,’ he continued in his quiet way.

‘We had the RAF to give us a hand,’ Rick told him. ‘Mind you, for once I think I’d rather have been up in the air than down on the ground. Gets everywhere, that sand does, and I mean everywhere,’ he emphasised feelingly, causing the other two young men to respond with broad man-to-man grins whilst the girls affected not to understand.

Then, just as Olive was beginning to feel concerned that the conversation might be venturing in a direction best conducted in male-only company, Rick said, ‘I saw a bit of what the German bombs have done to London on my way from the station, and if there’s anyone deserves a medal from anyone then it’s them what have had to cope with being blitzed. Compared with what I’ve seen, marching through sand and firing off a few rounds at the enemy is child’s play.’

Rick was really a very pleasant young man, and a very thoughtful one, Olive admitted, when he tipped Dulcie firmly off his knee and announced, ‘You’ll all be wanting to get some sleep. Is it still all right for me to kip down at Ian Simpson’s, do you know, Mrs Robbins?’

‘It sure is,’ Drew answered him for Olive, explaining, ‘I lodge there and Ian told me that you were welcome to stay.’

Cocoa mugs were quickly drained, everyone standing up, the girls going to help the young men retrieve their coats and hats, Tilly pulling a small private face to Drew as she whispered, ‘It’s a pity Rick had to arrive now and not during the daytime tomorrow.’

Drew knew what she meant. Rick’s arrival and the fact that he too was staying at Ian Simpson’s meant that Drew and Tilly wouldn’t be able to say a long lingering good night in the discreet darkness of the blacked-out street.

‘We’ve got tomorrow night,’ he reminded her, ‘and since it’s New Year’s Eve I bet there’ll be plenty of slow numbers being played at the Hammersmith Palais.’

Tilly nodded, her heart thumping in excited anticipation of the dance and the chance for her and Drew to be close.

Stifling a yawn, Sally helped Olive clear away the empty mugs. She’d offered to work New Year’s Eve since she couldn’t be with George, who was on duty. It was disappointing, of course, not to be able to welcome in the New Year with him but there’d be other dances and hopefully other New Years. She gave a small shiver despite the warmth of the kitchen. It didn’t do to risk tempting fate by looking too far ahead or making too many plans during wartime.

It was funny the changes the last months of the year had brought to them all, Tilly thought a little later, lying snugly in her bed whilst Agnes slept peacefully in the bed next to hers. Last New Year’s Eve they had all been heart- and fancy-free, except for Agnes, and they had tended to stick together when they went out dancing. Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve, though, it would only be her and Dulcie going out together with their partners. It was a pity – Tilly had enjoyed it when they all went out together. It had been fun. But that was what happened when you met someone special, she acknowledged. You wanted to be with them every minute you could. She felt sorry for Sally, who couldn’t see George. New Year’s Eve, even more than Christmas, was a time when people in love wanted to be together, to make all those sweet special promises to one another.

Falling in love might have changed the amount of time they spent together but it hadn’t and couldn’t change the closeness of their friendship. The four of them were still close friends, of course, and they always would be. Tilly knew that they’d all drop everything like a shot if one of the others needed them.

As she had done every single night since he’d first put it round her neck, Tilly reached for Drew’s ring, holding it tight as she whispered a prayer for him, to join all the other prayers she said every night for those she loved, and for their country.

Three

‘You look lovely, beautiful, and I’m the luckiest guy in the world.’

Tilly’s face flushed a pretty pink as she listened to Drew’s obviously heartfelt compliment. He’d been waiting for her when she’d come downstairs in the plum-coloured silk velvet dress her mother had had made for her in the early months of the war. With its nipped-in waist and bias-cut full skirt it emphasised Tilly’s slender figure, the colour of the rich velvet complimenting the dark hair and pale Celtic skin she’d inherited from her mother. Her dancing shoes might be well-worn now, but thanks to Drew she was wearing a pair of brand-new silk stockings – given to her not directly by Drew himself, but passed tactfully to her mother to give her, along with a pair for each of the other girls, to be wrapped up as extra Christmas presents. She was wearing another of Drew’s Christmas gifts to her, too: a gorgeous shimmering silver-grey silk shawl, which she’d draped round her shoulders, to wear underneath her best coat with its velvet collar and cuffs.

At Drew’s own appearance Tilly’s breath caught in her throat. He looked so smart in his dark lounge suit and crisp white shirt worn with the dark maroon tie with the tiny gold fleck that she’d given him for Christmas. The tie had been a lucky find, having been handed over to her mother’s WVS group along with other men’s clothes. It had caught Tilly’s eye as they sorted through the clothes and its Gieves & Hawkes label had had Dulcie announcing knowledgeably that it must have been very expensive when new. Tilly had been honest with Drew, explaining to him that even if she had the money for an expensive new tie she doubted that she would be able to buy one because of the ongoing shortages. Drew, to her delight, had said that he loved the tie, and tonight he was wearing it to prove that statement.

Wilder, Dulcie’s date, was wearing his habitual leather flying jacket over a white shirt and a pair of black trousers, whilst Dulcie’s brother, Rick, who was going with them, was in his army uniform. Rick’s good looks meant that no girl was likely to spend too much time looking at his clothes, Tilly admitted, but to her relief she had discovered with his return that Rick and his good looks no longer had any effect on her whatsoever.

Only now could she admit to herself that a tiny corner of her had been worried that Rick might remember her crush and perhaps comment on it in a teasing way. Thankfully he had done nothing of the kind, and the only thing to spoil her happiness was the niggling feeling of guilt because she hadn’t told Drew about that silly girlish crush.

Within minutes of the young men arriving at number 13, all five young people were piling into the taxi picked up by Wilder on his journey from the station to Article Row, having asked the cabby to wait with the promise of a good tip if he did, and were being waved off from the darkened hallway by Olive.

As they were engaged, and knowing how little privacy they had, Olive had given Ted and Agnes permission to spend a couple of hours together in her front room before they went to join in whatever traditional celebrations still might be allowed to take place in Trafalgar Square. Olive herself had accepted an invitation from the Windles to see the New Year in at the vicarage, which was within easy walking distance. Prior to getting to know Audrey, Olive had never had a really close friend. Orphaned and then married young, she had been far too busy, especially whilst she had been nursing first her husband and then later both her in-laws. Their friendship might only have come about because of the war and the fact that they were members of the same WVS unit, but it was genuine and Olive found Audrey a wonderfully soothing antidote to her neighbour Nancy’s acerbic and often spiteful attitude to their shared neighbours.

This evening’s get-together might not be going to be a party as such, but since it was New Year’s Eve Olive had decided to wear her own silk velvet dress. The rich amber fabric had been a present to her from Tilly and Agnes, and she treasured the dress as much for that as for its lovely material and elegant style. At thirty-seven, Olive was nearly as slim as her daughter, so that its boat-shaped neckline and three-quarter sleeves, along with its neatly fitting bodice and gentle A-line skirt, suited her perfectly.

She might not have spent all afternoon washing and then drying her hair, like Tilly, Dulcie and Agnes, but her natural waves meant that her weekly home shampoo and set always left her hair framing her face in a pretty natural style.

Olive knew that there was no need for her to warn Ted about the standard of behaviour she expected from the young couple left alone in the house in her front room. Ted was simply not the sort of young man to behave in anything other than the most respectable and responsible manner. And Agnes, bless her, being the timid girl that she was, was hardly likely to encourage him to break any rules.

Going upstairs to her bedroom to check her appearance and get her best coat before setting out to walk up to the top of Article Row and then across to the vicarage, Olive had a strong suspicion that she might not have been able to say the same thing about her own daughter. Tilly had always been passionately intense about everything she did and passionately proud of everyone and everything she loved. That was her nature. Drew was a well-brought-up young man – Olive could see that – but a passionate young woman in love for the first time, combined with the urgency that war brought, was not a combination that could allow any protective mother to do anything other than react with some concern.

Still, Olive thought, ten minutes later as she said good night to Ted and Agnes, and let herself out into the dark street, at least it was Drew and not Wilder who was Tilly’s beau. Try as she might, Olive couldn’t quite take to the other young American. She was prepared to accept and understand that a young man from another country, who had come to Britain expressly to offer his help in its fight against Hitler, might be justified in feeling proud of himself but whilst Wilder’s arrogance and the comments he sometimes made about others might boost him in his own eyes, in Olive’s they did him no favours at all.

Dulcie, though, seemed pleased that he had shown an interest in her. Whether she was pleased because she liked Wilder himself or because she liked the excitement of going out with a young American with plenty of money in his pockets, Olive didn’t know. Whilst there were plenty of young men in uniforms from other countries to be seen on the streets of London, Americans were a much rarer sight. There was quite a lot of openly expressed ill feeling in some quarters about the fact that America was remaining aloof from the war, and no doubt in Dulcie’s eyes that made Wilder and his ilk, who had volunteered to put their lives at risk, and who behaved as though they were something very special because of that, all the more potently dangerous, and challenging to a young woman. Drew might be American but Olive didn’t think she had ever met a more modest and considerate young man.

The night air was yellowy grey with what now seemed like an ever-present pall of smoke from the burned buildings. It felt gritty in the lungs and left behind an unpleasant taste. The occasional car and taxi moved slowly along the road that ran past the church and the vicarage, their dimmed lights just about picking out the white paint on the edge of the pavement, which had been put there because of the high number of road accidents in the early days of the blackout. A bus rumbled past the end of the road. The church hall and, beyond it, the church itself loomed up out of the darkness. Olive’s walking pace quickened as the cold air bit into her lungs.

Normally she would have walked to the vicarage with Nancy, her next-door neighbour, and her husband, but they had gone down to Nancy’s daughter’s in-laws in the country to spend Christmas and the New Year with them. Olive knew that Nancy wasn’t the most popular inhabitant of Article Row, especially with the younger generation, as she was one of those people who seemed to delight in finding fault with others, but they had been neighbours for a long time.

Olive had always got on reasonably well with her, although this last year she had found herself having to bite down on her tongue a bit over some of the things Nancy had said, especially about Sergeant Dawson. Olive liked Sergeant Dawson. He was a kind man – a good man – and Nancy had gone far too far when she had tried to suggest that he might be showing too much of an interest in women without a man to protect them. Nancy had been referring to her when she had said that, warning her, Olive knew, and ever since then she had felt uncomfortable about being in the sergeant’s company on her own. Not because she felt there was any truth in Nancy’s aspersions – she didn’t – no, it was because she suspected that Nancy might be peering round her lace curtains to see if her suspicions were being confirmed.

Poor Sergeant Dawson. They hadn’t had an easy life, he and Mrs Dawson, with losing their son when he had been a young boy, and then Mrs Dawson turning into a recluse because of it.

The vicarage was in front of her now. Olive opened the gate and walked up the path to the front door. The vicarage, the church and the church hall had all been built by the same wealthy merchant who had built Article Row.

Audrey opened the door to Olive’s knock, greeting her warmly, and then taking Olive’s coat, hat and scarf from her after Olive had tucked her gloves in the pockets.

‘Oh, Olive, I do love that dress. The colour is perfect on you,’ she complimented Olive with the genuine admiration of a true and good friend.

Olive smiled her thanks and tried not to shiver in the draught that was coming into the square hallway from under the badly fitting doors. A vicar’s stipend was only modest, Audrey Windle had given Olive to understand, and had not stretched to such luxuries as new doors and window frames, even before the war when such things had been readily available.

‘Come into the sitting room,’ Audrey invited, opening a door into the large, shabbily furnished room.

Two well-worn leather sofas and two armchairs that didn’t match either each other or the sofas were pulled up close to a sullen-looking fire in the large fireplace. The Afghan and tartan rugs on the chairs and the sofas showed how the occupants of the house normally tried to keep warm. Dark red velvet curtains, which had obviously come from somewhere else originally because you could see where the original hems had been let down, were drawn over the blacked-out windows. The only piece of really good furniture in the room was the baby grand piano, which was Audrey’s pride and joy.

The vicar, a quiet, kindly man, who always seemed to have a bit of a cold, was standing talking with his curate, whilst several fellow members of Audrey’s WVA group, along with their husbands, were clustered as close to the fire as good manners would allow.

War brought people together in so many new ways, forging friendships that would never have been possible before the war, Olive acknowledged. Now they had a common goal – to stay strong for their country and the brave men fighting for it.

‘Thank you for those sandwiches and the mince pies you brought down earlier, Olive, and for helping me set up the buffet in the dining room,’ Audrey said, adding, ‘Oh, and did I tell you that I had a letter from Mrs Long? She often mentioned how grateful she was for everything we did for her after she lost her husband.’

The Longs had lived at the last but one house on Article Row, number 49. Their son, Christopher, had at one stage attended the local St John Ambulance brigade with Tilly. As a conscientious objector Christopher had not joined any of the armed services. Initially he had been in a reserved occupation, with the Civil Service, but then he had been obliged to join the bomb disposal service, something that, according to Tilly, he hadn’t wanted to do one little bit. She was so lucky, Olive reflected. Some poor families went through such dreadful things. It was true that she had been widowed young but she had had her baby to keep her going. After she had been widowed Mrs Long had left London to return to her home town in the South of England.

‘Have you seen what the Luftwaffe did the other night?’ Anne Morrison asked Olive after the vicar had poured her a class of elderberry wine.

‘Yes. We all went down to have a look at St Paul’s,’ Olive replied.

The sitting room door opened again, bringing a fresh draught of cold damp air against Olive’s legs as she stood with her back to it.

‘Oh, it’s Sergeant Dawson. No Mrs Dawson, though,’ Anne informed Olive with a small sigh. ‘Poor woman. One does feel sorry for her.’

‘Yes,’ Olive agreed without turning round. Drat Nancy for going and making her feel so self-conscious when she had no need to feel that way. Those who said that Nancy was a bit of a troublemaker certainly had a point.

‘Good evening, ladies.’

‘Good evening, Sergeant Dawson,’ Anne acknowledged the policeman’s greeting happily. ‘I was just saying to Olive here how very lucky we were to have you teach us both to drive. My husband said so at the time although I know there were those – no names mentioned but she’s a neighbour of yours, Olive – who were inclined to disapprove of females learning to drive, despite the fact that they have benefited from us doing so.’

Anne was a large, solidly built, jovial woman, and when she laughed, as she was doing now, her whole body seemed to shake with good-natured mirth.

‘All the credit doesn’t lie with me,’ Sergeant Dawson responded with his own smile, tactfully avoiding her reference to Nancy, much to Olive’s relief. ‘I had two very able pupils.’

‘Oh, excuse me, will you, please,’ Anne stopped him. ‘Only I’ve just seen Vera Stands and I need to have a word with her about the church flower rota.’ With another smile she strode off, leaving Olive on her own with the sergeant and no ready excuse to take her own leave. She was about to ask politely if the Dawsons had had a good Christmas and then just in time she remembered that the sergeant had once told her that Christmas was naturally a very difficult time for them both, but especially for his wife, because of the loss of their son.

Instead, she asked him, ‘Is it definitely all official now, I mean about you and Mrs Dawson taking Barney in?’

‘Yes. He had to spend Christmas in a children’s home outside the city, much to his disgust, but he’ll be coming to us in time for the new school term. Mrs Dawson’s been getting his room ready for him. She’s had me giving it a coat of distemper to freshen it up a bit.’ A rueful look crossed the sergeant’s face. ‘I just hope that she isn’t going to spoil him too much.’

Olive could tell from both his expression and the sound of his voice how much the sergeant was looking forward to Barney’s arrival.

‘Oh, and there’s something I ought to tell you,’ he continued. ‘It’s about Reg Baxter and that vacancy there was going to be at the ARP station, the one that I thought you should put your name forward for?’

Olive nodded. She’d felt both surprised and a bit overwhelmed when Sergeant Dawson had suggested that she volunteer to fill a vacancy at their local ARP unit, but the sergeant had insisted that she would be an ideal candidate.

‘It seems that Reg Baxter has decided not to retire and move after all,’ the sergeant told her, ‘and the other vacancy, the one that Mrs Morrison had applied for, that’s gone to a chap from Court Street.’

Olive was surprised to discover how unflatteringly she was thinking of the men who had turned down the opportunity to have someone as capable as her fellow WVS member join them. Before the war such a thought wouldn’t have crossed her mind. The war, though, had shown her just how capable and resourceful her own sex was, and how proud she was of what women were doing to help with the war effort.

That neither she nor Mrs Morrison had been offered the membership of the local ARP unit wasn’t Sergeant Dawson’s fault, however, and Olive could see from his expression that he felt slightly uncomfortable about the news he had had to give her.

Even so, she couldn’t resist saying with a small smile, ‘Sergeant Dawson, the ARP unit doesn’t know what it will be missing in not taking on Mrs Morrison. She’s a first-class organiser, and she makes the best hotpot I’ve ever tasted. She regularly brings one round for our WVS suppers.’

‘Archie, please, Olive. We agreed when I was teaching you to drive that we had known one another long enough to be on first-name terms. Hearing you address me as “Sergeant Dawson” makes me feel that you think of me as someone of your late in-laws’ generation.’

‘Oh, no, I would never think that.’ Was she blushing? Her face certainly felt hot, and no wonder after such a silly gauche remark, far more suitable to someone Tilly’s age than her own. Of course she didn’t think of Sergeant D— Archie … as someone of her late in-laws’ age. How could she when it was perfectly obvious that he wasn’t? His dark hair might be greying slightly at the temples now, whilst fine lines fanned out around his eyes when he smiled, but he was still tall and lean, with a very manly bearing and …

And nothing, Olive stopped herself firmly, allowing herself to say only, ‘Somehow I don’t think that Nancy would think it proper for me to call you Archie. You know how she is about such things.’

‘Yes, I know how she is,’ he agreed, ‘but in private, when we are talking to one another, then surely it can be Olive and Archie?’

She ought to say ‘no’ but that would be rude. He didn’t know, after all, about that silly awareness of him she had developed – or those secret, dangerous, unwanted and unacceptable thoughts of envy she sometimes had for the obvious contentment of the marriage he and his wife shared.

‘Very well,’ she agreed.

Nestled in Drew’s arms, her head tucked into his shoulder, as they moved slowly together on the dance floor, Tilly gave a small sigh as the final strains of ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ died away. The song had been one of the hits of the year and now, on New Year’s Eve, as the dancers and those sitting out broke into applause, and the band stood to take their break, she told Drew, ‘It’s such a lovely song that it always brings a lump to my throat. But it’s hard to imagine any kind of bird singing in any of London’s squares right now, thanks to the Blitz.’

‘It’s a song of hope for the future, for better times ahead,’ Drew reminded her, his arm round her as the lights came up over the darkened dance floor and they started to make their way towards their table – Dulcie’s favourite table, which she had bagged the minute they had arrived.

‘Dulcie’s brother seems a nice guy,’ Drew commented. ‘He was really friendly last night back at Ian’s when I was asking him about the desert campaign. Of course, there was stuff he couldn’t tell me but he gave me a real good idea of what it’s been like for them out there. I’ve noticed that you don’t say much to him, though. Don’t you like him?’

Tilly felt a pang of guilt, her straightforward nature making it impossible not to be honest with Drew when she loved him so much.

‘It isn’t that. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Rick, it’s just, well, I had a bit of a crush on him for a little while, when I first met him.’ She pulled a small face. ‘So silly, and I’m ashamed of myself now. I’d grown out of it even before I met you, but I was just a girl then. I wanted to tell you but I didn’t want you to think—’

‘What I think is that he’s the one who is keen on you, not the other way around,’ Drew astonished her by saying.

‘Rick, keen on me? Oh, no.’ Tilly shook her head vehemently. ‘No, he wasn’t in the least bit interested in me.’

Hearing the honesty in Tilly’s voice made Drew smile. She was the best girl any guy could want. He didn’t for a single minute doubt her, but he knew his own sex and he’d seen the looks Rick had been giving Tilly when he thought that no one was watching him.

‘Take it from me,’ Drew corrected her, ‘he’s interested, but no way is he going to get a look-in.’

‘No way at all,’ Tilly agreed, stopping at the end of the dance floor to kiss Drew’s cheek. ‘You’re the only man I want, Drew.’ She paused to tuck her arm through his as they headed for their table, then asked him, ‘Have you told your family yet – about us, I mean? Mum had a lovely letter from your mother with her Christmas card but it didn’t say anything about you and me, but then if you have written to them they probably wouldn’t have got your letter before they sent the Christmas Card.’

‘I’ve told them that I’ve met a very special girl,’ Drew answered her, turning his head as he did so, so that she couldn’t see his expression. He changed the subject to warn her, ‘Dulcie’s heading our way with Wilder, and I know he isn’t your favourite person.’

‘I don’t like the way he treats Dulcie,’ Tilly admitted. ‘I know she seems worldly-wise on the outside but I’m afraid that Wilder might hurt her. You said that you don’t think she’s the only girl he’s seeing, but I don’t think she knows that.’

Drew nodded, feeling guiltily relieved that she had taken his lead on the subject. It wasn’t that he wanted to deceive Tilly – there was nothing he wanted more than to be completely honest with her – but it just wasn’t possible. Not at the moment, not yet. Just as it wasn’t possible for him to be totally honest with his family about his feelings for Tilly. If he wasn’t being totally honest with Tilly then it was because he loved her and wanted to protect her, that was all.

‘Not long until midnight now,’ Dulcie announced, coming to sit down next to Tilly as Drew pulled up a chair for her.

‘So don’t you go and disappear with some fast piece,’ Dulcie warned her brother. ‘I don’t want the only member of my family I’ve seen over Christmas disappearing with some girl just as it strikes midnight.’

‘If anyone’s likely to disappear to have an illicit bit of how’s your father with some girl he’s just met, it’s that fly boy of Dulcie’s, not me,’ Rick muttered in an aside to Drew whilst Dulcie was talking to Wilder. When Rick realised that Tilly had overheard him, he apologised. She shook her head in response to his, ‘Sorry …’ She was more concerned about the fact that Rick’s opinion of Wilder matched her own than she was about his sturdy male language. She was very fond of Dulcie and would hate to see her hurt.

‘Do you think there’ll be many there?’ Agnes asked Ted as they hurried arm in arm through the cold night air in the direction of Trafalgar Square, to share in the traditional way of bringing in the New Year.

‘I should think so,’ Ted assured her. ‘Londoners aren’t going to let something like a few German bombs stop them from celebrating.’

At Barts Sally looked at the watch she wore pinned to the front of her uniform apron, as she emerged from the operating theatre for her break. Ten minutes to go. She and George had promised that they’d think of one another the moment midnight started to chime. For someone who prided herself on being so matter-of-fact she was surprised how emotional she felt that they weren’t seeing out the old year and welcoming in the new one together.

Setting off in the direction of the stairs, she thought that she might as well go to the canteen, where she could at least welcome in the New Year amongst the other staff who were on their breaks.

She almost made it, would have made it, if she hadn’t been stopped in her tracks by the totally unexpected sound of George’s voice calling out breathlessly from behind her.

‘Sally.’

She spun round to stare at him in disbelief, then she was running towards him, ignoring the rule that nurses never ran unless there was an emergency. After all, there was an emergency of sorts, the emergency of reaching the man she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with, before the clocks struck midnight.

Her, ‘What are you doing here?’ was muffled against his lips as he kissed her and then kissed her again, lifting her off her feet to hold her tight, his face cold from the air outside, but his body warm beneath his overcoat as she unfastened the buttons and burrowed close to him.

‘I wanted to see in the New Year with the girl I love,’ he answered her question.

‘You got leave?’

‘Not exactly, but I’m off duty until tomorrow evening, so I thought I’d risk coming up to London. I’ll have to go back on the first available train, though,’ he warned her.

‘You came all the way to London, because …’

‘Because I wanted to kiss my girl and wish her a Happy New Year,’ he finished for her.

For a minute Sally just looked at him, and then her voice trembled slightly as she whispered, ‘Oh, George.’

‘It’s midnight,’ he whispered back. ‘Happy New Year, my darling girl, and may it be just the first of a lifetime of Happy New Years for us.’

‘Oh, George, don’t say that,’ Sally begged him. ‘Don’t tempt fate by talking about the future. Just kiss me instead.’

‘Oh, Ted.’ Tears filled Agnes’s eyes as she turned towards her fiancé amongst the crowd of people who had braved the threat of Hitler’s bombers to come out to celebrate the arrival of the New Year around the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Unlike before the war, there were no lights to illuminate the scene, only starlight shining fitfully through the still heavy pall of smoke, but from what Agnes could see, the couples who turned to one another didn’t seem to mind the lack of light – quite the opposite.

People were reaching out for one another’s hands, the sound of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ growing louder and stronger. As she looked at Ted, Agnes was sure that the diamond in her ring sparkled even more brightly than usual. She was so lucky, and so happy too, even if sometimes she did wish that Ted’s mother would be a bit more friendly. Ted had told Agnes not to worry about his mother’s lack of warmth towards her, stating in his calm good-natured way that eventually she’d come round. Never having known the love of her own mother, she had dearly hoped that Ted’s mother would take to her. Maybe one day she would, Agnes told herself hopefully, as she snuggled closer to Ted.

‘I love you,’ Drew mouthed to Tilly, knowing that it would be impossible for her to hear his voice in the cacophony of cheers, whoops and ‘Happy New Years’ that had filled the dancehall as midnight struck. Now they were standing up for ‘Auld Lang Syne’, the dance floor packed, people covered in streamers and the balloons that had been let down from the net above them.

‘I love you too,’ Tilly mouthed back to him. Everyone was laughing and hugging, Rick looking very happy with the pretty little redhead on his arm, and Dulcie glowing from all the male attention she was getting from single servicemen eager to get their share of the kisses being exchanged to bring in the New Year.

‘Where’s Wilder? He’s missing all the fun,’ Tilly asked Dulcie, cupping her hand to the other girl’s ear so that she could hear her, her other hand holding tightly onto Drew’s.

‘Gone to the gents’,’ Dulcie yelled back.

Truth to tell, she wasn’t as concerned about Wilder missing the countdown to midnight as she might otherwise have been, thanks to the admiring attentions of a young naval officer who, Dulcie had to admit, looked far more handsome in his immaculate uniform than Wilder did in the worn leather jacket that he had insisted on keeping on, despite the heat in the packed the dancehall.

In fact, if anything, the young naval officer, with his open delight in her company, was far better company than Wilder, who had been offhand all evening, complaining that London’s way of welcoming in the New Year was a poor drab thing compared with New York’s.

‘Well, New York isn’t being bombed by the Germans, is it?’ Dulcie had snapped at him at one point in the evening, turning her back on him to sit with her arms folded dismissively across her chest. That was when the young naval officer – Mike – had seen her and had given her a look of bashful hope.

When the band had played a ladies excuse me, and Wilder had announced that he didn’t want to dance, she’d gone over and asked Mike to dance instead, encouraging him to come over to join their table, where she’d introduced him to the others, telling Wilder prettily that she’d felt it was her duty to take pity on ‘one of our brave servicemen, who hasn’t got a dance partner’.

Wilder had responded with a grunt, and the unkind comment that Britain’s armed forces might be brave but they weren’t strong enough to defeat Hitler, and then he’d got up and walked off.

That had been half an hour ago.

Well, if Wilder thought that she was the sort of girl who got all anxious and upset about that kind of behaviour, he was going to find out that he was wrong, Dulcie decided, getting up to go and grab hold of her brother’s hand.

‘Come and dance with me, Rick …’

Later, from the dizzyingly blissful delight of Drew’s arms as they swayed romantically together beneath the dimmed lights to an intimately slow dance number, Tilly murmured to him, ‘I think that Dulcie and Wilder have had a bit of a tiff.’

‘Mmm,’ Drew murmured back. ‘Have I told you that your hair smells of honey and roses, and that your lips taste of paradise?’

Tilly closed her eyes and melted into him.

They had been so close tonight, mentally, emotionally and physically. Being held this close to him, being able to feel all of him against all of her was dangerously exciting. There was an ache low down in her body that made her want to press even closer to him, an awareness within her that the kisses they shared, no matter how sweet they were, could not alone satisfy the need that ached inside her.

Tilly knew what married intimacy entailed but she had never imagined until she had met Drew that she would hunger for that intimacy so strongly and passionately before marriage.

They stayed on the floor until the notes of the last waltz of the evening had died away, returning to their table to find Rick and Dulcie waiting there for them but no sign of Wilder. He appeared a couple of minutes later, removing his handkerchief as he did so, Tilly’s heart hammering as the lights came up and she saw on it the telltale marks of bright orange lipstick. Bright orange when Dulcie was wearing deep pink.

Anxious for her friend, Tilly deliberately leaned across to block Dulcie’s view of Wilder, asking Rick with forced nonchalance, ‘When did you say your leave finished, Rick?’

He too leaned forward, and the look in his eyes suggested to Tilly that he too had seen those lipstick marks as he folded his arms on the table, forcing Wilder to sit back.

‘Tomorrow.’

Tilly nodded, glad of his sensitivity to Dulcie’s feelings.

It was later, after the taxi had dropped the four of them off at the top of Article Row – Wilder remaining in the taxi, having turned down Drew’s suggestion that he stay the night at Ian Simpson’s, insisting that he needed to get back to his base – that Tilly told Drew what had happened as they hung back behind Dulcie and Rick.

‘That’s one of the things I love about you,’ Tilly told him, cuddling up to him. ‘The fact that you’re so honest, Drew. I know you’d never deceive me about anything.’

Drew swallowed hard, conscious that there was something he hadn’t been honest about with Tilly, and it was a very big something, a something that grew harder for him to bear with every fresh kiss they exchanged and every promise of shared love they made. What would happen when he did tell her? Would he lose her? He wouldn’t be able to bear that. He loved her so much, with her brave bright spirit, her fierce loyalty to those who mattered to her, her compassion for others, and her passionate nature.

Tilly didn’t object when Drew suddenly turned to her in the middle of the dark street, took her in his arms and kiss her fiercely. Why should she, when she loved it when he kissed her like that? The only thing was that it was a bit out of character for him to do so in such a public place. But then it was New Year.

Lying awake in bed waiting for Tilly and Dulcie to come in – Ted had brought Agnes home shortly after Olive had returned to number 13 herself, and Sally wouldn’t be off duty until the morning – Olive reflected on her own evening out. She was a sociable person by nature and naturally sympathetic to others, which often meant that people brought their troubles to her knowing they could confide in her and trust her not to repeat what they had told her to others. Normally Olive enjoyed and valued that role, but the trouble, as she was now discovering, was that there was no one for her to turn to when she herself needed to confide.

The evening had been very pleasant, a few hours of relief from the constant anxiety of the war, even if the recent bombing had been a major topic of conversation. And an incident had happened that had left her feeling wretched and guilty.

It had been about half-past eleven when Sergeant Dawson – Archie – had announced that he was taking his leave of them so that he could call round at the ARP post to wish his colleagues there all the best for the New Year and still make it home in time to welcome in 1941 with his wife.

Obviously he’d shaken hands with all those close to him, and naturally Olive had held out her hand to shake his; not to have done so would have been unthinkably rude. But then instead of shaking it he had simply held her hand between his own and …

Olive closed her eyes against the sharp knife of emotion that turned inside her, as she remembered the feelings that had swept her, the memories and the longing she had had no right to feel. How could she have allowed that to happen? How could she have felt, standing there with Sergeant Dawson clasping her hand in the warmth of his own, that shocking agonising need for the warmth of a man’s arms around her, combined with that awful surge of jealousy against those women who were lucky to have what she did not: the presence of loving husbands in their lives and in their beds.

Even now, remembering how she had felt, Olive could feel the small beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead. She was thirty-seven years old. She had been a widow for nearly eighteen years. Never once during those years had she felt the way she had felt tonight, watching Sergeant Dawson walk away from her, then turning to look at her friends with their husbands. Marriage could be hard work. All women knew that, once they were married. Decent respectable women – the kind of woman she had always believed herself to be – did not lie in their beds at night with their bodies aching because they were on their own.

What she had felt meant nothing, Olive assured herself. It was just because it was New Year. Because of the war. It certainly wasn’t Sergeant Dawson’s fault. He had simply been kind, she knew that. Her heart thudded anew, and then thankfully she heard the front door open, Tilly and Dulcie’s voices reaching her from the hallway. She was a mother and a landlady, she had responsibilities and duties, and instead of dwelling on certain things she would be far better off ignoring them – and making sure she didn’t experience them again.

Dulcie wasn’t the only person to be concerned about the Home Secretary, Mr Herbert Morrison’s, January announcement that he intended to make it compulsory for London’s residents and businesses to form their own fire-watching group from amongst their inhabitants and employees, as Olive discovered when she attended one of her twice-weekly WVS meetings at the vicarage. Audrey Windle told them that she felt they should extend the length of their normal meeting to make time to discuss ‘Mr Morrison’s request for people to form fire-watching groups.’

‘Well, as to that,’ Nancy sniffed, immediately bridling, ‘I hope that you aren’t going to suggest that any of us take up such dangerous work, Mrs Windle. That’s men’s work, that is, and besides, what are our ARP wardens being paid for if it isn’t to sort out that kind of thing?’

‘Well, yes, of course,’ the vicar’s wife agreed quickly in a placatory tone, ‘but the thing is that, as Mr Morrison has said, and as we all saw with the dreadful bombing raid on the 29th of December, with the best will in the world neither our Home Guard nor the fire brigade can be on hand everywhere they are needed. No one’s suggesting that anyone should put themselves in danger. It’s simply a matter of making sure that those of us who feel that we do want to be involved can be as safely as possible.’

‘Well, I don’t want to be,’ Nancy informed the vicar’s wife flatly. ‘Like I said, it isn’t women’s work. We’re all doing enough as it is, if you ask me.’

‘I don’t know, Nancy,’ Olive felt obliged to speak up, as much in defence of poor Audrey Windle, who was looking rather desperate, as anything else. ‘We’ve been very lucky in Article Row so far, but we’ve all seen and heard about the damage that those incendiary bombs can do if they aren’t spotted and dealt with quickly. The Government must think that it is safe for women to deal with them because they’ve sent out those leaflets to every household telling people what to do, and it’s normally women who are home most of the time, not men.’

Nancy was giving her an extremely baleful look but Olive wasn’t going to back down. As she’d been speaking she’d realised that although she hadn’t given it much thought before, she did actually believe that it was important for householders to do everything they could to protect their homes from the incendiary bombs being dropped by the Germans. Unlike other bombs, the incendiaries were not designed to explode and kill people, but rather to cause serious fires. The initially long, large bombs each contained many small incendiaries. As it fell it opened, showering the ground with these smaller incendiaries, which burst into flames as they landed. If discovered quickly, it was a relatively simple matter to dowse the flames, either with a stirrup pump, which used water, or by raking the burning matter into sand and smothering the flames with it. But the effectiveness of these courses of action depended on the incendiaries being spotted and dealt with quickly, and it was to this end that the Government had announced to the country via the BBC news that they must form themselves into fire-watching groups.

Giving Olive a grateful look Audrey Windle pressed on hopefully, ‘We’ve all read the leaflets. They explain very clearly how we set about organising local fire-watch teams and make out a rota for fire-watching.’

‘I’ve heard that you have to go up on the roof and stay there all night when it’s your turn,’ one of the other woman broke in. A large person, her ample chins shook with anxiety as she continued, ‘I couldn’t do that.’

‘No, of course not, Mrs Bell,’ the vicar’s wife agreed, ‘but as Sergeant Dawson explained to me, in many cases husbands and wives are working together, so that, for instance, the husband will be the one to do the active watching but then he will call down to his wife, who will be perhaps waiting at an open bedroom window – with the lights out, of course – to tell her where the bombs have fallen. Then she will get ready the stirrup pump, which the Government is making available to households, and together they’ll go out and tackle the incendiaries with the help of their neighbours, who they will alert about the bombs.’

‘It’s taking advantage of our good nature, that’s what it is,’ Nancy sniffed, folding her arms in front of her bosom in a way that said that she wanted no truck whatsoever with Mr Morrison’s scheme.

Olive’s assessment of her neighbour’s frame of mind was confirmed when Nancy turned to her and said, ‘There’s no one to do it in Article Row anyway, is there? Mr Whittaker at number 50 is too old; you couldn’t expect the Misses Barker at number 12 to get involved, nor Mrs Edwards at number 5, since her husband’s already working as an auxiliary fireman.’

‘There’s Mr Ryder at number 18,’ Olive pointed out. ‘I’m sure he’d want to be involved, he being retired from the Civil Service.’

‘Mr Ryder? With that bad leg of his?’ Nancy shook her head, adding triumphantly, ‘And it’s not as if you could do anything, is it, with you being a household full of women.’

‘Why should us being female stop us from getting involved?’ Nancy’s attitude reminded Olive of how she had felt when she and Mrs Morrison had been rejected by the ARP – and they had been rejected she felt sure, no matter how tactful Sergeant Dawson had tried to be.

Mrs Morrison clapped her hands and said approvingly, ‘Oh, well done, Olive. I’m certainly going to have a word with Mr Morrison and see if we can’t get something set up.’

Audrey Windle was smiling at her with relief, whilst Nancy was giving her a very angry look indeed.

‘I hope you aren’t thinking of setting yourself up in charge of some kind of fire-watch, Olive,’ Nancy told her grimly. ‘Because if you are I’m afraid that me and my Arthur will definitely have a view.’

What was Nancy trying to say? That she wasn’t up to the job of organising a small team of neighbours to keep a watch for falling incendiaries and to deal with them when they did fall? Olive very much resented Nancy’s attitude, and instead of putting her off the idea it actually made her feel very determined to carry it through.

‘Well, if Arthur wants to join in he’ll be very welcome,’ was all Olive allowed herself to say.

‘Arthur? He’s far too busy at it is, and I’m not having him going and risking getting a cold in this bad weather with that chest of his.’

‘I’m sure that Ian Simpson will want to be involved, and Drew, of course,’ Olive continued, ignoring Nancy’s mean-spiritedness.

‘Well, yes, your Tilly would love that,’ Nancy agreed cattily. ‘Every time I see her these days she’s linked up to that American. In my days girls waited until they’d got an engagement ring on their finger before being so familiar with a young man.’

‘You and me are the same age, Nancy,’ Mrs Morrison cut in and then laughed, saying, ‘and I remember me and my hubby walking down the Strand with our arms wrapped around one another on his first leave home from the front and we’d only been walking out a few weeks before he joined up. We weren’t the only ones, either. That’s what happens during wartime.’

Mrs Morrison had definitely taken the wind out of Nancy’s sails, Olive could see, but knowing her neighbour as she did, Olive suspected that sooner or later Nancy would find a way of getting her own back. Olive didn’t know why she was finding it so difficult to get along with her neighbour these days. They’d always managed to rub along well enough before. But that had been when she had merely been a daughter-in-law in her in-laws’ home. Since number 13 had become hers, Nancy had been noticeably more critical of her. Olive tried to be charitable and to put Nancy’s almost constant carping about her young lodgers and Tilly down to the natural reaction of a mother parted by the war from her own daughter and her grandchildren, but there was no doubt that Nancy could be hard work.

‘I’m so glad you’ve decided to organise a fire-watching team for Article Row, Olive,’ Audrey told her later as they said their good nights.

Olive had deliberately held back on the pretext of wanting to ask the vicar’s wife more about Government’s provision of stirrup pumps so that she wouldn’t have to walk home with Nancy, who had gone off in a very bad mood indeed.

‘Nancy isn’t very happy about it,’ Olive felt bound to admit.

‘I’m afraid Nancy makes it her job not to be happy about a great many things,’ Audrey sighed ruefully. ‘Now, I’m going to ask the vicar to have another word with the warden to arrange for someone to come along and give everyone who’s interested a proper demonstration of a stirrup pump. Everyone who signs up for fire-watch duties will be given a hard hat as well as the stirrup pump, and every local council has been asked to provide supplies of sand for people to use. You might want to think about having some moved to Article Row so that your team can access it easily if need be.’

‘Yes, we could put it in one of the gardens. I’d say mine, but Nancy is bound to think I’m giving myself preferential treatment if I do that. Maybe Mr King will let us put it in the back gardens of one of his houses, since they’re unoccupied at the moment,’ said Olive.

Mr King was a local landlord who owned several now empty properties at the other end of Article Row from Olive.

‘That’s a good idea,’ Audrey approved.

‘We’ve got a couple of rakes in the garden shed. My father-in-law used to be a keen gardener and Agnes’s fiancé, Ted, came over and cleaned and sharpened everything in the autumn for Sally. She’s very kindly taken charge of the garden and its veggies for us.’

A little later, making her solitary way home, Olive discovered that although initially she had worried about what she might be getting herself into, now she actually felt rather proud of herself for making that decision. For all that Nancy had been so unpleasant about it, surely it was far better to get involved and do something to protect the homes of which they were all so proud rather than risk an incendiary starting a fire that no one spotted until it was too late, and it had taken hold, possibly threatening the whole Row.

Four

‘I expect that you and your young man have got something special planned for the evening of Valentine’s Day on Friday – that’s if Hitler doesn’t come calling with more bombs,’ Clara Smith, the girl who worked with Tilly in the Lady Almoner’s office at Barts Hospital, asked as they sat side by side in front of their typewriters, shivering in the room’s icy February chill. The two girls were working through yet another batch of new patients’ details for their files, and trying to keep warm with extra layers of clothing because the radiator in their office had been turned off to conserve precious fuel.

Tilly loved her job and felt very proud of the fact that her head mistress had recommended her for the post. She’d worked hard not to let her or the Lady Almoner down, even though the war had brought an increase to her workload that had felt daunting at times.

‘Drew is taking me out for dinner,’ Tilly answered. ‘I don’t know where, though. Drew says that it’s going to be a surprise.’

Being taken out to dinner sounded awfully grown up and sophisticated, not like going to the pictures or even going dancing at the Hammersmith Palais. Her mother wasn’t very keen on them going out alone, just the two of them, Tilly knew.

‘Ooh, a surprise, is it? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if his surprise includes an engagement ring, it being Valentine’s,’ Clara informed her with the wisdom of a girl who already had an engagement ring on her finger.

Tilly felt her heart turn over. There was nothing she wanted more than to have Drew’s ring on her finger – a wedding ring, though, not just an engagement ring.

‘Mum thinks I’m too young to get engaged,’ she felt obliged to tell Clara. She didn’t want the other girl secretly thinking when she didn’t have an engagement ring to wear after Valentine’s Day that Drew didn’t love her enough to give her one. ‘She says that she doesn’t want me rushing into anything just because we’re at war.’

‘That’s typical of the older generation,’ Clara criticised roundly. ‘They don’t understand. It’s because of the war that people want to get engaged and married, in case anything happens, and it’s too late.’

‘Well, Mum got married just a few years after the last war,’ Tilly felt obliged to defend her mother, ‘and she was eighteen herself then, but by the time she was twenty she’d been widowed and she’d got me to look after.’

‘That was then,’ Clara told Tilly. ‘Things are different now. If you ask me I’d rather be married to my fiancé and have something special to remember him by than have him die without ever doing, well, you know what, if you know what I mean.’

Tilly did indeed know what Clara meant. Her face might have grown hot because of what Clara had said but it was no hotter than her body grew at night when she was alone in bed thinking about Drew’s kisses and how they made her feel.

It was an open secret, if you listened properly to what some of the bolder girls had to say in the canteen at lunchtime, that there were plenty of girls who weren’t prepared to deny their young men their physical love when they were going off to war, even if they didn’t have a wedding ring on their finger.

‘Our boys are being so brave and risking their lives for us, us being brave and taking a risk to make them happy is the least we can do. Leastways that’s what I think,’ one of the more outspoken girls had announced when this very subject had come under discussion one lunchtime.

In one sense the war had brought Drew to her, but the thought of it taking him from her made Tilly’s blood chill as ice cold in her veins as though she had been standing outside without her coat in the cold February wind. Suddenly she couldn’t wait for her working day to finish and for the reassurance of finding Drew waiting outside the hospital’s main entrance to walk her home, as he sometimes did if he could snatch enough time away from his work as a reporter. Not that Drew was one to shirk his duty to his work – far from it, he often worked long into the evening, reporting on bombing incidents, talking to the dispossessed, taking photographs. As often as her mother would let her, Tilly went with him when he worked in the evening, gathering material not just for his articles but also for the book he planned to write about Fleet Street when the war was over.

She was lucky to have Drew here in London, Tilly knew. So many sweethearts were separated because of the war; so many brave men in uniform. Take the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy, for instance, manning the all-important convoys that risked not just the dangerous winter seas to bring much-needed supplies back to Britain, but Hitler’s U-boats, as well. Then there was the army fighting to hold back Rommel’s men in the desert, and the RAF doing everything they could to stop Hitler’s Luftwaffe from bombing Britain.

No wonder the whole country read their newspapers so keenly and gathered so anxiously around their wirelesses to catch the BBC news broadcasts. Tilly’s heart swelled with fresh pride as she acknowledged just how important her wonderful Drew’s role was in keeping the country informed.

‘Wait up, Olive.’

Olive pulled her coat more firmly around herself as she stood in the icy February wind waiting for Nancy to catch up with her. Like her, Nancy was carrying a shopping bag.

‘If you’re going to the grocer’s you’d better watch out,’ she complained, her voice shrill with discontent. ‘He told me he hadn’t got a jar of meat paste in the shop last Thursday, but on Tuesday Mrs Mortimer from Parlance Street told me that he’d had a new order of it in. You mark my words, he’s stockpiling things, keeping them back until the price goes up.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true, Nancy,’ Olive responded. ‘He’d probably sold out, that’s all. And as for shopkeepers profiteering by keeping tinned goods back, there’s a new law been brought in to put a stop to that.’

‘It’s all very well for you to say that. How’s this new law going to be imposed, that’s what I want to know? And that’s another thing: I don’t know how Sergeant Dawson can do his job properly, taking as much time off as he has since they’ve had that rough boy living with them.’

‘Sergeant Dawson is simply using up some leave that was owing to him so that he and Mrs Dawson can get Barney properly settled in.’

‘Oh, he told you that, did he? And when might that have been?’

‘No, Sergeant Dawson didn’t tell me that. Mrs Windle did.’ Thank heavens Nancy didn’t know just how relieved she was to be able to tell her that and put her in her place, Olive thought guiltily.

‘That’s all very well,’ Nancy responded, bridling angrily, ‘but like I’ve said to you before, Olive, a woman in your shoes – widowed and on her own – can’t be too careful where her good reputation is concerned. You’ve only got to think about that widow from the other side of Farringdon Street. She’d got men calling all hours of the day and night, her and her daughter. Said she was interviewing lodgers.’ Nancy gave a disparaging sniff. ‘And that reminds me, I was telling my daughter about your Tilly taking up with that American over Christmas and she said that she could never fancy getting involved with a foreigner herself, and especially not an American, on account of them remaining neutral.’

‘Drew’s a lovely young man. The kind of young man any mother would be pleased to have making friends with her daughter,’ Olive informed Nancy, putting aside her own maternal concerns about the relationship, before adding briskly, ‘Excuse me, Nancy, but I’ve just remembered that I promised I’d call in at the vicarage to see Audrey Windle, and I don’t want to miss the lunchtime news on the wireless, so I’d better let you go and get on with your shopping on your own.’

Without giving her neighbour the opportunity to object Olive set off across the road, her cheeks pink with angry colour. It was one thing for Nancy to criticise her but she wasn’t having her criticising Tilly.

Audrey wasn’t in, but at least calling at the vicarage had given Olive the chance to escape from Nancy. She started to cross the road again and then stopped as she saw Mrs Dawson coming out of the front door to number 1. Knowing how reluctant Sergeant Dawson’s wife was to talk to anyone, Olive hesitated, not wanting to ignore her but not wanting either to make her feel uncomfortable. But then to her surprise, instead of walking away, as Olive had expected, Mrs Dawson crossed the road and came over to her.

‘I’m just going out to see if I can get a tin of Spam,’ she announced chattily. ‘Barney loves it fried with a bit of potato. It’s his favourite dinner.’

‘He’s settled in well then, and it’s all working out all right?’ Olive asked once she had overcome the shock of Mrs Dawson’s unfamiliar talkativeness.

‘Oh, yes. He’s ever so bright. Had me in tucks the other night, he did, imitating them from that ITMA programme on the wireless.’

‘It will be good to hear a child’s voice in Article Row again,’ Olive smiled. ‘It’s been so quiet with the Simpson children evacuated.’

‘Yes, it has, although my Archie says that quite a lot of them that was evacuated into the country to live with other families have been brought back by their mothers because they missed them so much.’

‘Yes, we’ve seen that through the WVS as well,’ Olive agreed, ‘although of course the Simpson children are with their mother, and she is with her parents. That makes a big difference.’

‘I’d better be on my way,’ Mrs Dawson said. ‘Archie forgot his sandwiches this morning so I’m going to call by the station and drop them off for him. I’ve told him that I’m not going to be able to run round after him now that I’ve got Barney to think about. He’s got to come first now. Oh, I can’t tell you the difference it makes having Barney living with us. I think that Archie assumed that it would be him and Barney that would pal up, but it’s me and Barney that have really hit it off. Of course, Archie says that’s just because I let Barney wind me round his little finger, but if a boy that’s gone through what he has doesn’t deserve a bit of spoiling then I don’t know who does.’

Olive nodded, but privately Mrs Dawson’s words had made her feel rather sorry for Archie Dawson. She must not be critical, though, she warned herself. The Dawsons – and especially Mrs Dawson – had had such a lot to bear, first with their son’s illness and then his death. Olive had worried a bit, when she’d first learned that the Dawsons were taking Barney in, that Mrs Dawson’s vulnerable emotional state might mean that she couldn’t cope with a healthy young boy in the house after the tragedy of her own son, but she’d obviously been wrong. Having Barney around had given Mrs Dawson a new lease of life, and she was pleased for her as well as for Barney himself, Olive reflected, as she headed for the shops.

‘Watch out, you’ll end up breaking that mug if you slam it down any harder,’ Sally told Dulcie, wincing. ‘What’s wrong with you, anyway?’ she asked. ‘You look as though you’ve lost a shilling and only found a penny. You’ve not had another row with Wilder, have you?’

It was common knowledge at number 13 that Dulcie’s relationship with Wilder was somewhat tempestuous.

‘Well, I dare say you wouldn’t be feeling too pleased yourself if your George had told you that he couldn’t get leave after promising to take you out somewhere special on Valentine’s Day.’

‘Well, Wilder is in uniform, Dulcie,’ Sally felt obliged to point out.

Dulcie’s scowl told her that her comment was not well received. ‘That’s as maybe, but he was able to get time off easily enough when he wanted to go to watch some silly boxing match last week. Of course, I know he wanted to take me somewhere special,’ she added hastily, ‘’cos he thinks a lot of me, Wilder does.’

Sally nodded. The truth was that she didn’t think that Wilder thought very much of anyone other than himself, but she knew that beneath her sharp exterior Dulcie had an unexpected vulnerability, so she kept her thoughts to herself.

‘A fine thing it’s going to be, me having to say that I had to stay in on Valentine’s Day when everyone else at work is talking about where they went,’ Dulcie continued.

Sally looked at her. ‘Well, if you’re at a loose end you could always come to Sussex with me for the weekend,’ she told her. ‘They’re having a dance at the hospital on Saturday for those patients who are well enough to attend. George was saying only the last time I spoke to him that they’re short of girls to partner the men. There’s two single beds in the room where I’m staying. I’m sure Mrs Hodges, the landlady, won’t mind you using the spare bed.’

‘What? Me go to some hospital to dance with sick men?’ Dulcie demanded scornfully. ‘I’d have to be hard up before I’d want to do something like that.’

Repressing her instinctive urge to let Dulcie see what she really thought of her callousness, Sally mentally counted to ten, and then told her firmly, ‘Well, it’s up to you, of course, Dulcie. I’d be the last person to suggest that you sacrifice having a good time to benefit anyone else, but those poor boys have been through an awful lot – and lost an awful lot – for our sakes, you know. They are always so grateful to have visitors. They’d be especially grateful to have the opportunity to dance with a girl as pretty as you. Of course, if you’re thinking that Wilder might not approve …’ she added craftily.

‘Huh, it’s not up to him to approve of what I decide to do. I’m perfectly capable of making up my own mind about that, thank you very much.’ Privately after what Sally had said, Dulcie was thinking that it might not be a bad idea to be able to tell Wilder truthfully that she had gone to a dance without him and been asked to dance by scores of smitten young men. That would teach him not to use his leave to go to boxing matches instead of taking her out.

‘All right then,’ she told Sally grudgingly. ‘I’ll go but if Wilder finds out that he can get leave after all, I’ll have to change my mind,’ she warned.

‘That’s fine,’ Sally agreed. Whilst George had told her how keen the hospital was to get girls to attend the Saturday night dance they were giving for their patients, she suspected that Dulcie wasn’t exactly the kind of girl he had had in mind. She hardly had the milk of human kindness flowing through her veins. As Sally had seen for herself on her first visit to the hospital the previous month, some of the men were terribly badly disfigured from the injuries they had suffered, so much so in some cases that their own relatives refused to visit them. It was too late now, though, for her to regret having made her impulsive suggestion.

On Valentine’s Day Tilly was up early, wishing that the morning wasn’t so dark and that she could watch for the postman’s arrival from her bedroom window.

However, when she went downstairs, she discovered that she had had her own personal postal delivery because there was a card lying on the hall floor with her name on it but without a postage stamp, showing that Drew must have posted his card to her on his way to work. Smiling happily, Tilly hugged the card to her.

On her own way downstairs, Olive watched her. It didn’t seem so very long ago that she had been the one to secretly send her daughter a Valentine’s card. Now Tilly had no need of such maternal care, because she had Drew. Olive could remember how she herself had felt on receiving that precious first Valentine’s card from Tilly’s father: the excitement; the longing; the shared stolen kisses. What was that ache in her heart? What was wrong with her? She was thirty-seven and not a girl any more.

No, she wasn’t a girl but she was a mother, she reminded herself as she followed Tilly into the kitchen, thinking sadly as she did so that these days she and Tilly were hardly ever alone together. Was Tilly avoiding being alone with her because she knew that her mother was concerned about the growing intensity of her relationship with Drew?

‘From Drew?’ Olive asked, nodding her head in the direction of the card Tilly was still clutching to her chest as she followed her into the kitchen.

‘Yes,’ Tilly acknowledged happily. She wasn’t going to open her card until she was on her own. Reading Drew’s first Valentine’s card to her was something very special and very private.

Olive started to fill the kettle and then stopped, turning round to put it down and look at her daughter.

‘Tilly, I hope you haven’t forgotten what I said to you about you being so young and—’

‘I’m old enough to know how I feel about Drew, Mum,’ Tilly stopped her mother immediately. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have – not today on Valentine’s Day, when all she wanted to think about was Drew and their love for one another.

Olive could feel her heart thumping.

‘You’re eighteen, Tilly, that’s all, and there’s a war on.’

‘Exactly,’ Tilly shot back. ‘I’m eighteen and there’s a war on. Boys my age are joining up to fight and die for this country, Mum, just like my dad did. If Drew was one of them I—’

She broke off as the kitchen door opened and Agnes came in, her face pink as she clutched a white envelope. ‘The postman’s just been,’ she beamed, breathless with an innocent happiness that for Olive contrasted painfully sharply with Tilly’s hostility towards her.

Now wasn’t the time to talk rationally to her daughter, Olive recognised.

Later, when the girls had all left for their respective jobs, as she put away the washed and dried breakfast things and then set about sweeping the kitchen floor as she listened to more of Elsie and Doris Waters’ Home Hints on the wireless, Olive reflected that all she wanted to do was protect her daughter, and it hurt her that Tilly couldn’t see that. It was a pity that she had agreed to be on WVS mobile canteen duty tonight to fill in for a colleague from another branch of their organisation, before her regular WVS meeting, Olive reflected. Now she would have preferred to remain here at home so that she could mend things with Tilly before she went out for the evening. The last thing she wanted was her passionate and sometimes headstrong young daughter going out in a rebellious mood, and with discord between them. Despite what Tilly seemed to want to believe, Olive could remember perfectly well how it felt to be young and in love on Valentine’s Day.

It had, after all, been on the evening of Valentine’s Day that Tilly’s father, Jim, had proposed to her.

Without realising she had done so, Olive stopped sweeping, her gaze clouding with memories as she clasped the handle of her brush.

There had been no special meal out for her and Jim the night he had proposed. He’d arrived home on leave unexpectedly, and she’d found him waiting patiently in the rain for her outside the small clothing company where she’d been taken on as a machinist. He’d had a bit of a cough even then, she remembered. They’d been walking out together for just over a year. She’d met him through one of the other girls at the factory whose brother he’d been on leave with. She’d liked him right from the start. Tall, and handsome, and with the kindest eyes and smile she’d ever seen, he’d made her feel so safe with him and so proud to be his girl, even if his parents, especially his mother, had thought that he could do better for himself and hadn’t really approved of her, left orphaned as a teenager and with no family of her own to support her. It had brought her so much joy to see him standing outside the factory, smoking a Woodbine as he waited for her, the collar of his army greatcoat turned up against the drizzle, that she had felt as though the sun had come out. He’d brought her a Valentine’s card that he bought for her in Paris. She still had it upstairs, along with the letters he had written her. As if in a dream, Olive leaned her sweeping brush against the table and headed for the stairs.

Upstairs in her bedroom she kneeled down on the floor to pull Jim’s battered suitcase from underneath her bed. Since Olive kept a spotless house there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust on the case, the familiar lock clicking open beneath her fingers. Fingers that trembled slightly as though she were still that young girl he had courted with so much love and tenderness. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done this, Olive acknowledged as she opened the case.

Inside it was Jim’s greatcoat and the medal he had received for his bravery in the field. ‘Everyone gets them, if they live long enough,’ he had told her. There had been so much pain in his eyes on that leave home – his last before the end of the war. She’d found out later from his nightmares that he’d been the only member of his platoon to survive when the trench they were in had come under attack, and that he’d stayed with two of his dying fellow soldiers until the end rather than make his own escape. That had been Jim all over, always thinking of others before himself. It had been the gas from those attacks that had damaged his lungs, which had ultimately led to his death. The man who had come home to her after the war had been a shadow of the young man with whom she had fallen in love, but today it wasn’t that sick dying Jim she wanted to remember. Today she wanted to remember the handsome young soldier who had brought her a Valentine’s card from Paris, and with it a special bottle of scent.

Very carefully Olive folded back Jim’s greatcoat, smoothing the front of the fabric, much as she had smoothed Jim’s poor damaged chest in those last awful months and weeks of his life.

Beneath the coat, carefully wrapped in tissue paper and tied in blue satin ribbon, were the letters he had written to her and the cards he had sent her.

That special Valentine’s card, though, wasn’t with the others. Instead it was in the box in which she had received it – a lovely silver-coloured box with a red satin heart on the front of it and the words ‘To my Sweetheart’ written on it.

Was it her imagination or did even the box still smell of foreign places and war? For a moment tears blurred Olive’s eyes as she opened the box to reveal the card inside it. On top of a delicate cream lace underlay, hand-painted pink and blue flowers on their green stems twined all round the red satin heart decorated with tiny seed pearls at the centre of the card. Inside there was a small verse: ‘Here is my love, from a heart that’s true. A true blue heart that beats just for you.’

Jim had told her that there was a shop in Paris that sold cards made especially for the British servicemen to send home to their girls. Olive’s hand shook, a tear rolling down her face. Quickly she brushed it away, her desire to protect her precious memento overcoming her emotions.

What was she doing up here behaving like this? She was far too old for this kind of silliness. And too old to sometimes miss and long for the comfort of a protective loving pair of male arms to hold her, for that special something that a loving couple shared?

Yes. She really didn’t know what was getting into her these days, Olive berated herself, as she replaced the card in its box and put it back in the case, closing it and pushing it back under the bed.