Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Copyright © Kay Brellend 2016

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Photography by Henry Steadman

Other cover photographs © Alamy (children); Shutterstock.com (street scene)

Kay Brellend asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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

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

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

Source ISBN: 9780007575305

Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780007575312

Version: 2015-11-03

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the unsung heroes who served in the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service (LAAS) during the Second World War.

Equally for the volunteers who served in other cities during the conflict.

Not forgotten.

Also, for Mum and Dad.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Kay Brellend

Keep Reading

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE
Doctor’s Surgery, Shoreditch, October 1941

‘My mum died young so I’m a bit worried … in case I’ve got the same disease.’ The young woman sat down on the edge of the hard-backed chair. ‘Mum was only thirty-three when she passed away.’

‘You look a lot younger than that and as fit as a fiddle, my dear.’ The doctor raised his wiry grey eyebrows, peering over his spectacles at the exceptionally pretty young woman settling a handbag on her lap. Her platinum hair was in crisp waves and her sea-blue eyes were bright with nervousness. She was nicely dressed and he guessed she had a good job keeping her in such style. He was more used to seeing women with careworn faces, and toddlers on their scruffy skirts, perching nervously at the other side of his desk.

Rosie Gardiner wasn’t sure whether Dr Vernon’s casual dismissal of her concerns had cheered her or left her feeling more anxious. She’d not yet turned twenty and had a healthy glow from a brisk walk on a blustery autumn day. Or the flush could be a fever. In Rosie’s opinion the least he could do was stick a thermometer in her mouth to check her temperature instead of just sitting there tapping his pen on a blotter. Feeling exasperated by his silence she added, ‘It’s hard dragging myself out of bed some mornings. Then I spend an hour bending over the privy out back being sick. It’s not like me to feel too rough to go to work ’cos I like my job at the Windmill Theatre.’

‘Mmm …’ Dr Vernon cast a glance at the young woman’s bare fingers. In wartime women sometimes pawned their jewellery to buy essentials. An absence of an engagement ring didn’t necessarily mean that the lass hadn’t given her fiancé a passionate send-off to the front line, getting herself into trouble in the process.

‘Putting on weight?’ Dr Vernon asked.

‘Not really … no appetite … so I don’t eat much.’

‘Monthlies on time?’

Rosie blushed, wondering why he was asking personal questions like that when she was frantically worried she had the cancer that had put her mother in an early grave. Prudence Gardiner had seemed to be recovering from an operation to remove a tumour but then pleurisy had finished her off. But Rosie had only spotted a little bit of blood instead of proper monthlies.

‘You look to be blooming, my dear … might you be pregnant?’

‘No … I might not!’ Rosie spluttered. ‘I’m not married or even got a sweetheart. I’ve never even wanted to …’

‘Right … I’d better examine you then if there have been no intimate relations to cause trouble.’ Dr Vernon got up from his chair, gesturing for Rosie to stand also. ‘Abdominal fullness, you say, with sickness …’ The muttered comment emerged as he got into position to prod at her with his fingers.

Rosie stayed in her chair, the colour in her complexion fading away. Intimate relations … The phrase hammered in her head and she felt stupid for not having made the connection herself about why her body seemed horribly different. But there had been nothing intimate about that one brutal encounter with a man she’d despised.Rosie’s mind wanted to flinch from the memory but she forced herself to concentrate on the man who’d attacked her all those months ago. Lenny and his father had been her dad’s associates. They’d worked together churning out bottles of rotgut, much to Rosie’s disgust. But what had disgusted her even more was Lenny’s attention. She’d made it plain she’d no intention of going out with him but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. They’d attended the same school, their fathers were friends and Lenny thought that gave him the right to pester her for dates and then call her names when she turned him down. Rosie had hated her father getting involved in crime and had nagged him to break up his illegal booze racket but she hadn’t let on that his association with Lenny was a prime reason for her wanting him to go straight. At that time, she’d been a proud independent woman: a Windmill Girl, and Windmill Girls were able to look after themselves, whether fending off catty theatre colleagues, or randy servicemen lying in wait at the stage door. With youthful arrogance she’d believed she could deal with Lenny herself.

Then one night Rosie had met him by chance in the East End when she was feeling a bit the worse for wear. She’d discovered in just a few vicious minutes that she wasn’t as sassy as she’d thought; she certainly hadn’t been as strong as Lenny, though she’d fought like a maniac to try and stop him.

‘Ah …’ Dr Vernon had seen her stricken look and turned back towards his desk. ‘You’ve remembered an incident, have you, and think there might be reason to count the months after all?’

‘Yes …’ she whispered. ‘But I’m praying you’re wrong, Doctor.’

He smiled kindly. ‘I understand. But better to incubate a life than an illness, my dear.’

Rosie thought about that one. The odd weight she’d sensed in her belly was not a nasty growth in the way she’d thought; but it could destroy her life. ‘If you’re right – and I pray to God you’re not – I think I’d sooner be dead than have his baby,’ she whispered.

CHAPTER ONE
February 1942

‘Well done, dear … good girl … just one more big push. Come on, you can do it …’

Rosie knew that the midwife was being kind and helpful but she just wanted to bawl at her to go away and leave her alone. She had no energy left to whisper a word let alone shout a torrent of abuse. She didn’t want to push, she didn’t want the horrible creature fighting for life in her hips but she knew the agony wouldn’t stop unless she did something … She raised her forehead from the sweat-soaked pillow, dragging her shoulders off the rubber sheeting to grip Nurse Johnson’s outstretched hands. Rosie clung on to the two sturdy palms as tightly as she might have to a piece of driftwood in a raging sea, and gritting her teeth she bore down.

‘What’re you planning on calling her?’

The whispered question emerged tentatively as though the man anticipated a tongue-lashing. And he got it.

‘Calling her?’ Rosie dredged up a weak laugh from her aching abdomen. ‘How about bastard … that should suit. Now go away and leave me alone.’ Rosie turned her pale face to the wall and groaned, drawing up her knees beneath a thin blood-streaked sheet.

The fellow hesitated, then tiptoed about the bed. He knew the poor cow had been driven mad with pain because he’d heard her shrieking even above the din of the wireless. When things had quietened down overhead he’d guessed the worst was over. Then he’d spied the dragon barging down the hall, uniform crackling. As soon as she had disappeared into the front room with a bucket of stuff to burn he’d crept upstairs while the coast was clear.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Trudy Johnson burst into the back bedroom and glared at the intruder; childbirth was nothing to do with men, in her opinion. They might put the bun in the oven but should stay well out of the way at the business end of things. The midwife had been disposing of soiled wadding in the parlour fire while waiting for her patient to enter the final stage of labour. But she’d heard voices and speeded up the stairs to see what was going on.

‘I’ve every right to be here.’ John Gardiner sounded huffy. ‘She’s me daughter and that there’s me granddaughter.’ He pointed at the swaddled bundle at the foot of the bed. The infant was emitting mewling squeaks while punching feet and fists into her straitjacket. He almost smiled. The poor little mite was unwanted but she was a fighter. John moved to pick up the newborn but the midwife advanced on him threateningly, fists on starched hips. He backed away, muttering, his hands plunged into his pockets.

‘I think your daughter deserves some privacy, Mr Gardiner. I’ll let you know when she’s ready for a visit.’

Chastened, John trudged meekly onto the landing, then peeped around the bedroom door. ‘Put the kettle on, shall I? Bet you’d like a cuppa, now it’s all over, wouldn’t you, dear?’ He addressed the remark to his exhausted daughter but gave Nurse Johnson a wink when she raised an eyebrow at him.

‘I’d be obliged if you’d make yourself scarce till it is over. But you can put the kettle on. I need some more hot water. Leave a full pot outside the door for me, please.’

Trudy looked at her patient as the door closed. The girl was fidgeting on the protective rubber sheet, making it squeak. The afterbirth was about to be expelled. After that it would be time to set about tidying up the new mum; Trudy hoped having a wash and a brush through her hair might give the poor thing a boost.

Rosie Deane didn’t look more than nineteen and was as slender as a reed. She had battled to get the baby through her narrow hips and finally succeeded after a lengthy labour.

‘Here … have a cuddle … she’s fair like you …’ The midwife placed the baby against Rosie’s shoulder, hoping to distract the young woman from dwelling on her sore nether regions.

‘Take her away from me. I don’t want her.’ Rosie’s hands remained clenched beneath the sheets and she turned her face away from her firstborn.

‘’Course you do; just got a bit of the blues, haven’t you, love? Only natural after what you’ve been through. All new mums say never no more, then quickly forget about the rough side of it.’ Trudy knew that to be true, but not from personal experience. She had no children, but she’d delivered hundreds of babies over more than a decade in midwifery. Some of the women on her rounds in Shoreditch seemed to knock out a kid a year, even into their forties. Mrs Riley, Irish and no stranger to her old man’s fists, had borne fifteen children, twelve of them still alive, and eight of them still at home with her.

Trudy was about to say that the pelvis opened up more easily after a good stretching in a first labour in the hope of cheering up this new mum. Then she realised the remark would be insensitive. The girl’s father had told her that Rosie’s husband had been killed fighting overseas only months ago, so Trudy kept her lip buttoned. In time Rosie would probably remarry and go on to have a brood round her ankles. She was plainly an attractive girl, despite now looking limp and bedraggled after her ordeal.

‘You’ve got a wonderful part of your husband here to cherish.’ Trudy glanced at the child her patient was ignoring. She pushed lank fair hair from Rosie’s eyes so she could get a better view of her baby. ‘See, she’s got her eyes open and is looking at you. She knows you’re her mum all right …’

‘I said take her away from me.’ Rosie levered herself up on an elbow, grabbing at the child as though she might hurl her daughter to the newspaper-strewn floorboards. Instead she held the bundle out on rigidly extended arms. ‘Take her … give her away … do what you like with her …’ she sobbed, sinking down and turning her face into the pillow to dry her cheeks on the cotton.

‘Come on, love; don’t get tearful.’ Trudy placed the baby back by the bed’s wooden footboard then gave her hiccuping patient a brisk, soothing rub on the back. ‘Just a few minutes more and we can give you a nice hot wash down. You’re almost done now, you know.’

‘Almost done?’ Rosie echoed bitterly. ‘I wish I was. It’s all just starting for me, Nurse Johnson …’

CHAPTER TWO

‘You don’t mean that!’

‘If the girl says that’s what she wants to do, then that’s what she wants to do,’ Doris Bellamy stated bluntly. ‘A mother knows what’s best for her own child …’

‘I’ll deal with this,’ John Gardiner rudely interrupted. Doris was his fiancée, and a decent woman. But she wasn’t his daughter’s mother, or his grandkid’s nan, so he reckoned she could mind her own business and leave him to argue with Rosie over the nipper’s future.

‘You won’t change my mind, Dad. I’ve already spoken to Nurse Johnson and she says there are plenty of people ready to give a baby a good home.’

‘Does she now!’ John exploded. ‘Well, I know where that particular baby’ll get a good home ’n’ all. And it’s right here!’ He punched a forefinger at the ceiling. ‘The little mite won’t have to go nowhere. She’s our own flesh and blood and I ain’t treating her like she’s rubbish to be dumped!’

‘She’s not just our flesh and blood, though, is she, Dad?’ Rosie’s voice quavered but she cleared her throat and soldiered determinedly on. ‘She’s tainted by him. I can’t even bear to look at her in case I see his likeness in her.’

‘Forget about him; he’s long gone and can’t hurt you no more.’ John flicked some contemptuous fingers.

‘It’s all right for you!’ Rosie was incensed at her father’s attitude. ‘You just want a pretty toy to show off for a few years till you’re bored of teething and tantrums. You certainly won’t want her around if she turns out anything like that swine.’ Rosie forked agitated fingers into her blonde hair.

‘I think you’d better take that remark back, miss!’ John had leaped up, flinging off Doris’s restraining hand as she tried to drag him back down beside her on the sofa. ‘How dare you accuse me of play-acting? It’s you keeps chopping ’n’ changing yer ideas, my gel.’ John advanced on his daughter, finger wagging in emphasis. ‘I offered at the time to put things right. Soon as we found out about your condition I said I’d stump up to sort it out. Wouldn’t have it, though, would yer? Insisted you was having the baby and was prepared for all the gossip and hardship facing you as an unmarried mother.’ He barked a laugh. ‘Now you want to duck out without even giving it a try.’

‘I said I’d have the kid, not that I’d give it a permanent home,’ Rosie shouted. ‘I’ve got to act before it’s too late: once she gets to know us as her family it wouldn’t be fair to send her away.’

‘It ain’t fair anytime, that’s the point!’ John roared.

‘But … I might never love her. I might even grow to hate her,’ Rosie choked. ‘That’d be wicked because she could have somebody doting on her. She’s not got a clue who we are!’ Rosie surged to her feet at the parlour table, knocking over her mug of tea in the process. Automatically she set about mopping up the spillage with her apron.

She couldn’t deny that some of what her father had said was true. She’d not wanted an abortion; the talk of having something dug out of her had made her retch. The idea of enduring horrible pain and mess had been intolerable; now she knew that the natural way of things was pretty awful too.

Yet Nurse Johnson had been right when she’d said the memory of the ordeal would fade; her daughter was only four weeks old yet already Rosie felt too harassed to dwell on the birth. She guessed every other new mum must feel the same way. But she doubted many of those women were as bitter as she was, and her father, much as he wanted to help, was just making things worse.

‘Cat got yer tongue, has it?’ John was prowling to and fro in front of the unlit fireplace. ‘You should be ashamed. And I ain’t talking about what happened with Lenny. I know that weren’t your fault.’ After a dramatic pause he pointed at the pram. ‘But if you abandon the little ’un you should hang your head, ’cos it should never have come to this.’

‘I’m not a murderer,’ Rosie muttered. ‘I’m not a hypocrite either. Don’t expect me to play happy families.’ Attuned to her daughter’s tiny snickers and snuffles Rosie glanced at the pram. It was an ancient Silver Cross model that her father had got off the rag-and-bone man for a couple of shillings.

He’d brought it home a month before the date of her confinement. The sight of it had shocked and frightened Rosie because up until then she’d shoved to the back of her mind how close she was to having Lenny’s child. John had ignored his daughter’s announcement that he’d wasted his time and money on the pram because the Welfare was getting the kid.

The creaking contraption had been bumped down the cellar stairs and John had toiled on it in his little workshop, as he called the underground room that doubled as their air-raid shelter. Screws had been tightened and springs oiled, then he’d buffed the scratched coachwork and pitted chrome until they gleamed. At present John’s labour of love was wedged behind the settee, with the hood up to give the baby a bit more protection from the chilly March air in the fireless room.

‘She’s gonna be as pretty as you, y’know.’ Taking his daughter’s silence as an encouraging sign, John tried a bit of flattery.

‘Good looks don’t make you happy,’ Rosie stated bluntly. ‘If you force me to keep her, none of us’ll be content.’ She didn’t hate the child: the poor little thing was an innocent caught up in a vile web of violence and deceit.

‘We’ll make sure this is a happy place, dear.’ John sensed his daughter was softening. ‘No point in suffering like you did, then having nothing good to show for it in the end, is there?’

With a sigh, Rosie gathered up their tea things, loading them onto the tray ready to be carried into the kitchenette. She knew it was pointless trying to win over her father. It was always his way or nothing at all. But not this time. She had one final duty to perform before she slipped free of the yoke the poor little nameless mite had fastened around her neck.

She avoided her future stepmother’s eye. Rosie knew that Doris had been watching her, pursed lipped, throughout the shouting match between father and daughter. The woman had resented being told to shut up and had sat in stony silence ever since.

‘Nurse Johnson’s due soon. She said after today it’s time to sign us off home visits.’ Rosie was halfway to the door with the tea tray before adding, ‘I’m going to tell her to start things moving on the adoption.’

‘If you ain’t got the guts to look after her, I’ll do it meself,’ John sounded adamant. ‘No granddaughter of mine’s ending up with strangers, and that’s the end of it.’

Doris leaped to her feet. ‘Now just you hang on a minute there. Reckon I might have something to say about getting landed with kids at my age.’ They’d recently spoken about getting married in the summer so Doris thought she’d every right to have a say.

‘If you don’t like it, you know where the door is.’ John snapped his head at the exit.

Doris gawped at him, her expression indignant. ‘Right then. Couldn’t have made that plainer, could yer?’ She snatched up her handbag, then marched over the threshold and into the hallway.

‘Well, that was bloody daft.’ A moment after the front door was slammed shut, Rosie sighed loudly. ‘If Doris never speaks to you again it’ll be your own fault, Dad.’

‘Don’t care.’ John shrugged. ‘There’s only one person I’m interested in right now.’ He kneeled on the sofa and peered over its threadbare back into the pram. The little girl was sleeping soundly, long fawn lashes curled against translucent pearl-spotted skin. A soft fringe of fluffy fair hair framed her forehead and her tiny upturned nose and rosebud mouth looked as perfectly delicate as painted porcelain.

John stretched out a finger to stroke a silky pink cheek before pulling the blanket up to the infant’s pointed chin. ‘Don’t know you’re born, do you, little angel? But I won’t let you down,’ he promised his granddaughter in a voice wobbling with emotion.

‘You’re just feeling guilty,’ Rosie accused, although she felt quite moved by her father’s melodramatic performance. But what she’d said about him feeling guilty had hit the spot. And they both knew it. A moment later John flung himself past her and the cellar door was crashed shut as he sought sanctuary in his underground den.

Rosie placed the tea tray back on the table. For a moment she stood there, leaning against the wood, the knuckles of her gripping fingers turning white. The baby started to whimper and she automatically went to her. Seated on the sofa she reached a hand backwards to the handle, rocking the pram and avoiding looking at the infant, her chin cupped in a palm. Within a few minutes the room was again quiet. Rosie stood up, drawing her cardigan sleeves down her goose-pimpled arms. She took off her pinafore and folded it, then looked in the coal scuttle, unnecessarily as she knew it would be empty.

It was a cold unwelcoming house for a visitor but it didn’t matter that her father was too thrifty to light the fire till the evening. When Nurse Johnson turned up Rosie intended to say quickly what she had to, then get rid of her so she might start planning her future.

She wandered to the window, peering through the nets for a sighting of the midwife pedalling down the road. It had been many months since she’d hurried from Dr Vernon’s surgery to huddle, crying, in a nearby alleyway. She’d been terrified that day of going home and telling her father the dreadful news that she was almost certainly pregnant, yet he’d taken it better than she had herself. But now, at last, Rosie felt almost content because the prospect of returning to something akin to her old life seemed within her grasp.

Under a year ago she’d been working as a showgirl at the Windmill Theatre. Virtually every waking hour had been crammed with glamour and excitement. She’d enjoyed her job and the companionship of her colleagues, despite the rivalry, but she couldn’t go back there. Her body was different now. Her breasts had lost their pert youthfulness and her belly and hips were flabby. Besides, Rosie felt that chapter of her life had closed and a new one was opening up. Whether she’d wanted to or not, she’d grown up. The teenage vamp who’d revelled in having lavish compliments while flirting with the servicemen who flocked to the shows, no longer existed. Wistfully Rosie acknowledged that she’d not had a chance to kiss goodbye to that sunny side of her character. That choice, and her virginity, had been brutally stolen from her by Lenny, damn the bastard to hell …

But once her daughter was adopted Rosie knew she’d find work again, and she wanted her own place. Her father’s future wife resented her being around and Rosie knew she’d probably feel the same if she were in Doris’s shoes.

Suddenly she snapped out of her daydream, having spotted Nurse Johnson’s dark cap at the end of the street. Rosie let the curtain fall and pulled the pram out from behind the sofa so the midwife could examine the baby. Although she was expecting it, the ratatat startled her. Rosie brushed herself down then quickly went to open the door, praying that her father wouldn’t reappear to embarrass her by making snide comments.

Half an hour later the examinations were over and Rosie was sitting comfortably in the front parlour with the midwife.

‘She’s a beautiful child but would benefit from breast milk rather than a bottle, Mrs Deane. She might put on a bit more weight.’

Rosie smiled weakly; she hated people calling her by the wrong name. Her father and Doris had persuaded her to pass herself off as a war widow to stop tongues wagging. But that hadn’t worked: the old biddies were still having a field day at her expense. Rosie had chosen to use her mother’s maiden name as her pretend married name. She cleared her throat. ‘What we spoke about last time, Nurse Johnson …’

Trudy Johnson put down her pen on the chart she’d been filling in. ‘You still want to have her adopted?’ she prompted when Rosie seemed stuck for words.

‘I do … yes …’

‘Why? You seem to be coping well, and you have your father’s support.’

‘I’m not married,’ Rosie blurted, although she was sure the midwife had already guessed the truth. ‘That is … I’m not widowed either … I’ve never had a husband.’

Trudy sat back in the chair. It wasn’t surprising news, but Rosie’s honesty had taken her aback. Families who were frightened of ostracism often came up with non-existent husbands to prevent a daughter’s shame tainting them all. And now it was clearer why the baby still hadn’t been named. Much of the falsehood surrounding illegitimate births unravelled when awkward questions were asked at the registry office.

‘I guessed perhaps that might be the case.’

‘You don’t know the ins and outs of it all.’ Rosie bristled at the older woman’s tone. ‘Nobody does except me and Dad.’

Trudy Johnson could have barked a laugh at that. Instead she put away her notes in the satchel at her feet. At least this young woman had had the guts to go through with it, whereas lots of desperate girls allowed a backstreet butcher to rip at their insides. She had been approached herself over the years by more than one distraught family to terminate a ‘problem’ for them. Trudy had always refused to abort a woman’s baby but it didn’t stop them going elsewhere. And, to Trudy’s knowledge, at least two of those youngsters had ended up in the cemetery because of it.

‘Your situation’s more common than you think.’ Again Trudy’s tone was brisk. ‘Unlike you, though, I’ve seen some poor souls turfed out onto the streets with their babies. Your father is keeping a roof over your heads.’

‘It’s the least he can do, considering …’ Rosie bit her lip; she’d said enough. Besides, she didn’t want to get sidetracked from the important task of finding her daughter a new home.

Trudy stood up, buckling her mac, and gazed into the pram. The baby was awake. She’d been just five pounds at birth and was struggling to put on weight. Arms and legs barely bigger than Trudy’s thumbs were quivering and jerking, and just a hint of a smile was lifting a corner of the little girl’s mouth. It was probably wind but Trudy tickled the adorable infant under the chin.

‘I want her adopted,’ Rosie stated firmly. ‘And I want it done soon, before she gets attached to us.’

‘If you’re sure that’s what you want to do, then I’ll have her. I’ve never been married but I’ve always wanted a child.’ Trudy sent Rosie a sideways smile. ‘I almost got married when I was seventeen but …’ She shrugged. Her memories of Tony were too precious to share. She even avoided talking about her dead lover with her elderly parents. They’d liked him, and had mourned his passing almost as much as she had herself.

‘I see … sorry …’ Rosie finally murmured, recovering from her shock. On reflection she realised that the child would probably get no better care than from someone with Nurse Johnson’s skills. ‘Will having a baby interfere with your work?’ Rosie didn’t think that the midwife would leave a tiny baby for long periods of time, yet neither did she expect the woman would pack in her vocation just like that.

‘I share shifts with other nurses and know a good nursery,’ Nurse Johnson explained.

‘I’m not sure …’ Rosie felt awkward. She didn’t want to upset Nurse Johnson but her intention had always been that her baby be taken into a family where she could be mothered properly. Then in the evenings the woman’s doting husband would come home from work to coo over his new daughter. ‘I’ll think about it and I’d better let Dad know, too,’ Rosie said slowly, avoiding the older woman’s eye.

‘Of course …’ Trudy withdrew her hand from the pram. It wasn’t the first time that she’d attempted to foster a child only to be shunned because of her age and spinster status.

‘Did your sweetheart ever get married?’ Rosie blurted, keen to change the subject.

‘He lost his life in the Great War. He was too young to join up, but he went anyway. Lots did. He was killed at Ypres, still eighteen. I’ve grown old without him.’

‘You met nobody else?’ Rosie asked, saddened but still inquisitive.

‘I’d have liked to find somebody, but so many young fellows of my generation are still in Flanders, aren’t they?’ Nurse Johnson’s expression turned rather severe, as though she regretted betraying her feelings. ‘Does your father agree with your plan for adoption?’

‘It’s up to me to decide what’s best for her,’ Rosie blurted. ‘He doesn’t like the gossip going round, in any case.’

‘Neighbours chinwagging?’ Nurse Johnson asked with a slight smile.

‘They’ve been told I’m Mrs Deane, too, but they’re not green. I did go away and live with my aunt in Walthamstow for a few months, so I could say I’d had a whirlwind wedding before he bought it overseas.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve already had a run-in with Mrs Price; I don’t suppose it’ll be the last time.’ She frowned. ‘I’m going to find work that takes me away somewhere. Then I can start afresh and Dad’ll marry his fiancée …’ Rosie glanced at the midwife. She was not a bad sort. She’d not turned sniffy on knowing the baby was illegitimate. Neither had she gone off in a huff when her offer to take the baby hadn’t been snapped up. ‘I think you’d make a good mum,’ Rosie said kindly. ‘Good enough for me, anyhow,’ she added on impulse.

‘You mean … shall I start to make arrangements for myself then?’ Trudy’s eyes had lit up, her voice shrill with emotion.

‘I’m glad it’s you.’ Rosie sounded more enthusiastic than she felt. ‘I only want the best for her, you know.’

‘I know you do, dear.’ Nurse Johnson stood up and Rosie did too. They took a step towards one another as though they might embrace but instead shook hands just as the baby started to cry.

‘She takes her bottle without any trouble,’ Rosie informed the midwife quickly. She’d never wanted to feel a soft pink cheek against her naked breast and the baby gazing up at her with steady, inquisitive eyes.

Rosie glanced down and noticed that her clothing was wet.

‘You’ll need to bind yourself up, dear.’ Trudy nodded at the damp patches on Rosie’s bodice.

‘I know … it’s a right nuisance.’ Rosie frowned, grabbed the pinafore and put it on again, hiding the stains on her blouse. ‘How long will it all take … the adoption?’

‘You’re sure you don’t want to think about it for longer?’ Trudy felt conscience-bound to ask although she prayed Rosie wouldn’t back out now when she was considering Angela as a lovely name for such a blonde cherub.

Rosie nodded vigorously. ‘I’d offer you tea, but I’ve a pile of ironing to do.’ There were only two of her father’s shirts and one of her blouses in the basket, but Rosie wanted the woman gone. She felt a strange raging emotion within that was making her want to sink to her knees and scream. She guessed her conscience was troubling her but she mustn’t let it. Her father might accuse her of being selfish and heartless, but she truly wanted the best for her daughter.

‘It’s all right … I’ve got to get on too.’ Trudy realised that the young woman wanted to be on her own now. With a surreptitious look of longing at the baby, she gathered up her things and followed Rosie towards the front door.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Gone has she, the interfering old bag?’

Her father must have been waiting for the midwife to leave. He’d emerged from the cellar almost before Rosie had shut the front door, having seen the woman out.

‘Yes, she has … but you’ve no need to speak about her like that. She’s all right, is Nurse Johnson.’ Rosie knew that crossed-armed, jaw-jutting stance of her father’s meant another row was in the offing. He was likely to hit the roof when he found out what arrangements she’d made, and spit out a few more choice names for the nice nurse.

‘Go and see if little ’un’s all right, shall I?’

‘She’s fast asleep; I’ve only just come out of the bloody front room and you know it,’ Rosie retorted in response to his cantankerous sarcasm.

‘How long are we going to keep calling the poor little mite “she”? Getting a name, is she, before her first birthday?’ John continued sourly.

His barbs were starting to get on Rosie’s nerves but she reined in her temper. They had a serious conversation in front of them and she’d as soon get it over with. ‘Come and sit down in the kitchen, Dad. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

Rosie took her father’s elbow and, surprisingly, he allowed her to steer him along the passage.

‘Let’s wet our whistles.’ Rosie began filling the kettle, hoping to keep things calm if not harmonious between them.

John pulled out a stick-back chair at the kitchen table and was about to sit down when he hesitated and glanced up at the ceiling. Rosie had heard it too: the unmistakable sound of aeroplane engines moving closer.

‘Must be some of ours,’ Rosie said, putting the kettle on the gas stove and sticking a lit match beneath it.

There’d been no warning siren and the afternoon was late but still light. The Luftwaffe mostly came over under cover of darkness. Since the Blitz petered out last May, German bombing had thankfully become sporadic and Londoners – especially East Enders who’d borne the brunt of the pounding – had been able to relax a bit.

John peered out of the window, then, frowning, he opened the back door and stepped out, head tipped up as he sauntered along the garden path. His mouth suddenly fell agape in a mixture of shock and fear and he pelted back towards the house, shouting.

But the sirens had belatedly begun to wail, cutting off his warning of an air raid.

Rosie let the crockery crash back to the draining board on hearing the eerie sound and sprang to the back door to hurry her father inside. Before John could reach the house a short whistle preceded an explosion in a neighbour’s garden, sending him to the ground, crucified on the concrete at the side of the privy.

Crouching on the threshold, arms covering her head in instinctive protection, Rosie could hear her father groaning just yards away. She’d begun to unfold to rush to him when debilitating terror hit her. She sank back, shaking and whimpering, biting down ferociously on her lower lip to try to still her chattering teeth. Tasting and smelling the metallic coppery blood on her tongue increased the horrific images spinning inside her head. She rammed her fists against her eyes but she couldn’t shut out the carnage she’d witnessed in the Café de Paris a year ago. Her nostrils were again filled with the sickly stench of blood, and her mind seemed to echo with the sounds of wretched people battling for their final moments of life. Some had called in vain for loved ones … or the release of death. Limbless bodies and staring sightless eyes had been everywhere, tripping her up as she’d fled to the street, smothered in choking dust. For months afterwards she’d felt dreadfully ashamed that she’d instinctively charged to safety rather than staying to comfort some of those poor souls.

‘Rosie … can you hear me …?’

Her father’s croaking finally penetrated Rosie’s torment and she scrambled forward, uncaring of glass and wood splinters tearing into her hands and knees. She raked her eyes over him for injuries, noting his bloodied shin, although something else was nagging at her that refused to be dragged to the forefront of her mind.

‘Think me leg’s had it,’ John cried as his daughter bent over him.

Rosie was darting fearful looks at the sky in case a second attack was imminent. The bomber had disappeared from view, but another could follow at any moment and drop its lethal load. Obliquely Rosie was aware of neighbours shouting hysterically in the street as they ran for the shelters, but she had to focus on her father and how she could get him to safety in their cellar.

‘Take my arm, Dad … you must!’ she cried as he tried to curl into a protective ball on hearing another engine. Thank goodness this aeroplane, now overhead, was a British Spitfire on the tail of the Dornier. ‘Come on … we can make it … one of ours is after that damned Kraut.’ Rosie felt boosted by the fighter avenging them and murmured a little prayer for the pilot’s safety as well as their own. But then her attention was fully occupied in getting her father to cooperate in standing up. He was slowly conquering his fear and squirming to a seated position with her assistance.

Regaining her strength, she half-lifted him, her arm and leg muscles in agony and feeling as though they were tearing from their anchoring bones. Gritting her teeth, she managed to get both herself and her father upright. With her arm about his waist she dragged him, limping, into the kitchen. John Gardiner wasn’t a big man; he was short and wiry but heavy for a girl weighing under eight stone to manhandle.

Slowly and awkwardly they descended the stairs to the cellar, crashing onto the musky floor two steps from the bottom when Rosie’s strength gave out. John gave a shriek of pain as he landed awkwardly, attempting to break his daughter’s fall while protecting his injured limb.

Rosie scrambled up in the dark, dank space and lit the lamp, then crouched down in front of her father to inspect him. The explosion had left his clothes in rags. Gingerly she lifted the ribbons of his trouser leg to expose the damage beneath. His shin was grazed and bloody and without a doubt broken. The bump beneath the flesh showed the bone was close to penetrating the skin’s surface.

Her father’s ashen features were screwed up in agony and Rosie noticed tears squeezing between his stubby lashes. She soothed him as he suddenly bellowed in pain.

‘Soon as it’s over I’ll go and get you help,’ she vowed. ‘We’ll be all right, Dad, we always are, aren’t we?’ She desperately wanted to believe what she was saying.

Rosie thumped the heel of her hand on her forehead to beat out the tormenting memories of the Café de Paris bombing. It seemed a very long while ago that she’d gone out with two of her friends from the Windmill Theatre for a jolly time drinking and dancing to ‘Snakehip’ Johnson’s band, and the night had ended in a tragedy. Three of them had entered the Café de Paris in high spirits but only two of them had got out alive.

Rosie forced the memories out of her mind. She sprang up and dragged one of the mattresses, kept there for use in the night-time air raids, closer to her father, then helped him roll off the floor and on to it to make him more comfortable. There was some bedding, too, and she unfolded a blanket and settled it over him, then placed a pillow beneath his head.

Sinking down beside her father, Rosie pressed her quaking torso against her knees, her arms over her head as the house rocked on its foundations. Another bomber must have evaded the Spitfire to shed its deadly cargo.

‘We’ve taken a belting … that’s this place finished … we’ll need a new place to live,’ John wheezed out between gasps of pain, his voice almost drowned out by the crashing of collapsing timbers and shattering glass. ‘Come here, Rosie.’ He held out his arms. ‘If we’re gonners I want to give you a last cuddle. Be brave, dear … I love you, y’know.’

They clung together, terrified, the smell of John’s blood and sweaty fear mingling in Rosie’s nostrils. After what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than a few minutes the dreadful sounds of destruction faded and the tension went out of John. Pulling free of his daughter’s embrace he flopped back on the mattress, breathing hard.

‘That’s it over then, if we’re lucky. Everything seemed all right while we still had this place.’

Rosie knew what her father meant. This had been the house her parents had lived in from when they were married, and it was Rosie’s childhood home. Wincing as she picked a shard of glass from her knee, Rosie mentally reviewed their options. Doris lived in Hackney and she might let them stay with her until the housing department found them something. Then Rosie remembered the woman had stomped out, making it clear she wasn’t getting landed with kids …

As though the memory drifted back through a fog in her mind Rosie realised that it wasn’t just her and Dad any more. Her baby was upstairs. She’d saved her own skin and her father’s, oblivious to the fact that there were three of them now. Her little girl was all alone and defenceless in the front room and she’d not even remembered her, let alone made an effort to protect her from the bombing.

Rosie pushed herself to her feet. She stood for less than a second garnering energy and breath, then launched herself up the cellar steps, her hands and knees bloodied in the steep scramble as she lost her footing on the bricks in her insane haste. The door was open a few inches and she flew into it to run out but something had fallen at the other side, jamming it ajar. With a feral cry of fury Rosie barged her arm again and again into the door until it moved slightly and she could squeeze through the aperture. Frenziedly she kicked at the obstacles blocking her way.

Masonry from the shattered kitchen wall was piled in the hallway but she bounded over it, falling to her knees as the debris underfoot shifted, then jumping back up immediately. She’d no need to fight her way into the front room. The door had fallen flat and taken the surround and some of the plaster with it.

Rosie burst in, her chest heaving. The top of the pram was covered in rubble and a part of the window frame, jagged with glass, lay on the hood.

Flinging off the broken timbers, she swept away debris with hands and forearms, uncaring of the glass fragments ripping into her flesh. Oozing blood became caked with dust, forming thick calluses on her palms.

Hot tears streamed wide tracks down her mucky face as finally she gazed into the pram. Very carefully she put down the hood, and removed the rain cover. She was alive! Rosie picked up her daughter, wrapped in her white shawl, and breathed in the baby’s milky scent, burying her stained face against soft warm skin until the infant whimpered in protest at the vice-like embrace.

‘Thank you, God … oh, thank you …’ Rosie keened over and over again as the white shawl turned pink in her cut hands. She bent over the tiny baby as though she would again absorb her daughter into herself to keep her safe. Her quaking fingers raced up and down the little limbs, checking for damage, but the infant’s gurgling didn’t seem to be prompted by pain.

‘Let’s go and find Granddad, shall we?’ Rosie softly hiccuped against her daughter’s downy head. ‘Come on then, my darling. I’m so sorry; I swear I’ll never ever leave you again.’

When she pushed open the cellar door Rosie found her father had crawled to the bottom step and was in the process of pulling himself up it. He choked on a sob as he saw them, flopping back down against the wall.

‘I forgot about her, too,’ he gasped through his tears. ‘What sort of people are we to do something like that?’ He shook his head in despair, wailing louder. ‘It’s my fault. I was too concerned about meself to even think about saving me granddaughter.’

‘It’s all right, Dad. She’s fine, look …’ Rosie anchored the baby against her shoulder in a firm grip, then descended as quickly as she could, hanging onto the handrail. ‘Look, Dad!’ she comforted her howling father. Gently she unwrapped the child to show her father that the baby was unharmed. ‘We’re not used to having her around yet … that’s all it is. No harm done. She’s in better shape than us,’ Rosie croaked. She felt a fraud for trying to make light of it when her heart was still thudding crazily with guilt and shame.

John blew his nose. For a long moment he simply stared at his granddaughter, then he turned his head. ‘Can see now that you’re right, Rosie,’ he started gruffly. ‘She’d be better off elsewhere. Let somebody else care for her, ’cos we ain’t up to it, that’s for sure.’

Somewhere in the distance was a muffled explosion, but neither John nor Rosie heeded it, both lost in their own thoughts. Rosie settled down on the mattress. Her lips traced her daughter’s hairline, soothing the baby as she became restless. She placed the tiny bundle down beside her and covered her in a blanket, tucking the sides in carefully.

John studied his wristwatch. ‘Time for her bottle. I’ll watch her if you want to go and get it.’ Muffling moans of pain, he wriggled closer to peer at the baby’s dust-smudged face. He took out from a pocket his screwed-up hanky.

‘No! Don’t use that, Dad. It’s filthy; I’ll wash her properly later … when we go upstairs.’ Rosie smiled to show her father she appreciated his concern. But she wasn’t having him wiping her precious daughter’s face with his snot rag.

‘She’s hungry,’ John said, affronted by his daughter’s telling off.

Rosie made to get up, then sank back down to the mattress again. ‘Kitchen’s blown to smithereens. Won’t find the bottles or the milk powder; won’t be able to wash her either, if the water’s off.’ She began unbuttoning her bodice. ‘I’ll feed her,’ she said. Turning a shoulder to her father so as not to embarrass him, she helped the child to latch onto a nipple. Her breasts were rock hard with milk, hot and swollen, but she put up with the discomfort, biting her lip against the pain. She encouraged the baby to feed with tiny caresses until finally she stopped suckling and seemed to fall asleep with a sated sigh.

‘What you gonna call her?’ John whispered. He had rolled over onto his side, away from mother and child to give them some privacy. His voice sounded different: high-pitched with pain still, but there was an underlying satisfaction in his tone.

Rosie smiled to herself, wondering how her father knew she’d been thinking about names for her daughter. ‘Hope …’ she said on a hysterical giggle. ‘Seems right … so that’s what I’m choosing. Hope this bloody war ends soon … hope we get a place to live … hope … hope … hope …’

‘Hope the doctors sort me bloody leg out for us, I know that.’ John joined in gruffly with the joke.

‘You’ll be right as rain with a peg leg … Long John Silver,’ Rosie teased.

They both chuckled although John’s laughter ended in a groan and he shifted position to ease his damaged limb.

In her mind Rosie knew she’d chosen her daughter’s name for a different reason entirely from those she’d given. Her greatest hope was that her daughter would forgive her if she ever discovered that she’d abandoned her like that. The poor little mite could have suffocated to death if she’d not been uncovered in time. Or the weight of the shattered window frame on top of the pram might even-tually have crushed the hood and her daughter’s delicate skull. The idea that Hope might have suffered a painful death made bile rise in Rosie’s throat. She closed her eyes and forced her thoughts to her other hope.

She hoped that Nurse Johnson would forgive her. The woman desperately wanted to be a mother, and Rosie had promised her that her dream would be real. Rosie sank back on the mattress beside Hope and curved a protective arm over her daughter as she slept, a trace of milk circling her mouth.

But Rosie had no intention of allowing anybody to take her Hope away now. She’d do anything to keep her.

‘Hear that Dad?’

‘What … love?’ John’s voice was barely audible.

‘Bells … ambulance or fire engine is on its way. You’ll be in hospital soon,’ she promised him. While she’d been cuddling her little girl she’d heard her father’s groans although he’d been attempting to muffle the distressing sounds.

‘Ain’t going to hospital; they can patch me up here,’ he wheezed.

‘Don’t be daft!’ Rosie said but there was a levity in her tone that had been absent before. She couldn’t be sure which of the services was racing to their aid and she didn’t care. She was simply glad that somebody might turn up and know what to do if her father passed out from the pain that was making him gasp, because she hadn’t got a clue.

‘Anybody home?’

The shouted greeting sounded cheery and Rosie jumped up, clutching Hope to her chest. This time she emerged carefully into their wrecked hallway rather than plunging out as she had when in a mad scramble to rescue her daughter. A uniformed woman of about Doris’s age was picking her way over the rubble in Rosie’s direction.

‘Well, you look right as ninepence,’ the auxiliary said with a grin. ‘So does the little ’un.’ The woman nodded at Hope, now asleep in Rosie’s arms. ‘Can’t say the same for the house though, looks like a bomb’s hit it.’ She snorted a chuckle.

Rosie found herself joining in, quite hysterically for a few seconds. ‘Dad’s in the cellar … broken leg. He caught the blast in the back garden.’

‘Righto … let’s take a shufti.’ The woman’s attitude had changed to one of brisk efficiency and she quickened her pace over the rubble.

Even when she heard her father protesting about being manhandled, Rosie left them to it downstairs. She had instinctively liked the ambulance auxiliary and she trusted the woman to know what she was doing. A moment later when she heard her father grunt an approximation of one of his chuckles Rosie relaxed, knowing the auxiliary had managed to find a joke to amuse him too. Stepping carefully over debris towards the splintered doorway she stopped short, not wanting to abandon her father completely by going outside even though the all clear was droning. She found a sound piece of wall and leaned back on it, rocking side to side, eyes closed and crooning a lullaby to Hope, who slept contentedly on, undisturbed by the pandemonium in the street.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘My, oh my, look how she’s grown. Only seems like yesterday little Hope was born.’ Peg Price stepped away from the knot of women congregated by the kerb. They were all wearing a uniform of crossover apron in floral print with their hair bundled inside scarves knotted atop their heads. Peg ruffled the child’s flaxen curls. ‘She’ll be on her feet soon, won’t she, love?’

To a casual observer the meeting might have seemed friendly, but Rosie knew differently and wasn’t having any of it. She attempted to barge past the weedy-looking woman blocking her way. But Peg Price was no pushover and stood her ground.

‘Some of ’em are late starters,’ another woman chipped in, eyeing the toddler sitting in her pram. ‘Don’t you worry, gel, kids do everything in their own sweet time.’

‘I’m not worried about a thing, thanks.’ Rosie gave a grim smile, attempting to manoeuvre around the trio of neighbours stationed in front of her. They were all aware that her daughter was walking because they spied over the fences and watched Hope playing in the back garden.

Even after two years the local gossips hadn’t given up on probing for a bit of muck to rake over. Rosie knew what really irked them was that she had so far managed to remain unbowed by their malice. She’d never crept about, embarrassed. She’d brazened out their snide remarks about her daughter’s birth. And her father and Doris had done likewise.

After the Gardiners’ home had been destroyed at the bottom end of the street the council had rehoused them in the same road, so they were still neighbours with the Price family.

‘Coming up to her second birthday, by my reckoning.’ Peg stepped into the road to foil Rosie’s next attempt to evade her.

‘She’s turned two.’ Rosie glared into a pair of spiteful eyes.

‘Shame about yer ’usband, ain’t it? Proud as punch, he’d be, of that little gel.’ May Reed chucked the child under her rosy chin. ‘’Course, she’ll ask about her daddy, so you’ll be ready with some answers for the kid, eh, love?’

‘Yeah, I’ve already thought of that, thanks all the same for your concern.’ Rosie’s sarcasm breezed over her shoulder as she moved on, ignoring May’s yelp as the pram clouted her hip.

‘Looks like you, don’t she, Rosie? Just as well, ain’t it?’

It wasn’t the sly comment but Peg Price’s tittering that brought Rosie swinging about. ‘Yeah, she’s just like me: blonde and pretty. Lucky, aren’t I, to have a daughter like that? Jealous?’ Rosie’s jaunty taunt floated in her wake as she marched on.

It wasn’t in Rosie’s nature to be vindictive, but she was happy to give as good as she got where those three old cows were concerned. Over two years Peg and her cronies had done their best to browbeat her into admitting her baby was a bastard and she was ashamed of Hope. But she’d never been ashamed of Hope, even in those early days when she’d considered giving her away.

Everybody knew how to shut Peg Price up: rub the woman’s nose in the fact that her only child was an ugly brat. If anybody was ashamed of their own flesh and blood it was Peg. Not only was Irene a spotty, sullen teenager, she had a reputation for chasing after boys.

‘Conceited bleedin’ madam, ain’t yer?’ Peg had caught up with Rosie and grabbed her arm. All pretence at geniality had vanished.

‘Well, that’s ’cos I’ve got something to be conceited about.’ Rosie wrenched herself free of the woman’s chapped fingers. ‘Bet you wish your Irene could say the same, don’t you?’

‘What d’yer mean by that?’ Peg snarled, shoving her cardigan sleeves up to her elbows in a threatening way. ‘Come on, spit it out, so I can ram it back down yer throat.’

Rosie gave her a quizzical look. Peg’s pals were enjoying the idea of a fight starting. May Reed had poked her tongue into the side of her cheek, her eyes alight with amusement as she waited expectantly for the first punch to be thrown.

‘You don’t want to let the likes of her talk to you like that, Peg.’ May prodded her friend’s shoulder when a tense silence lengthened and it seemed hostilities might flounder.

‘At least your Irene’s decent, unlike some I could mention.’ Lou Rawlings snorted her two penn’orth. ‘Widow, my eye! I reckon that’s a bleedin’ brass curtain ring.’ She pointed a grimy fingernail at Rosie’s hand, resting on the pram handle.

‘Decent, is she, your Irene?’ Rosie echoed, feigning surprise and ostentatiously twisting her late mother’s thin gold band on her finger. ‘Go ask Bobby West about that then …’cos I heard different, just yesterday.’

Rosie carried on up the road with abuse hurled after her. She already felt bad about opening her mouth and repeating what Doris had told her. Peg’s daughter had been spotted behind the hut in the local rec with Bobby West.

Although they’d lived close for many years the gap in their ages meant Rosie and Irene had never been friends. Previously they’d just exchanged a hello or a casual wave; once Irene found out who’d dropped her in it Rosie reckoned she’d get ignored … or thumped by Irene. In a way she felt sorry for Peg’s daughter. The poor girl had every reason to stomp about with her chops on her boots with that old dragon for a mother.

Lost in thought, Rosie almost walked straight past her house. They’d been rehoused for ages but the Dorniers had kept coming although their street had so far avoided further damage. She still headed automatically to her childhood home, further along. She found it upsetting to see the place in ruins so usually took a detour to avoid the bomb site it now was. She unlatched the wooden gate, fumbling in her handbag for her street door key. Glancing over a shoulder, Rosie noticed that trouble was on its way: Peg was marching in her direction with fat Lou and May flanking her. The unholy trinity, as her father called the local harridans, looked about to attack again before Rosie could make good her escape.

Rosie stuck her bag back under the cover of the pram then wheeled it about and set off along the road again. She was feeling so infuriated that, outnumbered or not, she felt she might just give Peg Price the scrap she was spoiling for. She wasn’t running scared of them; but Rosie was keen to avoid upsetting her little girl.

Hope was sensitive to raised voices and a bad atmosphere. Just yesterday her daughter had whimpered when Rosie had given Doris a mouthful. Rosie didn’t mind helping out with all the household chores, but she was damned if she was going to act as an unpaid skivvy for her new stepmother.

Since she’d moved in as Mrs Gardiner, Doris had made it clear she thought her husband’s daughter had outstayed her welcome and she’d only tolerate Rosie’s presence if she gained some benefit from it.

Rosie didn’t see herself as a rival for John’s affections, but Doris seemed to resent her nevertheless. Naturally, her father’s second wife wanted to be the most important person in her husband’s life. Unfortunately, John still acted as though his daughter and granddaughter had first claim on him. John and Doris weren’t exactly newlyweds, having got married six months ago, but Rosie thought that the couple were entitled to some privacy.

‘And so do I want some bloody privacy,’ she muttered to herself now. She dearly wished to be able to afford a room for herself and Hope, but the cheapest furnished room she’d found was ten shillings a week, too dear for her pocket. So for now, they’d all have to try to muddle along as best they could. On fine days like today Rosie often walked for miles because the balmy June air was far nicer than the icy atmosphere she was likely to encounter indoors.

Now that her daughter was potty-trained Rosie felt ready to find Hope a place at a day nursery so she could get a job. Her father had never fully recovered his fitness after they’d been bombed out and Rosie wasn’t sure he was up to the job of caring for a lively toddler, although he’d offered. Rosie didn’t want to be beholden to her stepmother. Doris had a job serving in a bakery and was always complaining about feeling tired after being on her feet all day.

Rosie turned the corner towards Holborn, tilting her face up to the sun’s golden warmth. It was late afternoon, but at this time of the year the heat and light lingered well into the evening. If John had prepared her tea he’d put the meal on the warming shelf for her to eat on her return.

‘Hey … is that you, Rosie Gardiner? Is it really you?’

Rosie was idly window-shopping by Gamages department store when she heard her name called. Pivoting about, she frowned at a brunette hurrying towards her bouncing a pram in front of her. She didn’t recognise the woman, and assumed she’d been spotted by a forgotten face from schooldays.

‘Don’t remember me, do you? Bleedin’ hell, Rosie! It’s only been a few years!’ The newcomer grinned, wobbling Rosie’s arm to jolt an answer from her. ‘I can’t have changed that much.’

It was the young woman’s rough dialect and unforgettably infectious smile that provided a clue. The poor soul had changed; in a short space of time her acquaintance from the Windmill Theatre looked as though she’d aged ten years. If Rosie had relied on looks alone to jog her memory, she’d never have identified her. ‘Oh … of course I remember you. It’s Gertie … Gertie Grimes, isn’t it?’

Gertie nodded, still smiling. Then she gave a grimace. ‘It’s all right, nobody from the old days recognises me. Look a state, don’t I?’ She sighed in resignation.

‘No …’ Rosie blurted, then bit her lip. There was no point in lying. Gertie Grimes was nobody’s fool, Rosie remembered, and wouldn’t appreciate being treated as one. ‘Been a bloody long war, Gertie, hasn’t it?’ she said sympathetically.

‘Oh, yeah …’ Gertie drawled wearily. ‘And it ain’t done yet.’

‘There’s an end in sight, though, now the troops have landed in Normandy.’ Rosie gave the woman’s arm a rub, sensing much had happened in Gertie’s life since they’d last spoken to make her sound so bitter.

‘Perhaps we’ll be having a victory knees-up soon.’ Gertie brightened. ‘Come on, tell me all about it.’ She nodded at the little girl spinning the beads threaded on elastic strung between the pram hood fixings. ‘Beauty, she is; what’s her name?’ Gertie lifted Rosie’s hand and saw the wedding ring. ‘I suppose you married an army general to make me really jealous. I remember the top brass were always fighting over you at the Windmill. Could’ve had yer pick, couldn’t you; all the girls envied you.’

‘I was a bit of a show-off, wasn’t I?’ Rosie replied with a rueful smile. ‘Her name’s Hope; but you go first. I remember you had boys, but this isn’t a boy.’ Rosie tickled the cheek of the little girl with dark brown hair and her mother’s eyes. The child looked to be a few months older than Hope and the two little girls were now leaning towards each other sideways, giggling, to clasp hands.

‘Never got a chance to tell you I was pregnant, did I, ’cos I left soon as I found out?’ It was a fib; Gertie had concealed her pregnancy for quite some time from everyone at work, and from her cuckolded husband. ‘She’s called Victoria and she’s gone two and a half now.’

‘Crikey, you’ve got your hands full, Gertie. I know you’ve got four sons, so a girl must’ve been a lovely surprise for you and your husband.’

Gertie frowned into the distance. None of what Rosie assumed was true. Gertie now had just two children alive and, far from being delighted about another baby, her husband had knocked her out cold when he found out he’d not fathered the child she was carrying. ‘Got just the one boy now. Three of them was lost in a raid during the Blitz. Direct hit … happened before Vicky was born.’

‘Oh … I’m so sorry,’ Rosie gasped. The memory of almost losing Hope when their house was destroyed still tormented her. Her remorse over that day was a constant companion and she could see in Gertie’s eyes that the woman was battling similar demons.

‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Rosie said softly. ‘I can’t know how you feel, not really, so I won’t say I do. But I nearly lost Hope so I know what it is to feel guilty.’ She paused. ‘She was nearly crushed to death in her pram on the day we got bombed out in Shoreditch. It was my fault, no getting away from it.’ Rosie cleared the huskiness from her voice with a small cough. ‘My dad had been injured in the back garden, you see, and I was so concerned about getting him indoors that I forgot all about my baby in the front room.’ It was the first time Rosie had admitted to anybody what she’d done. Not even Doris knew what had occurred that terrible afternoon.

‘I still wake up at nights howling about the night my boys were killed. I feel so ashamed,’ Gertie croaked. ‘Least you was close enough to put things right before it was too late.’ She sunk her chin to her chest. ‘I wasn’t there for them … nor was me husband … or me eldest boy. All out, we was, and Simon and Adam and Harry perished all alone in the house. Harry was just about the age Vicky is now. But it’s the other two that I ache most for. Being older, they might’ve understood and been so frightened, the poor little loves.’ Gertie swiped the heel of a hand over her cheeks. ‘Please God they didn’t suffer too much.’

Rosie put an arm about Gertie’s shoulders and hugged her tight. ‘They’re at peace now, Gertie,’ she soothed. ‘You’ve done it so far, you can carry on a bit longer … then a bit longer after that. That’s what I told myself, when I felt like beating my head against the wall to punish myself.’

‘The ambulance girls … they fought like demons to keep my Harry alive. He was protected a bit by being in his pram, you see.’ Gertie gulped back the lump in her throat. ‘But they couldn’t save him. One of the poor lasses was bawling almost as loud as me when they put the three bodies in the back of the ambulance.’

‘Oh, Gertie, I’m so sorry …’

Gertie sniffed and blew her nose. ‘Wanted to join the ambulance auxiliaries after that. Rufus wouldn’t hear of it. But I went along for the interview anyhow.’ Gertie looked crestfallen. ‘Didn’t pass the test, though. Best if you’ve got no young kids, they said, ’cos of the dangerous nature of the job.’ Gertie grimaced. ‘I told ’em about the dangerous nature of living in the East End. Didn’t go down too well with the snooty cows.’

Rosie was impressed that Gertie had tried to join the auxiliaries. It seemed such a fitting thing to do in the circumstances. She remembered how efficiently the ambulance teams had got on with things when they’d been bombed out at home. At the time Rosie had been wrapped up in caring for her daughter and had happily allowed the auxiliaries to take over tending to her father. The middle-aged woman who’d patched him up, along with a younger female colleague, had almost carried him up the cellar stairs. Though the two of them looked like butter wouldn’t melt, they’d come out with a few risqué jokes to distract John while loading him into the back of a makeshift ambulance.

With bad grace Doris had offered Rosie and Hope a roof over their heads with her in Hackney until John came out of hospital and the Council re-housed them. None of the trouble they’d suffered though could compare with Gertie’s suffering.

‘What’s your oldest lad’s name?’ Rosie asked ‘Bet he’s quite the young man now, isn’t he?’

‘Oh, Joey’s cock of the walk, all right. Thirteen, he is, and giving me plenty of lip.’ Gertie managed a tiny smile. ‘Mind you, that one always did have too much to say for himself. Gets that off his dad.’

‘I bet your husband dotes on his princess.’ Rosie nodded at Victoria. ‘My dad calls Hope his princess.’ She gave her friend a smile. ‘Best be getting off, I suppose … be late for tea. Dad’ll wonder where we are.’ Rosie regretted drawing attention to her own circumstances; Gertie would wonder why she was referring to her father so much rather than to a husband.

‘Fine reunion this has turned out to be,’ Gertie’s mumble held a hint of wry humour.

‘Glad I bumped into you, Gertie,’ Rosie said, glancing at her daughter, clapping hands with Victoria.

‘Shall we meet up again?’ Gertie looked at Rosie quite shyly as though anticipating a rebuff. ‘The little ’uns seem to be getting along. We could take them for a stroll round a park another day. Perhaps have a picnic … if you like.’

‘I’d like that very much,’ Rosie said enthusiastically. ‘We can reminisce about old times. What a to-do that was about Olive Roberts. Who’d have thought it?’

‘Never liked that woman,’ Gertie’s eyes narrowed as she reflected on the kiosk attendant at the Windmill Theatre who’d been unmasked as a dangerous Nazi sympathiser.

‘Quite hair-raising, wasn’t it?’ A gleam of nostalgia lit Rosie’s eyes. ‘We saw some times there, didn’t we? Good and bad.’

Gertie grunted agreement. ‘I miss the old place,’ she said. ‘Funny thing is, when I was at work, I couldn’t wait to finish a shift and get home to me boys, though they drove me up the wall. Now I’m home all the time I wish I’d got a job.’

‘Now Hope’s turned two I’m after a nursery place for her so I can get back to work.’ Rosie tidied her daughter’s fair hair with her fingers. ‘I want to help bring this damned war to an end.’

‘Not going back on stage?’ Gertie asked.

‘No fear.’

‘Before you disappear, you must tell me about your other half.’ Gertie teasingly prodded Rosie’s arm.

‘Tell you more when I see you next week,’ Rosie replied, turning the pram about, ready to head back towards Shoreditch. ‘How about Thursday afternoon at about three o’clock? We could meet right here outside Gamages …’

‘Suits me; Rufus goes to a neighbour’s to play cards on Thursdays.’

‘Your husband back on leave, is he?’ Rosie asked.

‘Oh …’course, you wouldn’t know that either. He’s been invalided home from the army,’ Gertie said briskly to conceal the wobble in her voice.

Rosie read from Gertie’s fierce expression that the woman felt she’d suffered enough condolences for one day. ‘See you Thursday then.’ Rosie let off the brake on the pram.

The two women headed off in opposite directions, then both turned at the same time to wave before settling into their strides.

Rosie walked quickly, aware her dad would be wondering where she’d got to, but at the back of her mind was the conversation she’d had with Gertie about the ambulance auxiliaries. Rosie wanted to do a job that was vital to the war effort and in her book there was nothing more important than saving lives. So she reckoned she knew what employment she’d apply for. All she had to do was break it to her dad that she was going to volunteer for a position with the ambulance auxiliaries.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Long time no see, mate.’

John Gardiner almost dropped the mug of tea he’d been cradling in his palm. He’d opened the front door while carrying it, expecting to see his daughter on the step. He’d been about to say, ‘What, forgot your key again, dear?’ because Rosie had earlier in the week knocked him up when he’d been snoozing on the settee.

Instead his welcoming smile vanished and he half closed the door in the wonky-eyed fellow’s face. It’d been a year since he’d caught sight of Frank Purves, and then they’d only nodded at one another from opposite pavements. On that occasion John had been tempted to hare across the road to throttle the man for having spawned a fiend. But, of course, he hadn’t because that would have given the game away. And John would sooner die than cause his daughter any more trouble. He kept his welcome to a snarled, ‘What the hell d’you want?’

‘Well, that ain’t a very nice greeting, is it?’ Frank stuck his boot over the threshold to prevent John shutting him out. He stared at his old business partner although just one of his eyes was on the man’s face and the other appeared to be studying the doorjamb. Popeye, as Frank was nicknamed, had never let his severe squint hold him back. ‘Just come to see how you’re doing, and tell you about a bit of easy money heading your way, John.’

‘I told you years back that I ain’t in that game no more, and I haven’t changed me mind,’ John craned his neck to spit, ‘I’ve got a wife and family, and I don’t want no trouble.’

‘Yeah, heard you got married to Doris Bellamy. Remember her. All used to hang about together as kids, didn’t we?’ Frank cocked his head. ‘Gonna ask me in fer a cuppa, then?’ He nodded at the tea in John’s unsteady hand. ‘Any left in the pot, is there, mate? I’m spitting feathers ’ere …’

‘No, there ain’t.’ John glanced to left and right as though fearing somebody might have spotted his visitor. ‘Look … I’m straight now and all settled down. Don’t need no work.’ As a last resort he waggled his bad leg at Frank. ‘See … got a gammy leg since we got bombed out up the other end of the road.’

‘Yeah, heard about that, too.’ Frank gave the injury a cursory glance. ‘Thing is, John, that bad leg ain’t gonna hold you back in your line of work, is it?’ He shifted his weight forward. ‘You owe me, as I recall, and I’m here to collect that favour.’

‘Owe you?’ John frowned, the colour fleeing from his complexion. Even so, he was confident that what he was thinking wasn’t what Frank Purves was hinting at. John reckoned that Popeye couldn’t know anything about that, ’cos if he did the vengeful bastard wouldn’t be talking to him, he’d be sticking a knife in his guts. Lenny’s actions had started a feud between the Gardiners and the Purveses that Popeye knew nothing about. But one day he would and when that day came John wanted to get in first.

‘When you chucked it all in you left me high ’n’ dry with a pile of labels I’d run off. Never paid me for ’em, did yer? Plus I had a fair few irate customers waiting on that batch of gin.’

John’s sigh of relief whistled through his teeth. He ferreted in a pocket and drew out some banknotes, thrusting them at Frank. ‘There! Go on, piss off!’

Frank looked contemptuously at the two pounds before pocketing them. ‘I’m in with some different people now. They’re interested in you, John. I been singing your praises and telling ’em you’re the best distiller in London. They ain’t gonna like your attitude when they’ve stumped up handsomely to sample your wares.’

John’s jaw dropped and he suddenly reddened in fury. ‘You had no right to tell a fucking soul about me. I don’t go blabbing me mouth off about you doing a bit of counterfeiting.’

‘Yeah, well, needs must when the devil drives, eh?’ Frank leaned in again. ‘Lost me son, lost me little bomb lark business ’cos me employees crippled themselves. A one-armed short-arse and a fat bloke wot got nobbled in France. Ain’t saying they aren’t keen but, bleedin’ hell, they’re a fuckin’ liability.’ Frank finished his complaint on a tobacco-stained smile. ‘Got nuthin’ but me printing press to fall back on.’ He glanced over a shoulder. ‘Need a few extra clothing coupons, do you, mate?’ He gave John a friendly dig in the ribs. ‘That’ll put you in the missus’s good books. Get herself a new frock, can’t she? Get herself two if she likes.’

‘You forging coupons now?’ John whispered, aghast.

‘I’m forging all right, just like I was when I run off all them dodgy spirit labels for your hooch.’ Frank’s lips thinned over his brown teeth. ‘We need to talk, mate … seriously …’

John knew he’d never get rid of Popeye until he’d let him have his say. And he didn’t want the neighbours seeing too much. Popeye lived the other side of Shoreditch but he had a certain notoriety due to his ducking and diving. Not that you’d think it to look at him: Popeye had the appearance, and the aroma, of a tramp. ‘Just a couple of minutes; they’ll all be in soon fer tea. Don’t want no awkward questions being asked,’ John snarled in frustration.

‘Right y’are …’ Frank said brightly and stepped into the hall.

John pointed at a chair under the parlour table by way of an invitation. He limped into the kitchen and quickly poured a cup of lukewarm tea with a shaking hand. ‘There, get that down yer and say what you’ve got to.’ John glanced nervously at the clock, dreading hearing his wife’s or his daughter’s key in the lock.

‘Look at us,’ Frank chirped, watching John fidgeting to ease his position. He pointed at his left eye. ‘There’s me with me squint and you with yer gammy leg.’ He guffawed. ‘Don’t hold yer back, though, John, do it, if you don’t let it?’ He grinned wolfishly. ‘Bet you still manage to show Doris yer love her, don’t you? Bit of a knee trembler, is it, balancing on one leg on the mattress?’ He winked. ‘Gotta get yer weight on yer elbows.’ Popeye leaned onto the tabletop to demonstrate, rocking back and forth on his seat. ‘I’ve got meself a nice young lady works in the King and Tinker, name of Shirley.’ He paused. ‘Your daughter’s called Rosemary, if I remember right. Heard you’d got a grandkid; so young Rosie’s given up the stage, has she, and got married now?’ Popeye paused to slurp tea.

‘Fuck’s sake, you got something to say, or not?’ Agitatedly, John snatched Popeye’s cup of tea off him. He’d been about to throw it down the sink but knew if he disappeared into another room, Popeye might decide to follow him. And he was desperate to get him out of the house, not further into it.

‘So what’s the nipper’s name? Rosie call her after her mum, did she? Prudence, God rest her, would have liked that, wouldn’t she, John?’

‘Me granddaughter’s name’s Hope,’ John ejected through his teeth. ‘She’s a lovely little darlin’ and I don’t want her coming back home and having you scare the bleedin’ life out of her with yer ugly mug.’ John grimaced at Popeye’s dirty clothes and the greying stubble on his face.

Frank ran a hand around his chin, understanding John’s look of disgust. ‘My Shirley’s always telling me to smarten up. Perhaps I should.’

‘Sling yer hook before they all come in!’ John had almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of next door’s dustbin lid clattering home.

‘Right, here’s the deal.’ Suddenly Popeye was deadly serious, mean eyes narrowed to slits. ‘I know this outfit what’s deep in with anything you like: dog tracks, bootlegging; pimps ’n’ spivs, they are. Based over the docks—’

‘I get the picture,’ John interrupted, having heard enough. ‘You’re out of your league and you’ve promised ’em stuff you can’t deliver. Ain’t nuthin’ to do with me, Popeye. I’ve paid you up. That’s us quits.’

‘It ain’t me who’s got to deliver on this occasion, it’s you, mate. I’ve run ’em off a nice line of girly mags in the past and I’ve been doing their booze labels. Trouble is they’ve got no bottles of Scotch to stick ’em on. Their distiller got his still broken up by the revenue men a while back.’

‘Well, let yer big mates buy him another one.’ John hobbled to the door and held it open.

Popeye ignored the invitation to leave and sat back comfortably in his chair. ‘’Spect they would do that, but trouble is the fellow what knows how to use it’s doing a five stretch. So I told ’em I knew how to help them out.’

‘Right … thanks for the offer of the work. But I ain’t interested. Ain’t even got me still now.’

‘Now, I know you ain’t destroyed it, John.’ Popeye pulled an old-fashioned face, crooning, ‘Don’t you tell me no lies, now. Might not be down in the cellar … where is it?’ He jerked his head back, gazing at the ceiling. ‘Attic? I reckon since you moved here you’ve stashed it away all neat and tidy, ain’t yer?’

‘I got rid of it when we was bombed out of the other place.’

‘Don’t believe you for one minute. It’s here all right … somewhere …’ Popeye glanced around thoughtfully as though he might set off in search of it.

‘Get going; we’re done here.’ John yanked at Popeye’s sleeve to shift him.

‘Don’t think so, mate.’ Frank ripped his arm out of John’s grasp. ‘If you don’t sing along they’re gonna want their cash back, ain’t they?’

‘What?’ John tottered back a step, apprehension stabbing at his guts. ‘What fucking cash?’

‘The cash they give me, to give to you.’ Popeye shrugged. ‘I told them you’d need an advance to buy stuff to get going so they give us a monkey up front.’

John licked his lips. Five hundred! That was a serious sum of money. ‘Well, you’ll just have to give it back, won’t yer?’

‘Can’t … do … that …’ Popeye warbled. ‘Make me look like a right prat. Anyhow, I ain’t got it.’ He sniffed. ‘Needed some readies meself so I had to use it to keep someone sweet. You know the old saying: rob Peter to pay Paul, but John’s getting it in the end.’ He gave a wink. ‘You know I’m always good for my word. Never once not paid you up, have I?’

John swallowed noisily. ‘Sounds like you’ve got some explaining to do then when they come looking for you.’

‘Not me … you.’ Popeye nodded slowly. ‘This is where they’ll head. You don’t cross people like that, John. You should know that.’

‘They come here looking fer me I’ll call the Old Bill and tell ’em everything, especially that you’ve just tried to blackmail me to get involved in counterfeiting.’

Popeye came to his feet in quite a sprightly fashion considering he was over sixty and overweight. ‘Now, that ain’t wise, talking like that, John. I’ll pretend I never heard it.’ Popeye walked up to the smaller man and eyeballed him as best he could, before strolling out into the hallway. ‘Right … be seeing you then. You come to me next time; only fair … my turn to make the tea. Say, end of the week and we can make arrangements to put the still up in my basement if it’s likely to cause ructions with your Doris. Give the missus my regards now, won’t you?’

‘Fuck off.’ John slammed the door after Popeye and ground his teeth when he heard the faint laughter coming from the other side of the panels. He paced to and fro then went upstairs as quickly as his limp allowed. He found the steps in the airing cupboard and positioned them beneath the loft hatch. A few minutes later he poked his head into the cool, dark roof void, his heart thumping so hard he thought it might burst from his chest.

He’d promised Rosie on his life that he’d never make another drop of moonshine. Doris had no idea that he ever had run an illegal still. Nobody had known, other than his daughter and his business associates. Now Popeye had blabbed his business about, God only knew how many people were aware he’d once risked a spot of hard labour.

John hauled himself into the loft, wincing from the effort, and approached the dismantled still covered in tarpaulin. He crouched down and peered at the tubes and funnels and receptacles. Suddenly he smiled wryly. The contraption had survived the bombing, having been wedged in the corner of the cellar with a cover over it. Now he was wishing that the bloody thing had been in the loft of his old house, and been smashed to smithereens with the roof. But the hundred pounds in his Post Office book had come courtesy of this little beauty. And that money was being saved up for another little beauty, and one day she’d thank her granddad for buying her presents. John felt his eyes fill with tears as he put the hatch back in place. He’d do anything for his little Hope, and protect her with his life, if need be.

CHAPTER SIX

‘Insult my Irene again, you bitch, and I’ll wipe the floor with yer.’

Rosie spun about to see that Peg Price had sprinted down her front path to yell and jab a finger at her. The woman must have been loitering behind the curtains, waiting for her to return, Rosie realised. On the walk home her surprise meeting with Gertie, and everything they’d talked about, had been occupying her mind and she’d not given her run-in with her rotten neighbours another thought.

Rosie contemptuously flicked two fingers at the woman’s pinched expression before pushing the pram over the threshold and closing the door behind her.

A savoury aroma was wafting down the hall from the kitchen, making Rosie’s stomach grumble.

‘That you, Rosie?’

‘Yeah. Sorry I’m late.’ Rosie carried on unfastening Hope’s reins, thinking her father had sounded odd. But she gave his mood little thought; she was too wrapped up in counting her blessings. And she was determined to work for the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service. If she got turned down, as Gertie had, she’d try again and again until she was accepted.

Rosie cast her mind back to the time when the female ambulance auxiliary had entered their bombed-out house and with a simple joke made her laugh, then tended to her father with brisk professionalism. Rosie had been impressed by the service, and the people in it. But her baby daughter had taken up all her time and energy then. Now Hope was older, toddling and talking, and Rosie had the time to be useful. She wanted her daughter to grow up in peacetime with plentiful food to eat and a bright future in front of her. Wishing for victory wasn’t enough; she needed to pitch in and help bring it about, as other mothers had throughout the long years of the conflict.

From the moment Gertie had recounted how the ambulance crew had battled to save her baby’s life, Rosie knew that’s what she wanted to do … just in case at some time the baby dug from beneath bomb rubble was her own.

John appeared in the parlour doorway wiping his floury hands on a tea towel.

Lifting her daughter out of the pram, Rosie set Hope on her feet. The child toddled a few steps to be swept up into her granddad’s arms.

‘How’s my princess?’ John planted a kiss on the infant’s soft warm cheek.

In answer Hope thrust her lower lip and nodded her fair head.

‘See what Granddad’s got in the biscuit tin, shall we, darlin’?’

Again Hope nodded solemnly.

‘Don’t feed her up or she won’t eat her tea,’ Rosie mildly protested, straightening the pram cover. She watched her father slowly hobbling away from her with Hope in his arms. Lots of times she’d been tempted to tell him not to carry her daughter in case he overbalanced and dropped her. But she never did. Hope was her father’s pride and joy, and his salvation.

In the aftermath of the bombing raid, it had seemed that John’s badly injured leg might have to be amputated. Sunk in self-pity, he’d talked of wanting to end it all, until his little granddaughter had been taken to see him in hospital and had given him a gummy smile. At the time, Rosie had felt pity and exasperation for her father. In one breath she’d comforted him and in the next she’d reminded him he was luckier than those young servicemen who would never return home.

John carefully set Hope down by her toy box and started stacking washing-up in the bowl.

‘You stewing on something, Dad?’ Rosie asked. Her father was frowning into the sink and he would usually have made more of a fuss of Hope than that.

‘Nah, just me leg giving me gyp, love.’ John turned round, smiling. ‘Talking of stew, that’s what we’ve got. Not a lot in it other than some boiled bacon scraps and veg from the garden but I’ve made a few dumplings to fill us up.’

‘Smells good, Dad,’ Rosie praised. ‘Sorry I didn’t get home in time to give you a hand. We had a nice walk, though.’

‘’S’all right, love. Enjoy yerself?’ John enquired, running a spoon, sticky with suet, under the tap. ‘Anyhow, you can help now you’re back. There’s a few spuds in the colander under the sink. Peel ’em, will you?’

Having filled a pot with water, Rosie sat down at the scrubbed parlour table and began preparing potatoes while filling her dad in on where she’d been. ‘First I went to the chemist and got your Beecham’s Powders.’ She pulled a small box from the pocket of her cardigan and put it on the table. Her dad relied on them for every ailment. ‘Then I took a walk to Cheapside and bumped into an old friend from the Windmill Theatre—’

‘You’re not going back there to work!’ John interrupted. ‘If you want a job you can get yourself a respectable one now you’re a mother.’ He had spun round at the sink and cantankerously crossed his wet forearms over his chest.

‘I don’t even want to go back there to work, Dad,’ Rosie protested. ‘Gertie doesn’t work there now either. She’s got a little girl a bit older than Hope. The two kids had a go at having a chat.’ Rosie smiled fondly at her daughter. ‘Made a friend, didn’t you, darling?’

‘Gertie? Don’t recall that name,’ John muttered, and turned back to the washing-up.

Rosie frowned at his back, wondering what had got his goat while she’d been out. But she decided not to ask because she’d yet to break the news to him about the employment she was after and she wasn’t sure how he’d take it.

‘Gertie was one of the theatre’s cleaners. She left the Windmill months before me.’

‘Mmm … well, that’s all right then,’ John mumbled, flicking suds from his hands. He felt rather ashamed that Popeye’s visit had left him on edge, making him snappy.

‘I am getting a job, though, Dad.’

‘Ain’t the work I’m objecting to, just the nature of it,’ John muttered.

‘You didn’t mind the money I earned at the Windmill Theatre, though, did you?’ Rosie reminded him drily, dropping potatoes in the pot.

‘If you’d not been working at that place you’d never have got in with a bad crowd and got yourself in trouble,’ John bawled. He pursed his lips in regret; the last thing he wanted to do was overreact and arouse his daughter’s suspicions that something was wrong.

‘I got into trouble because of the company you kept, not the company I kept,’ Rosie stormed before she could stop herself. It was infuriating that her father still tried to ease his conscience by finding scapegoats. In Rosie’s opinion it was time to leave the horrible episode behind now. They both adored Hope so something good had come out of bad in the end.

The slamming of the front door had John turning, tight-lipped, back to the sink and Rosie lighting the gas under the potatoes.

‘What’s going on?’ Sensing an atmosphere, Doris looked suspiciously from father to daughter.

‘I was just telling Dad that I saw an old friend from the Windmill Theatre. The poor woman has had dreadful bad luck. A couple of years ago their house got hit and she lost three of her young sons.’

Doris crossed herself, muttering a prayer beneath her breath. ‘She was lucky to get out herself then.’

‘She was very lucky, and so was her husband and eldest boy,’ Rosie said after a pause. She knew Doris could act pious, so she wasn’t going to mention that the three children had died alone. Her stepmother would have something to say about neglect despite the fact that her own daughter-in-law and grandson rarely came to visit her because they were never invited.

‘Didn’t realise it was bad news you got from your friend,’ John said gruffly by way of apology. That terrible tale had momentarily edged his own worries from his mind.

Doris’s sympathy was short-lived, however, and she was quick to change the subject. ‘Just got caught outside by Peg Price; sounding off about you, she was.’ Doris wagged an accusing finger.

Rosie shrugged, refusing to take the bait. Doris would always make it plain she felt burdened by the duty of sticking up for her.

‘Saw somebody else with a long face.’ Doris gazed at her reflection in the mantel mirror and started pushing the waves back in place in her faded brown hair. ‘Nurse Johnson was in civvies down Petticoat Lane.’ Doris looked at the little girl crouching on the floor. ‘You’d think she’d pop in once in a while to see how Hope’s getting on.’

‘I expect she’s too busy,’ Rosie said succinctly. Doris enjoyed bringing to her attention that she’d caused enmity on several fronts.

Rosie hadn’t spoken to her midwife since the day she’d broken the news about withdrawing from the adoption. At the time Rosie had thought that the woman seemed to take it quite well. Trudy had listened to her explanation, then said the sort of things that Rosie had been expecting to hear about being surprised and disappointed. Ever since, if they met out walking a brief nod was the most Rosie got from the woman. Rosie couldn’t blame Trudy Johnson if she had felt bitter about what had happened.

‘Going upstairs to put a brush through me hair before we have tea.’

Once his wife had gone out of the room John said, ‘Didn’t mean to snap earlier, Rosie; just that I worry about you, y’know, grown up though you are.’ He pulled out a chair at the table and sank onto the seat. ‘God knows we’ve had to cope with some troubles these past few years.’

‘Not as much as some people, Dad,’ Rosie said pointedly, to remind him of Gertie’s catastrophe.

‘I know … I know … but you’re still my little girl, however old you are. And I won’t never stop worrying about you and Hope s’long as I’m drawing breath.’

‘You’ve no need to worry, Dad, I’m able to look after myself and Hope now.’ After a short silence Rosie saw her father seemed to have gone into a trance, staring into space. ‘What is it, Dad?’ She sat down opposite him and rested her elbows on the tabletop. ‘You seem odd … thoughtful. Something up?’

‘Nah, just this leg getting me down,’ John lied. He forced a smile. ‘Wish you could meet a nice young man, dear.’ He took Rosie’s hands in his. ‘You need somebody to care for you, ’cos I ain’t always going to be around. Robbie likes you, y’know, and he’s not short of a bob or two … or a couple of pork chops.’

Rosie tutted in mock exasperation at her father’s quip. Robbie Raynham was the local butcher, and at least fifteen years her senior. He was pleasant enough and not bad-looking but Rosie didn’t like him in that way. She didn’t like any man in that way. Rosie knew Doris often sent her to get their meat ration in the hope the smitten butcher might slip a little bit extra in for them in return for the promise of a date.

But Rosie didn’t have any interest in marriage or men. Since she’d been dragged into an alleyway then thrown to the ground and raped, a cold dread had replaced any longing she’d once had for an exciting romance and a husband. Love and affection were saved for her daughter; all she wanted to do was keep Hope safe and make plans for her future.

Rosie took a deep breath and blurted, ‘I’m going to apply to join the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service.’

John gawped at his daughter as though she were mad. ‘Why?’ he eventually asked.

‘Because it’s an important job needs doing.’

‘Being a mother to that little girl’s an important job needs doing,’ John replied pithily. ‘Ambulance work’s too dangerous. You’ll be covered in blood and muck.’

‘I was covered in blood and muck when the Café de Paris got bombed and again on the afternoon our house was wrecked. I’m used to it now.’

John had the grace to blush as he recalled how she’d nursed him and dressed his wounds till they could get help on that dreadful afternoon.

‘Dad, d’you remember how that auxiliary helped you that day?’

‘’Course …’ John muttered. ‘And I was grateful to her, but that don’t mean I want you taking them sort of risks.’ He pointed a finger. ‘She were a lot older than you, for a start …’

‘Her colleague who helped you up the stairs wasn’t. And she was driving the ambulance, if you remember. She looked to be in her twenties, like me …’

‘Don’t want you doing it, Rosie …’ John began shirtily.

‘I’m going to apply,’ Rosie said firmly. ‘Hope’ll be fine in a nursery. I’m going to the WVS tomorrow to see if they can sort out a place for her.’

‘If you’re determined, me ’n’ Doris can see to the little ’un between us.’ John sounded affronted.

‘I’d like her to make some more friends,’ Rosie answered diplomatically. ‘She had a lovely time playing with Gertie’s little girl.’

‘Time enough fer that when she’s older. I’ll mind her.’ John sounded stubborn. He’d always been very protective of his granddaughter but suddenly after Popeye’s visit it seemed more important than ever to keep a close watch on Hope.

‘It’s time for me to get my own place, too, Dad. Now you and Doris are married you deserve some privacy. Besides, I need to learn to stand on my own two feet. So as soon as I’m earning I’ll be able to pay rent.’ Rosie had been planning on saving that blow for another day. But as her father had seemed to accept her work, albeit reluctantly, she had decided that ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ might be the best approach.

‘Leaving home and standing on your own two feet backfired on you once before.’ John pressed his lips into a thin line. He’d not wanted to hark back to that episode. ‘Anyhow, people my age don’t need a lot of fuss. Ain’t as if me and Doris are starry-eyed. Known each other too long for any of that.’ John coughed, recalling Popeye’s dirty talk.

‘Still, it’d be nice for you both to have some peace and quiet.’ Rosie understood her father’s unease about discussing intimate things.

‘I know kids have tantrums, so that don’t bother me one bit. I brought you up, remember,’ he added darkly.

Rosie smiled faintly. Her stepmother wasn’t happy about losing her sleep. The woman had let Rosie know she’d been kept awake by Hope crying as she’d barged out of the bathroom that morning.

Suddenly Rosie was missing her mum with such strong sadness that she felt momentarily unable to speak. Prudence Gardiner had passed away when she was in junior school but Rosie could recall her vividly. She could also remember that her mother’s affair hadn’t lasted, but the bitterness between John and Prudence had. He’d taken her back … for the girl’s sake … the words stuck in Rosie’s mind as the reason he’d bawled at his wife when she’d shown up again, suitcase in hand. Rosie knew that Prudence would have adored her beautiful granddaughter. Had her mother still been alive perhaps Hope might have succeeded in doing what Rosie had yearned to do but had failed at: bring her parents some shared happiness.

She glanced at her father’s lined face, feeling a rush of pity that his second wife was unlikely to bring him any more contentment than his first had. ‘I’m grateful that you’ve taken care of me and Hope till now. But I’ll cope on my own, Dad.’

‘You won’t!’ John’s anxiety had manifested itself in anger. ‘You’re staying right here where I can keep an eye on you both.’

‘Might be that yer daughter’s got a point about being independent and paying her own way,’ Doris said, entering the kitchen. ‘And as your wife, you might like to ask me my opinion on things that concern me.’

Rosie knew that Doris was thoroughly in favour of her moving out, and the sooner the better.

‘Stew’s done.’ John turned his back on his wife, stooping to open the oven door. With a teacloth protecting his hands he drew out a sizzling-hot clay pot.

‘That’s yer answer, is it?’ Doris snorted in disgust. ‘Dinner’s ready!’

‘Let’s eat, then talk about it later.’ Rosie gave her stepmother a smile, signalling a truce. It seemed there was something eating away at her father and she’d no idea what it might be. But she was quite sure it had little to do with her wanting a job and some independence.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘So you can hear it ’n’ all, can you, Rosie love? I thought me ears were playing tricks on me.’

John was crunching along the cinder path in the back garden dressed in his pyjamas and bedroom slippers. His palms batted against his ears at intervals as though to unblock them.

At the sound of her father’s voice Rosie turned and gave him a quick nod before fixing her eyes again on the moonless sky.

It was a humid June night and Rosie had been restlessly dozing, when the wail of an air-raid siren had brought her swiftly to her feet. She’d glanced at Hope, sound asleep, then padded to the window to stare out. It was just a week away from midsummer and, though not yet dawn, the sky hadn’t fully darkened. She’d been able to see for some distance. She’d heard the ack-ack guns start up and seen bullets tracing the heavens, but a weird noise had made her snatch up her dressing gown and investigate further.

A few months ago the first warning wail would have had Rosie grabbing her daughter and flying downstairs to the safety of the cellar, but there had been a lot of false alarms recently; German reconnaissance planes had skimmed over the capital but there hadn’t been a bombardment since the winter. The Normandy landings had been such a success that nobody was expecting one while the Luftwaffe had their hands full elsewhere. But something was surely closing on London, or why were the defence batteries blasting away?

The drone of approaching bombers was terrifyingly familiar to East Enders, whereas whatever was up there tonight was making an odd roaring noise as though a mechanic’s giant blowtorch had taken flight. The searchlights were in full swing yet Rosie hadn’t had a glimpse of a plane’s silhouette. She rubbed the back of her stretched neck, wondering if the eerie throb was coming not from above but from some new-fangled machinery down on the Pool of London, where supply ships heading for Normandy were being loaded up.

Suddenly the sky directly overhead was striped by a searchlight, making Rosie anxiously blurt out, ‘Not taking any chances, Dad. I’m getting Hope and going to the cellar. Come on … don’t care if it is another false alarm. Never heard anything like that before and it can’t be one of ours or the guns would have stopped.’

‘What the bloody hell is that?’ John yelled, pointing towards the south. ‘’S’all right, love. Look, it’s not a bomber. It’s much smaller … a fighter plane, I reckon, and the Jerry bugger’s taken a hit. Look!’ He wagged his finger at the sky.

Rosie halted by the back door, again gazing heavenwards.

There, caught in a crosshair of searchlights, was the outline of a plane; and it did, indeed, have a plume of brilliant fire spurting from its tail.

‘It’ll crash, Dad,’ Rosie shouted. ‘Get inside.’

‘It’s gonna crash all right,’ John said in awe, watching the fast-moving object. ‘Blimey! Wonder if the pilot’s ejected. Keep an eye out for a parachute, love. Don’t want no Kraut landing on me roof.’ Suddenly he went quiet, as did the V1 rocket, but the weapon glided on silently before its nose dipped …

‘Come on, Dad!’ Rosie was already inside the back door, holding it ajar for him. ‘Quick! Let’s get in the cellar!’

‘What in God’s name’s going on?’ Doris had shuffled into view, belting her dressing gown. ‘We got a proper raid?’

‘Is that Jerry? Taken a hit, has he?’ a fellow bawled across fences. ‘Bailed out, has he? See anything, did yer, John?’

‘Dunno what the hell it is, mate,’ John yelled back at Dick Price. Peg’s husband was yawning and scratching his pot-belly beneath a grimy vest. John had noticed that the trail of flames had disappeared at about the same time that the aircraft’s engine cut out. He didn’t reckon that the pilot would’ve managed to extinguish that fire. As the thing had got closer he’d also noticed that it had the Luftwaffe cross on it but it wasn’t even big enough to be a Messerschmitt.

‘Reckon it might be wise to get under cover.’ Finally John’s fear overtook his amazement. He waved his arms in warning at his neighbour before limping into the house and following Doris down the cellar stairs. Rosie joined them seconds later with Hope clinging sleepily around her neck.

When the explosion came a few minutes later Rosie instinctively curled her body protectively over her small daughter until the mortar that had been loosened from the bare brick walls had finished coating them in fine dust.

‘Reckon that was over Bethnal Green,’ John said after a short silence. ‘Bet Jerry sent over some sort of Kamikaze pilot in a toy plane. ‘I ain’t never seen the like of that before.’

‘If you’re right, I hope there’s just the one of them.’ Rosie cradled Hope, soothing her whimpering daughter with gentle murmurs.

‘Don’t reckon Hitler’ll get many volunteers. Jerry ain’t like the Nips when it comes to that sort of thing.’ Doris picked up the knitting she kept in the cellar to while away the time during air raids. ‘If this is a sign the Blitz is starting all over again then I’m getting out of London. I was living on me nerves last time, never knowing which way to run to the nearest shelter.’ Doris threw down the needles, unable to concentrate on counting stitches. ‘D’you reckon there’ll be more of those blighters tonight?’ She gazed at her husband for a response but John was still shaking his head to himself in disbelief at what he’d seen and heard out in the garden. ‘Well, I ain’t having it,’ Doris said shrilly. ‘I’m off to me son’s place in Kent for some peace and quiet. Already been invited to stay so I’m taking me daughter-in-law up on it.’ Still John sat rubbing his bad leg and gazing at the ceiling. With an agitated tut, Doris picked up the cardigan sleeve and started knitting a row of pearl.

As soon as Rosie’s father had shouted out that there was a letter for her it had been a relief to give up the pretence of rest and hurry downstairs. They’d all trooped up to bed when the all clear sounded but Rosie had found it impossible to get back to sleep. The sinister chugging that had first woken her had continued to pound through her brain. She’d buried her head in the pillow to try to block it out but by then the sun had been filtering through the curtains.

Her father was obviously not in the mood to share any news about her forthcoming job interview so with a sigh Rosie returned to her bedroom with her letter. Within half an hour she had got dressed, neatly filled in the Form of Application for National Service, and put on her mac as it was drizzling outside.

‘Just off to the post box. Will you mind Hope for a few minutes?’ Rosie poked her head round the kitchen door to ask her dad. ‘She’s still asleep so shouldn’t be any trouble.’

‘What name you going under then?’ John asked, pointing at the envelope in his daughter’s hand.

‘My real name. I’m Rosemary Gardiner, aged twenty-two, spinster, born and bred in Shoreditch.’

‘So your daughter doesn’t exist then?’

‘Oh, she does!’ Rosie vehemently declared. ‘But Hope’s my private business and there’s no reason to bring her into it.’

‘Well I say there is!’ John retorted. ‘Round here you’re Mrs Deane now and that’s the way it should be. Using two different names’ll brew up trouble.’

‘Answering questions about my poor dead “husband” will brew up trouble,’ Rosie replied flatly. ‘I don’t want to start off in a new job telling a pack of lies about myself; they always trip you up in the end.’

John muttered beneath his breath but he couldn’t deny the truth in what his daughter had said. He wished in a way that he’d agreed to brazen out Rosie’s pregnancy. It had been what his daughter had wanted rather than stooping to deceit. At the time he’d sided with Doris and insisted his daughter protect the family name by inventing a story. It hadn’t stopped the gossip; in fact he could see now that it had just provided more grist for the mill. But they couldn’t backpedal on it now or it would make matters worse.

Rosie felt frustrated with her father’s attitude but she didn’t want an argument with him so tried a different tack: ‘Look, I’ve been shirking conscription for years, pretending I’m a married woman.’

‘Ain’t shirking. Women with kids – legitimate or not – ain’t breaking the rules in staying home and caring for them,’ John returned. ‘Anyhow, you’ve been fire watching plenty of times.’

Rosie gave up trying to put her point across and headed for the front door.

‘It’ll come out you’re an unmarried mother,’ John called out after her. ‘Then when they’re all talking about you behind yer back you’ll wish you’d done things differently.’

The deputy station officer of Robley Road Auxiliary Ambulance Station in Hackney – or Station 97 as it was better known – was seated behind a battered wooden desk. Having studied the notes in front of her she inspected the young woman perched on a chair opposite.

Rosie neatly crossed her ankles, nervously clasping her hands in her lap. She was wearing a smart blue two-piece suit purchased years ago when she was flush from working at the Windmill Theatre. It was a bit loose because she’d lost a few pounds running round after her toddling daughter, but was still in pristine condition. And the colour suited her. Her pale blonde hair had been styled into a sleek chin-length bob rather than jazzy waves, and she’d applied her make-up sparingly: just a slick of coral lipstick and some powder to cool the colour of her peachy complexion.

‘Your references are very good.’

Since leaving her job at the Windmill Theatre Rosie hadn’t had much to deposit in her bank account but the elderly manager of the Barclays Bank in the High Street had agreed to give her a character. And so had the retired draper who’d employed Rosie as a youngster, winding wool for pocket money on Saturdays. Rosie had carefully chosen her referees from people who were unaware she was a mother and had always known her as Miss Gardiner. She might be withholding personal information, but it wasn’t the same as lying in Rosie’s opinion.

‘Do you consider yourself to be strong and healthy?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m fit as a fiddle,’ Rosie immediately returned.

‘You’ll need to be,’ Stella Phipps emphasised. ‘It’s surprising what a severed limb weighs. Then there are the stretchers to lug about. Lifting those to the upper position in an ambulance can put a person’s back out.’ Stella cocked her head, examining Rosie’s figure dubiously. She looked soft and petite, whereas most of the female recruits were strapping individuals.

‘Oh, I’m used to lifting …’ Rosie’s voice tailed off. She’d been on the point of adding that she’d got a chubby two-year-old who liked to be carried about but stopped herself in time. She was Rosemary Gardiner, spinster, no dependants. ‘My dad’s got a bad leg injury so I’ve lugged him up and down the cellar steps in the past, amongst other things.’

‘That’s the sort of stuff that comes in useful, but you do seem a bit weedy, dear, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ Stella took off her glasses to polish them. ‘Of course, you’re very attractive so no offence meant.’

‘I’m very capable,’ Rosie returned stoutly. ‘And I’ll prove it.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do your best, Miss Gardiner. It’s just that I feel obliged to impress on you that the work is arduous … and gruelling.’ Stella sighed. ‘Apart from physical sturdiness you need to be prepared for some harrowing sights. Have you had any medical training?’

‘No, but I’d quickly learn,’ Rosie said eagerly. ‘And the sight of a bit of blood doesn’t bother me. I tended to my dad when he got badly injured.’

‘The sight of “a bit of blood” is what you might encounter here when the sanitary bin in the ladies’ convenience overflows.’ Stella replaced her spectacles and gazed grimly at her interviewee, ignoring the girl’s blushing. If Miss Gardiner were serious about getting a job with the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service she’d better be prepared for some plain speaking. ‘If you’re accepted and your experience follows mine you’ll encounter rat-eaten bodies and scraps of terry towelling nappies containing burned flesh … all that remains of what was once a human baby.’ In the silence that followed Stella stabbed her pen nib repeatedly on the blotter, eyes lowered. ‘I’d been in the job just a fortnight when I observed a parachute descending and in the dark I thought it might be a German who’d bailed out. It was something far deadlier … a landmine. It exploded in Brick Lane about a hundred yards from where we’d just been called to another incident. That was during the winter of 1940 at the height of the Blitz.’ Stella paused. ‘We lost two of our ambulance crew that night.’

Rosie swallowed, hoping she didn’t look too green about the gills. She knew the deputy station officer wasn’t being deliberately cruel. In fact, she was being very kind. ‘I understand … I’m prepared for the worst,’ Rosie vowed in a quavering yet resolute tone.

‘You’re a better person than I then, Miss Gardiner,’ Stella replied. ‘I wasn’t up to it at all; I brought my heart up the first time I had to deliver a man’s leg to the fridge at Billingsgate Market.’ She saw Rosie shoot her a horrified glance from beneath her thick lashes. ‘Oh, that’s sometimes the first stop for odds and ends before they make it to the mortuary, you see. We’re not cannibals in England … not yet, anyhow, despite the paltry rations.’

Rosie smothered a giggle. Stella Phipps might be a fierce-looking dragon but she had a sense of humour. Rosie realised that it was probably an essential requirement for working in the LAAS, the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service. Having heard those stomach-churning anecdotes, she relaxed and decided she liked the woman who might soon be her boss.

‘I can book you on a first-aid course with the St John Ambulance if you pass the interview.’ Stella closed the manila folder in front of her. ‘Any driving experience? We could do with drivers.’ She sighed. ‘Most of the men we had in the service have gone off on active duty, you see.’

‘I used to drive my dad’s car,’ Rosie burst out. She was determined to be taken on; and if that meant embellishing the truth a little, she’d do it. The only driving she’d ever done had been at the age of fifteen when her father had taken her for a day trip to Clacton and after much badgering had allowed her to get behind the wheel in a country lane. It was the first and last time, though; Rosie had scraped the paintwork of John’s pride and joy after swerving into a hawthorn hedge while fighting with the stiff gears.

‘Do you still drive a car?’ Stella asked optimistically.

‘Um … no,’ Rosie owned up. ‘Since Dad got injured he’s sold the Austin. And I never actually passed a test.’

‘At least you’ve a head start, dear. An RAC course might be all that’s required to bring you up to scratch.’

Rosie nodded, feeling a fraud. None the less she added stoutly, ‘I’m sure I’ll do fine so long as I can remember where the brake is.’

Stella chuckled, then looked thoughtfully at the new recruit. The volunteers were usually keen, eager to be of service. Some lasted just a few weeks before they took fright. Others, like herself and her friend Thora Norris, had been serving since the start of the Blitz. In those days they’d turned up for work dressed in their civilian clothes without even a pair of sensible shoes between them. As the war dragged on the service had become a lot more organised and efficient.

‘Following the landings in Normandy it seemed as though we might wind down when victory seemed finally within reach,’ Stella said. ‘The routine here had become quite mundane. Oh, we still got called out, but on the whole we were dealing with domestic incidents or road accidents.’ She shook her head in despair. ‘You’d be surprised at how many dreadful injuries have been caused by the blackout. It’s as lethal as any Jerry bomb.’

‘But if the damage done by that bloody rocket coming over and causing havoc is anything to go by, you might need more volunteers …’ Rosie had anticipated what Stella Phipps was about to say and blurted it out, rather bluntly. She blushed, mumbled, ‘Sorry … language …’

Stella smiled. ‘You’ll hear worse … say worse … than that, dear, if you join our little team at Station 97. Letting off steam is essential in this line of work. So no apology required.’

Rosie smiled sheepishly.

The recent explosion in Bethnal Green had everybody talking fearfully about a fiendish new weapon, although Whitehall was doing its best to keep the details under wraps to avoid a panic. But rumours were already spreading that the blazing plane Rosie and her father had watched speeding across the sky was a bomb shaped like a rocket and there had been whispers of others falling across London.

‘I saw that first one come over; the noise it made was deafening and very eerie,’ Rosie said. When she noted Stella’s interest she rushed on, ‘Dad and I watched it from the garden. Dad thought it was a miniature Messerschmitt and wondered whether the pilot might bale out and land on our roof because it seemed to be on fire.’

‘Let’s hope the rumours are just that,’ Stella said. ‘We don’t want a return to the Blitz.’

Stella’s concern reminded Rosie of her stepmother fretting about London being heavily bombarded again. Doris had moaned constantly whilst they’d waited for the all clear to sound that night.

‘I’ll get one of my colleagues to show you around our station, though you might be posted to another one. Have you any preference where you’d like to be sent?’

‘As close to home as possible,’ Rosie answered quickly, following the older woman out into the corridor. ‘Here at Station 97 would be just fine.’

‘Righto …’ Stella said, striding along at quite a pace. ‘Of course when we get called out it’s not always to local incidents. If a Deptford crew for example are engaged on a major incident we might be required to cover for them on their patch.’

‘I understand,’ Rosie said, trotting to keep up with the older woman.

‘Have you seen Thora Norris?’

Stella’s question was directed at a brunette who was propped on an elbow against the wall, smoking. She turned about, flicking her dog end out through an open door into the courtyard. ‘I think she’s gone shopping with the new mess manager, ma’am. We’re low in the cupboards, by all accounts.’

‘I’m hoping there are no petrol cans stored out there, Scott.’ Stella Phipps angrily eyed the stub smouldering on concrete.

‘Sorry … didn’t think.’ The young woman trotted outside to grind the butt out with a toe, looking apologetic.

‘Mmm … and not the first time, is it?’

The young auxiliary was dressed in a uniform of navy-blue safari-style jacket and matching trousers. The letters ‘LAAS’ were picked out in gold embroidery at the top of a sleeve. She turned to look Rosie up and down. ‘How do? You mad enough to want to join us, then?’ She stuck out a hand and gave Rosie’s small fingers a thorough pump.

‘Nice to meet you, and yes, hope I’ve got the job.’ Rosie sent a peeking glance at the deputy station manager.

‘I think you’ll fit in,’ Stella said with a severe smile. ‘I’ll leave you in Hazel Scott’s capable hands.’ Her eyebrows hiked dubiously. ‘She’ll show you round the place and even if you’re not posted here, you’ll get a feel for things, Miss Gardiner. The auxiliary ambulance stations are all much of a muchness.’

‘Only ours is best.’ Hazel said sweetly, earning a smile from her superior.

‘Don’t mind her,’ Hazel hissed as Stella’s rigid back disappeared round a corner. ‘Bark’s worse than her bite and all that. I’ve worked in three different stations now and some of the DSOs – that’s deputy station officers to the uninitiated – well, they’re worse than the top dog.’ Hazel stuck her hands in her jacket pockets and chuckled. ‘Got something to prove, I suppose.’

‘She seemed very nice, I thought.’ Rosie managed to get a word in edgeways. She was glad to have any information about ambulance station life. She realised that there had been no need to turn up looking so demure: Hazel’s eyelashes were laden with mascara and crimson lipstick outlined her wide mouth.

‘Nice? Really?’ Hazel rolled her eyes in a show of surprise. She drew out her pack of Players and offered it to Rosie. ‘Don’t smoke?’ she snorted when Rosie declined with a shake of the head.

‘Used to … gave it up.’

‘Not for long in this place, you won’t. Couldn’t get by without a fag an hour, me.’ Hazel’s cockney accent seemed to have become more pronounced. She took a long drag on the cigarette then pointed with it. ‘Fancy a cuppa? Canteen’s just down this way.’

‘I’m Rosemary Gardiner, by the way. Rosie, friends call me.’

Hazel slanted a smile over a shoulder. ‘I’ll call you Rosie then, and I’m Hazel to my friends. Most of the others here address us by our surnames. But I don’t go for being formal with people I like.’

It was a typical canteen set with uncomfortable-looking chairs pushed under Spartan rectangular tables. Hazel led the way into the kitchen at the back and filled the kettle at a deep china sink. Having rummaged in a cupboard for some cups and saucers she turned to give Rosie a searching stare.

‘Got a man in your life?’

Rosie shook her head, having noticed that Hazel was glancing at her fingers, probably searching for a ring of some sort. Her mother’s wedding ring was wrapped in tissue in her handbag. ‘You got a boyfriend?’ Rosie always turned a leading question on its head. Her home life wasn’t up for discussion.

‘Mmm … he’s a sailor. Chuck’s due back on leave soon.’

‘Lucky you,’ Rosie said with a friendly smile.

‘Lucky him … if you know what I mean,’ Hazel winked a weighty eyelid, lewdly puckering up her scarlet lips. She cocked her head. ‘Can’t believe you’ve not got a feller.’ She tutted. ‘Sorry, that was a bloody stupid thing to say, all things considered. There’ve been so many casualties in this damned war.’

‘No, it’s all right; I’ve not lost anybody over there or here. Just not got anybody special in my life … a man that is …’

Rosie’s private smile as she thought of Hope went unnoticed by Hazel.

Hazel spooned tea into a small enamel pot. ‘Best get this down us before the hordes descend. Teatime at four thirty.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, got half an hour to spare.’ She poured boiling water onto the leaves and stirred. ‘Come on, while that brews I’ll show you a bit more of the set-up.’

Hazel was tall and solidly built. From the young woman’s forthrightness Rosie reckoned Hazel was no shrinking violet when it came to cleaning up the human wreckage left behind after Hitler had dropped his calling cards.

‘This is the common room.’ Hazel waved at a young fellow who was filling some hurricane lamps ranged in front of him on a table. In response he called out a cheery hello.

‘New recruit, Tom,’ Hazel informed. ‘Tell Miss Rosie Gardiner she’s barmy; go on, she won’t believe me.’

‘Listen to Hazel,’ Tom called with a rather effeminate wave. ‘Scarper while you still can.’ He then turned his attention to the funnel he was using to drip oil into the lamps.

‘Tom Anderson is a conchie,’ Hazel said quietly. On seeing Rosie’s bemusement she explained, ‘Conscientious objector. We’ve had a few of those sent here. He might not want to fight but he’s a bloody godsend with the ambulances. He’s a driver and knows a thing or two about mechanics. He used to drive a tractor on his dad’s farm.’

Rosie hoped Tom was unaware that Hazel had been gossiping about him. His boiler-suit-style uniform made him look more like a plumber than an ambulance driver.

‘Table tennis …’ Rosie had spotted the net shoved into a corner, bats and balls scattered on the top. ‘I used to be pretty good at table tennis.’

‘I’ll give you a game if we end up on the same shifts,’ Hazel offered. ‘What did you do before this damned war buggered us all up?’

‘Worked in a theatre a few years back.’

‘Me, too!’ Hazel burst out, delighted. ‘Which theatre?’

‘The Windmill …’ Rosie started examining the table tennis bats. She never volunteered the information that she’d worked as one of the theatre’s famous nudes. But neither did she deny what she’d done, if asked directly.

The Windmill Theatre had stayed open throughout the war. But Rosie had never felt any inclination to go back for old times’ sake and see a show, or look for the few old colleagues who might remain working there.

‘I worked as a magician’s assistant,’ Hazel informed her. ‘He was always trying to have a fiddle down the front of me costume so I dropped him and went out on my own. I could do a bit of singing and dancing but never made much of a name for myself.’ Hazel click-clacked a few steps with toes and heels, hands jigging up and down at her sides. ‘I was in the chorus at the Palladium once when one of the girls went sick at the last minute.’ She sniffed. ‘Never got asked back, though. They said I was too tall for the chorus line.’ She gazed at Rosie admiringly. ‘The Windmill! Now why didn’t I try there!’ She grinned. ‘What’s the place like? Bit racy, ain’t it, by all accounts? All the servicemen flocked there. Chuck and his navy pals used to race to get a seat at the front. Bet you had a few followers, being as you’re so pretty.’

‘Take a look at an ambulance, can I?’ Rosie asked brightly. ‘I’d better see what it’s all about just in case I’m lucky enough to get to drive one.’

‘You think that’s lucky? Oh, come on, the tea’ll be stewed.’ Hazel led the way back towards the canteen. ‘Getting behind the wheel of a meat wagon is no picnic, I can tell you. Gilly Crump had held a motor licence for years yet she drove an ambulance straight into a wall in the blackout. Knocked herself sparko and ended up in the back of the blighter on a stretcher.’ Hazel chuckled. ‘Gave in her notice shortly after when she got out of hospital. You’ll need to do a few practice runs under instruction before they’ll let you loose on your tod with an assistant.’

‘You won’t put me off, you know.’

Hazel poured the tea then held out a cup, grinning. ‘You look like the sort of girl that does all right whatever she turns her hand to. Some people just have that sort of luck. Whereas me … I bugger up everything.’

‘I bet you don’t!’ Rosie returned, thinking ruefully that if Hazel knew her better she’d be revising her opinion.

Rosie rather liked her new colleague’s droll manner. She knew already that she’d chosen well in applying to the service; it didn’t feel like home yet, but it did feel right being here with Stella Phipps and Tom Anderson and Hazel Scott. In fact, she was itching to get started.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘Didn’t know if you’d still come over for a picnic after what’s gone on,’ Gertie called out as soon as she saw Rosie rounding the corner.

‘’Course I’d come for a picnic. Been looking forward to it. Take more than a load of flying bombs to keep me away from our day out.’ Rosie grinned although she wasn’t feeling quite as chipper as she sounded. While heading to their rendezvous spot Rosie had also wondered if she was making a fruitless journey. She wouldn’t blame Gertie for wanting to stay day and night right by an underground shelter after losing three children in the Blitz.

‘Head off towards the park, shall we?’

Gertie nodded. ‘We had a couple of close shaves in our street. Get any blasts your way from those damned rockets?’

‘Where I live they’re always coming too close for comfort,’ Rosie replied with feeling. ‘Thankfully, no hits in the street. I saw the first one come over, though.’ She shook her head as she recalled that night. ‘Couldn’t believe my ears … or eyes.’

That first doodlebug had come down in Bethnal Green, blowing to smithereens the railway line and several houses. Unfortunately, Stella Phipps’ hopes that the rumours weren’t true had been dashed. Hundreds more of the missiles had whizzed overhead since in a relentless German onslaught. The sight of a fiery tail approaching, coupled with a sinister roaring, was dreadful enough, yet when the rocket’s engine died and it carried on silently for several seconds, the uncertainty of where it might drop was even more terrifying.

They turned in through the iron gates of a small square recreation area. A couple of urchins in plimsolls and short trousers raced past, almost colliding with them. Having mumbled an apology they hared off again. The local school had turned out and the park was crowded with mothers and children making the most of the afternoon sun. But Rosie noticed that a lot of women looked anxious and were keeping an eye on the open skies. The missiles hadn’t only been arriving after dark and there was a tension in the air despite the children’s joyful voices.

‘Here’ll do.’ Gertie swiped away a crust of bird droppings on a bench’s slats. Having sat down she delved into her shopping bag, pegged on the pram handle. ‘Brought a flask.’ Gertie held out the Thermos. ‘Not much in the way of a picnic, though. Sorry, me rations are low.’

‘I’ve got some Spam sandwiches.’ Rosie dug into her bag and found a small packet. She unwrapped it and offered the sandwiches to Gertie. ‘Would have been corned beef but Dad wanted to keep that to fry up for our teas tonight.’

‘Blimey! They’re fit for a queen!’ Gertie looked admiringly at the tiny neatly cut triangles, unlike the doorsteps of bread and jam encased in greaseproof paper that she’d brought along. ‘Thanks.’ She took a bite before unscrewing the Thermos and pouring two weak brews into plastic cups.

‘Bread’s a bit dry; only had a scraping of Stork left in the pack,’ Rosie apologised.

‘Tastes fine to me,’ Gertie said truthfully, taking another hungry bite. At home she never had sandwiches with butter or marge. Those rations were saved for her husband and kids.

‘Your little ’un’s good.’ Gertie nodded at Hope, sitting quietly in her pram. Victoria, on the other hand, was rocking herself on her bottom and banging her heels against the thin mattress to get her mother’s attention.

‘She’s too big for the pram now,’ Gertie said, giving her daughter’s nose a wipe. ‘Like to get out and walk, don’t you, Vicky?’ Gertie lifted her daughter out of the pram and let her sit beside her on the seat. ‘Behave yourself,’ she warned. ‘Be a good girl like Hope.’

‘You wouldn’t have said that if you’d heard the little madam last night,’ Rosie responded ruefully. ‘Thought Doris was going to have a fit …’

‘Doris?’ Gertie asked, holding out Rosie’s tea to her. She noticed Rosie’s expression change. ‘’S’all right … not prying, honest.’ Gertie rummaged for a jam sandwich. She broke off a piece for her daughter and Victoria stopped fidgeting and tucked in. ‘Can Hope have a bit?’

‘Yeah … I’ve got her bib somewhere.’ As Rosie fastened the terry towelling about her daughter’s neck she said, ‘Doris is my stepmother. Dad got married again recently.’

‘Take it things ain’t always easy between you two.’ Gertie followed up with a knowing laugh. ‘I had some of that with me mother-in-law. Mustn’t speak ill of the dead, though, so enough said.’ She handed a morsel of bread oozing thick dark jam to Hope who promptly took a bite then threw the remainder overboard.

‘She’s not very hungry,’ Rosie apologised. ‘Dad gave her a few biscuits about an hour ago. He spoils her.’ She glanced at Gertie. ‘You’ve probably guessed that I’ve not got a home of my own and live with Dad.’

‘Me ’n’ Rufus started off married life at my mum’s,’ Gertie replied flatly. ‘Couldn’t wait to get out and into me own place.’

‘Drive you mad, did they?’ Rosie asked.

‘Wasn’t them; they did what they could for us. But couldn’t take living with me younger brother.’ Gertie clammed up. She never spoke about Michael. She didn’t want to see or hear from him ever again. In fact she hoped that the nasty bastard was six feet under. He’d been a thorn in her side for decades; even as kids they’d not got on. Then he’d plunged a dagger in her heart when her little boys died; she blamed him for the children having been left alone in the house that night.

In Gertie’s experience most of life’s troubles revolved around the men in her life. And she reckoned that Rosie was reluctant to talk about Hope’s father because she held the same opinion.

‘Army, is he, your husband?’ Gertie asked sympathetically. ‘Rufus ain’t the easiest man to live with yet when he was in France I fretted no end about him. Almost came as a relief when he got invalided home; I know that’s a wicked thing to say.’ She wiped her jammy fingers on a hanky. ‘Sometimes I’d not have the wireless on in case of any bad news about the Middlesex Regiment. Didn’t want Joey to hear it; it didn’t seem fair landing that on him as well after he’d lost his brothers. ’Course, now his dad’s back we don’t have that bother.’ Gertie gave a bashful smile. ‘Sorry, going on a bit, ain’t I?’

‘I like to hear about your family, Gertie. You must miss your sons so much,’ Rosie said quietly.

Gertie nodded. ‘Joey took it badly. Thought at one point he’d need a dose of something from the doctor to calm him down. But we got through it … the two of us. After Rufus enlisted it was just me and him for a while, before Vicky was born.’ She sniffed, glanced at Rosie. ‘I understand if you don’t want to talk about your husband, though …’

‘I said I’d tell you more about myself today, didn’t I?’

‘’S’all right; you don’t have to say a thing if you don’t want to. Plenty of stuff in my past I never talk about.’ Gertie grinned. ‘Bet that’s come as a surprise to you after listening to me rabbiting nineteen to the dozen.’

Rosie sat back sipping her tea. ‘I don’t have a husband,’ she suddenly blurted. ‘My name’s still Rosie Gardiner and never been any different although some people think I’m a widow called Mrs Deane.’

‘Stops ’em yakking, don’t it, if they see a ring on your finger?’ There had been a long silence before Gertie’s reply, but when it came it sounded matter-of-fact. ‘Wrong ’un who ran off, was he, the father?’

‘He was a wrong ’un all right,’ Rosie said bitterly. ‘But he didn’t run off. He never knew, thank God.’

‘Didn’t want no help off him?’ Gertie asked, surprised.

Rosie shook her head vigorously. ‘Never wanted to see him again. And I got my way. I never did. He died before I even found out I was expecting.’

‘Killed in action?’

‘He got discharged as unfit before he’d ever held a rifle. Didn’t do him much good, though; he perished in a nightclub fire. The day I found out I could have jumped for joy. Some people might think that wicked.’

‘Not me. He raped you.’ Gertie’s quiet statement was husky with sorrow.

‘I didn’t say so,’ Rosie rattled off. Suddenly she regretted revealing too much about her past. Her dearest wish was to protect Hope, and hearing gossip that your father had raped your mother was a dreadful thing for any child to deal with. Having a chat and a picnic couldn’t alter the fact that she and Gertie still didn’t know one another well enough to share secrets.

‘You don’t need to worry,’ Gertie reassured. ‘Like I said, there’s plenty of stuff in my past I don’t talk about. So I’d never talk about your’n, promise.’

‘Thanks,’ Rosie mumbled. ‘Hark at us! Right pair of miserable cows, aren’t we? Thought I was getting out of the house to cheer myself up.’ She got to her feet, brushing sandwich crumbs from her skirt. ‘Let’s have a quick stroll round the grass before the heavens open.’ A cliff of dark cloud was menacing the horizon. People were gathering up their belongings and hurrying towards the park gates as they noticed the air changing.

‘Don’t fancy getting drenched.’ Gertie put the flask back in her bag and they headed off side by side, pulling the hoods up on the prams in preparation for a downpour.

‘I volunteered to work as an ambulance auxiliary. I’ve been talking about making myself useful for ages, so I finally did something about it.’

Gertie looked surprised, then smiled. ‘Glad to hear it! They’ll take you on, no trouble, especially if a fellow interviews you.’ She glanced sideways at Rosie’s stylish skirt and blouse, so much prettier than the faded cotton frock she was wearing herself.

‘A woman interviewed me. And I got a letter this morning offering me a job.’

‘Good for you!’ Gertie glanced at Hope. ‘Yer stepmother going to mind the little ’un for you?’

‘Dad’ll help out as Doris is working.’

‘I’ll give a hand babysitting, if you like,’ Gertie volunteered. She’s such a cutie it’d be a pleasure to have her round to play with Vicky.’

‘Dad got moody when I spoke about getting Hope a nursery place. He’s determined to mind her,’ Rosie quickly rattled off. She liked Gertie but the woman was a rough-and-ready sort and she didn’t know enough about the Grimes family to let Hope stay there.

Rosie felt bad for thinking she was a better mother than Gertie. Considering what life had thrown at the poor woman she deserved praise for coping so well.

At the park gates Rosie turned to give Gertie a spontaneous hug. ‘Thanks … for everything.’

‘Ain’t done nothing,’ Gertie replied bashfully.

‘Yeah you have, and I’m so glad we bumped into each other that day. Don’t know what my shifts are going to be yet but I hope we can keep on meeting up.’

Gertie took a scrap of paper from her bag. ‘Shopping list,’ she explained the spidery scrawl filling half of one side. Turning it over she printed her address on it with a stub of pencil found in a pocket. ‘There. When you get a day off, come and see me, if you like. I’m usually about.’

With a wave the two women quickly set off in opposite directions as fat raindrops were spotting the hoods of the children’s prams.

It had been clear skies when Rosie had set out for a picnic so she hadn’t bothered to stuff a scarf in her pocket, fearing the weather might turn. By the time she trotted up to her front door her stylish fair locks were glued to her cheeks in sleek rat’s-tails.

‘Crikey, you did get caught in it, didn’t you?’ John clucked his tongue while inspecting his daughter’s bedraggled figure.

Rosie gave her head a shake and quickly unbuttoned her cardigan and took it off, hanging the sodden wool over a chair back.

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