Well, it had just better work, that was all, Bella thought fiercely. Six times now she had had to put up with ‘doing it’, Alan panting and grunting on top of her. The first night, after he’d said he wanted to listen to the wireless and then fallen fast asleep the minute he’d got into bed with her, had been the worst.

First she’d had to wake him up. Then when she had, he pushed ‘it’ into her hand and made her touch it, his breath stinking of beer as he moaned and groaned. And then as if that hadn’t been bad enough, when he’d finally ‘done it’ inside her, he’d made a funny sort of noise and shouted out Trixie’s name at the top of his voice before rolling off her and then falling back asleep before she could say anything.

The horrible unwanted Polish refugees she was forced to have living with her were bound to have heard him. In fact, she knew they must have done because the daughter had given her such a smug look in the morning.

Bella didn’t know which she hated the most, Alan or what she was having to do. One thing she was determined on, though: Trixie was going to be put in her place and her nose very firmly rubbed in the dirt. Alan was her husband, and she intended to make sure that Trixie was forced to accept the public shame of what she had made herself.

Once Bella had set her mind to something she didn’t give up easily and so every night since she’d seen Alan kissing Trixie, she’d waited for him to get into bed and then she’d made sure that he did ‘it’.

Men were supposed to do anything you wanted them to do once you’d let them do it, but instead of being grateful to her, Alan had been even worse-tempered and horrible than normal. It was all right for Trixie, sitting there in that office, thinking she was something special because Alan was kissing her. Bella was ready to bet that she wouldn’t be making up to him the way she was if she knew how rough and horrible he could be. Bella had bruises all over her body from him grabbing and pinching her.

When he was doing it he looked at her as though he hated her, and wanted to hurt her, his face hard and angry. Well he’d be sorry for the way he’d behaved when he found out she was going to have a baby. They all would. She could see herself now, pushing her smart new pram, and getting admiring and envious looks from everyone who saw her. She’d insist on Alan’s father getting rid of Trixie, of course. At first she’d just drop a few hints to Alan’s mother about it not being right that Trixie was there, and then she’d come right out and tell her why – and in front of Trixie and her parents. Oh, she was looking forward to that, and to the humiliation that Trixie would suffer.

Then she’d tell those wretched refugees that they had to go. She couldn’t be expected to have strangers living with her when she was having a baby. Where was Alan? If he was letting that Trixie make up to him … Bella didn’t like the feeling that thinking about seeing Alan kissing Trixie gave her, so she decided to ignore it. Alan would have to start giving her more housekeeping, of course. She would have to buy lots of things for the baby – and for herself.

Francine looked anxiously at her watch.

‘Vi said she’d be here at two and it’s half-past now.’

‘She’s probably been delayed,’ said Jean. She was every bit as anxious as Francine, although she was trying very hard not to show it.

‘If she doesn’t come I’m going to go over there and see her.’

Jean’s anxiety grew as she heard the desperation in Fran’s voice. ‘She will come, Fran, I’m sure of it,’ she tried to sooth her.

‘It certainly put the wind up her when I telephoned her and told her that if she didn’t I’d be over there. Edwin’s probably told her not to let me into the house. He never liked me, and he certainly doesn’t approve of me.’

‘Sam reckons Edwin looks down on all of us,’ Jean told her, and then paused, wanting to warn Francine not to expect too much from Vi or to get her hopes up too high, but worried that if she did she might only make matters worse. ‘Vi’s changed, Fran. You’ll see that for yourself, you not having seen her for so long. I suppose it’s only natural, what with Edwin’s doing so well for himself.’

‘You always did defend her, Jean.’

‘She means well, but she likes having her own way. She always has, and she doesn’t take kindly to being criticised.’

Francine pounced immediately, demanding sharply, ‘You don’t think I should be doing this, do you?’

Her voice might sound sharp but Jean could hear the telltale emotional break in it. Her heart ached for Fran, but she knew what Vi could be like. The truth was that it was little Jack himself she was most worried about – and about whom she felt so much guilt. She struggled to find the right words to calm Francine down and yet at the same time acknowledge her own sympathy for her.

‘I didn’t think it was right them sending Jack away myself,’ she told her truthfully, ‘but you know what Vi’s like once someone gets her back up. She wouldn’t even give me his address so I could send him his Christmas presents. Said I had to give them to her and she’d send them. That did shock me, her not having him back home for Christmas,’ Jean admitted, ‘but—’

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Francine stopped her. ‘You’re going to remind me that Vi is the one who has the right to say where he should go and what he should do.’

Jean looked at her, her heart filled with pain for her. ‘Vi and Edwin are his parents, love.’

‘Yes, I know that. And I’ve no room to talk, I know. It’s just—’ she broke off as they heard the front doorbell.

‘That will be Vi now,’ said Jean. ‘I’ll go and let her in.’

‘About time, Jean. I’ve been standing here for ages,’ said Vi sharply.

‘You’ve only just rung the bell,’ Jean told her twin mildly.

‘I really haven’t got time for this, what with all I’ve got to do. I’m the second in charge at our WVS now, you know, and I have responsibilities.’

Jean thought privately that no responsibility could be greater than the one a woman owed her child but she knew better than to say so.

Vi was on the attack the minute she walked into the kitchen, refusing to be parted from her expensive coat. She might be smartly dressed in her plum-coloured Jaegar skirt and toning twinset, but she had thickened out over the years, much more than Jean had herself, and in Jean’s eyes Vi looked nowhere near as elegant as Fran. Say what you liked, their younger sister stood out a mile as someone who had lived a different life, in her black woollen dress with its white collar and cuffs. Fran looked so bandbox smart she could have stepped right out of the pages of one of those expensive magazines that Vi boasted about reading.

Both Vi and Francine looked out of place in her kitchen, Jean thought. You’d never have imagined looking at the three of them now that they’d all grown up in the same shabby little terraced house with no proper bathroom. Not that she envied either of her sisters their material success, not one little bit. Jean reckoned that of the three of them she was the one who was the happiest.

‘It really is most inconvenient, me having to come here,’ Vi was saying crossly, ‘and it’s very selfish of you to carry on like this, Francine.’

‘All I want is the address of where Jack is staying. You could have saved yourself a journey if you’d given it to me straight off when I asked.’

For a moment Vi looked taken aback, and Jean guessed that her twin had still been thinking of Fran as the cowed sixteen-year-old she had last seen nearly ten years ago.

‘I don’t know why you should be making all this fuss anyway, Francine. What business is it of yours where Jack is? You haven’t seen him since he was born,’ Vi reminded her, then rounded on her twin. ‘This is all down to you, Jean, making trouble, because you haven’t had the good sense to evacuate your two.’

‘Don’t go blaming Jean, Vi,’ Fran answered. ‘It’s me that has asked after Jack and wants to know where he is.’

‘Well, you can ask all you like. I’m not telling you. I’m not having him upset when he’s settled. I’ll thank you to remember that me and Edwin are his parents.’

‘You aren’t acting much like parents, are you, sending him away and not even having him home for Christmas? And as for your Edwin, I reckon he never wanted him in the first place.’

Vi’s face was blotched with angry colour. ‘You’ve got no right to say that.’

Jean went cold and her heart missed a beat. She had been hoping against hope that Vi would not say that. But now it was too late, she had said it, and Francine had drawn herself up to her full height, which was a good two inches taller than Vi, closer to four with those high-heeled shoes she was wearing.

‘Oh yes I have.’

Francine’s voice was as soft as butter but as clear as the noonday sun. It shattered the careful ten-year-old fiction they had all spun between them with all the force of one of Hitler’s bombs being dropped on a glasshouse, and to just as devastating an effect.

‘After all,’ Francine pointed out fiercely, ‘Jack is my son.’

Jean bit her lip. This was what she had been dreading from the minute she had opened her front door and seen Fran standing there. There had been something she had seen in Fran’s eyes that had warned her that it wasn’t just the war that had brought her sister back. Even so, she truly believed that if Francine had seen that Jack was happy and loved by Vi and Edwin, she wouldn’t have said anything. After all, it was plain that she loved her son and wanted the best for him.

Francine had been so young when she had had Jack, and unmarried. Jean would have taken Jack herself if she hadn’t been so ill, and then afterwards, when she had lost her own baby, she had wished desperately that she had had Jack, but it had been too late then. Vi and Edwin had stepped in and offered to take Jack and bring him up as theirs.

‘He’s been nothing but hard work since we took him in,’ Vi was raging now. She had never liked being put on the spot or criticised, and of course she was taking it out on Francine. ‘There’s bad blood in him and no mistake.’

‘He’s a little boy,’ Francine protested furiously. ‘All you had to do was love him; that was all. But you don’t love him. If you did he’d be here with you, not sent away to live with strangers.’

‘Me and Edwin have done our duty by him and by you. I don’t know how you dare speak to me as you are doing after the shame you brought on yourself. The shame you could have brought on all of us if it had got out what you’d done. There’s many a man would have said that kind of child should be sent to an orphanage and not brought up in a decent family. I’ve done my best with him but when there’s bad blood there it always comes out. If you ask me it will do him good to find out how lucky he was when me and Edwin had him. Teach him a bit of a lesson.’

‘I want to know where he is.’

‘Well, I’m not telling you.’

‘It’s only natural that Fran should want to see Jack, Vi,’ Jean intervened to try to calm things down. ‘I’d like to go and visit him meself, the poor little lad. I know how busy you are with your war work an’ all.’ She paused and looked at Francine, whose eyes were shining with tears. ‘After all, Fran does have the right, and I can’t see that it would do any harm.’

‘That’s the trouble with you, Jean: you’re far too ready to see more good in people than there is. Edwin was right. He warned me that no good would come of us having Jack. And as for you, Francine, I’ve never heard of such ingratitude. In your shoes I’d certainly not want to be talking about what I’d done, but then of course I’d never have done something so shameful.’

‘You’re right you wouldn’t – not with your Edwin.’

Francine’s temper was up now, Jean recognised and her anxiety grew.

Vi’s mouth had gone thin and vengeful. ‘You’re a disgrace to our family and you should have stayed in America. That way I wouldn’t have to be reminded that my sister was an unmarried mother and wouldn’t even tell anyone who the father was – if she knew.’

Francine went white and for a moment Jean feared for her self-control, but Francine simply drew in her breath and then let it out again unsteadily.

‘I wanted to take Jack to America with me where we could have a new start, but you begged me to let you have him. You said that he would have a better life with you, that I wouldn’t be able to give him the time or the love that you could because I’d be on my own and working. You said that if I really loved him then I’d let you have him because you and Edwin could give him so much more than I could. You said that you would be the best mother in the world to him and that Edwin would be his father. You said all those things to me, Vi, but none of them were true were they, because if they were then Jack would be at home with you.’

Tears filled Jean’s eyes. She really felt for Fran and always had done; right from the moment Fran had come to her and told her about her trouble and the man who had caused it. Not that Jean would ever have dreamed of telling Vi the name of Jack’s real father, knowing how her twin felt about actors and the stage.

‘This is ridiculous. There’s a war on in this country, I’ll have you know, and it was the Government that said that children should be evacuated, not me and Edwin.’ Vi was blustering now. ‘We’ve done our best for him and no one could have done any more, but he’s not been an easy child. I’ve never known a baby cry so much, or be so sickly. Drove Edwin mad, it did; kept us all awake and upset poor Bella dreadfully. She couldn’t bring her school friends home because of him. He was that slow at walking we thought there must be something wrong with him. Edwin reckons that Jack hasn’t got a brain in his head.’

‘Give over do, Vi,’ Jean stopped her firmly. ‘Sam says he’s proper bright and you’ve said yourself that he’s always got his nose in a book.’ She turned to her younger sister. ‘He’s a lovely lad, Fran, a son anyone could be proud of.’

‘Well, you and me have got very different opinions of what makes a mother proud, then, Jean. That’s all I can say,’ said Vi.

Nothing that either of them could say to her could persuade Vi to change her mind and tell them where Jack was, and as Jean confided to Sam that night when they were in bed, she reckoned that Vi knew she had done wrong but was refusing to admit it.

‘I never thought I’d say this about me own twin, Sam, but what she’s done is downright wicked. Poor Francine went up to Grace’s room after she’d gone and cried her eyes out. I felt for her, I really did.’

‘I said all along that no good would come of your Vi having Jack,’ Sam reminded her.

‘I should have teken him meself and I blame meself for not doing, Sam. Poor Fran’s that upset.’

‘There was nothing you could have done, not with you being so poorly.’

In Grace’s bedroom Francine lay awake and dryeyed, looking up through the darkness. Jack. The pain that tore at her was as real and as sharp as the birth pangs she had felt bringing him into the world. She could remember his birth as clearly as though it had only been yesterday. She had been so frightened when she had first realised that she was pregnant. She hadn’t even known what was happening to her at first, and then when she had she had been terrified. Con had already deserted her and she had known there was no point in turning to him for help.

Vi had been wrong about one thing. Con had been both her first and her only lover. Frightened though she had been to discover she was pregnant, she wasn’t going to pretend that she hadn’t enjoyed what had led to that pregnancy. Con had known all the right moves and all the right touches all right, and besotted with him as she was, she had been swept away on a tide of physical longing that had been at full flood. That, though, had been before she had learned that he was married and that she was just one in a long line of girls he had seduced and then abandoned. She had made a promise to herself when it was all over and she was on her way to America that she would never make a fool of herself in the same way again, and she had stuck to that promise, not risking dating any of the many men who had asked her out just in case the body she didn’t feel she could trust any more betrayed her a second time.

She had hated giving Jack up but she had wanted to do the best for him. Despite the disgrace and shame she had brought on herself she had loved Jack from the first minute she had held him in her arms; loved him with a helpless aching love that she hadn’t expected and didn’t understand. She had been sixteen when he had been born, and when Vi had told her that the best thing she could do for him would be to allow her and Edwin to bring him up as their own son she had let her elder sister convince her that giving him up was what was best for him. Jean had been too ill to help her, too ill for her even to talk to her after the tragic death of her own baby. Poor Jean. Francine could only imagine what she must have suffered, knowing how badly she had ached physically as well as emotionally for her own baby in those first months without him, waking up wanting him and going to sleep crying for him. The only thing that kept her going had been her belief that she had done the right thing for him.

‘Come on, Grace, it will be fun going dancing. You might even get that chap of yours on the floor for a smoochy number if you’re lucky.’

‘Me and Teddy don’t want to go dancing, all right?’ All Grace had done since Teddy had told her about his heart had been worry about him. When she was with him she was constantly begging him not to overdo things, constantly trying to make sure that when they were together they didn’t walk too far or do too much, and the anxiety was wearing her down. It wasn’t like worrying about Luke being in France or worrying about Hitler invading England. Those were worries that she shared with other people, and that somehow made them easier to bear. And as well as feeling anxious she also felt guilty. Guilty because she was well and Teddy was not.

‘All right,’ Lillian answered her snappily. ‘Keep your hair on. I was only asking. Don’t come with us then.’

‘No I won’t,’ Grace agreed, equally snappy, picking up the notes she had been studying.

She might as well go to her room as stay here and fall out with Lillian. If Teddy had been properly well she’d have loved to go dancing, and she knew that if she were to tell him what the rest of her set were planning and that they were included, he’d have been eager to join in. But how could she let him? What if something were to happen to him?

She pushed her textbooks to one side and looked towards the window. They were back to double summer time now and the last of the day’s sun was warming her room.

There was a brief knock on her door.

‘It’s only me,’ Hannah called out.

Grace opened the door to let her in.

‘Are you OK, Grace?’ she asked, ‘only you haven’t seemed yourself just lately, and you were a bit sharp with Lillian. Is it because of your brother? I know he’s still writing to her.’

Grace shook her head. ‘No. It’s nothing,’ she lied. Tears brimmed in her eyes. Cross with herself, she wiped them away. ‘I’m sorry, Hannah. I don’t want to cause any upset.’

It was true that she wasn’t particularly fond of Lillian, but the other girl was a member of their set, and that meant that traditionally they owed one another a certain loyalty.

Hannah came in and closed the door behind her. ‘Look, if it’s the work, Grace, or if something’s happened on the ward, well, there’s nothing to be ashamed of in saying so. There’s been several girls drop out since we started out training, although … well, I’d got you down as the sort who would see things through.’

‘It isn’t the work … or anyone on the ward. It’s … it’s Teddy,’ Grace admitted.

‘You’ve had a fall-out?’ Hannah guessed. ‘And that’s why you don’t want to go dancing.’

It was no use, she would have to tell Hannah, Grace recognised, otherwise she would be imagining all sorts of things that just weren’t true.

‘We haven’t had a fall-out,’ she told her carefully. ‘But Teddy can’t go dancing, Hannah. In fact, he can’t do very much at all. He’s very poorly, you see.’

Hannah listened in silence whilst Grace explained, waiting until she had finished to say shakily, ‘Oh, Grace, how awful.’

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ agreed Grace bleakly. ‘But you mustn’t say anything to anyone, Hannah. Please promise me you won’t. Teddy doesn’t want anyone fussing. That’s what’s making me so on edge, knowing that he won’t be careful. I’m so afraid for him. It’s on my mind all the time. I can’t understand why he’s doing what he is. He didn’t need to volunteer to drive an ambulance. He could be living quietly at home resting, but he says … he says … he says …’ Grace couldn’t go on. Her emotions had overwhelmed her. She could tell, though, from Hannah’s expression that she understood what she was trying to say.

‘I’ll have a word with Lillian, if you like, and tell her that you’ve not been feeling too good.’

Grace gave her a weak smile. ‘Well, you won’t be able to tell her that I’m having me monthlies.’

Hannah laughed. They had all been bemused at first when their periods had altered so that they all had them at virtually the same time but then Doreen had discovered from one of the more senior nurses that this was something that tended to happen when young women lived and worked together closely.

It just had to have happened, that was all, because if it hadn’t … Bella felt sick with fury at just the thought of what had occurred yesterday when she had called round at Alan’s parents. She, Trixie, had been there, sitting in the garden with Alan’s mother, whilst Trixie’s own mother and Alan’s fussed round her. None of them had seen her at first. Trixie was crying, her plain face looking even plainer. Alan’s mother had been holding her hand, comforting her, telling her quite openly that Alan had made a terrible mistake in marrying Bella.

That was when Trixie had seen her and had pretended to be embarrassed, but of course Bella had known she wasn’t.

Bella had been so furious that she had confronted the three of them there and then.

‘Well, Alan is married to me whether you like it or not,’ she had said, ‘and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ And then she had left and gone round to her mother’s, but her mother hadn’t been there so she had had to come home.

Just let them wait, all of them. She’d make them sorry and she’d give their precious Trixie something to really cry about when she dropped a few hints to other people about keeping their husbands away from her because she was the kind that went after married men.

The back door opened and the refugees, as Bella insisted on mentally referring to Bettina and her mother, came in.

‘What do you two want?’ Bella demanded, taking her bad temper out on them.

‘It is time for my mother to eat and have a rest,’ Bettina told her.

‘If she wants to eat you can take her to a café. And as for her resting, it’s high time she did a bit of work. This kitchen floor needs a good scrub—’ Bella broke off as the door opened a second time and a man followed them in and went to join them.

Bettina immediately linked arms with him, all over him like a rash. Bella could see why. He was extraordinarily handsome, tall, with very dark hair cut short. But no matter how handsome he was he had no right to be here.

‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing,’ Bella told Bettina nastily, ‘but I’ll tell you what you’re not doing and that’s bringing your fancy man here to this house.’

Bella looked at him as she spoke. He was looking back at her with angry contempt. He turned to Bettina and said something to her in Polish.

‘Jan is my brother,’ Bettina told Bella proudly. ‘He is here in England with the Polish Air Force and he has come to see our mother, who is not well. He will be staying here with us for two days whilst he is on leave.’

‘Staying here? In this house? My house? He most certainly will not.’

‘You have the spare room – why should he not stay? Your Government is paying you for the use of two of your bedrooms already, although you have forced Mama and I to share one.’

Bella could feel her temper rising. How dare this … this nobody, who did not even have a country any more, start acting as though she had the right to make demands?

The mother had started to cough, just like she did at night. Bella glared at her whilst Bettina and her brother fussed over her.

‘There’s nothing wrong with her, you know. She just puts it on for sympathy.’

They were speaking in Polish again, and ignoring her, whilst Jan guided his mother to a chair, and Bettina filled the kettle and put it on the stove.

‘I’m not putting up with this,’ Bella began, but Bettina overruled her, telling her fiercely, ‘It is you who is making my mother ill. Do you really think that we want to be here, living like this, in this? At home in Poland we had—’ She stopped, bright red spots of colour burning in her face, and then continued passionately. ‘My father was a well-known and respected medical specialist. We lived in a beautiful and very old house. Our home was filled with music and laughter and friends. It was a life that someone like you could never understand. My parents loved one another very dearly and you could not understand that either. You, who has a husband who never wants to come home and who when he does needs to get himself drunk before he can bear to be with you. You see, it is as I told you, Jan,’ she continued, turning to her brother. ‘We must find somewhere else to live. I have complained already to the organisation that put us here and they have promised to find us somewhere else as soon as they can.’

Bella couldn’t believe her ears. Bettina had complained about her?

‘You come over here to our country,’ she raged at her, ‘where you don’t belong, expecting to be housed and fed by our government. You take jobs from our men and you can’t even speak English properly, and then you dare to complain? Why don’t you go back where you came from?’

Bettina burst into a torrent of Polish, stopping only when her brother put his hand on her arm and shook his head slightly before turning towards Bella, and telling her coldly, ‘You are the most despicable person I have ever met.’

Then, without waiting for Bella to respond, he went to his mother and said gently, ‘Come, Mama, lean on me. Yes, that’s it. Now we will go upstairs and you will rest, and then tonight I shall take you both out for a meal.’

Now the three of them were behaving as though she didn’t exist, Bella saw wrathfully. If anyone needed helping upstairs for a rest it was her, not their mother, because she really did feel very odd all of a sudden. Very odd indeed.

‘Look.’ Gently but very firmly Teddy put his hands on Grace’s shoulders and gave her a small shake. ‘Stop worrying about me, please. Everything’s fine. I’m fine. The thing you should be worrying about is this war, not me, Grace.’

‘It’s easy for you to say that. How can I stop worrying when I know …?’ Too late Grace realised what she had said. Of course it wasn’t easy for him. How could it be?

‘I shouldn’t have told you.’ Teddy sounded weary and his smile had gone.

They’d taken the ferry across to New Brighton because Teddy had said that it was a shame not to enjoy the spring sunshine even if they couldn’t walk on the beach because of its fortifications against enemy landings, and now Grace felt guilty because she’d spoiled what should have been a happy day out.

‘You mustn’t say that,’ she told him, fishing in her pocket for her handkerchief in case she disgraced herself by starting to cry. The beaches looked so ugly and frightening with the defences in place. She wished passionately that things were different, that there was no war and that Teddy could be well.

‘I’m glad you told me, I really am.’ It was the truth. ‘I would have hated it if … if I hadn’t known,’ she finished lamely.

‘I told you because I wanted there to be honesty between us, Grace, and because, selfishly, I wanted you to be the one I could turn to and talk to.’

‘You can talk to me, Teddy,’ insisted Grace.

Teddy shook his head, the soft floppiness of his hair already tangled slightly by the sea breeze. ‘No I can’t. Not as I want to. Just then you were going to say you’d have hated it afterwards if you hadn’t known, but you didn’t say it. That isn’t being straight about things, Grace. That is not what I want. I know it’s hard for you, and I know I’m asking a lot of you, things that I don’t have any right to ask. I don’t want you fussing like me mum, or thinking the worst every time you don’t see me for a few days. What I want more than anything else is to live whilst I can. I want to share that living with you, Grace, but what I don’t want when I’m gone is … One day, Gracie, you’ll meet someone and fall in love.’

Grace made a small murmur of distress but Teddy shook his head again.

‘Of course you will, and it’s only right that you should. You and me aren’t sweethearts, Grace. We’re friends. I’m not saying that if things had been different we couldn’t have been different, but they aren’t. When you do fall in love, I hope you’ll tell him about me and when you do I don’t want him feeling or thinking that I did badly by you. By that I mean that I don’t want to feel I’m leaving you with a burden of guilt – for anything.

‘When you look back at this time I want you to look back with happiness, not pain. What I want more than anything else, Gracie, is for you to remember that we laughed and had fun. I want the time we spent together to be as if nothing was going to happen. Even when we die, a part of us lives on in the hearts and the minds of those who’ve known us. I know I’m asking a lot of you, asking you to carry me with you into the future, but I know you can do it. I don’t want you clinging to the past, and when you and this chap you’re going to fall in love talk about me, I want him to think what a decent sort I was, and I want you to know that your happiness is the future I want for both of us. I won’t be here for that future, Gracie, so you have to be happy and live it a little bit for me.’

I can’t do that. The words would be so easy to say but Grace knew she mustn’t. She felt older and more grown up than she had ever imagined she could feel.

‘I want you to promise me that you will do that, Gracie.’

‘I promise.’

As though by magic, just as she spoke, the wind dropped so that instead of being carried away out to sea her words hung softly on the air between.

Teddy didn’t kiss her and Grace was glad in a way that he had not done so, because that made the moment and her promise somehow more sacred.

He did kiss her later, though, after they had competed with one another to see who could skim the flat pebbles they had picked up from what was accessible of the beach over the flat sea as it waited for the tide to turn.

It was a bittersweet kiss. Both tender and fierce. A kiss that she knew instinctively was both a taste of what could have been and a reminder of what must not be.

Bella could hear the laughter coming from the kitchen the minute she opened the front door, and for a moment it held her immobile in the hallway, her face warmed by the shaft of sunlight coming in through the window and catching motes of dust in the air, gripped by an unfamiliar piercing sense of loss and pain and a feeling of being excluded and unwanted, an outsider.

Just as she had been at school; just as she was now at the Tennis Club.

That was ridiculous. She had been the most popular girl at school and the prettiest, just as she was at the Tennis Club. And as for being an outsider, this was her home.

She walked down the hall and pushed open the kitchen door. They were sitting round the kitchen table, with the back door open to let in the sunshine and the fresh air. There was a bottle of wine on the table and three now almost empty glasses, and the air was rich with the smell of something cooking that was alien and spicy.

The mother looked apprehensive when she saw her, but the other two simply looked at her. Both of them were smoking, and Bettina’s expression was both mocking and defiant, whilst Jan’s somehow made her feel … Bella didn’t know really what she actually felt but she knew that she hated it just as much as she hated him.

She was still furious that despite her refusal to allow him to stay he had done so. When she had complained to Alan about it when he had eventually come in he had simply shrugged and ignored her.

Bella wasn’t used to having her wishes ignored and nor was she used to feeling helpless.

‘Cigarette?’

The drawled offer caught her off guard. She looked down at the packet Jan was extending towards her. His fingers were long and lean, and something about them quickened her heartbeat although she had no idea why.

Without answering him, Bella turned on her heel and left the kitchen.

Halfway up the stairs she heard the sound of his laughter following her and mocking her.

Alone in her bedroom she lay down on the bed. Her head was swimming and she felt dreadfully tired. For the first time in her life as she lay on her bed, listening to the sound of voices and laughter drifting upstairs, Bella knew what it was to feel completely alone and isolated from other people. A feeling, a mixture of panic and fear and sickness, curdled in her stomach. What was the matter with her? She was a married woman with a husband, parents, an extended family of aunt, uncle, and cousins, whilst those three downstairs were refugees with nothing. How could they laugh? How could they possibly be happier than she was? They certainly had no right to be. If she wasn’t feeling so dreadfully and uncharacteristically tired she would have gone downstairs to the kitchen and told them so.

‘We had two amputations in the theatre this morning, but we aren’t getting anything like as many road accidents now that we’re back to double summer time,’ said Hannah tiredly as she sank into a chair opposite Grace, who had been making the most of having their sitting room to herself to write up her notes on the new patients admitted to the ward. She would be on nights herself again soon and Night Sister expected the junior nurse to accompany her on her ward round and to know off by heart each patient’s condition, symptoms and treatment.

‘Did you hear about those girls from the barrage balloon site?’ asked Hannah. When Grace shook her head, Hannah explained, ‘It seems they decided to have a bit of a night out, seeing as things seemed quiet, only when they got back the balloon had broken loose. Now, as punishment, the whole lot of them have been sent up to some remote island off Scotland.’

‘Oh, poor things,’ Grace sympathised.

‘Never mind poor things. If you ask me it serves then right,’ Hannah contradicted her robustly. ‘That’s the trouble with you, Grace, you’re far too sympathetic. It won’t do in a nurse, you know,’ she joked, adding, ‘Mind you, I suppose you’re still worrying about Teddy.’

‘Yes. I am,’ Grace agreed, ‘and not just about him.’ She closed her exercise book and leaned forward, interlinking her fingers and looking down at them as she rested her forearms on her crossed knees. ‘I keep thinking about what’s going to happen to him and I can’t help wondering if I ought … well, that is to say …’

‘You mean he’s asked you to go all the way with him?’ guessed Hannah immediately.

‘No, no, he hasn’t, but I think that if I offered …’ Grace coloured up. Normally speaking this wasn’t the sort of conversation she’d have dreamed of having with anyone, but the situation she was in now was so different from anything she had ever thought she might experience that somehow it made normal conventions seem less important. Even so, she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell Hannah that she suspected from the occasional passionate kisses Teddy gave her when he couldn’t help himself that even though he wanted to protect her, he did want to go further.

‘There’s plenty of men that are asking their girls to do it, scaring them half to death by saying that they might not come back, and there’s plenty of girls too that wish they hadn’t let them,’ Hannah told her warningly.

‘Yes I know.’

‘Are you in love with him after all, then?’ Hannah asked.

‘I don’t think so. Anyway, it’s not like that. It’s just that I keep thinking that if I don’t then he’ll never know what it feels like, will he? And that makes me feel guilty.’

‘How do you know that he hasn’t already with someone else?’ asked Hannah practically.

She didn’t, of course, Grace admitted.

‘And what would happen if you were to get caught and fall for a baby?’ Hannah pressed on ruthlessly. ‘That would be a fine thing, wouldn’t, it? Him dead; you carrying and not wed.’

Grace felt sick at the thought of the shame of such a situation.

‘And then even if you weren’t, what would happen if you were to meet someone else who you did fall in love with? What would you tell him? There’s not many chaps who’d take kindly to their girl saying that she’d done it with someone else.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ she agreed, ‘but I just can’t help thinking—’

‘Well, don’t go thinking, and yes, I am right. If you want to know what’s really what, then you should go down to the women’s ward where they have the woman that have been brought in because they’ve tried to get rid of a baby they don’t want. We had one in theatre last week. Mr Anslow did his best to save her but she was in that much of a mess inside with septicaemia from what she’d had done that he couldn’t. Nurse Perry that’s a full year ahead of me went in to a dead faint just with the stink from her.’

Grace’s own stomach heaved, not so much with sickness as fear and horror. Everyone had heard the stories of the horrible deaths suffered by those women who had broken the law and gone to a backstreet abortionist in a desperate attempt to avoid having an unwanted child.

‘Mind you, if she’d survived she’d have ended up in prison,’ said Hannah matter-of-factly. ‘Not that there aren’t those with the money and the connections who can get themselves sorted out properly with no questions asked, of course, but it’s different for the likes of us.’

‘I thought it was supposed to be all right if a man used … something,’ said Grace selfconsciously.

‘Aye, supposed to be,’ Hannah agreed, ‘but there’s many a couple thought themselves safe and then found out that they were no such thing. If you want my advice, Grace, you’ll leave things as they are. And if Teddy does start hinting about you doing it with him, then make sure you say no.’ Her expression softened slightly and she reached out and touched Grace’s arm. ‘Look, I’m not saying that I don’t understand. I dare say I’d feel just the same meself in your shoes.’

‘I just keep thinking how I’d feel if I was Teddy and I knew I was going to die without ever having known what it’s like. I know we’re supposed to wait until we fall in love and get married, but what if you don’t have time for that? What if all the time you’ve got is now, Hannah? What would we do then?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hannah admitted quietly.

* * *

It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. After all she’d done, putting up with Alan and ‘it’, there wasn’t going to be a baby after all. Her monthlies had started two days ago and even though they’d been mercifully short-lived this time, they’d been really bad and had left her feeling pulled down and tired. So tired, in fact, that her mother had insisted that she ought to see the doctor, and had made her an appointment there and then for this afternoon.

‘You probably need a bit of a tonic,’ she’d told her.

Bella hadn’t said anything. The only tonic she needed was getting those refugees out of her house and getting Alan to behave towards her as a husband should, and that Trixie put in her place.

She was on her way to see Alan now. He hadn’t left her any housekeeping this week – again – and when she’d told her mother, she’d said that it was disgraceful and that her father would have something to say to Alan’s father if things went on like this.

The refugees had gone out this morning and when they’d come back Jan had been in uniform. The first time she had seen him he had been wearing a tweed jacket, a pair of cavalry twill trousers with a tattersall checked shirt, and a V-necked pullover all in soft shades of brown; the kind of clothes she was used to seeing men in, but somehow Jan’s had looked different, softer and older, and in some indefinable way they had seemed to fit him better than her father and Alan’s new clothes ever seemed to fit them.

Jan was one of those Polish Air Force pilots who, when Poland had been forced to surrender, had managed to fly his plane to Britain, along with many other Polish pilots, his mother had told Bella proudly. Those men were now forming a squadron under the auspices of the RAF.

In that case, the sooner he got posted the better, Bella had told her sharply and the further away the better, because she certainly wasn’t going to put up with having him thinking he could sleep in her spare room whenever he felt like it.

Mr James, her father-in-law’s fussy elderly clerk, opened the office door to her and told her that both Alan and his father were out. The offices were decorated in the same drab brown as Alan’s parents’ house; the furniture was equally old-fashioned, and the atmosphere equally formal. An oil painting of Alan’s father hung on one wall. Beneath it, in a locked cabinet, were several silver-gilt trophies won by both Alan and his father. The whole place had an air of self-satisfied prosperity and smugness.

‘Miss Trixie is in, if you want to leave a message with her,’ he informed Bella.

Oh, yes, she’d certainly leave a message with her, Bella decided angrily. A message that told her that she shouldn’t go around kissing other women’s husbands.

Trixie was busy typing when Bella pushed open the office door, her fingers fairly flying over the keys, short practical fingers with short unpolished nails. Not manicured like her own.

The fact that Alan could actually want to kiss someone so plain and dull when he was married to her, further enflamed Bella’s temper.

Trixie had seen her now and had stopped typing.

‘Alan isn’t here, I’m afraid,’ she told Bella quietly.

‘No, I dare say he’s trying to do the decent thing and stay away from you, after the way you’ve been throwing yourself at him.’

Trixie’s face turned bright red.

‘I suppose you thought he wouldn’t tell me about you making up to him and kissing him,’ Bella continued. ‘Well, of course he did, seeing as I’m his wife and he’s my husband. And let me warn you that if you don’t leave my husband alone I’m going to make sure that people know just what kind of woman you are. Poor Alan, he said he didn’t know which way to turn when you started chasing him. He’s been that worried that I’d be upset about it, but it’s like I told him, no one would ever think that he’d look at someone like you when he’s married to me. So you just stay away from him in future, otherwise it won’t just be me who knows what you’ve been up to.’

Trixie was crying now. ‘I love Alan and—’

‘Well, he certainly doesn’t love you,’ Bella cut her off ruthlessly, ‘because the other night when he was in bed with me doing what married people can do, he told me that he loved me.’

Trixie had gone a really funny colour now, and her stupid face was convulsing into an even plainer expression than usual. It was clear that what she had told her had shocked her, Bella recognised triumphantly.

‘Just you remember,’ Bella told her as she opened the door ready to leave, ‘in future, keep away from my husband.’

Once Bella was back out on the street, the giddy sense of power and triumph she had felt in the office receded, leaving her feeling very odd and weak. So weak that she almost felt as though she might faint. Perhaps her mother was right and she did need a tonic.