Grace could hardly believe that it was finally happening and that she was about to begin her nursing training, but overlying her excitement as she walked towards the hospital’s nurses’ home where she had been told to present herself, was her anxiety for her brother, and her awareness of her mother’s anguish.

Luke was in an army camp somewhere now, undergoing his training. There was an unfamiliar and very strained atmosphere at home, and as excited as she was at the thought of beginning her own training, Grace also felt guilty for leaving her mother when she was so very upset.

And yet at the same time as she shared her mother’s anxiety, Grace could also understand how Luke felt and why he had joined up.

In the battered leather suitcase she was carrying, and which she and Jean had bargained for in a pawnbroker’s dusty shop, were all the items on the list she had been given when she had received the letter informing her that she had been accepted for her training: three pairs of black stockings, one pair of flat black serviceable shoes, a selection of safety pins and studs, a packet of white Kirbigrips, two plain silver tiepins, one pocket watch with a second hand, one pair of regulation nurse’s scissors, money for textbooks, six exercise books, pens and pencils and two drawstring laundry bags clearly marked with her name. Although the cost of her uniform and the textbooks would exceed her first year’s earnings, her board and food, and her laundry would be provided free of charge.

Since Sister Harris had recommended her there had been no need for her to attend an interview, and it had also been Sister Harris who had measured her for her probationary uniform and sent those measurements to the hospital.

The letter she had received had told her the date on which she was to report to the nurses’ home for her probationary training; that she would find her uniform waiting for her in her room; that she was to change into it and then wait in the probationary nurses’ sitting room for further instructions; that she must not under any circumstances whatsoever leave the hospital wearing her uniform.

Had she done the right thing? Did she really have what it took to become a nurse? Ought she to have stayed where she was at Lewis’s? What if the other girls didn’t like her? What if … Grace’s eager footsteps halted, but it was too late for second thoughts and doubts now. The nurses’ home was right in front of her and the nurses’ home sister, thin, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, was watching her. Behind her stood two other sisters with lists in their hands.

Nervously Grace approached them.

‘Name?’ one of them barked.

‘Er … Grace … Grace Campion.’

The sister was frowning for so long over her list that Grace began to wonder if it was all a mistake and she wasn’t going to be allowed to train after all, but then to her relief she nodded her head and handed Grace a key with a number on it.

Now what was she supposed to do? Uncertainly she looked at the sister, but she didn’t look back, turning instead to the girl who was now standing behind Grace. Another girl who had had her name ticked off by the other sister was making her way into the home, so Grace followed her.

Several girls were already inside and Grace joined them as they walked along corridors and up and down flights of stairs looking for their rooms.

The smell of carbolic lingering on the air was somehow in keeping with the green-painted walls, and shiny clean linoleum.

Grace found her room up two flights of stairs and halfway along a corridor. Her arm aching from the weight of her suitcase, she unlocked the door and went inside. Her room was small and very basic. The paint on the walls was peeling, especially around the small sink in the corner. A small dark brown wardrobe stood against one wall, along with a dressing table-cum-desk and a chair.

The iron-framed bed was covered with a green bedspread that looked thin and worn. The room felt cold and Grace shivered, suddenly overwhelmed with homesickness and a longing for her own pretty attic bedroom.

Her uniform was lying on the bed, the dresses short-sleeved, with a separate uncomfortable-looking set of collars and cuffs. The dresses were patched and darned and had obviously been passed on many times before they had come to her. Next to them was a long navy woollen cloak with a dark purple lining and purple straps that crossed at the front and fastened at the back. Grace looked for her cap, her heart sinking when she saw the two oblongs of white cloth the size of a nappy starched as stiff as a board. How on earth was she supposed to transform those into a nurse’s cap?

Mindful of the list of rules she had been sent with her acceptance letter, Grace had already removed the pale pink nail polish she normally wore before leaving home, along with her pretty silver chain and locket. Student nurses were not allowed to wear any makeup or jewellery. No pictures or posters were to be hung on the walls, and slippers were not to be kept on the floor.

Quickly Grace unpacked her case and put everything away, then changed into her uniform, her fingers clumsy with nervousness.

She checked her appearance in the mirror, worrying that the hem of the dress might not be the regulation twelve inches above the floor. The fabric of her uniform dress felt uncomfortable and scratchy, and she wasn’t sure which pockets she was supposed to put everything into. Her thick black stockings looked drab and her shoes felt heavy and clumsy. Grace checked her letter again. Once she had changed into her uniform she was to make her way down to the student nurses’ sitting room for a ‘welcome tea’.

Feeling awkward and uncertain, Grace hesitated just inside the open door to the student nurses’ sitting room, which was already busy with other girls dressed in their uniforms. The tables were each set for six, with individual plates containing two sandwiches and a slice of Victoria sandwich.

A cheerful-looking girl with ginger hair and freckles came up to her and smiled. ‘If you’re looking for a table there’s a spare seat on ours,’ she offered.

Gratefully Grace followed her over to one of the tables where four other girls were already seated.

‘Now we’ve got a full table I suppose we’d better introduce ourselves,’ the ginger-haired girl suggested. ‘I’m Hannah Philips.’

‘Grace Campion,’ Grace followed her, listening carefully as the other girls gave their names: Iris Robinson, small and pretty with dark hair and huge dark eyes. Jennifer Halliwell, who spoke with what she explained to them was a Yorkshire accent, adding that her family were originally from Leeds. Doreen Sefton, who said that if the war went on for long enough she wanted to join the army as a nurse, once she had done her training, and finally the prettiest of them all, in Grace’s opinion, Lillian Green, who had blonde curls and huge blue eyes, and who was so slim and delicate she looked as though she might blow away in the lightest wind, and who giggled and explained that she had decided to train as a nurse after she had met a gorgeous-looking doctor at a friend’s party.

After they had eaten their sandwiches and cake, and drunk as much tea as they wanted, Home Sister stood up and gave them a talk about what was expected of them and the high standards set and demanded by the teaching hospitals. She emphasised how fortunate they were to be given the opportunity to train at such a prestigious hospital.

Their lessons, they learned, started at eight o’clock in the morning and did not finish until six o’clock at night. At the end of their three-month training they would sit an exam and if they passed it then and only then would they be allowed on to the wards, as that lowest of nursing ranks, the probationer.

Once they’d been dismissed, everyone made their way back to their rooms.

‘You’ll find that the six of us will tend to stick together now,’ Hannah told Grace knowledgeably, when they were the only two of the original six who had still not reached their rooms. ‘So it’s a pity we’ve got Green as one of our number. That sort always causes trouble. You mark my words.’

Grace didn’t know what to say. Hannah had already told them over tea that her elder sister and her cousin were both qualified nurses, and she certainly seemed to know the ropes better than anyone else.

‘I don’t mind a bit of a lark around but when it comes to chasing after doctors, saying that you’ve only taken up nursing so that you can do that …’ she gave a disapproving shake of her head.

Alone in her own small room, Grace undressed, hanging up her uniform carefully, and then once she was washed and in her night things she sat down to write to her family.

Her head was buzzing with all that had happened. There was so much she wanted to write that she hardly knew where to start. She felt both uncertain and excited, half of her wishing that right now she was at home in her mother’s kitchen, with its familiar sights and smells, and most of all her mother in one of her floral pinafores bustling about looking after them all, and the other half of her sharply aware that she had taken the first step from being a girl at home to being an independent young woman. She stifled an exhausted yawn. She didn’t want to write anything that would alarm her mother, like how hard the work was going to be, or how nervous she had felt listening to Home Sister’s stern warnings about the penalties for not making the grade or breaking one of the very many rules. It had been such an extraordinary day – a day that would live in her memory for ever. There were things like meeting the other girls in her set that she would always share with them; things that were apart from the life she had known at home. And yet these were also things she wanted to share with her family.

It would take her ages to write down everything she wanted to say, Grace admitted, stifling another yawn, and some of it would have to wait until she had her first time off.

In the end she simply wrote that the day had gone reasonably well and that she was well and happy, but that she missed them all.

‘Oh, darling!’

Vi dabbed at her eyes with the lace-edged handkerchief she had removed from her handbag, whilst Bella ignored her mother’s emotions, pursing her lips and studying her reflection in the mirror.

They had arrived at the exclusive modiste’s on Bold Street just over an hour ago, having had to make an appointment, as Madame Blanche only ‘received’ one bride at a time.

Her ‘salon’ was on the first floor, its décor very pink and supposedly ‘French’. Everything that could be was swagged in pink silk, even the changing cubicles, and the chaise-longue and chairs on which mothers waited, handkerchief in hand, for that moment when their daughter appeared from behind the mirror screens, magically transformed by Madame and her staff into ‘the bride’.

Initially Madame had been inclined to be slightly off hand. She was busy. Everyone wanted to get married because of the war. She had even – although very discreetly – added a bit extra to the prices of her gowns because of the high demand. But then she recognised what an excellent advertisement for her gowns Bella would be, especially when she had measured her waist and found it to be a mere twenty-two inches, and she had thawed slightly.

‘And the bridesmaids – will they be dressed by us?’ she asked Vi once Vi had got over the emotion of seeing Bella looking everything that a bride should be.

It was Bella who answered her, saying carelessly, ‘Oh, no. I’m having only two bridesmaids, after all, and we’ve already got them something.’

Madame incline her head. She wouldn’t have expected a bride as pretty as this to insist on her having her bridesmaids dressed to their disadvantage and her advantage, but quite plainly in Madame’s opinion that was what she intended. So far as the bride herself went, though, Madame doubted she’d seen a better one the whole year.

Bella preened and posed in her gown, the most expensive one they had been shown, and she had known immediately that she wanted it. Plain heavy satin trimmed with thick lace, and designed to show off a small waist, it might have been made for her. The only alteration necessary, as Madame had said, was a fraction reduction of the waist because hers was so tiny. That would show Alan’s mother and stop those cold angry looks she kept on giving her. It might have suited Bella to have both sets of parents believe that Alan had ‘forgotten’ himself, in order to expedite their marriage, but it certainly did not suit her ambitions for her future to be talked about behind her back by the Tennis Club set as someone who had ‘had to get married’.

She certainly wasn’t going to have either Grace or Trixie wearing an expensive dress either. Why should she? If Grace had had any consideration at all she’d have waited until after the wedding to go and start training to be a nurse. It was ridiculous, her doing something like that anyway, trying to show off and get herself involved in nursing because of this wretched war. And as for Trixie … well, the only reason Bella had wanted to have her as her bridesmaid was to show Trixie and Mrs Parker that she was the one who was marrying Alan. Trixie wasn’t even one of her friends, and she wasn’t going to become one either. Why should she want to make a friend of a plain dull girl like Trixie? Of course, she was another one involving herself in this wretched war fuss, as well.

Vi tried not to look too appalled when Madame informed her of the cost of Bella’s dress. Edwin wouldn’t be pleased. She tried to suggest that Bella have a less expensive wedding gown but the truth was that her heart wasn’t really in it. From the moment she had seen her darling standing there in it, looking a true vision of beauty and modesty, her heart had swelled with so much maternal pride that she had agreed with Bella that it was impossible for her to wear anything else.

Edwin was constantly preaching economy, with regard to the wedding, especially since she had insisted to him that they could not let poor Bella move in with her in-laws and that if the Parkers didn’t do something for the young couple to enable them to have their own house then they must. But at the same time as he was saying he wasn’t made of money he was also boasting about how much money he was going to make because of the war.

‘We’ve just got the flowers and the cake to sort out now, darling,’ Vi told Bella as they left Madame’s salon.

‘And the house,’ Bella reminded her sharply. ‘Don’t forget about that, Mummy. I can’t possibly move in with Alan’s parents.’

‘Of course not, Bella, and no one’s suggesting that you should. It’s just that your father thinks that maybe you should consider something a bit smaller to start off with.’

Bella pouted. She had set her heart on a four-bedroomed detached house in the same road as Alan’s parents, but with a larger garden. The kind of house, as she had pointed out determinedly to her father, that people would expect her and Alan to have.

‘Aye, well, let Alan’s father put his hand in his pocket and pay for it then,’ her father had responded sharply, but Bella knew how to get round him.

‘I don’t think Mr Parker’s business is going to do as well out of the war as yours is, Daddy. I’ve heard him say so,’ she had told him, slipping her arm through his as she added, ‘In fact, Alan has as good as said that his father is just a little bit jealous of you because you’re so successful, and I don’t suppose they’re going to like it very much if you buy us a house.’

She would get the house she wanted, Bella knew – one way or another.

‘It’s such a pity that this wretched war has come now,’ Vi sighed now, as they made their way home. They would have to cross the Mersey using the ferry, and then get the bus, but with such a satisfactory day behind them, and so much to talk about, neither of them minded. ‘I’m afraid that we shan’t be having as many guests as we would have done, because of it. Your auntie Jean’s written to say that Luke probably won’t be able to come, and it’s the same for Charlie,’ Vi added, as they found seats on the bus that would take them down to the Pier Head and the ferry, ready to make the crossing to Wallasey.

Bella pulled a face. ‘I’m not bothered if Auntie Jean doesn’t come. It’s a pity we haven’t got some really smart relatives, Mummy. That would show the Parkers.’

Vi could only agree with her. Her twin sister wearing her one good coat with her husband dressed in a half-price Blackler’s suit was hardly going to impress the likes of the Parkers. Mrs Parker was the type who would know immediately what everyone was wearing had cost and judge them accordingly, Vi decided, conveniently forgetting that that was exactly what she would do herself.

‘It’s just so selfish of Charlie to have gone and got himself called up for the TA just when I’m getting married,’ Bella complained. ‘I was relying on him and Luke to be groomsmen and now they probably won’t be there.’

‘Well, darling, I’m sure Charlie’s equally unhappy about what’s happened himself. He never intended to get involved in this, as you know, and Daddy is still very cross with him.’

Of course, it was typical of her sister Jean’s family that Luke had volunteered for the army and was now undergoing his initial training and that Grace was training as a nurse, Vi reflected ungraciously. She just hoped her twin didn’t live to regret it. She’d heard that nursing had a dreadful coarsening effect on a young girl and was little better than being a skivvy.

Vi was every bit as put out about the fact that the war had stolen some of their shared mother-and-bride glory as Bella, even though she had initially been the first to recognise what an excellent excuse it had provided for the speed with which Bella was getting married. It was bad enough that Mrs Parker was refusing to be as publicly enthusiastic and grateful for the fact that she was getting such a prize as a daughter-in-law as she ought to have been, without this talk of the war to detract from Bella’s big day.

The Parkers had even had the gall to suggest that the wedding should be kept low key because of the war, but Vi had put her foot down on that idea.

‘Oh, no, Mrs Parker, I don’t think so,’ had been her saccharine response. ‘I’m sure that everyone will be grateful to have something to cheer them up a bit. Really, Edwin feels that it’s our duty to carry on as though the war hasn’t been announced.’

‘But with so many families having seen their young men go off into the services, and Mr Parker being on the council, eyebrows might be raised.’

Vi had been delighted to be able to point out smugly, ‘Well, with our own son already in uniform, and my Edwin so involved with the Ministry, I doubt that any eyebrows will be raised in our direction, Mrs Parker.’

Not, of course, that that she wanted to fall out with Bella’s mother-in-law-to-be, but she had seen the way Mrs Parker’s cronies had looked at her that first WVS meeting after the engagement had been announced.

‘I expect you’ll be seeing Alan tonight, will you, Bella? After all, you haven’t seen him all week.’

‘I can’t, Mummy. There’s so much to do still for the wedding. I thought you and I and Daddy might go and have another look at the house tonight. I’d really like to get that front room repapered before we move in, and you said you thought it needed a new stove for the kitchen, if Daddy does buy it for us. I do hope that he will, Mummy. I couldn’t bear to have to live with Alan’s parents.’

Of course she would really have rather gone out to see a film with Alan, or at least she would have done if he wasn’t being so beastly and unkind to her. And, anyway, it was for his sake really that she was being a good fiancée and organising things for their new home, not that her father had actually said yet that the would buy it for them, but Bella knew that he would.

Grace was exhausted. The first day of their training had passed in a blur of information and her own anxious fear that she wouldn’t remember any of what she had been told, or worse, that she would do something so dreadful that she would receive one of the ignominous warnings from Sister Tutor that several of the other girls in her set had had during the course of the day.

Watching and listening whilst Sister Tutor and Home Sister had shown them the correct procedure for making up a hospital bed had told Grace just how much she had to learn. Who could have imagined that such a simple procedure could sound so complicated whilst looking so easy. The sheets must be pulled tight and not have a single wrinkle because that could cause a patient to develop bed sores. They must not be shaken vigorously because that could spread dust and infection.

Their day had started with fifteen minutes of morning prayers led by the principal sister tutor, after which they all had to don their starched aprons and follow the pinned-up rota of cleaning chores, which included the lavatories and the floors, overseen by the stern eye of the sister tutors. Everything had, they were told very firmly indeed, to be spotlessly clean, and everything had to be done in a strictly regimented and fixed fashion, and woe betide anyone who did not adhere to that routine.

Their first day’s true lessons had been of the chalk-and-talk variety, although at first few of them had even been able to take their eyes off the life-size male torso, bereft of limbs and, of course, private parts, positioned close to the blackboard. This torso showed the male anatomy from head to groin in what they had all agreed later was truly gruesome detail.

And then there had been Mrs Jones, the dummy on which they would have to practise various procedures. Mrs Jones lived in the Practical Room, which also contained hospital beds, stainless-steel trolleys, rubber tubes, face-mask jars and shining instrument cupboards filled with frightening-looking equipment, sterilisers and bandaging, and shudder-inducing Skelly the skeleton, so that they could memorise each part of the body.

‘Phew, thank goodness there aren’t any more lessons today,’ Iris sighed in relief as the girls all made their way towards their dining room for their meal.

‘That’s nothing, you just wait,’ Hannah warned them, whilst Lillian pouted and complained, ‘I thought it was going to be a lot more fun than this. I didn’t come here to be a char.’

‘What about you, Grace?’ Hannah asked. ‘What did you think of today?’

‘I don’t know yet. There seems so much to learn, and knowing we’ve got to get it right because people’s lives will depend on us is such a big responsibility. I want to do it, but I’m not sure I can.’

The day had left her feeling overwhelmed and yet at the same time inspired. She couldn’t wait to write home about it. The twins, in particular, would love hearing about Skelly.

When Sam came in for his tea, Jean watched him carefully whilst trying to make sure that he didn’t realise she was doing so.

Sam hadn’t said a single word about Luke since their son had left, and at first she had been so upset by what had happened that she hadn’t felt inclined to talk about it herself. But it wasn’t in Jean’s nature to blame or punish those she loved, and as the days went by she became increasingly concerned about Sam.

Where he had been so upright and proud when he walked, now he seemed to stoop, his head bent as though he wanted to avoid looking at anyone. He looked older and diminished somehow. He also seemed to have withdrawn into himself, rarely speaking, his expression bleak. It hurt her to see him like this every bit as much as it had hurt her to see Luke walk away, but Luke was her son, her child, and like any mother she felt protective of him, whilst Sam was her husband and it was towards him that she looked for her protection.

She knew families in which the woman had to stand between husband and son, sometimes even physically, but she had never imagined that Luke and Sam would fall out. They had always been so close, so much in harmony with one another, so ‘like father like son’, as the old saying went. Now Luke had hurt Sam twice over: once by rejecting his advice and a second time with his absence.

‘I expect we’ll be hearing from Grace soon,’ Jean told Sam as she poured his tea. She waited until she put the teapot down before adding as casually as she could, ‘And Luke, of course. I was speaking with Mrs Gilchrist from five down today and she said that when they’re doing their training the lads normally get to write home once a week on a Sunday.’

The wireless was on, and she and Sam normally enjoyed a good chat over their tea, listening to the news, exchanging news of their different days, talking about the children, as parents did, and it hurt her that Sam was shutting her out, even though they had been married long enough for her to understand that that was just his way.

Young Bella would soon learn that there was more to getting married than having a fancy wedding.

The house felt so empty without Luke and Grace, although hardly quiet. Not with the twins and that gramophone of theirs, she reflected as she waited for Sam to reply, trying not to show how anxious she was.

She had warned the twins about not playing their records too loudly when they had come home saying that they had bought a second-hand gramophone with the money they had earned from running errands, but to judge from the music she could hear from their bedroom they hadn’t paid much attention.

Abruptly Sam pushed his chair back and then stood up, frowning as he looked towards the ceiling.

‘I’m sick of that damned row.’ His mouth compressed and he strode past her, opening the kitchen door and going up the stairs.

Jean could feel her heart suddenly contracting as though someone was squeezing it, filling her with a mixture of pain and concern.

The girls’ bedroom door opened and then suddenly there was silence. Then Sam came back downstairs carrying a record in his hands.

‘Sam, what are you doing?’ Jean asked.

‘What does it look like? If you’ve told them once about the noise, you’ve told them a dozen times. Well, you won’t have to tell them again. I’m throwing this out.’

‘Oh, Sam, no,’ Jean protested. ‘They don’t mean to play their records so loudly.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘Remember how we used to love music ourselves when we were young.’

Sam slammed the record down on the table and opened the back door, striding down the garden. Jean could see him leaning over the fence at the bottom of the garden. Poor Sam.

The twins came downstairs, looking uncertainly round the door.

‘Where’s Dad?’ Lou asked

‘He’s in the garden.’

‘He took our record.’

‘Well, you’ve both been told often enough not to play them so loudly. It’s bin driving me and your dad mad, and half the street as well, I expect,’ Jean scolded them.

‘Mum, me and Lou have been thinking that we’d like to be singers and make records,’ Sasha informed her.

‘Yes. Like Auntie Francine. Well, like she’d be if she’d made any records. Is that why she’s gone to America?’ Lou asked.

‘Your auntie Francine has gone to America because she’s singing with Gracie Fields, and as to the two of you making records, well, I dare say your dad will have something to say about that,’ Jean warned them firmly.

Sam was still leaning over the fence. Things couldn’t go on like this. Jean wiped her hands on her apron and headed for the back door.

‘Where are you going?’ Lou asked her.

‘Never you mind. You two stay here and no playing any loud music.’

‘I bet she’s gone to talk to Dad,’ Lou told Sasha as soon as Jean had gone.

‘I wish that Luke and Grace were here. It’s horrid without them,’ Sasha sighed.

Sam hadn’t heard her coming, or he was ignoring her, Jean didn’t know which but she did know that the sight of his unmoving back view wrenched at her heart.

The Michaelmas daisies they had planted the year after they had moved in were in full bloom, along with Sam’s prized chrysanthemums, their cheerfulness at odds with the prevailing atmosphere at the Campions’.

As much as she missed Luke and feared for him, which she did, Jean could understand why he had done what he had, and yes, she was even proud of him, though at the same time so very, very frightened for him. But she wasn’t Sam. Luke had not gone against her wishes and her advice; he had not turned his back on her as she knew Sam felt Luke had on him.

She took a deep breath and closed the distance between them. They weren’t a couple who were physically affectionate with one another in public, but instinctively Jean put her arm round Sam and stood close to him. To her relief he didn’t, as she had been half-afraid he might, pull away from her, and when he turned to look at her she saw that there were tears in his eyes.

Her heart trembled and ached for her husband. Oh, Luke! But how could she condemn her son for his father’s pain? She loved them both.

‘Our Reg was seventeen when he went off to war,’ Sam announced without preamble. ‘I can see him now, Jean. A good-looking lad, he was.’

Jean nodded. Sam and his family had lived close by when they were growing up and she could remember Sam’s elder brother.

‘He was always our mam’s favourite.’ Sam’s breath shuddered in his throat. ‘She were never the same after we got the news that he’d been killed. I allus thought that she’d rather it had been me if one of us had to go.’

‘No, Sam, don’t say that,’ Jean begged him, her eyes filling with tears.

‘It was only having that ruddy whooping cough that saved me from going, and I reckon if I had I would have been dead, an’ all.’

Jean nodded again, but didn’t say anything, sensing that now wasn’t the time. She knew the story of how contracting whooping cough and being ill for so long had meant that Sam had been declared unfit for military service, and how although he never said so in so many words, that had left him with a feeling of guilt because his brother who had gone off to war had died whilst he who had not, had lived.

That had been before they had started courting, after the war was over. She had felt only relief when she had heard the story. It always made her heart clench with fear to think how easily she might have lost him before she had even loved him.

‘War does terrible things to a man, Jean. Even them that did come back, they was never the same. You know that.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. Both of them had seen within their own families, and amongst their neighbours, men who had returned from the trenches so changed, both physically and within themselves, by the horrors they had seen and experienced that they were condemned forever to live within the hell of their memories, isolated from those who loved them.

‘We know that, Sam, but Luke’s young. He doesn’t know what we do.’

It was the wrong thing to say. Immediately he tensed. ‘Well, he should do,’ he answered grimly. ‘I’ve told him often enough what happens to men that go to war. But no, he thinks he knows better, he thinks it’s all medals and glory and wearing a ruddy uniform. He doesn’t know the half of it.’

‘He’s got your pride, Sam, you know that.’

‘Aye, well, his pride won’t do him much good when he’s lying face down in the mud and dead, will it?’ His voice was savage with pain.

Jean started to tremble. Sam’s words were conjuring up an all too vivid picture for her. ‘Don’t say things like that,’ she begged him. ‘I can’t bear the thought of it.’

‘Do you think I can? Ruddy young fool. He could have been here, safe … and still have done summat for the war effort. Doing your bit isn’t just about joining the ruddy army. There’s many a chap worked for the Salvage Corps that’s got more guts – aye, wot’s done more for this city than any ruddy soldier.’

Jean reached out to touch him and Sam pulled away, rejecting her unspoken comfort. He felt things so deeply; Jean knew that, even if no one else did. As a young bride it had upset her dreadfully when his occasional dark moods of unhappiness came down over him, causing him to retreat from her into his own pain and silence, until she had learned to understand how affected he had been both by his elder brother’s death and the fact that he had not been able to join up himself.

‘I never thought it would come to this, Jean, that me own son would look at me like he thought I was a coward.’

‘Luke would never do that, Sam.’

‘Looked at me just like me mam did, when Nellie Jefferies from number eleven give me them white feathers,’ Sam told her, ignoring her protest. ‘Walked off, Mam did, and left me there in the street, she was that ashamed of me, and no wonder. Lost three sons and her hubby Nellie had and there was me walking down the street, when every other lad that lived there had gone off to fight.’

There it was, the real unacknowledged source of Sam’s pain, forced down and locked away and now brought back to festering life, moving Jean to an immediate defence of him.

‘Sam, you were ill. The army wouldn’t take you, and if Nellie Jefferies had had any sense she’d have known that.’

‘It wasn’t just her. Even me own mam thought …’ He stopped and shook his head, his jaw set.

Jean had thought that Sam had got over believing that his mother blamed him in some way for living whilst Reg had died. It was such a long time ago. It worried her to hear him talking about it again now and in that kind of voice. She felt guilty for not recognising how he felt.

‘It’s only natural that this war should bring back memories of the last one, Sam. But …’ she hesitated, groping for the words to say what she felt had to be said without making the situation even worse, and could only come up with a lame, ‘well, that’s all in the past now.’

‘Is it?’ Sam challenged her. ‘How can it be, Jean, when me own son is acting just like me mam did and accusing me of being a coward?’

‘Sam, that’s not true at all,’ Jean denied. ‘Luke never said anything of the kind. And as for your mam …’

Jean had to pause then, remembering that Sam’s mother had never really been as loving towards Sam as her own mother had been to her and her sisters. As the young girl Sam was courting she had simply accepted that Sam’s widowed mother was different from her own much more openly affectionate mum without questioning it. In those days young girls were brought up to respect their elders and she would never have dreamed of criticising Sam’s mother, or even of talking about her, to her own mother. However, she could remember now that her own mother had commented that the death of her elder son had turned Sam’s mother ‘a bit funny’.

Sam’s mother had died shortly after Luke had been born, and Jean could remember how hurt she’d been at the way her mother-in-law had turned away from her new grandson the first time she saw him. Afterwards she’d put that down to her being poorly, but maybe there had been more to it than that, and Sam’s mother had resented Sam for being alive whilst her elder son was dead.

‘Well, like I just said,’ she insisted to Sam, ‘our Luke never said anything about you being a coward.’

‘He may not have said it, but it’s what he was thinking. I could see that from the way he was looking at me. And besides, if he hadn’t thought it then he’d have listened to my advice and stayed put.’

‘Sam, that’s nonsense. Luke thinks the world of you, and he always has done. It’s just that he wants to do his bit and to be part of what his friends are doing. It must have been hard for him, listening to all the other lads talking about enlisting.’

She knew immediately that she had said the wrong thing, but it was too late. She could see the tips of Sam’s ears burning dark red with anger.

‘Hard for him? Don’t you think it was hard for me when every lad in our street had gone off to war but for me, and me with me mam hating me for being there and not being our Reg? He was always her favourite.’

Jean searched her mind for something to say that would comfort him and realised that she could not think of anything, not for a pain that went so deep and which had been kept secret until now. Tears blurred her vision; not for Luke but for the young lad her Sam had been.

He’d always had a bit of a soft spot for Vi’s Jack, and had blamed Vi for favouring the other two over him and now suddenly she thought she could understand why.

‘Well, if he was then she was daft, if you ask me,’ she said resolutely. ‘There’s no one who can hold a candle to you for being a good husband and father, Sam.’

When he shifted his weight from one foot to the other in the familiar way that told her that he was taking in what she was saying even if he appeared not to be, she continued determinedly, ‘And it’s not only me that thinks so. It gets on me nerves at times, the number of women that tell me how lucky I am to be married to a chap like you.’ She summoned up a frown and deliberately made herself look severe. ‘Aye, and I’ve a pretty fair notion that more than one of them wouldn’t mind stepping into me shoes if they thought they might get the chance, especially that Dolly Nesbitt wot works in the chippy. Always had a bit of an eye for you, she has.’

‘What, her with the brassy-looking hair that wears all that lipstick? Do me a favour, Jean.’

Jean smiled to herself. She could see that he had begun to perk up a little bit. Not for anything was she going to tell him just how, over the years, she’d looked at her good-looking, tall, broad-shouldered husband and worried that some flighty piece might try to get her hands on him. Not these days, of course. She was too sensible for that now, what with them with a grown-up family, an’ all.

‘Come on in, love,’ she urged Sam. ‘It’s beginning to feel really damp with the dew coming.’ Jean rubbed her arms to take the evening chill out of her flesh, and then smiled when Sam reached for her, putting his arm around her and drawing her into his side.

He felt so warm and solid, so safe and strong, no one who didn’t know him as well as she did could ever guess how vulnerable he could be, especially not Luke, who had always looked up to his father. Sam had never been one to talk about his own youth to his children – he just wasn’t that sort. Jean leaned gratefully into his warmth.

‘Our Luke is so young, Jean. All I wanted to do was to keep him safe.’

‘I know, love.’

‘Looked at me like he hated me, he did.’

‘He’ll be missing you, Sam. Allus thought the world of you, our Luke has, right from the start. Remember how it was always you that could stop him crying when he was teething and not me?’

She could feel his chest lift as he gave a reluctant laugh.

‘Aye, I can see him now sitting there, watching for me coming in. It’s a strange thing, you know, Jean, holding a little ’un and knowing that you’ve helped make it, knowing that you’ve helped give it life. It makes you feel that you can never stop worrying, never stop looking out for it, and at the same time it fills your heart with so much happiness that it could almost burst.’ Sam shook his head.

Jean said nothing. As a mother she knew all too well the feelings Sam was struggling to explain.