The sound of the twins’ muffled giggles had Jean looking along the pew and giving them a warning shake of her head. Dust danced in the long bars of sunlight striking through the high windows and onto the stone floor. She hoped the vicar’s sermon wasn’t going to go on for too long this morning. She’d got a nice piece of beef in the oven and she didn’t want it spoiling, and besides, she needed to sort out what she and the twins were going to wear for Bella’s wedding. A turn-up for the books, that had been and no mistake. And Vi could say what she liked about them getting married fast because there might be a war; it still wouldn’t stop folk putting one and one together and getting three, as the saying went.

From the pew she could see where the Boy Scouts were standing. Jack had told her all about the badges he’d got when she’d seen him at Vi’s. It didn’t seem two minutes ago since their Luke had been marching off proudly in his own Scout’s uniform, his hair slicked down straight.

She’d telephoned Vi yesterday from the telephone box at the end of the road, after the postman had brought the wedding invitation, and she’d been a bit taken aback when Vi had told her that Jack had been evacuated already.

‘His headmaster said we should, since they’ll be closing his school down if there is a war.’

Jean bent her head and said an extra special prayer for her young nephew, and then another one for all those other children who had been sent away from their homes, and for their mothers as well.

In the pew in front of them old Mrs Knowles from round the corner had fallen asleep, her hat coming down over one eye, its feather trembling in time with her snores, which was no doubt the cause of the twins’ mirth, Jean recognised ruefully.

Dutifully Grace tried to concentrate on the vicar’s sermon, but the warm beams of sunshine striking through the Sunday morning torpor of the worshippers, combined with the excitement that was fizzing away inside her, was too much of a temptation, drawing her thoughts outside the church to more exciting things. This time, next week she’d have started her training. She was to report to the nurses’ home next Saturday morning and, like her mother had said, they were going to have to get their skates on if they were going to get in time everything on the list she’d been given.

Lewis’s had been ever so good to her as well, giving her a day’s leave without docking any of her pay. Oh, she just couldn’t wait, although of course she was going to miss home and her family. She just hoped though that she’d be able to be Bella’s bridesmaid. A real surprise that had been, to all of them.

‘Perhaps the young man that was so kind to you will be at the wedding,’ her mother had suggested.

Grace knew that she had coloured up and she knew too that her mother had noticed, but she was determined to be realistic about Seb and his kindness to her, and so she had said determinedly, ‘Well, he could be, Mum, although he told me that he isn’t really related to Alan at all. And… well, I got the impression he wasn’t very keen on him, and if he’s already back with the RAF, he may not be able to be there.’

‘Well, never mind,’ her mother had responded. ‘I’d have liked to thank him for his kindness to you, though.’

‘How many breaths do you think it will be before her hat falls off?’ Louise whispered to her twin.

‘Ten,’ Sasha responded.

‘I bet you it’s fifteen. And if I win you’ve got to kiss Tom Lucas.’

‘I’m not kissing him. You kiss him.’

‘Sally says that he sticks his tongue right down your throat.’

‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘It’s what they do in France, she says.’

‘Mum’s watching us …’

The sudden realisation that the vicar had stopped speaking virtually in mid-sentence caused not only Jean but virtually the whole congregation to look first towards the pulpit and then back towards the now open door, where the verger and two of the sidesmen were in earnest conversation. The verger broke away and started to hurry down the aisle, his robes billowing with the speed of his progress. He reached the pulpit, saying something to the vicar, who had leaned down to listen.

Several seconds passed. Mrs Knowles woke up abruptly in mid-snore and straightened her hat. The vicar stepped down from the pulpit to stand in front of the congregation.

‘It is my sad duty to inform you that we are now at war with Germany.’

Immediately Grace looked towards her parents. Her mother’s face had lost its colour and her father’s mouth had gone stern. The twins were standing close together, their arms round each other.

Luke stood apart from his family, a grim, almost bitter, expression shadowing his face as he watched some of the other young men gravitate towards one another and begin a low-voiced conversation. Why couldn’t his father understand how it made him feel, knowing that he was going to be safe here in Liverpool whilst his friends went off to fight? The service summarily finished, the congregation was moving swiftly towards the open doors. Half a dozen young men in various service uniforms, who had been attending church with their families, were very much the centre of attention, receiving approving smiles and words of encouragement as older men went up to them to clap them on the shoulder or pat them on the back.

Luke could feel the backs of his eyes burning drily with shame and anger.

‘Oh, Sam, do you think it’s really true?’ Jean asked anxiously as they all left the church.

‘I reckon so. We’ll know more when we get home and listen to the wireless. Luke, we’d better check in with the ARP post this afternoon,’ he told his son, ‘and I’ll have a word with Andy Roberts to see if he’s heard anything.’

Andy Roberts was the most senior of the Salvage Corps men and acted as an unofficial co-ordinator and ‘foreman’ for the group.

‘Does that mean now that Hitler’s going to march into Liverpool?’ Lou asked anxiously.

‘Don’t be daft,’ her twin responded dismissively. ‘He can’t march across the Channel, can he?’

‘No, but he can ruddy well bomb it,’ Arthur Edwards, one of their neighbours, told them, having overheard the twins’ conversation. Arthur was a widower, and Jean normally made up a bit of a plated dinner for him on a Sunday. ‘There’s going to be some tears shed before tonight’s over,’ he added dourly. ‘There’s hardly a house in the street that’s not sending one of its men off to fight. I’m surprised that you ain’t in uniform yet, young Luke. Alf Simpson’s two lads have both joined up this last month and the Bristows from number sixteen’s son’s in the Merchant Navy.

‘Luke’s going to be working in the Salvage Corps with me,’ Sam told their neighbour sharply.

‘Oh, Mum …’ Grace’s voice broke as she went into her mother’s arms, and they hugged each other.

They were less than halfway home when they heard a booming noise, similar to that made by the One o’ clock Gun down on the docks, followed by another. Before the echoes of the second had died away Sam was shepherding his family towards the nearest public shelter, which happened to be in the grounds of a school. New and purpose-built with brick walls and a concrete slab roof, the shelter might be ugly, but right now it was a very welcome sight indeed.

Joining in with the shrill wail of the air-raid sirens, small children snatched up by their parents had started crying. Jean kept the twins in front of her, telling them to hold on to one another, conscious of the press of people seeking safety, but everyone was doing their best to keep calm, even if there were some very set and frightened faces.

Inside, the shelter was very similar to the one at the bottom of the road, which they had all been down to have a look at once it had been erected earlier in the year, although much larger. Bunk beds lined the walls; there were buckets filled with sand as emergency fire extinguishers, and a dedicated ARP post right by the door for those who would be in charge of getting everyone in and keeping a check on everything. Electric cables supporting solitary light bulbs dangled from the ceiling here and there, the bulbs giving off pools of light. Without any windows there was no chance of that light giving away their location to Hitler’s Luftwaffe. There was even a door marked ‘WC’, which was more than they had in their shelter, Jean thought enviously.

As Sam guided his family to one of the bunk beds so that they could all sit down he commented admiringly on how well equipped the shelter was.

‘We’ll be all right in here, love. They’ve got a supply of stoves stacked up over there, and their own water supply,’ he told Jean, before going back to join the other ARP men outside, helping to make sure everything proceeded as it should. Jean watched him leave with some anxiety – for his safety, not their own.

‘Blimey, that Hitler don’t believe in wasting much time, does he?’ an old lady puffed as she sat down on the bed next to the Campions’. The twins were packed in tightly between Jean and Grace, and a group of men a few yards away were joking that the ARP warden hadn’t thought to stock up with a few crates of beer.

‘Shame on you, Harry Meadows,’ a woman, whom Jean guessed must be his wife, objected sharply. ‘Talking about drinking beer on a Sunday, and when we’ve only just come out of church. You should be praying to the Good Lord to save us, not thinking about beer.’

Lou shivered and moved closer to Jean. Jean put her arm around her, and hugged her tightly, hoping that Lou wouldn’t be able to feel how fast her own heart was beating and guess how very afraid she was.

You could almost feel the effort everyone was making not to be afraid, or at least not to let their fear show. But it was there, Jean could see it in the eyes of other mothers and in the way they kept their children close to them. People were talking in low voices, quickly, anxious not to miss any sounds from outside.

Jean looked towards the shelter entrance. The door was still open; she could just about see Sam standing with the other ARP men. She wished desperately that he was with them, but he had his duty to do. Grace was holding Sasha as closely as Jean was holding Lou, and she felt a surge of pride for her eldest daughter.

‘It’s cold in here, Mum,’ Lou complained.

It was cold, and damp as well, Jean suspected, but far more important than the discomfort, and the fact that the beef would be ruined, was that they were safe.

Lou was pulling a face. ‘Pooh,’ she objected, wrinkling her nose. ‘It’s horrid in here, really smelly.’

Jean nudged her daughter and gave her a warning look, even though she was forced to acknowledge that Lou’s criticism was well deserved.

The beef would be ruined now. What a waste.

Sam was coming towards them, and Jean waited anxiously as he stepped carefully over outstretched legs.

‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘False alarm. Captain Cocks, from the Fort Perch Rock Battery ordered a couple of rounds to be put across the bows of a vessel trying to enter the closed Rock Channel approach to the Mersey. I dunno about scaring them off – he’s certainly put the fear of God up all of Liverpool. Not that the powers that be will be too put out, mind. I dare say it’s given them a chance to see if the civil defence measures are working as they should.’

As they all stepped out into the sunshine, Grace was thinking that the next time she heard an air-raid siren she could well be in her nurse’s uniform and on duty waiting for the injured to be brought in for treatment. It felt funny to be both so frightened and yet at the same time so determined to rise to the challenge of what war could bring.

‘I think I’d better stay on here to lend a hand, if you don’t mind love,’ Sam told Jean, as she gathered her family together.

It was only natural that he should want a chance to talk things through with the other men who had been clustered together by the exit to the shelter as they left, Jean acknowledged as they made their way home.

She felt tired and miserable, and her head had started to ache, but most of all she was thinking about Jack, and how he must be feeling.

‘Poor little lad,’ she said under her breath.

‘What’s that, Mum?’ Grace asked.

‘I was just thinking about Jack,’ Jean told her. ‘Your Auntie Vi’s had him evacuated.’

‘Of course, Edwin suspected all along that this was going to happen, and that it would be war. He’s got very close contacts with the Ministry, you know – not that he’d ever breathe a word out of turn. They have absolute trust in his discretion. To be honest, that’s why we gave in when Alan begged us to allow Bella to marry him. They’re so very much in love, and with it being war, well, one never knows what might happen …’

‘But I thought that Alan Parker worked for his father and doesn’t have to join up,’ the neighbour Vi was talking to queried.

It was early in the evening, and naturally everyone wanted to talk about the morning’s announcement that they were now at war.

Vi had only come out to deadhead the last of her roses, but her trug was at her feet without anything in it, and she was determined to ignore her neighbour’s telltale glance towards her own front door when she had such an excellent opportunity to reinforce the fact that it was Edwin’s perspicacity in recognising that war was about to be declared that was responsible for Bella’s swift marriage, and nothing else.

‘Well, yes, of course, but one never knows what may happen …’

Really, Vi thought, humming happily to herself ten minutes later as she returned to the house, things could hardly have fallen better. She now had the perfect explanation for anyone who chose to ask questions about the hurried nature of Bella’s marriage.

Edwin was in the lounge, listening to the wireless and drinking a G and T – his second of the evening, not that Vi was counting, of course. Edwin with his bald head and his neat moustache had grown somewhat portly over the years, and had developed a decided air of importance. Unlike Jean’s Sam, he was not a tall man, and unlike him too, he was now wearing spectacles.

‘Of course, I had my suspicions that this was going to happen,’ he told Vi, puffing out his cheeks, both of them ignoring the fact that it was only a couple of weeks since he had been saying that there wouldn’t be a war at all, in private as well as in public. ‘Just as well I had the foresight to expand the business, because we’ll certainly be getting more work. Charlie will have to pull his socks up a bit, mind. I don’t want to see work we could have had going to someone else because he’s not doing his job properly.’

‘Well, that’s a fine thing to say, and about your own son too. I’m surprised at you, Edwin, I really am,’ Vi retaliated. ‘Poor Charlie’s doing his best. It was gone eight o’clock three evenings last week before he came in for his meal.’

‘He needs to spend more time working and less time at that ruddy Tennis Club,’ Edwin told her.

‘Edwin! Language!’ Vi reproved him. ‘Jean’s going to be getting herself in a state. She was all for telling me I’d done the wrong thing when I said that we’d had Jack evacuated, but she’ll be wishing she’d had the sense to do the same with her twins now, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Edwin gave a bored grunt.

‘Edwin, I really do think you should speak to Alan’s father, you know. Poor Bella’s terrified that that dreadful mother of Alan’s is going to try to make them live with them after they’re married. It’s like I was saying to my WVS group, it doesn’t look very good when a prominent Wallasey Village businessman and a local councillor acts as though he can’t afford to set his newly married son up in a house of his own. I’d be ashamed if that was us and our Charlie.’

Edwin gave another grunt.

‘If you were to ask me then I’d have to say that I’m a bit worried that Mrs Parker is one of those mothers who have to have her son tied to their apron strings. I’ve already told Bella that she’ll have to watch out for that. She will be Alan’s wife, after all. You know, I was thinking, if you were to mention to Mr Parker when you see him tomorrow at the council meeting that you’re prepared to give the young ones a cheque to pay for the new furniture they’ll need for that house that’s up for sale near the Parkers, then that just might make him realise—’

‘Give it a rest, will you, Vi? If the Parkers won’t buy them a house then there’s nothing I can do about it. Get me another drink, will you?’

Vi got up and took the glass he was holding out to her. She knew when not to cross her husband, but at least she had planted the right seed in his mind. Bella had sobbed her heart out after they’d got back from church this morning after Alan had told her that he thought they should move in with his parents instead of setting up their own home.

Well, she’d see about that, Vi assured herself. She wasn’t going to have her Bella getting less than her due. If push came to shove then she’d see to it that Edwin bought them a house, and she’d make sure that everyone knew who’d had to pay for it.

She was very disappointed in the Parkers. Very disappointed.

‘Hey, Charlie, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to pick me up over half an hour ago.’

Charlie grinned, ignoring the harassed and irritated expression on the face of his friend, as Brian got into the passenger seat of Charlie’s car. It was true that Charlie had promised to pick him up outside his house, prior to them both attending a regular Territorial Army meeting, and it was equally true that Charlie was very late. Not that Charlie himself cared.

‘Sorry, Brian, but I had a bit of important business to attend to,’ he told him, winking meaningfully. ‘A certain pretty girl had heard that war had been declared and she wanted to say a proper goodbye to me. I tell you, mate, this TA uniform is worth its weight in gold for the effect it has on the girls.’

‘Oh, yes? Well, you won’t be feeling so pleased with yourself when you hear what I’ve got to tell you. We’re in deep shit.’

‘Ruddy hell, what for?’ Charlie scratched irritably at his neck where the rough fabric of his TA battledress had chafed his skin. Girl pleasing or not, he would be glad to get out of it and into his civvies. To tell the truth, the last thing he felt like doing now was going down to the local drill hall where his unit of the Territorial Army volunteers was based. For one thing, he suspected that his father would want to give him a lecture about the effects of the war on the business and the importance of him keeping his nose to the grindstone, and Charlie knew from experience that the best time to endure one of Pa’s lectures was on a Sunday evening after the old man had had a couple or three G and Ts rather than a Monday morning when his temper and his stomach were still soured by them.

‘Didn’t you hear that message they gave out on Friday over the wireless, saying that all army personnel have to report a.s.a.p. to their drill hall?’

‘No, I can’t say that I did,’ Charlie told him, shrugging dismissively. ‘We’re only in the TA, for heaven’s sake. It’s not like we’re in the real army, is it?’

‘Hasn’t Luke come back with you?’ Jean asked Sam when her husband walked into the kitchen.

They’d all been glued to the wireless since they’d got back, even the twins.

Old Mr Edwards had come round to tell them that the Liverpool Echo had brought out a Sunday edition and that he’d got them a copy.

It had made Jean’s heart bump against her ribs to see the bold headlines announcing the commencement of war instead of the normal front-page advertisements.

‘No. I thought he left with you and the girls.’

Jean looked at the clock on the wall. It was gone six o’clock. Luke wasn’t the sort to ignore family meal times without warning her in advance. Her heart started to beat too fast and too heavily.

‘He’ll be with the other lads, talking about what’s happened, I expect,’ Sam told her.

Jean nodded, but deep down inside she felt something was wrong. Not that she’d say so to Sam. He’d just laugh at her and say she was being a fussing mother hen.

‘You’ll be hungry,’ she told him. ‘You missed your dinner, after all. I’ll make you a sandwich.’

‘Ta, love.’ Sam sat down and picked up the paper, quickly becoming engrossed in it, whilst Jean filled the kettle and set about cutting bread. The wireless was on and she could hear the sound of the twins’ voices from their bedroom upstairs.

The kitchen door opened and Grace came in, holding a piece of paper.

‘Mum, look at this list. I just hope we’re going to be able to get everything it says I have to have.’

She sat down at the table, frowning over the list, and then got up again when she saw that the kettle was boiling.

That was typical of Grace, Jean thought gratefully. She never needed to be asked, and she was always quick to help.

Sam had eaten his sandwiches and she and Grace had done the washing up. It was gone seven now and Luke still wasn’t back, and Jean couldn’t help continually glancing at the clock.

It was nearly eight when Luke finally came in.

‘There you are. I’ll put the kettle on,’ Jean told him, not wanting to let on how worried and uneasy she had felt. He was back now, after all.

‘I’ve joined up. I’ve got to report for training tomorrow morning.’

The cup Jean had been holding slipped through her fingers onto the linoleum. She looked at the broken pieces of pottery and then at her son, afraid to move or speak in case she made what he had just said real, when she knew that it surely couldn’t be real. Luke didn’t need to join up. He was going to work in the Salvage Corps with Sam.

Sam! She looked at her husband. He was getting to his feet, his face burning a dark angry red, his fists clenched at his sides.

‘You’ve done what?’

‘You heard me, Dad. I’ve joined up. It’s no use you looking at me like that. I had to.’

‘You had to do no such bloody thing. I’d got you a place in the Salvage Corps. All you had to do was wait another couple of weeks.’

‘It’s all right for you to say that, you don’t know what it’s like,’ Luke objected fiercely.

‘It’s because I do ruddy well know what it’s like. I watched more than one man cough himself to death from the gas in the trenches. You’re the one that knows nothing about what war’s like, Luke.’

‘Not war, no. I do know what it’s like to be called a coward. That might not bother you, Dad, but it bothers me.’

Sam’s face changed colour from red to white. Jean had never seen him look at anyone the way he was looking at Luke now. Instinctively she moved over to him, begging, ‘Sam …’

‘You don’t need to protect me, Mum,’ Luke told her, his young face hardening too. ‘I’m a man now, not a kid.’

‘A man? You’re a fool, that’s what you are,’ Sam told him. ‘I’d thought you’d got more about you than to listen to a lot of daft lads doing a bit of name-calling. I thought you’d got a bit of sense, but you haven’t. You’re a ruddy fool, Luke.’

‘I might be a fool but at least I can hold my head up now.’

Again that unfamiliar look crossed Sam’s face. He shook his head as though trying to shake it away, like a man coming up for air from deep water.

‘Aye, for as long as you can keep it on your shoulders.’

‘Sam!’ Now it was Jean’s turn to feel her face drain of colour and her heart start to thump uncomfortably fast.

‘What do you want me to say? That I think he’s done the right thing? Well, I don’t.’

Beneath Sam’s bitterness Jean could sense his pain, but she could also tell that Luke couldn’t see that. His face was bleak with misery and anger.

They’d both raised their voices and were facing one another like enemies, these two who were so alike and whom she loved so very much. It was almost more than she could bear.

She looked at Grace. ‘Go upstairs and sit with the twins, will you, love? They’ll be wondering what’s going on.’

As soon as the door had closed behind Grace, Jean tried to intervene.

‘Luke’s only done what he thinks is right, Sam.’ She put her hand on Sam’s arm but he shook it off. She had never seen him so angry, Jean admitted, her heart sinking. For all that Sam had an easygoing nature, he had a streak of stubbornness in him when it came to what he believed to be right. In Sam’s eyes, by defying him and enlisting, Luke had shown that he didn’t value or respect his father’s advice, and Jean knew that Sam would find that very hard to take.

‘Well, you’ve made your bed now, and you’ll just have to lie in it,’ Sam told Luke. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself, because I’m certainly not. Like I’ve said, you’re a ruddy fool, and after all I’ve said to you, all I’ve done to try to get you into the Corps.’

‘The Salvage Corps. That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? You never even asked me what I wanted to do, or even if I wanted to be apprenticed as an electrician. No, all you could think about was what you wanted. Well, now I’ve done what I want. I’m not a kid, Dad, I’m a man, and if you don’t like that then too bad.’

This was war, Jean recognised: this horrible cruel merciless tearing apart of family ties and loyalties. This senseless destruction and pain.

Luke was opening the back door, whilst Sam ignored him.

Alarm filled Jean. ‘Luke, what are you doing? Where are you going?’

‘I’m not staying here. Not now. I’ve got a couple of mates I can stay with. We joined up together.’

‘Luke,’ Jean protested. ‘Sam, stop him…’

‘Like he just told you, he’s a man now, so let him go and be one.’

Couldn’t Sam see the sheen of tears in Luke’s eyes? Didn’t he realise what he was doing or what was happening? Luke, their son, was about to go and fight a war. They may never see him again. How could Sam let that happen with so many cruel words still lying between them?

For the first time in the whole of their time together Jean found that she felt not love for her husband but something that felt much more like bitterness and anger.

She ran out after Luke, ignoring Sam’s command to ‘Let him go’, catching up with him at the gate and grabbing hold of his arm, her tears rolling down her face.

‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I had to do it,’ he told her gruffly.

And then he was gone, walking away from her as straight-backed as though he was already in uniform and marching.

She was shaking from head to foot when she walked back into the now empty kitchen. She could hear the girls coming downstairs. They came into the kitchen, Grace shepherding the twins in front of her. For once they were quiet, holding on to one another, their eyes round and stark with confusion and pain.

‘We heard Luke leave,’ Grace told her mother.

Jean couldn’t trust herself to speak.

‘Where’s Dad?’ Grace asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Nor did Jean feel as though she cared, she recognised. Anger and pain welled up inside her. How could Sam have let Luke leave like that?

‘Dad’s gone down to the shelter,’ Lou announced.

‘He goes there sometimes to think about things,’ Sasha supplied. ‘That’s what he told us, wasn’t it, Lou?’

Jean stared at the twins. Were they right? She hadn’t known that Sam did that. How had they known? Not that she really cared. Right now all her pain and all her love were for Luke, her firstborn. Who but a mother could ever know what it felt like when that new life was placed in your arms for the first time and that well of almost unbearable emotion took hold of you; that need to protect that life from all harm? That love, that feeling, never went away.

Charlie was drunk. In fact he was very drunk indeed. It took him several minutes to climb out of his car. He staggered towards the front door, leaning against it whilst he searched for his key.

When, before he found it, his father opened the door for him he half fell into the hall. He could see his mother standing behind his father. They were both in their nightclothes, and his mother had rag curlers in her hair.

His father’s face was red with temper. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded.

‘The bloody bastards have called up the TA. Given us all Part One and Part Two orders,’ Charlie told them. ‘Bastards … bastards …’ His voice slurred over the words as he collapsed onto the floor, and then dragged himself up to lean against the wall, swaying slightly. ‘You’ve got to help me, Dad. You’ve got to get me out … I only joined because they said they’d never call up the TA Reserves …’

‘You’re a bloody fool, you know that, don’t you? I warned you that you were taking a risk, but you wouldn’t listen, and now look at the mess you’ve got yourself into. None of this would have happened if you’d listened to me and kept quiet.’

‘Yes, well, I didn’t, did I? But you can sort it out, can’t you?’

When her husband made no reply, Vi put her hand on his arm, saying sharply, ‘Edwin, you’ve got to do something; speak to someone. The Ministry.’

His face grew even redder as he shook her off. ‘I told you not to go getting yourself into the TA in the first place,’ he reminded Charlie again. ‘If you’d left well alone I could have wangled it that you’d be on the reserved occupation list, but it’s too bloody late for that now.’

Charlie’s stomach heaved and he was violently sick on the hall floor and his father’s slippers.