CHRISTMAS FOR THE SHOP GIRLS
Joanna Toye

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2020

Copyright © Joanna Toye 2020

Cover photographs © Gordon Crabb/Alison Eldred (woman), TopFoto (street scene), Shuttershock.com (all other images)

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

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

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

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

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

Source ISBN: 9780008298753

Ebook Edition May 2020 © ISBN: 9780008298760

Version: 2020-11-11

Dedication

For Cressida, with love from Shosho xxx

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Author’s note

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Joanna Toye

About the Publisher

Prologue
Christmas Eve, 1942

They’d been hanging the Christmas decorations, the balding tinsel and the frosted glass baubles, tatty now, but no chance of anything new after three years of war. Then Jim had his arms round her, smiling down, teasing her about what Father Christmas might bring, when suddenly there was noise – at first, far off, the nasal whine of the air raid siren, and then, overhead, more, a lot more. A great loud whoosh and a tearing squeal and then a massive booming, breathtaking thump.

Lily was torn away from Jim, sucked up and backwards and sideways, hurled against something hard and flung down again, rolling, bumping, like falling downstairs and hitting every step. Then finally coming to rest, her eyes and mouth full of dust, chunks of plaster all around, hemming her in, and everything gone dark and quiet, horribly quiet …

‘Shh, Lily, shh, it’s all right, it’s all right.’

‘What … what?’

‘You were dreaming, love. You shouted out.’

Dazed, damp with sweat, Lily blinked. It wasn’t dark and she wasn’t enclosed. She was sitting up in bed, in her room. The landing light was on and her mother had her arms round her. Lily’s heart was knocking at her ribs. She wondered if her mother could feel it too.

‘Oh, Mum. I’m sorry. I woke you up.’

‘You woke all of us up.’

Jim was standing in the doorway in his pyjamas, hair tousled, feet bare on the cold boards.

Lily closed her eyes. It had been a dream, just a dream, again. But the dreams were still as real as the night it had happened a few weeks ago, when she and Jim had been the last ones left in the store, finishing off the decorations to the Christmas grotto when the bomb had fallen in the street outside.

She raised her hand and touched the place where her collarbone had shattered. She was allowed to take her sling off at night and it felt strange; she was more used now to her arm being strapped across her chest than to see it hanging free. She looked at Jim. He was supporting himself on the door frame.

Her mum, Dora, gave her a gentle squeeze.

‘These dreams, love – it’s the shock,’ she said. ‘And it’s perfectly natural. But give it time and the … the bad memories, well, they might not go entirely, but they’ll fade.’

Lily nodded.

Jim was smiling at Lily, the crooked smile she loved.

‘I reckon this was all a ruse,’ he said. ‘You know what time it is, don’t you? While we’ve been standing here, it’s gone midnight. You just wanted your Christmas presents early! Typical!’

Chapter 1
April 1943

‘Look at it!’ said Lily. ‘You’d think the bomb had dropped yesterday!’ Ladies’ Fashions, Model Gowns and Suits and Coats were in uproar.

Gladys darted her friend a look – only Lily could say that! Gladys wouldn’t have dared, in case it brought that awful night flooding back. But Lily had been so strong, coming back to work when the memories must still have been so vivid and evidence of the destruction was still all around. Now, though, three months later, it looked as though the demolition squad was in again. The first floor was in chaos – and all because there was going to be a fashion show.

Harassed porters were assembling a catwalk under the supervision of the Model Gowns buyer: beside them the store’s carpenters sawed and hammered. In the middle of it all, the buyers from the other two fashion departments were taking dresses and suits on and off a rail, evidently in dispute over what should make the final cut. Juniors scurried to and fro offering more garments for inspection, which were scrutinised and mostly rejected. If not, they scuttled off again to iron out the sort of creases visible only to a buyer’s eye.

A potted palm wove its way uncertainly towards them and beneath it, Lily recognised Jim’s suit trousers. Along with Peter Simmonds, the first-floor supervisor, Jim had been charged with getting the store back on its feet after the bomb and the fashion show was going to act as a sort of relaunch for Marlow’s as well as highlighting the new spring and summer Utility styles. There was no doubt about it, Jim was on the way up. He was also – the thought still made her smile, inside and out – Lily’s boyfriend of a few months’ standing.

‘Jim!’ She hissed him over. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Let me put this thing down.’

Lily helped him to rest the pot on a little plinth where a plaster baby was displaying a smocked romper suit and waving a rattle. Jim’s tie was askew and his shirt untucked, not the sort of appearance Marlow’s usually required of Mr J. Goodridge, second sales on Furniture and Household.

‘If you really want to know,’ Jim began, ‘it’s hell. Suits and Coats and Ladies’ Fashions are at each other’s throats over who gets to show more items and Model Gowns is sulking because she wanted her stuff to go out all in one block – a “tableau” she calls it – and not mixed in with the others.’ He gave a despairing sigh. ‘And they say never work with children or animals. I could add to that!’

‘It’ll be fine!’ Lily tried to reassure him. ‘It’ll all come together at the last minute, you’ll see.’

His eyes were deep-set and brown; his hair was sticking up where he’d pushed his hands through it in the way Lily loved and she had to stop herself from reaching up to smooth it down. Her boss on Childrenswear, Miss Frobisher, tall, blonde, and ever-elegant herself, was a stickler for smartness in appearance, but even on a day when the usual rules didn’t apply, Lily didn’t think she’d approve.

Jim pushed his fingers through his hair again, making it stick up even more.

‘I don’t see how. I knew we should have got more done last night – at least got the catwalk built!’

‘Hah!’ Lily retorted. ‘You and I stayed late to finish off the Christmas grotto, didn’t we, and look what happened!’

Gladys winced, but that was Lily for you, and the measure of Lily and Jim’s relationship. They struck sparks off each other, but they both seemed to thrive on it. As if in proof, Jim was grinning and Lily was smiling at him with a sort of ‘Well? I’m right, aren’t I?’ expression. Even so, Gladys tactfully jumped in.

‘Are the models here yet?’

Before the war, Marlow’s had had its own models, but now they were in the WRNS or turning out shells in a factory somewhere. The models for today had been booked through an agency in London, and to Gladys were invested with an air of almost film-star glamour.

‘That’s another thing.’ Jim looked at his watch. ‘They should have been here three-quarters of an hour ago.’

‘You know what the trains are like.’

‘That’s why I wanted them to come yesterday, but would You Know Who hear of it? Decided to scrimp on expenses.’

You Know Who was Cedric Marlow, the store’s owner, notoriously careful with money.

‘It doesn’t really matter, does it?’ Lily pointed out. ‘There’s nothing for them to prance up and down on yet.’

‘Thanks for reminding me.’

In a further reminder, there was a monumental crash as a tower of gilt chairs tumbled from a trolley and hit the half-built catwalk.

‘I’d better get over there.’ Jim moved to pick up the palm, but before he could, Mr Simmonds approached. Tall and spare, he always moved at a lick, but this was speedy, even for him. He nodded to the girls and addressed Jim.

‘They’ve had a telephone call upstairs – the models haven’t left London yet. And I’m not sure they will.’

‘What?’

‘There’s an unexploded bomb at Harrow-on-the Hill. No trains leaving in our direction at all. I think we’d better face it, they’re not going to get here.’ Mr Simmonds sounded remarkably calm, but then he was ex-Army, invalided out with a dodgy shoulder. ‘We’re going to have to regroup.’

‘What does he mean, regroup?’ asked Gladys.

Miss Frobisher had sent them both off to dinner early, saying she’d square it with Mr Bunting, Gladys’s boss on Toys.

‘Think of something else, I suppose,’ shrugged Lily. ‘I don’t know.’ Gladys looked worried. Lily persevered with her rissole but chewed cautiously: bits of bone weren’t unknown. ‘Maybe the salesgirls from Fashions could model them, they know the clothes.’

‘They’re all so old though!’

It was true: with all women between nineteen and forty-three conscripted into some kind of war work, Marlow’s, like other shops and stores, was staffed by younger girls like themselves and, to put it politely, the middle-aged. ‘Salesgirls’ was a courtesy title: many of them had been brought back out of retirement.

‘There’s always the juniors.’

Gladys didn’t look convinced.

‘I can’t see the juniors on Fashions swanking up and down a catwalk – they’re like frightened rabbits! I’d be the same with their bosses.’

That was true as well: the fashion buyers were a fearsome bunch. Miss Wagstaff of Model Gowns was a tightly permed, tightly corseted martinet. Miss Drake (Dresses), petite and pretty, looked more approachable, though anyone who’d ever witnessed her beating down a wholesaler on price would have swiftly reassessed that opinion. Miss McIver of Suits and Coats was originally from Aberdeen and was a chip off the old block of that so-called granite city. All in all, Fashions was known to be the toughest department in which to work: Miss Frobisher had started there and survived, which was one of the reasons Lily admired her so much.

‘Anyway, it’s not our problem.’ Gladys pushed her plate away and pulled her jam turnover towards her.

Lily was quiet. It was still a setback for Jim. His problems were her problems; she’d help him if she could. In fact, she often intervened when her help wasn’t required – or desired.

‘Gladys!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘It is! We’ve forgotten about Beryl!’

In her shop nearby, Beryl was getting ready to lock up. She picked up the card which had been propped in the window for the past fortnight.

Beryl’s Brides will be showing one of our dresses as the GRAND FINALE to the Fashion Show to take place on the First Floor of Marlow’s on Wednesday, 21st April.

Entrance free but ticket required. Reserve early to secure your seat.

Enquire within or at the store for details.

Over the bottom corner she folded a slip of paper reading: TODAY.

Turning the sign to ‘Closed’ and stepping outside, she locked the shop. It wasn’t much of a place – or hadn’t been when she’d first seen it. But Beryl had always had an eye to the main chance and a way of talking herself into it.

Her little shop was one of Marlow’s former ground-floor window spaces, blown in by the bomb. With no chance of replacing huge sheets of plate glass, opening up small units like Beryl’s had seemed the best way forward. Cedric Marlow, always cautious, had taken some convincing, but persistence had paid off and within weeks Beryl had moved her bridal hire business from her front room to proper premises. She’d been talking for weeks about having one of her dresses in the show, all the more because Beryl’s dresses were second-hand. ‘As-new’, she called it, but it meant the same. After her own wedding, she’d spotted an opening. With materials in short supply and clothes rationing biting, who could afford to splurge all their coupons on a dress you’d wear only once? And so her business had been born.

Having a Beryl’s Brides gown as the finale to the fashion show was intended to give sales a boost, and Beryl was hanging every hope on it.

The dress she’d chosen for the catwalk was already upstairs in the store, and very classy it was too. Pre-war of course, Brussels lace, V-necked with a tiny stand collar and elbow-length sleeves. To go with it she’d chosen lacy gloves, a paste tiara and a short veil. Jim had promised he’d organise some kind of bouquet. It was going to be lovely.

Back in the staff canteen at Marlow’s, the full horror had dawned on Gladys.

‘You’re right! Beryl’s going to be devastated!’

Lily reached for her bowl; pudding might help her think. She was always hungry: everyone was always hungry.

‘What is this jam?’ she asked after a few mouthfuls. ‘It’s not carrot, for once. Is it marrow?’

But before Gladys could answer, Jim arrived at speed, practically screeching to a halt like something out of a cartoon.

‘Lily! There you are! How big are you?’

‘What?’

‘How big?’

‘You know how big,’ Lily looked up at him, spoon poised. ‘Five foot seven.’

‘Not your height! Your – your – vital statistics!’

Gladys spluttered pastry all over the table. Lily stared at Jim.

‘I beg your pardon!’

‘Miss Drake thinks you’re a thirty-six. Up top, anyway. Are you?’

Lily put down her spoon.

‘Isn’t this a bit of a private conversation to be having in a public place?’

‘There’s no time to be discreet. You’re going to have to model!’

Chapter 2

As Jim dragged her away, Lily was still trying to take it in. Yes, she’d wanted to help him out but behind the scenes, not parading up and down in clothes she’d never usually wear and certainly could never afford!

‘Why me?’ she protested, struggling to keep up with Jim as he wove between the canteen tables. ‘There’s loads of other girls in the store who could do it!’

‘I know,’ he flung back over his shoulder. ‘I’ve got two already, and they’re delighted. Not like you, Miss Awkward!’

‘Don’t tell me,’ groaned Lily. ‘Gloria from Cosmetics. I bet she volunteered!’

‘She did, actually, and Sally from China and Glass.’

‘There you are then!’ Lily was keeping pace with him now as they climbed the back stairs. ‘You don’t need me. There were only two models originally.’

‘Yes, professionals! You lot’ll take longer to get in and out of the clothes.’

Having scaled the back stairs two at a time, they’d reached the first floor and Jim was propelling her towards Ladies’ Fashions, Lily still protesting.

‘What about Brenda from Books?’

‘Too shy.’

‘Rachel from Travel Goods!’

‘Can’t see without her specs.’

‘Magda! On Toiletries. She’s beautiful.’

Jim stopped and turned to face her.

‘So are you, Lily. Even when you’re arguing, annoyingly.’

Well! He’d never said that before! It was nice to hear, and she didn’t think he’d said it just to get round her. He wasn’t like that. It could – should – have been a romantic moment, but there wasn’t time for the violins to tune up and the bluebirds to start singing.

‘Please,’ pressed Jim. ‘You will do it, won’t you? For Marlow’s? For me?’

It would be ungracious not to, especially after that compliment. Lily gave in.

‘Oh, go on then,’ she said. ‘Flatterer! But I wish you’d asked me before I had my dinner. I’ve just had a rissole, a ton of potatoes and a huge jam turnover!’

The next couple of hours were like nothing she’d ever known. In all her time at the store, Lily had barely glimpsed behind the scenes on Ladies’ Fashions. Now she was ushered through to the changing rooms like a proper customer to be handed one garment after another and told to try them on. She doubted the buyers would have been muttering quite so critically, though, if it had been a customer scrambling in and out of the clothes!

Eventually, like witches round a seething cauldron, the buyers went into a huddle over a pile of edge-to-edge jackets and a consensus emerged. Sally and Gloria, both nearly nineteen, would model what the buyers called the more sophisticated numbers: Lily was to model dresses and suits for a younger clientele. Sally and Gloria seemed flattered and Gloria simpered accordingly. Lily was pleased too and not surprised: she’d looked like lamb dressed as mutton in some of the clothes.

‘And her hair!’ she overheard one of the buyers lament.

Lily defensively touched her wayward blonde curls. None of this had been her idea!

Sally, a pale-skinned redhead, nudged her.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘They’ll do our hair. I heard they’re getting Monsieur Paul in.’

‘And Elizabeth Arden’s doing the make-up,’ added Gloria.

‘In person?’ asked Lily, just to needle her. Gloria was a pert brunette who wore a high hat, as the local saying had it. She’d already applied to the WAAF where she hoped – no, intended – to meet an officer – and not just any old Pilot Officer, but a Flying Officer at least, she’d been heard to say.

Outside of work, Lily liked to look nice if she could, but it wasn’t easy on her wages, not to mention rationing. Most of her clothes were pass-ons or what she could find at jumble sales, altered to fit by her mum, Dora. She couldn’t believe all this fuss over a few frocks!

By now it was now mid-afternoon and, to Lily’s relief, she heard the words ‘tea break’. Then, the girls were told, there’d be a proper rehearsal, during which, Miss Wagstaff informed them, they would learn to walk. There was evidently more to this modelling lark than met the eye.

When she emerged onto the sales floor for her break, a transformation had taken place. The catwalk was in place and violent purple felting was being nailed over it. At the top end, where the three girls would emerge, was a sort of slender pyramid, wrapped round with a gold lamé cloth. The gilt chairs had been laid out in rows and, on a little dais, a lectern had been set up with Jim’s potted palm to one side. Here, because every fashion show needed a compère, Mr Simmonds would stand to announce the models one by one.

Lily looked around for Jim, but he was in conference with a couple of brown-coated porters, of whom Les, Beryl’s husband, was one. Suddenly Beryl herself, in dudgeon as high as it could be, accosted her.

‘Lily! What the blinking hell’s going on back there?’

‘Oh, Beryl – haven’t they told you?’

‘I know the models aren’t coming, but only ’cos Gladys told me! Wagstaff’s told me nothing except to keep out the way till the Marlow’s part of the show’s been decided. A nice way to treat your grand finale!’

As she’d struggled in and out of various outfits, Lily had overheard the buyers discussing the problem of who would model the finale wedding dress now the London models wouldn’t to be there to carry it off.

‘I think it’s Gloria who’ll be your bride,’ she said.

‘I thought as much.’ Beryl tossed her head. ‘Always pushing herself forward, that one.’

Lily swallowed a smile: she’d thought much the same about Beryl when she’d first met her as another junior at Marlow’s. But when Beryl had fallen pregnant it was Lily she’d turned to in a panic, and they’d become friends. Now Beryl and Les were married, happily, and the proud parents of little Bobby.

‘You’re being very good about it,’ said Lily. ‘You must be fed up it won’t be a proper model swanning up and down.’

Beryl shrugged.

‘I’d prefer someone with a bit of class to that jumped-up piece, but it’s still a great chance for me, all those mothers and daughters in the audience. I know Marlow’s customers’d usually turn their noses up at a dress from a place like mine, but, well, it’s like me with Gloria. What choice has any of us got? There’s a war on, isn’t there?’

Lily didn’t need reminding of that when the rehearsal began: Miss Wagstaff would have given the average regimental sergeant major a run for his money.

‘Glide, don’t stride!’ she hectored as Lily came down the catwalk. ‘And eyes front! Keep your head still! You’re in a fashion show, not a searchlight battery!’

Then she made Lily glide all over again with Mr Simmonds reading his lines: she was taking no prisoners there either.

‘Kindly stick to the script!’ she boomed. ‘I know what’s there, I wrote it myself! Number Thirteen – a versatile skirt suit in heather mix tweed by Harella, not Marella!’

‘I’m sorry,’ sputtered Mr Simmonds, ‘but that’s not what it says here.’

Lily had never seen him so cowed.

‘I can’t account for the typist’s butterfingers!’ Miss Wagstaff cut in. ‘It’s Harella, take my word for it! From the top, please. Back you go, Lily!’

By six, when the store closed briefly before the show started at seven, Lily was a mass of nerves. Worse was to come.

‘You’d better start with this one,’ Miss Drake instructed the hairstylist, Monsieur Paul. ‘She’ll need the most attention!’

Thanks, thought Lily, sitting down at Monsieur Paul’s gesture. He was small and whippet-thin, his skinny legs emerging from what looked like an artist’s smock. He ran his fingers through Lily’s hair, making it more unruly than ever. He pulled it this way and that, examined the roots, then the ends, and not so much shook his head as gave a little shudder. Was it her imagination or, as he covered her with a slithery pink cape, did he actually say under his breath ‘Quelle horreur’?

He began by yanking her head this way and that, smothering her hair in some pungent lotion and twirling it about with the end of a vicious-looking comb. Then he inserted rollers, blasted it with hot air, tugged the rollers out and doused the whole thing in hairspray. At the end he offered her a mirror, but before Lily could take it, Miss Drake reappeared and shooed her into another cubicle for ‘make-up’.

Having her hair pulled had been bad enough, but it was nothing to the agony of having her eyebrows ‘tidied’, which Elizabeth Arden’s top salesgirl, a lady of mature years, said was necessary to ‘bring out those lovely eyes’. Having brought them out, she made Lily open them even wider while she applied mascara, then caked her face with powder – ‘“Dawn Blush” is the shade for you, dear. Remember that when you get your next pay packet!’ After that, Lily hardly noticed the lipstick and rouge go on.

Thrilled with her work (and a possible sale – though she’d be lucky) the saleswoman stepped back and handed her a mirror.

‘Quite a transformation!’ she crowed.

Lily was speechless. She’d never used more than a slick of pale lipstick and the tiniest bit of boot-black on her eyelashes. Now she looked like a panda with a high fever. A panda in a blonde wig.

Giving up the chair to Sally, she staggered off, trying not to look at her reflection in the long fitting-room mirrors. She found that Miss Naylor, the Schoolwear buyer, had arrived to chaperone the models while the Fashion buyers took a break and changed into their finery for the evening.

Miss Naylor and Miss Wagstaff were friends, but Lily was wary of her. She and Miss Frobisher had had something of a set-to before Christmas; Miss Frobisher had won and Miss Naylor had not been best pleased.

She nodded coolly at Lily, whom she saw as a Frobisher ally, and then towards some sandwiches and lemon barley water on a trolley.

‘Have something to eat,’ she ordered. ‘You’ll need it.’

Lily nodded – you didn’t say no to Miss Naylor lightly – but her stomach rolled at the thought. She poured herself a glass of lemon barley to show willing, and thankfully Miss Naylor spotted a couple of juniors giggling together and rushed off to deliver a lecture. Lily went in search of Gloria and found her in a quiet corner.

As a Cosmetics salesgirl, Gloria was considered competent to do her own make-up, so was already painted and preened. She was sipping from a hip flask which, she said, her boyfriend, Derek, had managed to smuggle in.

‘Have a nip,’ she said. ‘Better than lemon barley! Calm your nerves.’

Lily shook her head.

‘Not for me, thanks,’ she said. ‘But you’re not nervous, surely?’

‘Only that seeing me as the bride might give Derek ideas,’ scoffed Gloria. ‘As if I’m going to settle for a salesman off Shirts and Ties!’

In Number Three – ‘a go-anywhere day dress in a pretty powder blue – note the contrast trim and neat self-belt – just 60/- and 11 coupons’ (‘just!’) – Lily peered out from behind the fitting room curtain. It was ten to seven.

She’d managed to blot off the worst of the make-up, making rather a mess of the cloakroom roller towel, but it couldn’t be helped. The lipstick had worn off anyway, with all the nervous lip-licking, and she’d tried to loosen the concrete hairdo by waggling her fingers through it.

Out in front, the audience were arriving and the string quartet was tuning up. Beryl, wearing a sash with ‘Beryl’s Brides’ on it, was handing out programmes. Gladys, who’d sneaked round earlier to tell Lily she’d begged to stay on and watch the show, was standing to one side with Miss Frobisher. Jim was beside a pillar, deep in conversation with Evelyn Brimble.

Might have known she’d be there, thought Lily: she was, after all, engaged to Mr Marlow’s son, Robert. Presumably he was somewhere about too … yes, there he was, talking to a burly, florid man in a chalk-stripe suit with a carnation in his buttonhole. New money, as some of the older assistants at Marlow’s, used to serving the district’s gentry, would have sniffed.

As Lily wondered if she dared try to wave to Jim, Mr Simmonds came up to his little dais and took the microphone.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. On behalf of Mr Cedric Marlow and his staff, may I welcome you to this very special event for the store. We look forward to an evening of dazzling fashions, modelled for you tonight by some of our very own staff members, who have been practising all afternoon to give you a truly memorable evening. Without further ado, could I ask you to kindly take your seats so that the show can begin!’

There was a buzz of chatter as staff shepherded the most important guests – including Robert, Evelyn and her parents, Sir Douglas and Lady Brimble, to seats in the front row beside Mr Marlow himself, who was smiling benignly.

Cedric Marlow was nearly seventy, very much of the old school of shopkeeping, and it showed. He was semi-retired now, leaving the floor supervisors in charge of day-to-day operations, but he liked to keep a guiding hand on the tiller (or stick his oar in, as Jim had been heard to mutter) – as with the London models’ expenses. But the staff respected him; Mr Marlow had built up the store from the small draper’s shop that his father had started, and Jim wasn’t alone in giving him credit for that.

‘That was decent of Simmonds, wasn’t it?’ Sally, in Number Two – ‘a light woollen dress by Atrima – note the clever use of colour for the placket and mock pockets’ – appeared behind her. ‘He must have written that himself – Wagstaff would never have given us a mention!’

Lily was still hoping to catch Jim’s eye. At that moment he looked up and gave her a huge grin and a thumbs-up.

‘Good luck!’ he mouthed.

At least he still recognised her. Perhaps the evening wouldn’t be too bad after all.

Chapter 3

And it wasn’t. To Lily’s amazement, it went surprisingly smoothly. Any shyness she’d felt about cavorting around in her bra and knickers in front of the others had long gone and the juniors helped, holding dresses open so that Lily could step into them, untangling Gloria when she got her hair snagged on a button. And instead of criticising, the buyers were so keen that their own departments’ offerings would shine that they were positively encouraging.

‘Head up, shoulders back!’ Miss McIver urged. ‘You’re doing really well!’

‘Don’t forget the bias-cut yoke when you hear Mr Simmonds mention it! Just point to it – and a nice smooth turn at the end like last time!’ added Miss Drake.

The bridal finale was Number Seventy, and by the time the girls reached the high sixties, evening wear, Lily was almost enjoying herself. Then Gloria, coming off and ceding place to Sally, suddenly clutched at a curtain and went pale.

‘I don’t feel so good,’ she said. ‘Gone all light-headed.’

Miss Naylor was there like a shot with a velvet-buttoned stool.

‘Sit down, head between your knees!’ she commanded, shoving Gloria onto it.

Lily, half in and half out of a dress and with a junior holding Number Sixty-Nine ready, didn’t like the look of it. None of them had touched the sandwiches, and what Gloria had been taking sips of all night wasn’t lemon barley water, she knew. Despite her position facing the floor, Gloria remained a greenish white.

‘I can’t do it,’ she moaned. ‘I feel sick! And dizzy! You’ll have to find someone else to do the bridal.’

‘What’s going on?’ Miss Wagstaff bore down on them.

It was too much for Gloria. She clapped her hand over her mouth and pushed past her. Miss Wagstaff whirled around and went in pursuit.

‘Gloria! Don’t you dare get anything on my Hardy Amies!’

Miss McIver was gasping like a landed fish, but Miss Drake rounded on Lily.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to improvise. Lily – I need your help.’

The next five minutes passed in a blur. Sally had looked perplexed when frantic hand signals from Miss Drake had kept her twirling at the end of the catwalk three times, and then had been made to twirl again when she made it back to the fitting room end. The quartet’s playing had become somewhat manic, but Mr Simmonds had manfully burbled on about the dress Sally was showing being ‘perfect for cocktail wear or, er, going on somewhere afterwards, um, Mr Hitler and his activities permitting,’ which had even raised a laugh.

Now, the quartet starting scraping away at the Wedding March and Lily stepped onto the stage, just a few paces behind the bride. Miss Frobisher, the epitome, as always, of class and sophistication, preceded her in the Brussels lace, the tiara and the veil, with Lily in Number Sixty-Nine.

One of the juniors had rushed out to whisper to Miss Frobisher that she was needed urgently, and another to tell the musicians, but there’d been no way of warning Mr Simmonds about the change of model without alerting the audience. And as she and Miss Frobisher glided past, Lily couldn’t help but notice his expression. Shock, of course, but also something she couldn’t quite put a name to, then a frantic scrabbling for his script.

His blurb about the wedding dress was the same, but Lily’s delicate ice-blue dress, ‘a charming little number with a sweetheart neckline, perfect for any young girl’s debut’ became, thanks to his quick thinking, ‘and also, of course, suitable for any momentous occasion.’

If there was a slight hiatus, the audience didn’t notice: they’d broken into spontaneous applause. As they made their way down the catwalk, Lily looked to left and right as much as she wanted – Miss Wagstaff could take a running jump. She could see several mothers and daughters squinting at their programmes – hopefully intending a visit to Beryl’s Brides.

As Lily and Miss Frobisher executed a complex turn at the end of the catwalk, her boss gave Lily a conspiratorial smile. And as they swished past Mr Simmonds again, Lily was able to study his expression more closely. It was something like awe.

The show was over, the audience was gone, and, backstage, the buyers were supervising the re-hanging of the clothes. Gloria, pale and wan, had been poured into the arms of Derek from Shirts and Ties, and Sally was getting stuck into the curled-up sandwiches.

Lily had been walking on air when she’d stepped off stage, and her head was still buzzing with the applause.

‘Well!’ Miss Frobisher was back to normal, in her navy worsted suit. ‘Not quite what I expected from the evening!’

Even so, she’d taken it all in her stride – or rather glide, which seemed to come naturally to her.

‘I hope you didn’t mind, Miss Frobisher.’ Lily was also back in her own clothes. ‘But when Gloria came over all funny—’

She couldn’t say what she really thought, which was that she’d always thought Miss Frobisher would be perfect. She looked like a model anyway, tall and slim, with her honey blonde hair in its perfect French pleat, and she’d been a bride – it was only Marlow’s tradition that stipulated that all female staff were addressed as ‘Miss’, married or not.

‘I didn’t mind in the least,’ Miss Frobisher said now with a smile. ‘I rather enjoyed it. And you did very well yourself, Lily. But you should get home. It’s late.’

‘And we’ve got work in the morning.’

‘I didn’t mean that. Take a couple of hours off tomorrow morning in lieu of tonight and come in for eleven. You can tell the timekeeper to check with me if he makes a fuss.’

‘Thank you!’

Miss Frobisher was the best of bosses – firm but fair. She’d seen early on that Lily had potential, and she encouraged it – pushed her, even, sending her off to do sickness and holiday cover on other departments to widen her experience.

Lily said her goodnights and went out on to the sales floor, where the activity of the afternoon was happening in reverse, the purple felting being taken up and the catwalk dismantled. Jim, in shirtsleeves, was stacking chairs. Lily went over to him.

‘Let me help.’

Jim stopped what he was doing and grinned.

‘A bit beneath you, isn’t it? Now you’re a top model.’

Lily swiped at him and caught him on the arm.

‘You’re right. I’ll help but I can’t stay long. My mink-lined chauffeur-driven limousine’s waiting.’

There was no limousine, just the usual walk through the blackout for the two of them to the street of terraced houses where Jim lodged with Lily and her mum. Lily wanted to hear how he felt the show had gone – it was important for him that it had gone well.

‘Big thumbs-up,’ said Jim. ‘A lot of the audience were marking their programmes as you all tripped on and off, and Beryl was almost mobbed at the end.’

‘Really? That’s wonderful!’

‘And she was thrilled it wasn’t Gloria in her dress.’

‘I bet she was! And did Mr Marlow congratulate you? Or Robert? Or Evelyn Brimble?’

‘I didn’t see them afterwards. Evelyn buttonholed me beforehand, though, full of her and Robert’s wedding plans. Don’t know why she thought I’d be interested, but that’s one order Beryl won’t be getting. Evelyn’s got her dress already – well, it’s being made by some posh place in London.’

Lily wrinkled her nose.

‘No loss. I shouldn’t think Beryl’d want to deal with that spoilt madam!’

A car passed them with dipped and slitted headlights, but in the brief moment of illumination, Lily looked at Jim and saw him grimace. Lily knew he felt that in marrying the pampered and demanding Evelyn, Robert Marlow might be getting his just desserts. They both did.

Jim’s connection with the Marlows, father and son, was complex. Cedric Marlow had been married to Jim’s mother’s sister – a fairy-tale story of the shop girl who’d married the boss. Both women were dead now, Elsie Marlow soon after giving birth to Robert, and Jim’s mother a few months ago, but all her life she’d been resentful of her sister’s higher status and there’d been no contact between the two families. Jim’s mum and his dad, a farmworker, had been very much the poor relations, the country cousins, but his father had been badly gassed in the Great War and the family had fallen on even leaner times. Jim had only come to work at the store after his mother had swallowed her pride and appealed to Cedric to give her boy a helping hand.

Jim and his cousin Robert were both only children, but they couldn’t have been more different. Jim had started at the bottom, quite happily, and never mentioned, let alone traded on, the family connection – he’d got where he had by his own efforts. Robert had also been working at the store when Lily first started. Cedric had hoped that one day he’d take over the business, but Robert had repaid his trust with a delivery racket for favoured customers, Evelyn’s father Sir Douglas included. When the mucky business had been uncovered, thanks to Jim and Lily, Robert had still managed to come out of it smelling of roses: Sir Douglas had offered him a job in his Birmingham stockbroking firm, and the next thing anyone knew, Robert and Evelyn Brimble were engaged.

That reminded Lily of the man she’d seen Robert talking to.

‘Did you see Robert with a bloke who looked a bit – well, almost spivvy?’

‘Chalk-stripe suit and a carnation?’

‘Do you know him? Who is he?’

‘Yes … well, no, but I’ve seen him somewhere, I can’t think where. Maybe he was just out of context. Most men are, at a fashion show.’

‘I suppose he came with his wife. Oh, well. None of our business.’

They were nearly home and Lily suddenly felt exhausted. The evening was still playing out in her head, but it was going all blurry, one outfit merging into another. She yawned, loudly.

Jim unhooked his arm from hers and put it round her shoulders.

‘Missing your limousine? Or your glass coach? Come on, Cinders, not far to go.’

Thanks to Miss Frobisher, Lily had a lie-in next morning – she’d told her mum not to wake her – and by the time she came downstairs Dora was assembling her purse and string bag ready for the daily trip to the shops to see what, if anything, was on offer.

‘I hope what was left of that make-up hasn’t wiped itself all over your pillowslip!’ was her mother’s opening remark. ‘Clean on Monday, that was!’

Dora Collins’s mouth had practically fallen open the previous evening when she’d seen Lily all primped and made-up and heard how it had come about. But, good mother that she was, she’d seen that Lily was exhausted, and instead of pressing her for details, had spared some of her precious Pond’s cream to get the worst of Lily’s war paint off before shooing her into bed.

Now, over tea and toast, Lily relayed the whole story with relish, and Dora lapped it up. Small and trim, a thrifty housekeeper and a devoted mum, she lived for the children she’d brought up alone since their father had died.

‘Honestly!’ Dora exclaimed. ‘If I’d have thought when you started at Marlow’s you’d be getting up to that kind of caper – wait till you tell Sid and Reg!’

Lily’s handsome, happy-go-lucky brother Sid was in London ‘with the Admiralty’ as Dora liked to say, though in reality it was a lowly clerking role after an injury in training had ruled him out of active service in the Navy. The elder one, Reg, on the other hand, was out in North Africa, a mechanic with the Eighth Army. He wasn’t the best letter-writer, which could mean weeks of worry. Letters were rare, and uninformative when they came, which wasn’t his fault – they were censored anyway. The family could only go on what they heard when they gathered every night round the crackly wireless. Reg, they assumed, was advancing steadily westwards with the so-called Desert Rats, set on driving Rommel and his Afrika Korps into the sea.

Her mum was right, thought Lily – it’d be a nice change to have something to tell her brothers apart from a bit of feather-pecking in the hens they kept in the back yard, or that Gladys’s gran’s latest (imaginary) ailment was a ‘funny pain’ in her big toe.

Dora suddenly noticed the hands of the mantelpiece clock.

‘The butcher’s making sausages!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’d better get a wriggle on!’

Lily stood up to take her plate and cup to the scullery.

‘Me too,’ she replied. ‘Back to reality!’

Lily left her mum at the shops – the queue at the butcher’s was already curling round the corner – and made it onto the sales floor just in time to let Miss Temple, the older ‘salesgirl’ on Childrenswear, go off to her morning break.

‘Did you sleep well?’ asked Miss Frobisher.

‘Like a forest of logs!’

Miss Frobisher smiled and nodded towards a customer hovering by the boys’ shirts. Lily knew what a nod from Miss Frobisher meant: enough of the small talk. She sped off to assist.

When the customer had gone – she’d come out with the wrong book of coupons – Jim sidled over, looking mysterious.

‘I’ve had a message from upstairs,’ he began. He didn’t mean God, he meant the management floor, but it came to much the same thing. Lily’s eyebrows asked the question, and he went on: ‘No, not the old man – from Robert. He wants me to meet him. For lunch. Today.’

Lily’s head poked forward in surprise.

‘What about?’

Jim shrugged.

‘I’ll have to go to find out. One o’clock. At the White Lion, no less.’

Chapter 4

Lily had a lunch date herself as it happened, with Gladys and Beryl – not at the White Lion, but at Lyons. They usually favoured a small café called Peg’s Pantry but they were treating themselves so they could chew over the fashion show in a bit more luxury with their cheese on toast. Lily and Gladys had to get passes out to leave the store at dinnertime, and Beryl had decided she could probably risk shutting up shop for half an hour without losing any business.

‘It was a dream come true, Miss Frobisher in that frock,’ she said as they settled themselves at a table. ‘She carried it off beautiful. I wouldn’t have had half the enquiries I’ve had if it had been Gloria.’

‘It’s done you some good, then?’ asked Lily. Jim would be keen to know.

‘I’ll say! That dress alone’s been booked out six times before the end of the summer! And quite a few of my others! I can never thank Jim enough for getting me in that show. And I’ll tell you something else. If Peter Simmonds isn’t sweet on Eileen Frobisher, then I’m a monkey’s auntie.’

‘No! Do you think so?’ This was Gladys.

Lily smiled. Up on the catwalk, she’d easily picked out Gladys in the audience, eyes fixed, mouth slightly open, seeing nothing but her own wedding. Her fiancé, Bill, was in the Navy and his ship was on convoy duty – as far as they knew. But he was getting leave in the summer when his ship, the HMS Jamaica, was due for a refit, and he’d promised Gladys they’d be walking down the aisle.

‘Course he is!’ exclaimed Beryl. ‘His hands were shaking so much fumbling for his script he nearly knocked the microphone off his lectern. Couldn’t see what he was doing with his goo-goo eyes. Didn’t you notice, Lily?’

‘I did think he looked a bit odd.’ Lily had graced his look with a bit more dignity than ‘goo-goo eyes’ but it had certainly been something more than shock at the departure from the expected running order.

‘Ahhh, wouldn’t that be perfect?’ sighed Gladys. ‘He’s on his own, isn’t he, a broken engagement in his past, they say, and, well, if what we think is right – her husband’s not in the picture any more – it’d be lovely for her little boy to have a daddy.’

Gladys wanted nothing more than happy endings for everyone. She’d even fantasised about a double wedding with Jim and Lily, who’d quickly put her right. She and Jim were very clear-sighted about their relationship, and their careers. They were far too young and they both wanted to go as far as they could at Marlow’s before any of that sort of stuff got in the way.

The waitress approached, doing that clever waitress thing of balancing one of the plates on the heel of her hand. Lily looked at the thin skin of cheese and the thick slice of National Loaf – National Load, Jim called it, it was so heavy – and tried not to think of what lunch at the White Lion might be.

‘There’s no brown sauce.’ Gladys looked around but the waitress had gone.

‘You’ll have to pinch some off another table. If there is any.’ Beryl was already cutting into her food. ‘’Scuse me starting, but I’ve got to get back.’

Gladys went off on the hunt for sauce. Lily sawed at her toast. Now she could ask what she’d been dying to know.

‘Did you see Robert Marlow there, Beryl? Did he see you?’

It would have been their first encounter since Jim and Lily had caught him trying it on with Beryl in her shop, expecting her to sleep with him in exchange for waiving her rent.

‘He saw me all right!’ sniffed Beryl. ‘Looked away pronto, I can tell you, went and glued himself to Evelyn. As if I wanted to talk to him! I could have done, made things right awkward, but I didn’t want a scene, did I?’ She swallowed a large mouthful. ‘Did you see her suit though? Got to be Chanel.’

‘Chanel? French? Not very patriotic, is it?’

‘It’s a copy, more like. But a good copy.’ Beryl sighed. ‘I’d have had that off her back, no messing. But she’s welcome to him.’ She forked in another mouthful.

‘And vice versa,’ said Lily firmly. ‘She’s a proper little madam, as far as I can tell.’

‘They deserve each other then, don’t they?’ said Beryl, with her usual practicality. ‘At least they won’t be ruining two other people’s lives.’

Lily refrained from saying that Robert stood a pretty good chance of ruining his life anyway, given how he carried on. And he deserved that too.

Gladys came back disappointed.

‘Not a bottle in the place, I even asked at the servery. Beryl, you’re half finished! I want to hear all about who’s booked out which dress! And if you’ve found one for me yet!’

‘Sorry, Glad,’ said Beryl. ‘I’m on the lookout, but I haven’t seen the right dress for you yet. But I will, and with the money I’m going to be raking in after last night, I shall make sure it’s a stunner.’

Gladys beamed.

‘And one for Lily too, don’t forget.’

Beryl’s stock also included bridesmaid’s dresses and what she grandly termed ‘occasion wear’.

‘Yes, I’m not splashing my coupons on Number Sixty-Nine from Marlow’s,’ cautioned Lily. ‘Even for you, Gladys.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to!’ said Gladys. ‘But you did look nice in it.’

‘“Nice”? We’re not settling for nice!’ exclaimed Beryl. ‘Your wedding’s going to knock Evelyn Brimble’s into a cocked hat, Gladys, for all her six bridesmaids and her two pageboys and her fancy trousseau!’

Gladys beamed again as Beryl laid down her knife and fork, but Lily knew it was about more than making sure their friend had a day to remember. It was Beryl’s way of showing Robert Marlow that she, and her shop, were doing just fine without any of his so-called ‘help’ with the rent.

Beryl glugged down her glass of water and laid some coins on the table for her share of the bill and the tip.

‘I’ll love you and leave you,’ she said. ‘Back to business!’

Lily smiled and Gladys waved her fork, both chomping their way through hefty chunks of cheese on toast. Lily often felt that you burned up more calories chewing the National Loaf than it gave you in energy.

‘So,’ she said, swallowing the doughy lump with difficulty. ‘Any word from Bill? I don’t suppose you’ve had a letter?’

She knew what the answer would be: she’d have heard about it – at length – if there had been.

‘Not a dicky bird,’ Gladys replied. ‘Five weeks now. And till they retrain seagulls as carrier pigeons, it could be another five.’

Lily made a sympathetic face.

‘You’re very brave about it, Gladys,’ she said.

‘We’re all in the same boat, aren’t we?’ replied Gladys. ‘That’s what Bill says, anyway!’

Bless her, she even managed a smile.

The White Lion was their small town’s smartest hotel. To be fair, it didn’t have much competition, but it still tried hard, with a Union Jack fluttering outside and a uniformed bellboy to help you with your suitcases, if you had them. Jim didn’t, so he went straight through to the dining room. Robert was already there. Inevitably, they’d given him the very best table in the centre of the room.

Jim wasn’t used to this kind of setting. When he’d first confessed his connection with the Marlows, Lily had imagined him living in luxury with servants, starched tablecloths and silver cutlery himself, but he’d soon explained that his family were very much the poor relations. They lived in a simple cottage and did their own cooking and cleaning – and there was no family silver whatsoever.

Robert waved him over and stood up to shake hands.

‘Great to see you, Jim. Have a seat.’

Jim’s senses prickled: the last time he and Robert had had dealings, they hadn’t been exactly friendly ones. He sat down without comment, but Robert blithely carried on.

‘What’ll you have? I’m on Scotch and a splash, but I suppose it’s Adam’s ale for you as you’ll be going back to work?’

‘Yes, water thanks.’

Robert poured him a glass from the carafe on the table.

‘Let’s order, then I’ll tell you why you’re here. I’m sure you’re wondering.’

Jim picked up the menu. Never mind the Ministry of Food’s motto of ‘fair shares all round’. Meals out weren’t included in the ration: if you could afford it, you could eat out every night without sacrificing a single coupon.

‘If it helps, I’m having asparagus soup, then saddle of lamb, leeks à la crème and straw potatoes,’ Robert advised.

‘I’ll have the same.’

Anything to get the whole thing over with.

Robert gave their order, along with a glass of Chablis for himself, and once his wine had arrived, he leant forward.

On the face of it he was attractive, handsome even, broad-shouldered with smooth blond hair, blue eyes and healthy pink cheeks, set off by a well-cut suit, snowy white shirt, silk tie and matching pocket square. It was his character that was so unattractive.

‘I’ll come straight out with it,’ Robert began. ‘When I was here in Hinton over the winter, I indulged in a bit of, shall we say, extracurricular activity.’

After the devastation of the bomb, Robert had come back to Hinton for a couple of months to buoy up his father and help get the store back in business. He’d worked hard alongside Peter Simmonds and Jim, who was increasingly Mr Simmonds’s second lieutenant, and Jim had been pleasantly surprised. Until that evening when he and Lily had caught Robert trying to force himself on Beryl.

‘You mean Beryl,’ said Jim coldly.

Surely there hadn’t been more women on the side? Among Marlow’s staff perhaps? Surely Robert wasn’t going to tell him one of them was pregnant? If so, what was Jim supposed to do about it? But Robert shook his head.

‘No, not that. Extracurricular in the sense of – oh, look, I met this chap. The long and short of it is, he proposed a deal. He’s a haulier, and he’d had a nice little number going with Burrell’s over their fuel supplies. Whatever their allocation, he delivered a ton less, sold it off on the BM, and he and his Burrell’s contact split the proceeds. So—’

Horrified, Jim was there before him. Burrell’s, Hinton’s other big store, had been all but wiped out in the pre-Christmas bomb.

‘So with Burrell’s out of action, he suggested the same to you. Don’t tell me you agreed?’

Instead of a reply, Robert picked up his glass and took a swig.

‘Why?’ demanded Jim. ‘That delivery racket you set up when you worked at the store before – it’s obvious that was to get in with Sir Douglas as a way of getting in with Evelyn. But the black market! Something that risky! What were you thinking? What could possibly be in it for you?’

Robert shushed him as their soup arrived. When the waiter had flapped their napkins onto their laps and departed, he picked up his spoon.

‘It’s just a different way of doing business, isn’t it?’

‘Business? It’s a crime. A serious crime.’

Robert drank his soup.

‘Don’t be so wet. No one got hurt.’

‘No one? We’ve been shivering all winter at Marlow’s, and now I know why! More important, what about the poor bloody miners working their you-know-whats off, and the men dying at sea to keep up supplies? And the blokes in the Forces that need coal far more than we do – apart from them, you’ve been robbing your own father! Why would you do that?’

Robert gave a tiny shrug. He had no answer and his nonchalance made Jim long to slap him.

‘It’s not as if you need the money!’ he said instead. ‘You of all people!’

‘You don’t understand, do you? Any of it.’ Robert put down his spoon and dabbed his mouth with his napkin. ‘It’s not about the money, it’s about the – the excitement. You don’t know what my life’s like, Jim.’

‘Do tell me. It’s a hard one, is it?’

‘You’ve no idea. Back here I was living with Dad, with him going on every night about Marlow’s, Marlow’s, Marlow’s, and in Birmingham – well! I’m living in a mansion flat under the beady eye of Evelyn and her parents. Every evening it’s drinks, dinner, bridge, news at nine then a chaste kiss and night-night, Robert – no hanky-panky, I can tell you. On top of which, I’m working for Sir Douglas, God help me, so I’ve got him all day every day as well! This was my last chance for a flutter, to spread my wings!’

‘A flutter?’ Jim had picked up his spoon but he put it down again. ‘Like you thought you’d have with Beryl? Cheating your own father! Risking prosecution? You know it’d kill him if anything happened to Marlow’s’ reputation! Too right I don’t understand. But the thing I most don’t understand is why the confession. Why tell me? And why now?’

Chapter 5

Robert had begun to sweat.

‘Drink your soup,’ he said.

Jim obeyed. He might as well. There was obviously more to come.

Robert lowered his voice.

‘This haulier chap, he won’t let me go, he wants it to carry on. Not with coal – going into summer there’s not so much demand, so he wants to make it up with other things.’

‘What things?’

‘I don’t know! Anything in the store! Soap, razor blades, stockings, batteries and spare parts for radios from the repair workshop … he was even going on about Thermos flasks!’

Down went Jim’s spoon again. When they could get them, which was rare, Thermos flasks were sold on Small Household Goods – part of his own department.

‘Robert, you can’t!’

‘I know I can’t! I’m not even here any more, am I? I’m in Birmingham!’

‘That wasn’t what I meant – and I should hope that’s not the only reason!’

‘Of course not. It was—’

‘If you say fun—’

‘It was a one-off,’ pleaded Robert. ‘I want out.’

‘So tell him.’

‘Don’t you think I’ve tried? He’s putting the arm on me, coming on strong. Saying he’ll make sure Dad finds out and worse – saying he’ll tell Sir Douglas. The wedding’s three months away, I can’t have that! You’ve got to get him off my back, Jim.’

‘Me? Why me? Why should I?’

Surely Robert wasn’t trying to play the ‘family loyalty’ card? One look at him told Jim he was. Or at least Jim’s loyalty to Cedric and the store – and in that, he was on to something, blast him. Jim took a moment to think.

‘If I agreed to help – if – how am I supposed to do it?’

Robert clearly took this as a sign that Jim had caved in. He relaxed and the infuriating devil-may-care arrogance was back.

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged with a grin. ‘Concrete boots?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’

‘Well, OK, maybe not. But you’re a bright bloke. Jim. You’ll see a way through.’

‘Yes, I do! It’s simple. The bloke’s a crook! Go to the police!’

Robert made a ‘pipe down’ gesture; the waiter was hovering. Jim quickly spooned up the rest of his soup and their plates were removed. Robert leant forward, annoyed now.

‘I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.’

‘I’m not taking it seriously?’

‘I can’t go to the police! I know what you’ll say, tell them this fellow tried to blackmail me. You don’t know him. He’s a proper player round here. He keeps up a respectable front, but he’s got contacts with some real shady characters. I won’t live to see him prosecuted!’

‘I don’t see what else you can do,’ Jim replied firmly.

The waiter reappeared and put their main course in front of them. It looked and smelt delicious. It was the best meal Jim had seen since the start of the war, possibly ever, and though they both started to eat, he couldn’t enjoy any of it.

‘Please, Jim,’ Robert said simply. ‘The simple fact is – I don’t have anyone else to turn to.’

Jim chewed, tasting nothing. There was no reason why he should help. He could eat his lunch, walk away, let him get on with it. But Robert was such a hothead, he might do anything in desperation, something crazy like try to get this other bloke beaten up or worse, and whatever he did it was bound to end in disaster. Then what? Robert’s, Cedric’s and the store’s reputation dragged through the mire? That wasn’t going to help anybody.

‘Look,’ Jim said reluctantly. ‘I’m not saying I’ll help you. I don’t know that I can. But tell me who this bloke is. It’s not the one you were talking to last night, is it, at the fashion show? Flash Harry type?’

‘Not Harry,’ said Robert. ‘Barry. Barry Bigley.’

Of course! Barry Bigley! Now he had a name, Jim could place the face. He’d seen him once or twice, in old trousers and a brown dust coat, getting in or out of his lorry in the delivery bay. His name had been painted on the lorry’s side. And now something else was coming back to him.

‘Barry Bigley,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s got the scrap metal contract at Tatchell’s.’

Tatchell’s was one of Hinton’s few factories, which had turned from making car parts to aircraft parts.

‘So?’

‘I worked there for a while.’

‘Really? And?’

‘I did a few night shifts, and I remember seeing Bigley’s lorries arrive empty and leave piled with scrap. At least, I assumed it was scrap. But it was a damn funny time to be collecting it, don’t you think, two o’clock in the morning?’

‘You reckon it was a fiddle?’

‘What if,’ said Jim slowly, ‘some of it wasn’t scrap, but was good stuff underneath. From what you’ve said about Bigley … and the driver was very pally with the foreman, Deakin. I never liked him, nasty little man—’

‘Deakin?’ said Robert keenly. ‘I’m sure Barry mentioned that name.’

‘It’s not exactly proof,’ mused Jim. Despite himself, he was interested now. ‘It’s not even evidence. Just supposition.’

‘But it’s something else on Bigley! Possibly.’ Robert took a gulp of wine. ‘But what do we do with it? Maybe you could go to the police!’

‘And maybe I couldn’t!’ Was there nothing Robert wouldn’t have him do? ‘I suppose though … if this is still going on … an anonymous tip-off … tell the police to watch Tatchell’s, spot-check Bigley’s lorries …’

‘That’s the one!’ Robert seized on the suggestion.

‘Look, it may not work. Even if the police catch Bigley or one of his drivers in the act, if Bigley’s as slippery as you say, he might wriggle out of it. But with luck he’ll at least take it as a warning, move his activities a bit further afield. And it might stop him bothering you.’

‘That’s brilliant, Jim. When can you do it?’

‘What?’

‘This anonymous phone call. I assume you mean a phone call.’

They were right back where they’d started!

‘Hang on,’ protested Jim. ‘Why me? You’re nothing to do with Tatchell’s! There could be no comeback for you.’

‘There won’t be for you if it’s anonymous!’ Robert speared the last succulent morsel of meat on his plate and delivered it to his mouth. ‘That was delicious. Look, do stay and have a pudding if you’ve got time, Jim – on me, of course.’

‘What?’

How Robert could turn the conversation so lightly to the dessert trolley was beyond Jim. Robert took a final swig of his wine.

‘I’ve got to shoot straight back to Birmingham. Evelyn’s mother’s giving one of her blasted soirées – I had to make an excuse for not going back with them this morning. And it’d look highly suspicious to make a trunk call from Birmingham about a firm in Hinton; they can trace them, you know.’

He was absolutely shameless.

‘You never agreed, Jim?’ Lily was disgusted.

‘He wasn’t going to let me go till I did, and it was nearly two o’clock, I had to get back! I had to get a special dispensation from Simmonds to go in the first place.’

The working day was over and they were walking home. There was no fashion show excitement tonight, but it was one of those suddenly sunny April evenings, clouds bouncing along merrily in a stiff breeze, sparrows and starlings chirping from the chimney pots. If it hadn’t been for Robert Marlow, Lily might have felt all the joys of spring.

‘Every time he shows his face in Hinton it means trouble,’ she said bitterly. ‘And you always seem to get dragged into it. We seem to get dragged into it.’

When his delivery racket had been discovered, Robert had tried to pin the blame on Jim.

‘Yes, well, he’s gone now,’ replied Jim, ‘back to Birmingham and his terrible life there – or so he’d have me believe.’

‘Leaving you to clear up his mess!’

‘Which is why I’m going to knock this whole wretched thing on the head. Now.’

As Jim spoke, he was opening the door of a telephone box and nudging her inside.

‘You’re going to call the police right this minute?’

Squashed in the kiosk, Lily eased her gas mask case around so it wasn’t sticking in her ribs.

‘May as well get it over with.’ Jim dug in his pocket for change. ‘Look me up the number, will you?’

Lily found the number for the local police station in the directory and read it out as Jim fed coins into the slot and dialled.

‘You haven’t put your hanky over the mouthpiece,’ she chided as he waited for the connection. It was what they always did in the films. But Jim shushed her as the phone was picked up at the other end. He pressed the button and Lily, craning her neck to listen, heard a voice say, ‘Hinton Police.’

Jim kept it short, said what he had to, mentioned Bigley, scrap metal and Tatchell’s, then put the receiver down quickly.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

They bundled out of the box and scuttled off as if they were the criminals, Lily clutching Jim’s arm when she saw a policeman at the crossroads. He nodded them kindly across and Lily gave him a ghastly grin back.

‘What did the police say?’ she demanded when they were out of hearing.

‘I only spoke to the desk sergeant,’ Jim replied. ‘He said he’d pass it on.’

‘Is that all?

‘What did you expect? A black Maria shooting off to Bigley’s straight away?’

‘Well, no, but … how do we find out if they investigate? We’ll never know.’

‘We’ll have to keep an eye on the Chronicle.’ It was Hinton’s local newspaper. ‘It’d be a big story for them if Bigley was exposed. Who knows what else he’s been up to?’

‘You might have uncovered a whole crime ring!’

‘Yes, a real local hero! I can tell you one thing though. Next time Robert Marlow asks me to lunch, I’m not going. Not even for soup and saddle of lamb and leeks à la crème.’

Lily’s eyes could have passed as soup plates themselves.

‘You never ate that lot!’

‘I did,’ said Jim.

‘And all to get you to make a phone call? I’d have done anything for that!’

‘You’ve changed your tune! Shows how easily you can be bought!’ retorted Jim.

They’d reached the park, their shortcut home, though it wasn’t really a park any more, most of it ploughed up for ‘Dig for Victory’ allotments. Jim stopped and felt in his pocket.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ he added, ‘I didn’t taste any of it. But I brought you these.’

He produced a grubby envelope and gave it to her. Inside were two very squashed peppermint creams.

‘I sneaked them off another table on my way out – they’d left them, can you believe!’

‘Jim! We’ve been going on about Robert and Barry Bigley being crooks, and you’re thieving chocolates from the White Lion! You’re no better than they are! I’ve got a good mind to go back to that phone box, and—’

She was only teasing, he knew. Jim grabbed her and pulled her towards him.

‘Oh shut up and give me a kiss.’

‘Ow! Careful! You’re squashing my chocolates!’

But she gave in.

Chapter 6

When Lily met Gladys by the lockers in the bustle of the staff cloakroom next day, her friend was a different person, fresh-faced and cheerful.

‘A letter,’ she trilled excitedly. ‘Waiting for me when I got in!’

Lily didn’t need to ask who it was from. She could have dropped to her knees and sung Hallelujah right there on the cold stone floor.

Perfect! – exactly what Gladys needed. But there was more.

‘He can’t tell me the whys and wherefores …’ Gladys bundled her handbag, jacket and gas mask into her locker. One of her precious photos of Bill was taped to the inside of the door. ‘I don’t know how he knows, but he’s told me to definitely book the church! July the tenth!’

‘Oh Gladys! That’s wonderful! A date!’ Lily clasped her hands. ‘That’s not long at all!’

‘Not quite ten weeks!’

Of course, Gladys had worked it out.

‘There’ll be a lot to do.’

Neither of them had a dress yet; there was the church to organise, and a place for a reception, and the catering to sort, and the flowers, and then the extras Gladys would want – plenty to think about.

‘Oh I know, and I can’t wait to get started. I can leave the dress to Beryl, she knows what I want, I’m not worried about that, but the rest … you will help, won’t you, Lily? And your mum, with the food? And make the cake, of course. I’ll put by as much dried fruit as I can … and sugar … and thank goodness for your hens! We’ll be stuck for icing sugar, but isn’t everyone …’

‘Gladys! Calm down!’ Lily couldn’t help smiling. ‘We’ve got ten weeks, not ten days! Of course Mum’ll help, she’d be offended not to! We’ll all pull together.’

‘Oh, thank you! I knew you would. We’ll all do our best. It’s only that …’ Gladys tailed off, her eyes clouding.

‘What?’

‘Well … I just want it to be as nice as it can be. There’ll be some things missing, we can’t help that …’

Confetti, thought Lily. Icing for the cake. Bells at the church … Gladys had listed them before, many times.

‘I know, but it’s the war, isn’t it?’

‘Not just things. People, too.’

‘Sid’s got enough notice. Barring emergencies, he’ll be able to get leave—’ Lily began.

It couldn’t be Reg Gladys was bothered about; she hardly knew him, but she had a very soft spot for Sid. Most women did.

‘It’s not Sid I was thinking of,’ said Gladys quietly, and Lily could have bitten her tongue off.

Gladys wasn’t originally from Hinton. She’d been born and brought up in Coventry, but her parents had been killed in the Blitz on the city and she lived with her gran, who was pretty much wrapped up in herself and her ailments and took advantage of Gladys’s good nature. Her gran’d be at the wedding, of course, but no mum, and no dad to give Gladys away …

Lily put a hand on her friend’s arm.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I wish I could—’

She didn’t finish; she didn’t know what she could say.

‘No, I know, it is what it is. I’ve got used to not having my mum and dad anyway, as time’s gone on. But for Bill to have no family there either …’

Now there was even less to say.

Bill had been brought up in a children’s home, left there by his mother as a baby. That was all he knew. Of his father, he knew absolutely nothing.

‘I know it’s barmy,’ Gladys went on, ‘but sometimes I have this dream of … well, it’s more a fairy tale really, thinking I could find her for him.’

There were no words. As Lily stood at a loss, Gladys rescued her.

‘But I can’t, so that’s that.’

Lily seized the moment.

‘That’s right, Gladys. Onwards and upwards. Let’s concentrate on what we can do.’

‘Yes,’ Gladys nodded. ‘First things first. I’d better find some nice cards for the invitations. I’ve been having a look around …’

The cloakroom was emptying now as salesgirls scurried to their departments. Lily steered Gladys gently in their wake as she chattered on.

‘There’s not much about. What I’d like best is a plain card with a cherub in each corner blowing a trumpet and trailing a ribbon, so if you see anything like that on your travels …’

Lily smiled to herself. Dear Gladys. Ten weeks of this!

Unbeknown to Lily, someone else at Marlow’s had had a letter – and not one they were anything like as pleased to receive.

Peter Simmonds picked up the envelope that was lying on his desk – hardly more than a shelf – in the cramped little space he called his office. Once again he squinted at the postmark, which was unhelpfully blurred. It might be Hinton but it could have been Tipton, a town nearby. It could even, at a stretch, have been London. Laying it down, he picked up the sheet of cheap paper that had been inside.

On it was a typed message in capital letters.

EILEEN FROBISHER IS A SLUT AND HER SON IS A BASTARD

SHE WAS NEVER MARRIED SHE DOESN’T BELONG AT MARLOW’S

Peter felt sick, sick to his stomach. What a thing to say about anyone – and about Eileen in particular! He didn’t believe it for a moment, but who could dislike her – even hate her – so much that they’d think, let alone write, such a thing?

With the letter in his hand, he tried to think dispassionately.

Apart from the content, it was a puzzling note. It was correctly spelt – they’d even used the Marlow’s apostrophe – but there was no punctuation. Did that mean it had been written in the white heat of fury? He came back to the first question he’d asked himself. Who could hate Eileen so much as to spew out such a disgusting stream of spite?

Ever since the bomb, he and Miss Frobisher had gradually got to know each other better. At the hospital, visiting Lily and Jim, they’d shared the guilt they felt about leaving two junior members of staff in the store to finish off the Christmas preparations after hours. Logically, they both knew that no one could have predicted that some Luftwaffe pilot would randomly offload a bomb on Hinton, but it didn’t stop them feeling that way.

Over the weeks that followed, they’d occasionally coincided their morning or afternoon breaks – anything more frequent would have attracted attention and started the Marlow’s rumour mill whirling. With both of them the souls of discretion, their friendship had remained unobtrusive. Eileen was married, after all – at least that was the story.

Peter had never asked about Eileen Frobisher’s husband, and wouldn’t have dreamt of doing so, but having walked her home a few times and even once been invited in, he noted that there were no photographs of her young son’s father on display. He held to the theory which he’d long held and had shared with Jim – that Eileen and her husband were separated. That didn’t necessarily make her a free agent though, and it gave him a problem, because since the fashion show, and the vision of loveliness she’d been in the finale, he’d been forced to acknowledge that what he felt for her was far more than you’d feel for a friend. He’d fallen for her. Hard.

He rubbed his hand over his forehead. What next?

There was nothing else for it. He picked up the internal telephone and asked for Mr Marlow.

‘Oh, so you’ve had one now, have you?’

Sitting in Cedric Marlow’s rather more spacious and better-appointed office, Peter was surprised.

‘You mean you have as well, sir?’

‘Goodness me, yes.’ Cedric pushed the letter Peter had shown him back across the broad mahogany desk. ‘And all about Miss Frobisher. Not couched in quite such strong language, but I’ve been getting one or two a week for the last … what would it be … three or four weeks, I suppose.’

‘May I see them?’

‘I don’t have them. I threw them away.’

That was stupid, thought Peter, but he could hardly say so.

‘That’s a shame,’ he remarked circumspectly. ‘What did they say?’

‘Oh, I really can’t remember.’ Cedric Marlow looked up to the ceiling as if the answer might be written there. ‘“Eileen Frobisher is no better than she should be” – that was one of them, I think. And the others in much the same vein.’

‘But you chose not to do anything about them?’

‘These things are best ignored, surely?’ Cedric looked at him over his half-moon glasses. ‘It’s arrant nonsense, Miss Frobisher’s a respectable married woman.’

‘Well, yes, of course,’ said Peter quickly. This wasn’t the time or place for his own speculations about Eileen’s situation. ‘But things have moved on, haven’t they? I’ve had a letter now, and from what you say, the language has become far more offensive.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’ Mr Marlow had the grace to sound uncomfortable. ‘But these things usually sort themselves out in time. The letter-writer gets bored when there’s no reaction.’

‘But that’s not what’s happening, is it? The letters keep coming and they’re getting worse.’ There was no reply from Cedric, so he pressed on. ‘I’m not sure we can ignore it any longer, sir. It’ll have to be investigated.’

A look of panic crossed Cedric Marlow’s face.

‘You don’t mean … the police?’ he stuttered. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. We can’t have them sniffing around in the store! What would it look like?’

This was classic Cedric, or the Cedric of recent months.

Everyone knew the old man had been shattered by the bomb and the damage to his beloved store, but slowly, over the winter, he’d seemed to rally, thanks to the efforts of Robert, Jim, and Peter himself. Now he wondered. Had it all been too much? Not so long ago it would have been Cedric coming to him the moment the first letter had arrived, wanting it sorted out, and quickly. Was Cedric Marlow losing his touch? Even if he was, he was still the boss. Peter daren’t go over his head.

‘I can understand your reluctance,’ he said slowly. ‘But … well, look, sir, how about if we wait a short while and see if either of us receives any more of these … communications. And then maybe we can talk again.’

‘I suppose so. Yes, yes, very well.’

With that, Cedric seemed to regard the matter closed. For now, thought Peter, for now. He stood up and replaced his chair at the precise angle to the desk which the old man required.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘Naturally you’re concerned about the store’s reputation. We all are. But I’d like to think that extends to the reputation of its staff. That’s valuable too, don’t you think?’

It was as far as he dared to go, and Cedric’s tone told him he’d probably gone too far as it was.

‘Thank you, Mr Simmonds,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you have more pressing matters to attend to on the shop floor.’

With an inclination of his head, Peter made for the door, closing it quietly behind him.

He’d done his best. But where Eileen was concerned, his best didn’t feel nearly good enough.

Inevitably, the first person he saw when he emerged through the double doors on to the first floor was Eileen. She was walking with one of the regular customers, Mrs Jenkins, to the lift, and explaining that boys’ bathing trunks were a particular problem to get hold of.

‘Might you try knitting some yourself?’ she was asking.

Mrs Jenkins laughed.

‘Frankly, no! With my knitting they’d be round the poor boy’s ankles before he went anywhere near the water!’

‘Have you thought about joining our classes?’ Miss Frobisher persisted. ‘They’re very popular.’

Knitting and sewing classes, for free, as long as the materials were bought in the store, had been one of Jim and Peter’s initiatives to keep the customers coming, and he was pleased to hear Miss Frobisher recommending them.

He gave her a brief smile as they passed and she nodded in acknowledgement, then she was gone, in her black pencil skirt and silky blouse, her hair in its usual smooth roll. At the hospital, out of hours, she’d worn it loose on her shoulders. As they’d talked, she’d sometimes twisted a strand of it in her fingers, and he’d almost had to sit on his hands to stop himself from reaching out and touching it.

He stared after her, unable to believe what was in the letters. How had Eileen Frobisher stirred up such evil thoughts? Who could it be? Someone from her past? A spurned lover? A jealous rival? The errant husband?

Pull yourself together, he thought, as he saw Miss Wagstaff bearing down on him. Mind on the job!

‘Miss Wagstaff,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

She flourished a sheaf of paper.

‘We have a meeting,’ she said crisply. ‘About weekly targets. At your request, if you remember.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘If, that is, you’re not too distracted?’

Lily lifted her spoon. Today’s canteen pudding had been advertised as simply ‘cake’, which meant that, as usual, it would be mostly carrot. Never mind see in the dark, it was a wonder they didn’t all glow in the dark, the amount of carrots they consumed.

Over their first course, she’d told Jim about Bill’s letter, and the wedding date being set, but also Gladys’s sorrow that neither she nor Bill would have any family there.

‘So you see, Jim, we’ve got to make it up to her,’ she urged now. ‘We’ll have to be the family they haven’t got. And we’ve got to make this wedding absolutely perfect for them.’ Jim had nearly finished his pudding; hollow legs, Dora said. He scraped the last crumbs from his bowl. ‘Well?’

Jim laid down his spoon.

‘I’ll do my best, you know I will,’ he said. ‘But I can’t get involved in all this girls’ talk about – I dunno, veils and dresses and stockings and whatnot.’

‘I’m not asking you to! But she’s going to ask you to give her away, I know she is, so just, well, act delighted.’

‘I won’t have to act anything! I’m very fond of Gladys. There’s nothing I’d like more.’

‘Thank you.’ Lily beamed happily. ‘And Sid’s going to be best man as he was the one who introduced them, oh and she’s going to ask you to lend your camera to Les, so he can take the photographs. And if you happen to see any cards that’d do for the invitations … ideally with a cherub at each corner blowing a—’

Jim reached over and rapped her knuckles with his spoon.

‘Oy! Enough! What did I just say?’

Lily had the good grace to back down.

‘OK, I’ll let you off the invitations. But you’d better pace yourself, Jim. We’ve got ten weeks of this.’

Jim groaned.

‘Ten weeks! It’s not only Gladys who’ll be counting the days!’

Chapter 7

Peter Simmonds was also counting the days – until he could tackle Mr Marlow again. He didn’t have long to wait.

The following week, he received another letter. This time the postmark was clear – it had been posted locally, in Hinton, and its typed message was even more pointed.

WHY DON’T YOU WAKE UP AND LISTEN?

FROBISHER’S NOTHING BUT A—

It was the ugliest of ugly words and he could hardly bear to read it. Summoning every ounce of self-control, he folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and locked it in his drawer. Then he strode purposefully on to the sales floor.

Enough was enough. It was time for action.

‘What do you think, Miss Frobisher?’ asked Lily. ‘It looks as though the weather’s set fair for the next few days.’

‘If we can believe it!’

Lily had suggested changing the outfits on the Childrenswear mannequins and she and her boss were debating it when Peter Simmonds approached and indicated that he’d like a word.

Miss Frobisher moved slightly towards him.

‘Very well, then, Miss Collins.’ She addressed Lily over her shoulder. ‘The boy first. Fawn drill shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. But a sleeveless pullover on top, please.’

‘Yes, Miss Frobisher.’

Lily faded away to find something suitable, and Eileen turned to Peter with a smile.

‘I was looking for you earlier about that delivery that hasn’t materialised. Any news?’

‘No, nothing,’ he said, his mouth dry. ‘And it’s not about that. I wondered … if your neighbour would babysit … could you be free this evening?’ He didn’t want to talk to her about the letters in his tiny office, and he knew her elderly neighbour often looked after her son. ‘There’s something I’d like to talk to you about and I’d rather not do it in the store.’

‘I see!’ She sounded intrigued.

No, you don’t, he thought sadly. If only he were taking her out on a date, as he’d often thought of suggesting but had never quite dared.

‘I’ll telephone at lunchtime and ask her,’ Eileen offered. ‘She’s always saying it doesn’t make any difference to her whether she sits in her flat or mine.’

‘That’s because she’s using your electricity!’

‘Now, now,’ Miss Frobisher chided, ‘she’s very good. I’d like to put John to bed myself though, so perhaps … eight o’clock?’

‘I’ll call for you.’

‘Fine. I’ll see you later.’

Smiling to herself, she watched him go. A ribbed pullover in her hand, Lily watched her watching him. Well, well, she thought. Maybe there was something between those two after all …

Eileen dressed carefully for her evening out, even though she told herself it wouldn’t be a date as such. Peter probably wanted to sound her out about some new idea that Mr Marlow was resisting – he’d done that before. Even so, he usually did so by walking her home, not by taking her out. She didn’t get out much – well, at all really, and it was nice to have an excuse.

The evening was fine and warm, as Lily had predicted, and at eight it was still light, so she picked out a dress splashed with poppies and cornflowers, with red shoes and handbag. Like everyone else, she was restricted by coupons, but she’d always loved clothes from her time in the Fashion departments at Marlow’s and then in London. Before the war, before John had been born, she’d spent every spare penny on good clothes and they were serving her well now that things were so hard to come by.

Peter was prompt – that was ex-Army for you – and she was amused to see that he’d dressed carefully too, in fawn slacks and an open-necked soft shirt. When they’d met off duty at the hospital, he’d worn his regimental blazer and tie. Recently, though, as they passed Gentlemen’s Outfitting on the way to their breaks, Eileen had taken to casually pointing out certain items with a favourable comment, and she was pleased to see he’d taken the hint.

He suggested a pub nearby and with assurances to the babysitting neighbour that they wouldn’t be late, they set off. Peter found them a table in the beer garden and went to fetch the shandy she’d asked for, and a beer for himself. They chinked glasses and made the usual disparaging comments about the weakness of the beer. Then he took a piece of paper from his pocket.

‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve received this.’

‘A letter?’

‘Poison pen.’

Eileen gasped, shocked. And she hadn’t any idea, he thought miserably, that it was about her, or that he’d today had another, even more poisonous one.

‘It’s the first one to me, but Mr Marlow’s been getting them over the past few weeks. I don’t know why he didn’t do anything about it, but I intend to. But I’ll need your help. I’m afraid you’ll have to read it.’

Baffled, never suspecting she might be the subject, Eileen took the letter and read the ugly words.

EILEEN FROBISHER IS A SLUT AND HER SON IS A BASTARD

SHE WAS NEVER MARRIED SHE DOESN’T BELONG AT MARLOW’S

She didn’t say a word but folded it and laid it down again.

‘It’s nonsense of course—’ he began, but she held up her hand, the one with the slim wedding band on her third finger.

‘It’s not nonsense, Peter,’ she said. ‘It’s all true. Except perhaps for the last bit.’

‘Eileen, please—’

‘No, no.’ She was perfectly calm. ‘Let me tell you. I’d like to.’

‘I was young,’ she began, ‘and I can’t say exactly innocent – but still young and stupid and naïve. I moved to London, to a job as a junior buyer at Marshall and Snelgrove’s. I loved it, everything about it, the work, the store, the big city, my life. I was promoted to under-buyer, then buyer. There was travel, and in those days – well, we, the buyers, had the power. We weren’t going cap in hand to manufacturers begging like we have to now. The reps used to court us, if you like. Meals out, the theatre, little gifts.’

She’d been talking directly to him, meeting his eyes. Now she looked away.

‘He was one of them. Older, charming, very experienced, very good at his job. I fell for him. I was completely captivated.’ She gave a tiny shrug, remembering. ‘Reps! I know better now. Not all of them, but for quite a few a roving brief means a roving eye … he was married, of course. Once I found out, I should have ended it. I’m not proud of myself. I should have been stronger but …’

She looked down into her glass, then up at him again.

‘I didn’t mean to get pregnant; I wasn’t trying to trap him, I swear, but when I told him about the baby – well, he’d always promised to leave his wife for me and, idiot that I was, I believed him.’ She shook her head, impatient, regretful. ‘Of course, that all changed – he got a sudden attack of conscience. It turned out he’d been married not once but twice and he already had children by both marriages. He hadn’t mentioned that, funnily enough.’ She compressed her lips: Peter could see she found it difficult to talk about, even after so many years. ‘He couldn’t break up another family, he said – very noble of him. He wanted me to get rid of the baby. I was devastated, and the next thing was, he’d left his job and disappeared – to make sure I had no way of contacting him, I suppose, or asking for money, or making trouble with his wife, or wives – not that I’d have dreamt of it. Or of getting rid of the baby. Ever.’

‘Eileen,’ Peter said again. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It was my own fault.’

‘No, it wasn’t!’ He was surprised by how strongly he wanted to defend her. ‘He took advantage.’

‘You’re very kind. Too kind. But it takes two to tango, and all that.’

He found he couldn’t bear her taking the blame. He tried to move things on.

‘How did you manage?’

‘I managed,’ she said, ‘to hide the pregnancy for about five months, then I had to give in my notice and leave. My father was still here in Hinton, but I couldn’t go to him, I knew that. I have an aunt in Lincoln, I went there. She wasn’t exactly thrilled, but she found me a nursing home and I gave birth to John. The war was coming. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to go back to London, there was no point, I had no one there, so I came back here. I hoped that my father would come round and offer me a home once John was actually here. He didn’t. Far from it.’ She sighed, then shrugged off the memory, saying crisply, ‘It wasn’t a good time. I rented a room, and then quite suddenly, just after the start of the war, my father died, and I took over what had been his flat.’

Peter let out a breath.

‘You’ve had a very hard time.’

‘Not at all,’ she said, refusing to accept his sympathy. ‘I’m not the first and I won’t be the last. You’ve only got to look around you at the number of war babies. I’ve been very lucky, really. I have my son, a good job and somewhere to live. Plenty of women in my position have none of that.’

Peter dipped his head: she was putting a gloss on it, of course. She must have had some very dark times.

‘Perhaps not. Even so …’ He swilled his beer around in his glass, then put it down again. ‘But there’s one thing I don’t understand. When you came back to Marlow’s, why invent a husband? Why not simply say you were a widow?’

Eileen took a sip of her drink. Her hair was loose and she hooked it behind her ear. Her earrings were like little red buttons.

‘Good question. It was stupid of me. I couldn’t be called up because of John, but I needed to earn some money – I had somewhere to live but I needed an income. I knew Marlow’s would have me back like a shot, and when I came for the interview, I was wearing the ring I’d bought myself, and it was assumed that I was married and my husband was in the Forces. And I – well, stupidly I went along with it. I knew I’d be addressed as Miss Frobisher at work anyway and Staff Office were so pressed they didn’t even ask this fictional husband’s name. Of course it would have been easier to say I’d been widowed, I made things far too complicated for myself! But it’s a bit late now.’

Things might have seemed complicated to her, but for Peter everything suddenly seemed much simpler. If she was free … but he was getting distracted. They had to get back to the letter.

‘And this?’ He touched the folded sheet.

She lifted her shoulders and the poppies and cornflowers on her bodice rose and fell.

‘Someone knows.’

‘Well, yes, except they’ve put their own despicable interpretation on it!’ Peter took a long swig of his own drink. He needed it. ‘Do you have any idea who it could be?’

He expected a ‘no’, but she surprised him.

‘Any idea? I have a very good idea.’

‘Really? There’s someone in the world who hates you that much?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘You might like to get us some more drinks. It’s another long story.’

First thing next morning, at eight o’clock sharp, Peter Simmonds was tapping on Mr Marlow’s door.

He’d slept better than he had for days, and not just because he now had a plan of action. That was satisfying enough, but he knew the most refreshing rest had come because he was flattered – honoured even – by the confidences Eileen had entrusted him with, thrilled to know she was free of any ties, and excited to think he could get to know her better … and better. If his resolve to go into battle for her had been firm before, it was steely now. He knew he’d fight to his last breath for her if Cedric Marlow tried to resist.

But when he heard Peter’s suspicions, Cedric was so stunned he simply nodded dumbly. He didn’t ask how Peter had come to the conclusion he had, and Peter didn’t name names, just in case Eileen had been wrong. He knew he needed proof.

‘I need your permission, sir, to carry out a locker check. For every member of staff, from juniors right up to management. I’m hoping to find the evidence I need to confront them.’

‘Someone in the store …’ the old man repeated. ‘You must do all you can, we have to root this out. Someone in the store … we can’t have that!’

Downstairs, not knowing what was to come, the usual clatter and chatter prevailed in the cloakrooms, and no one was chattering more than Gladys.

‘Look, Lily, look,’ she squeaked excitedly, arriving beside her friend, hat askew and gas mask case flying.

Lily calmly closed her locker door, but before she could turn her head, Gladys was thrusting something under her nose.

‘I’ve got the cards!’ she cried. ‘Look!’

‘Whoa, whoa … when did this happen?’ gasped Lily. ‘I thought we were still hunting for them!’

‘You won’t believe it,’ Gladys said. ‘Brenda from Books gave them to me. Her brother got married – oh, years ago, before the war, and she knew her sister-in-law had some left over and she was sure she’d saved them. So she asked her at the weekend and her sister-in-law found them and Brenda came round with them last night!’

‘How lucky!’ said Lily. ‘And how kind.’

‘I know,’ said Gladys. ‘And they’re going to come to the church to see us married, and all, the pair of them. What do you think?’

She beamed, a smile as wide as the sea Bill sailed on. Lily obediently studied the card: Gladys would expect no less. There were no cherubs and no trumpets – well, you couldn’t have everything – but Gladys had got her ribbons, trailed by silver bells in each corner.

‘They’re perfect,’ she began, but was cut off by the sudden appearance in the doorway of Miss Garner from the Staff Office. She clapped her hands for silence.

‘Thank you, ladies, girls, if I could have some quiet, please?’

Anyone still chattering was quickly shushed by their neighbour: Miss Garner was another of the store’s formidable females. Almost eighty pairs of eyes turned towards her expectantly.

‘We need to carry out a locker check. Can you please open your lockers and stand beside them until it’s completed. Thank you.’

Everyone turned away with a variety of grimaces, mutterings, and raised eyebrows.

Locker checks happened about once every six months, usually when there was a suspicion of staff shoplifting. Someone had once been found with an unglamorous stash of tooth powder; another time it had been a pair of suede gloves. A more lucrative haul had been several pouches of pipe tobacco.

‘I’d like to assure you,’ Miss Garner added as her minions began moving methodically along the rows, ‘that the management lockers are being checked as well.’

There were more eyebrows raised.

‘No stone unturned,’ whispered the girl next to Lily. ‘There must be something pretty nasty underneath.’

Chapter 8

‘Would you care to explain, Miss Naylor?’

Jennifer Naylor, who’d been summoned from Schoolwear, folded her hands. Cedric Marlow was seated behind his desk, but it was Peter Simmonds, standing beside it, who was asking the question. The locker check had been more of a success than he’d dared hope.

‘You can see what it is,’ she said curtly. ‘A letter.’

‘Exactly. An envelope, typed, addressed to me, stamped, yet to be posted.’

‘It’s nothing to do with me. I don’t know how it got there.’

‘Really?’ asked Peter. ‘Let’s look at the contents, shall we?’

He took out the letter, typed in the same capitals as before, on the same cheap paper.

EILEEN FROBISHER IS A BITCH AND A TART AND—

Then the same ugly word again. He produced the other two letters he’d received and their envelopes and laid them alongside. ‘You see the connection I’m making?’

Miss Naylor looked at the letters and shrugged.

‘I see what you’re getting at, but it doesn’t prove anything. I’ve told you, I haven’t a clue how that letter got into my locker. Someone’s got it in for me. Miss Frobisher herself, perhaps.’

‘What?’

‘For all you know, she’s writing them herself and trying to pin the blame on me! She’s never liked me.’

Peter had to stop himself from throttling her: the nerve of the woman!

He collected himself: he must try not to get too heated. He went on coldly:

‘That’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’ Miss Naylor met his eyes directly, defiantly: maybe she was a little unhinged. ‘I’m sorry, but if you continue to deny all knowledge when the facts point directly to you, I shall have to involve the police, who’ll conduct a search of your home for the typewriter.’ It was an empty threat: Cedric still shrank from getting the police involved, but Miss Naylor didn’t know that. ‘It’s easy to identify one typewriter from another. Especially when the ribbon’s worn and some of the letters’ – he tapped the sheets with his finger – ‘almost cut through the paper. The “O” for example, and the “B”—’

‘I think, Miss Naylor,’ Cedric intervened, ‘that you may as well admit it.’

Mr Marlow didn’t know anything of the personal circumstances that Eileen had confessed to Peter Simmonds, nor that she’d gone on to explain the long-standing hostility between herself and Jennifer Naylor. But Cedric had worked that out for himself.

Presented with the evidence, he remembered an animosity between Jennifer Naylor and Eileen Frobisher that went back years – back to when they’d both been juniors on Ladies’ Fashions. Young Eileen had started at the store six months after Jennifer, but it was clear from the first that she had a feel for the clothes and a way with the customers that they liked. Jennifer, on the other hand, was perfectly efficient, but mechanical in her approach, and when she found the newcomer in favour …

Cedric remembered the Ladies’ Fashions buyer coming to him and asking that Jennifer be transferred. When he’d asked why, she’d explained that there was a bad atmosphere in the department, and that it was Jennifer who was causing it. Such things happened from time to time, and Cedric had agreed, but he’d kept his eye on Jennifer Naylor over the years. Bad atmospheres seemed to follow her around, but a difficult personality, though unfortunate, wasn’t a good enough reason to sack her. He’d discussed it with Miss Garner: their only hope had been that Miss Naylor would leave of her own accord. But she never did, and he’d even had to promote her through sheer length of service. She’d moved through several departments creating bad atmospheres before Cedric had settled on Schoolwear as the safest berth for her. It required no flair and not much charm; Marlow’s was the only supplier of uniform for various schools in the area, so customers couldn’t shop elsewhere even if they wanted to. It was only ever busy in certain months of the year, so Miss Naylor relied on ‘floating’ members of staff at busy times, and a full-time junior who Miss Garner watched over to make sure they weren’t being too fiercely bullied.

Eileen Frobisher had left, inevitably, lured away to the bright lights of London, and since she’d come back, there’d been no chance for her and Jennifer to clash. Though he did remember coming across them before Christmas, before the bomb, in something of a stand-off – over the store’s rocking horse, of all things. Cedric had tactfully had to intervene.

From across the desk, Jennifer Naylor looked sullenly at him. She was only in her thirties but her dark hair was already starting to lose its lustre. She was thin, too thin, neatly but plainly turned out in a charcoal grey suit and cream blouse, almost a school uniform in itself. He suddenly felt sorry for her. She must envy Eileen Frobisher, pure and simple, he thought, though he did wonder why her envy had boiled up now.

‘The choice is quite straightforward,’ he said. ‘You realise I have to sack you. Or you could pre-empt me and resign, which would be slightly more dignified.’

‘She fell on her sword,’ Peter told Eileen. He’d called her into his little office, though he was regretting it: her nearness, her stockinged legs, the faint trace of her perfume, was making him rather hot under the collar. He pressed on, hoping to disguise it. ‘Going quietly was the only thing she could do, really. I stood over her while she collected her things, made sure she handed in her name badge and pass, and she was seen off the premises. Cash Office will send on anything she’s owed.’

‘Oh Peter.’ Eileen bit her lip. He wished she wouldn’t do that; it was too tantalising. ‘I feel dreadful for her.’

‘What?’ It was the last reaction he’d expected. ‘She didn’t have much conscience about you!’

‘Maybe not, but—’

‘We couldn’t let it go on,’ he insisted. ‘From what you told me she’d had it in for you for years! Who knows where it might have ended?’

Eileen looked sceptical.

‘What was she going to do, snap my pencils? Steal my hole punch?’

‘Now you’re being facetious,’ he chided. ‘And since you’d be lucky to replace them, it might have been a good tactic!’

She smiled indulgently.

‘I know, but really, what were you imagining? Her running amok with a pair of pinking shears, taking me hostage or something?’

‘It’s not funny,’ Peter insisted. ‘I’ve seen it in the Army. It starts with a bit of ribbing, a bit of name-calling, an apple-pie bed, and the next thing is they’re putting some poor bloke’s head down the lavatory.’

That checked her and she conceded, ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. And I’m very lucky – that Mr Marlow didn’t believe the letters in the first place – but even more so that you acted so quickly. Thank you.’ She paused. ‘But Jennifer Naylor’s got nothing and no one, as far as I know. And what’s she going to do for work?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said crisply. ‘There’s plenty of war work, she should have been doing it already, a single woman of her age.’

‘I believe she has asthma,’ said Miss Frobisher. ‘And she does a couple of stints a week at the hospital. Reading to patients.’

‘What, Gothic horrors? Ghost stories? I should think that sets back their recovery!’

‘Now who’s being facetious? And mean!’

He held up his hands, a gesture of defeat.

‘All right, I’m sorry. But truly, Eileen, she’ll have no trouble finding work. She’s perfectly able – I can’t think of an industry that isn’t crying out for women. Miss Garner will give her a reference that says she’s efficient and punctual and all that. What it won’t say is that she’s a first-class, gold-plated—’

He stopped himself in time.

‘And what about the vacancy here?’

‘Ah,’ said Peter Simmonds. ‘I was coming to that.’

‘Oh, there’s a catch, is there?’ She smiled her curving smile. ‘Let me guess. You – or Mr Marlow – want me to combine the roles.’

‘Yes, please – temporarily, at least. There’ll be a slight increment in salary, naturally.’

‘I should hope so!’ She seemed to be considering something. ‘Am I allowed a suggestion of my own?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘I can’t be in two places at once. So move Lily Collins to Schoolwear. She’s ready for more responsibility – she’s getting bored on Childrenswear and there’s no more I can teach her.’

Peter straightened his tie, no longer the regimental stripe, but a navy background with fawn trellis pattern. That meant, she knew, that he was thinking. She added:

‘The summer stock on Schoolwear’s already here and the stuff for the autumn term is ordered. All it needs is a competent salesgirl. You’d have to boost Lily up to second sales, of course.’

‘Oh really? You don’t want much!’

‘I’m solving a big problem for you. You can’t leave the junior on her own day-to-day and I know all the floating staff are already spoken for. I’ll keep an eye on Lily. She’ll fly, I promise.’

‘Second sales, you say?’

‘Yes. And I’m not asking for a replacement on my department – I’ll manage with Miss Temple and Miss Thomas. So it won’t add to the wages bill!’

Peter Simmonds gave in.

‘All right. Don’t say anything to Miss Collins yet. I’ll have to put it to Mr Marlow.’

‘Is that all?’ It was a challenge, but at the same time a tease. ‘I was hoping you’d recommend it.’

‘Don’t push your luck!’

But her tone was encouraging. It made him feel he might be able to push his.

‘One thing I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Well, two. First, how do you think Jennifer Naylor found out?’

Eileen shook her head. Her hair was in a different style today, rolled back gently off her face, and up at the back. It suited her.

‘That I don’t know. I can only think that one of the reps she dealt with knows John’s father and what went on between us. Perhaps something was said.’

Peter considered this.

‘Perhaps … But the second thing is – why now? I mean, why did all that bile suddenly surface in the last few weeks?’ Thoughtful, he answered his own question. ‘Of course, maybe they’re connected. Maybe she only recently found out.’

‘Maybe.’

Eileen nodded agreement but she was smiling again, this time to herself.

She hadn’t been overly impressed with Peter Simmonds when he’d got the job as first-floor supervisor. At first, he’d seemed to throw his ex-Army weight around – instructions, even suggestions, flung out so briskly that they seemed like orders. ‘Bringing the barrack-square to Marlow’s,’ some of the other buyers, who’d had their eye on the supervisor role for themselves, had grumbled. But over the months, Eileen had come to realise that his brusqueness was only a front – covering a shyness, almost, probably because as a career soldier he wasn’t used to being surrounded by so many women.

Now she knew him to be gentle and gentlemanly and, in his own way, sweetly obtuse. It wasn’t just Lily and Beryl who’d registered the look on his face as she’d floated up and down the catwalk in the bridal gown. Eileen had seen it too – and so, she was sure, had Jennifer Naylor, watching from the wings. From her eyrie on Schoolwear, Jennifer had probably been watching them as they took their breaks together, too. Eileen didn’t think she’d entertained hopes of Peter Simmonds for herself – or maybe she had? Either way, the thought that her old rival might be the object of his affections must have simply derailed her.

Peter was studying her, looking worried.

‘You’re thinking.’

‘Yes, I was. Sorry.’

‘No, I’m sorry if all this has upset you.’

‘It hasn’t,’ she assured him. ‘That is, it would have upset me far more if I hadn’t had you to go into bat for me. I owe you a lot. And I’m so glad you know the truth.’

She met his eyes fully. They were nice eyes, grey, but warm.

‘Me too.’

Their eyes held each other’s for a moment, then she looked down, and up again.

‘Erm … when I said going into bat …’

‘Yes?’

‘John’s desperate to learn cricket. And I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss.’

Was she asking what he thought she was asking?

Some time ago, in a bid to keep up staff morale, Mr Marlow had asked for ideas and Peter had been quick to suggest sports teams. The girls played a few games of netball and rounders when they could muster some opposition, but it was the football and cricket teams that had really taken off. Peter was the cricket captain.

‘Well … erm … If you’d like me to give him a few lessons …’

‘Would you?’ she said at once. ‘He’d be thrilled.’

‘I’d be delighted!’

‘Thank you!’ Her smile lit up the poky office like a searchlight. ‘Well – are you busy on Sundays? In the afternoon? We could go to the park – there’s still a couple of patches of grass. I could bring a picnic?’

He could hardly believe it.

‘I’d like that very much.’

‘Good! That’s settled, then.’

He gave her a smile and Eileen looked modestly down at the band on her wedding finger. She’d leave it there for the moment. But in time, perhaps quite soon, she’d take it off and publicly admit the truth about John’s father. And the freedom that would give her, to be herself, and maybe to start again, was absolutely exhilarating.

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