It was over, the most exhausting and testing three months of their lives, they all agreed, followed by the longest and most fear-inducing three days when they had sat their exams, and now, after lunch, they would be summoned individually to see Matron to get their results.

A pass meant going on to the wards to continue training; a fail meant handing in the uniform and going home.

‘I had to do a many-tailed bandage for an abdomen wound,’ Hannah groaned. ‘I’m sure I got it wrong. Remember when Sister Tutor was showing us how she said my bandaging looked like a badly made birds’ nest and yours showed a sense of balance and order, Grace.’

‘I remember how I burned the consommé we had to make for sippy two diets,’ Grace shuddered. ‘I was dreading having to do one for my practical.’

‘What did you have to do, Grace?’

Grace grimaced and said succinctly, ‘Trays and Trolleys.’

During their three-month training they had had to learn by heart how to set up seventy-two different trays and trolleys in their individual specific order.

‘First she asked me to make up a tray for passing the flatus tube, then a trolley for a patient’s bath, then she asked me to bandage the left eye. I’m never going to pass.’

They only had fifteen minutes in which to do the practical side of their exams and every part was timed to ensure that they could complete the set tasks in the allotted time.

‘I was so nervous by the time I did the bandaging that I nearly dropped the bandage, and I’m sure I took longer than I should have done,’ Jennifer chimed in, her Yorkshire accent even stronger than normal with nerves.

They were all in the dining room, letting off steam and commiserating with one another after the ordeal. Of the girls who had started out at the same time as Grace, three had dropped out within the first week and another three at the end of the first month.

She just knew she wouldn’t pass, Grace decided. She had done so many things wrong. The other girls were all saying the same thing as they exchanged stories and comforted one another.

‘I know how a condemned man must feel now when he eats his last meal,’ Iris announced theatrically, tucking into her lunch. Most of the girls, including Grace, were too on edge to want to eat, even though their set were all sitting down together at the table.

Jennifer shuddered as she looked down at Iris’s plate of rissoles and cabbage.

‘I don’t know how you can eat anything, Iris, never mind Cook’s rissoles. I swear she puts in the gristly bits on purpose.’

Grace felt slightly sick in a way that had nothing to do with their lunch menu. Her heart was thudding with nervous anxiety.

‘How’s that good-looking ambulance driver that’s taken such a fancy to you, Grace?’ Lillian asked teasingly.

Grace had learned how to stop herself from blushing whenever Teddy’s name was mentioned. They weren’t exactly an item, but Teddy did seem to manage to be ‘around’ rather a lot, teasing her and complimenting her and making it plain that he enjoyed her company.

‘I’m sure I don’t know now what you mean,’ Grace responded with dignity, and then started to giggle as she admitted, ‘He’s asked me out to see a matinée tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Well, you tell him there’s to be no sitting in the back row and no trying to persuade you to give him the kiss of life neither,’ Doreen joked.

This time Grace did blush. Whilst it was true that things hadn’t got anywhere near as far as that between them, there was no denying that she had wondered what it would be like to be kissed by Teddy and she had decided that she would rather like to find out, she admitted.

They had been told that with Christmas only a week away, and the phoney war, as it was now referred to in the papers, making it seem as though they weren’t really at war at all – despite the sandbags, blackout, ARP wardens and other paraphernalia of civil defence – those who passed their exams would be allowed a week off to be with their families before their on-the-ward training began. But of course she wasn’t going to pass, Grace reminded herself woefully, not with the mess she had made of that eye bandage.

‘Home Sister’s just come in,’ Hannah hissed warningly.

They all looked towards the door where Home Sister was standing, her hands folded in front of her whilst she surveyed the dining room.

A sharp clap of her hands brought instant silence to the room, and then automatically the trainees pushed back their chairs and stood up facing the doorway. If there was one thing they had all learned, Grace reflected, it was that it was wise to accord immediate obedience to any of Sister’s commands.

‘I shall call out your names in alphabetical order and when you hear your name you will present yourself without delay to Matron MacDonald in my office.’

Grace felt as though her legs had turned to jelly and her stomach to liquid dread. At least she wasn’t too far down the alphabet. She dreaded to think what state she could be in had she been a Wilson or a Wood.

‘Campion, Matron.’

‘Thank you, Sister.’

Grace was sure that Matron must be able to hear her knees knocking together as she stood nervously in front of her, whilst one of the sister tutors stood discreetly to one side of her.

Grace had only seen Matron once before, the day after the trainees had first arrived, when she had given them a warning speech about how hard they would have to work and how high the hospital’s standards were. She had warned them then that many of them would not be able to meet those high standards, and now here she was, having failed them, Grace thought miserably, as she saw how Matron frowned as she looked down at the papers on her desk.

Abruptly she lifted her head and looked at Grace, subjecting her to gimlet-eyed scrutiny, before saying crisply, ‘Passed.’

Passed? She had passed? Grace didn’t know what to say or do. She heard Sister Tutor clearing her throat warningly and just about managed to gather her wits together sufficiently to stammer, ‘Thank you, Matron,’ before backing out of the door that Sister Tutor was now holding open for her.

She had passed. She was going to be a nurse; a proper nurse. Grace felt like turning cartwheels and whooping with joy, just like the twins did when they were excited. Giggles bubbled up inside her at the thought of Sister Tutor’s reaction if she were actually to do so. She would probably be dismissed on the spot, or put in a strait-jacket.

All the girls, they discovered later, on being given their results, had been instructed either to return to their individual rooms to pack their things prior to leaving the hospital, or to go and be measured for their new uniforms. The dining room that evening positively hummed with the sound of young female voices forced down to the low tone they had been instructed to use as trainee nurses, as they exchanged results.

Grace’s group were thrilled that all six of them had passed. They congratulated one another happily and exchanged horror stories of just what they had done wrong in their exams.

‘Have you been told yet what ward you’re going to be on?’ Hannah asked Grace.

‘Yes. Men’s surgical. What about you?’

‘Theatre,’ Hannah told her, pulling a face. ‘I’m pleased in a way, but I hope I don’t disgrace myself by fainting the first time I have to help scrub up for an operation. I’ve heard that some of the housemen take bets on how quickly new nurses faint their first time in theatre.’

‘You won’t faint,’ Grace told her firmly.

‘I hope I don’t. Did they tell you you had to be on the ward at seven thirty a.m?’

‘Yes,’ Grace confirmed, as the others chimed in with details of the wards they were to be in.

‘I was told we’d have to move our things out of our rooms and that we’d be given new rooms in the nurses’ home when we report for duty on the Monday evening,’ Iris offered. ‘I’ve heard it’s like a prison over there with all the rules they’ve got.’

‘All I want to think about right now is having a week off,’ said Lillian.

‘Did you see the queue to use the telephone?’ Jennifer groaned. ‘I’m not bothering. I’m going to wait until I get home to tell everyone.’

Grace had come to the same decision. She still couldn’t quite believe that she had actually passed, and she couldn’t stop smiling either.

‘What do you mean, there’s no supper?’

Bella tossed her head and glared at Alan as he stormed into the kitchen. She was very proud of her kitchen. Everything in it was brand-new, including her Cannon gas cooker, in the very latest design. Its cream enamel was matched by the set of pans and oven dishes they had received as a wedding present. Not that she planned to use her cooker very much.

Her mother had had the white curtains, with the red cherry design on them, and the frill across the top of the window made for her. They had chosen the fabric together in Lewis’s. A matching gathered skirt on elastic discreetly covered the space beneath the draining board and under the sink. A new gas water heater has been installed to one side of the kitchen window, and the smart linoleum on the floor made the rag rugs that Alan’s mother had on her kitchen floor look very shabby indeed in comparison.

A decorator had been hired to distemper the walls pale yellow, and the oilcloth covering the kitchen table matched the pattern on the curtains.

The house had a good-sized walk-in pantry with stone shelves and plenty of storage space, but Bella had still insisted on having a kitchen dresser with shelves at the top and two cupboards underneath.

‘I mean that there’s no supper,’ she told him, turning up the dial on the wireless and pretending to concentrate on the sound of Judy Garland singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’

‘When a man comes in from work, he ruddy well expects his wife to have his supper ready for him,’ Alan bellowed at her, red-faced, as he strode over to the wireless and turned down the volume.

‘Work? You?’ Bella scoffed. ‘That will be the day, or has your father given you a job drinking G and Ts now? Mind you, he should because it’s all you’re fit for.’ She turned the volume back up and started to hum along to the song.

She had spent the afternoon with her mother. They had gone to see a film together and then she had gone back to her parents where her mother had cooked her some supper.

With her father being so busy with all the extra work he was getting from the Ministry and no Charlie to help him, he was working all hours God sent, as Vi put it, and Bella knew that her mother welcomed her company.

It was certainly far more pleasant going back home and being spoiled by her mother than staying here on her own or, even worse, having to put up with a husband who seemed to think a wife was some kind of skivvy on hand to wait on him hand and foot, instead of someone he should cherish and adore.

‘Now listen, you,’ Alan yelled, grabbing hold of Bella’s arm and forcing her round to face him.

‘Let go of me,’ Bella yelled back.

‘This is my house and I’ll do what I ruddy well like in it,’ Alan told her.

‘Your house? That’s a joke,’ Bella taunted him. ‘It’s my father that bought it and you’d better just remember that. And if you want some supper you can go round to your parents and get your mother to make it for you,’ she finished triumphantly.

She knew perfectly well that he wouldn’t dare go to them in the state he was in, smelling of drink and hardly able to stand up properly.

‘I should have married Trixie and not you. Things would have been different then.’

‘Well, you didn’t, did you? You’re going to have to tell that father of yours he needs to pay you more, as well. I had to ask Mummy to help me out with the housekeeping again this week.’

‘If you didn’t waste so ruddy much, you’d have plenty.’

‘Plenty? You spend more on petrol for that car of yours than you give me. Daddy was saying that he’s surprised you can still get so much petrol.’

In fact what her father had actually said was that the Parkers must have access to someone who was prepared to let them have more fuel than the Government was allowing for private use – but at a price – and that he wouldn’t mind knowing where they were getting it from as he could do with a bit more himself. Bella wasn’t going to say that to Alan, of course. She didn’t want him thinking that he was going to get her to ask him for something. He’d love that.

She had never imagined that marriage would be like this. She had expected Alan to spoil her and give in to her in exactly the same way as her parents had. But instead … her mouth tightened.

Her mother had tried to ask her if Alan was ‘being a good husband’ to her, as she had put it, and Bella had known from the look of embarrassment on her mother’s face that she had been asking if Alan was fulfilling his marital duties in the bedroom. What a joke that was! They had been married going on for three months now and there’d only been one occasion in the whole of that time when he’d managed to get his ‘thing’ hard enough to be a proper husband to her. Not that she intended to tell her mother the truth – or anyone else. She had smiled sweetly instead and nodded her head, knowing that her mother wouldn’t pursue the subject. No, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Bella was determined that they must think of her marriage as perfect.

Not that she minded all that much about Alan’s failure in the bedroom department. It wasn’t her fault, after all. Alan could bluster and complain all he liked, but they both knew that his inability to do what a husband was supposed to do with his wife had given her the upper hand, Bella thought triumphantly. One word from her to anyone else about his failure and he’d be a laughing stock, and she’d told him so. His failure put her in a position of power, so far as she was concerned. She didn’t need to do anything to try to please him if she didn’t feel like it, and that included cooking his meals.

‘I’ve ordered tickets for us for the Tennis Club New Year’s Eve dance, and you’d better stay sober because I’m not having you showing me up,’ she warned him.

She’d already got her eye on the new dress she wanted; the kind of dress, with its low neckline, that an unmarried girl like Trixie couldn’t possibly wear even if she had the looks for it, but in which she, as a married woman, would easily outshine every other woman there. Alan was a very lucky man. Far luckier than he deserved to be. It was a pity Alan had had so much to drink, because she wished that he would go to his mother’s for his supper. She wanted to try out that new nail polish she’d persuaded her mother to buy for her and listen to the wireless in peace. Thinking of her mother reminded her of the conversation they had had.

‘Oh, and we’re going to my parents for our Christmas dinner,’ she told Alan.

‘I told you last week that we were going to mine.’

‘Did you? I must have forgotten,’ Bella told him insincerely.

‘Bitch.’ Alan swore at her as he made another grab for her, lunging towards her and then staggering into the table when Bella sidestepped him neatly.

He was always aggressive and inclined to violence when he’d been drinking. She made to step past him, but he moved faster than she had anticipated, trapping her with the weight of his body, just like he did in bed, but now against the door.

She gave him a withering look and then gasped in shocked pain when he thumped her in the stomach. The pain sent her sick and too dizzy to move, fury filling her that he should dare to treat her like this. But then he hit her again and again and her fury became fear and that fear became a pain that overwhelmed and enveloped her to become a red haze of agony splintered by his continuing blows, until mercifully oblivion overtook her.

Bella came round to the savage thrust of Alan’s body within her own. Slowly and painfully she opened her eyes. She knew she was still in the kitchen, because from where she was lying she could see the blurry outline of the legs of the kitchen table. She shifted her gaze to Alan, too weak to do anything other than focus helplessly on the blind fixed expression of hatred and triumph contorting his face, as he thrust violently into her, the friction of his movements within her unwelcoming body a fresh source of pain.

His lips were curled back against his teeth, his eyes narrowed and glittering.

‘Bitch! Bitch!’ He all but screamed the word at her when he saw that her eyes were open, his breath coming in short excited bursts until finally his frenzy overwhelmed him and it was over. The movement of his body blotted out the light as he leaned over her, his fingers fastening in her hair and then tightening, bringing fresh pain as he lifted her head and then banged it down hard on the linoleum, allowing her to escape back into nothingness.