Put Out the Fires

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; World War II; Sagas; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

The second novel in bestseller Maureen Lee's outstanding Liverpool sequence about family life during the Second World War September 1940 - the cruellest year of war for Britain's civilians as the Luftwaffe mercilessly blitz their cities. In Pearl Street, near Liverpool's docks, families struggle to cope the best they can. A nasty surprise for ever-cheerful dressmaker Brenda Mahon, and flighty Sean's love for little Alice, show how life goes on even when it appears to be falling apart. Yet while Eileen Costello tries to hide her ruined hopes of happiness with Nick, and do her best by the husband she hoped had gone for ever, Ruth Singerman returns, having escaped from Austria. Even the joy of seeing her father again cannot make up for the bitter loss of her children. Look out for titles in the bestselling Pearl Street series: Book 1 - Lights Out Liverpool Book 2 - Put Out the Fires Book 3 - Through the Storm

Release date: November 10, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 496

Sample

What had happened to the person who had gazed back at her from the chrome mirror over the mantelpiece in the parlour only that morning; the happy woman with sparkling eyes and fresh pink skin, a woman so obviously and radiantly in love?

Eileen Costello stared thoughtfully at her blurred reflection in the window of the Dock Road pub. The glass had been painted dark inside for the blackout, turning the window into a mirror.

The woman had disappeared, gone forever, to be replaced by someone with lank blonde hair and a pale drawn face and dead, expressionless eyes.

And what had happened to the day that had started off as had no other, the day that was going to be the happiest of her life?

You needed to go back a whole year to work it out, right back to the very day war had been declared and Francis had gone off within an hour of the declaration, looking smart and debonair in his khaki uniform, and suddenly, after six years of marriage, she was free!

It was bliss without his domineering presence. Tony blossomed and stopped jumping at the least sound, and she got a job – something Francis had always forbidden – working on a lathe in a munitions factory. Eileen smiled to herself, scarcely noticing she was being jostled by people who came hurrying around the corner. Several glanced curiously at the lovely blonde girl, rather oddly dressed in an old tweed coat that contrasted sharply with her smart straw hat and high-heeled shoes, who was standing on the pavement staring vacantly into a blackened pub window at half past seven on a Saturday evening.

It had been an education working at Dunnings. The conversation that went on between the girls above the sound of the machinery would have made a navvy blush, but she’d grown fond of her workmates and they were almost like a second family.

So, there she was at twenty-six, earning a good wage – more than Francis had ever done – an independent woman in her own right, with control over her own body for the first time in six years. And she was happy, happier than she’d ever been before. In fact, she felt rather guilty that the war, which had brought misery to so many people, had altered her own life out of all proportion for the better.

That was when she decided she didn’t want Francis back.

She knew it would cause a furore in Pearl Street. No self-respecting woman booted her husband out, no matter what the blighter might have been up to – not that anyone, even her own family, knew what went on behind the front door of Number 16. A woman was expected to grit her teeth and make the best of things. But Eileen Costello, flushed with freedom and a newfound sense of her own worth, decided she’d had enough.

There was a rumbling from up above as a train ran along the tracks of the overhead railway in the direction of Liverpool, and a sudden tremendous whooshing sound from inside a nearby warehouse as grain was emptied into a silo. On the Dock Road itself, work seemed to be grinding to a halt. There were slightly fewer people about than before, less bustle.

Of course, Francis wasn’t exactly pleased when she wrote and told him he was no longer welcome at home – and neither was her sister, Sheila. Sheila thought wedding vows were for life and you should stick by your man ‘till death us do part’, though Jack Doyle had taken the news his beloved son-in-law wasn’t all he was cracked up to be surprisingly well. As for Sheila, she soon changed her mind when, last Christmas, Francis came home on leave and forced his way into the house, and she walked in unexpectedly to find her sister being strangled to death with a towel. That was the day the fateful word ‘divorce’ had first been uttered, and now even Sheila approved. Sheila, who was in the Legion of Mary, and had a house stuffed full of holy pictures and statues, who went to church whenever she had a spare minute – even she didn’t think wedding vows meant you had to spend the rest of your life with a man who’d nearly murdered you. The sisters had decided not to tell their dad about the incident because big Jack Doyle would kill any man who laid a hand on one of his children, and Francis wasn’t worth swinging for.

‘Penny for them!’

Eileen nearly fainted. If there’d been any colour left in her cheeks, she felt it drain away as she clutched the windowsill of the pub for support.

‘Eh, are you all right?’

She blinked as her arm was grabbed by someone who regarded her with genuine concern, a weedy slip of a boy in a sailor’s uniform whose round hat barely reached her shoulder. ‘I was miles away,’ she muttered. ‘You gave me a bit of a fright.’

‘It’s Eileen, isn’t it? Sean Doyle’s sister?’

‘That’s right. I’m sorry . . .’ She felt uncomfortable that he knew her name and she didn’t recognise him from Adam.

He removed his hat to reveal a head of tight carrot-coloured curls. His rather sharp features were a mass of orange freckles, and his eyes the green of tinned peas. His unusual fruit and vegetable appearance tugged a cord in her memory. She realised now she’d definitely met him before.

‘I was in the same class as your Sean at St Joan of Arc’s. I used to come round to your house in Garnet Street.’

‘I remember now,’ Eileen cried, for some reason glad of a familiar face just then. ‘Ronnie Kennedy!’

‘You’re almost there.’ He seemed gratified she’d remembered. ‘It’s Donnie. Donnie Kennedy.’

Eileen frowned. ‘What are you doing in uniform?’

‘I’ve been called up,’ he said proudly. ‘I was eighteen last June. I’ve been down in Portsmouth doing me training. I expect it’ll be your Sean’s turn soon. He’s about six months younger than me.’

‘Jaysus! I still think of our Sean as a little boy,’ she gasped, horrified. ‘It hadn’t entered me head he’d be called up soon.’

‘Me mam said much the same,’ Donnie nodded. ‘She nearly had hysterics when me papers arrived.’ Despite the fact he looked little more than a child, he seemed very mature and confident. She vaguely remembered he had been a cocky little bugger when he’d come round to the house to see Sean, and the uniform appeared to have added to his idea of his own importance.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he asked, concerned again. Donnie Kennedy felt rather chuffed at the idea of making a fuss of Sean Doyle’s sister. She was a proper bobby dazzler, and he’d had a bit of a crush on her all those years ago, despite the fact she was so much older and way beyond his reach. ‘You looked as if you’d seen a ghost when I first spoke.’ Then, with a rush of nerve, he jingled the coins in his pocket and said daringly, ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘A drink!’ She looked down at him vaguely, as if she’d never heard of such a thing as a drink before. ‘Not really, but I’d love a ciggie, Donnie, if you’ve got one. I came out without mine.’ She’d just snatched a coat off the rack in the hall, desperate to get out of the house and think things through by herself, leaving the mess behind for her dad and Sheila to take care of for the time being.

‘Of course!’ Donnie fumbled eagerly in his pocket and held out a pack of Woodbines. She took one gratefully and he struck a match and was about to light it, when she removed the ciggie from her mouth and glanced around uneasily.

Donnie recognised her dilemma immediately. A respectable woman would never be seen smoking on the street. Their eyes met and Eileen smiled ruefully. ‘I wouldn’t mind a lemonade,’ she said, though drinking in a Dock Road pub was almost as bad as smoking in public. Her dad would have a fit if he found out, but if she didn’t have a smoke soon she’d burst.

It came as a bit of a relief to find you could scarcely see inside the pub, what with the darkened windows and just two gas jets burning behind the bar. She could feel the sawdust scattered on the otherwise bare wooden floor, and once her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit interior, she saw the place was crowded and ducked her head as she made for an empty table tucked out of the way in a corner. Fortunately, the customers, predominantly male, were too engrossed in their conversation to notice her. She removed her coat and lit the cigarette, whilst Donnie went over to the bar for the drinks.

‘Penny for them!’

For one painful, exquisite moment she’d thought it was Nick; that he’d come to Bootle searching for her, demanding to know why she’d hadn’t turned up at Exchange Station to meet him as they’d planned. She’d sent Tony along to the station with the news that she couldn’t come and why, but today was to have been the start of their life together. He might want to hear from her own lips the reason for letting him down.

‘Penny for them!’ His first words. She remembered them as clearly as if he’d spoken five minutes ago, not ten months, and not just the words, but the timbre of his voice, the amused expression in it, the warm smile on his long, sensitive face as he looked down at her in the restaurant in Southport. It had been December, and she was sitting alone by a Christmas tree with the sound of carols in the background. At first, she’d thought he was merely trying to pick her up, but it turned out he lived in Melling and recognised her from Dunnings. Nick Stephens was a scientist, and she’d never in all her life met anyone as grand as a scientist before, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter as they began to fall in love . . .

The memories flooded back for the umpteenth time that day. The Easter weekend in London when they’d first made love, the last night when they’d danced to We’ll Meet Again. Nick had decided it was their song and every time she heard it on the wireless, she thought of him and London. He’d lifted her up and twirled her round and round and round until she felt as if she would disappear altogether because it was so unreal, because it didn’t seem right that anyone should be allowed so much happiness . . .

‘Here you are.’ Donnie put a glass of lemonade on the table along with a small tot of spirits. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but you look as if you need it. It’s whisky, a double.’

‘Oh, Donnie, you shouldn’t have,’ she protested. ‘I didn’t bring me purse with me, either, I came out in such a rush, so I can’t give you any money.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said modestly. He didn’t knock on he hadn’t paid for the drinks. Someone at the bar had bought them. Since he’d been in uniform, Donnie had been receiving all the attention he’d always thought he deserved but, owing to his small stature and rather unprepossessing appearance, was aware he never got. Now, not only did he get drinks pressed upon him whenever he entered a pub, but an old lady had actually stood up on the tram into town that day and offered him her seat. ‘Here you are, son, sit down and take the weight off your feet,’ though he’d refused, of course. A barrow girl outside Reece’s Restaurant had given him a big rosy apple and urged him to, ‘Give that bloody Adolf a kick up the arse from me,’ and all sorts of people wanted to shake his hand and thump his shoulder and tell him what a brave fellow he was.

He lit a cigarette, looked Eileen up and down and, plucking up his courage, said in his best man-of-the-world fashion, ‘You look nice, if you don’t mind me saying. In fact, you look like you’ve been to a wedding.’ She wore a pink moygashel suit with a wide belt that accentuated her slim waist.

‘I have,’ she replied. ‘Me friend, Annie Poulson, got married again this afternoon. I was matron of honour.’

Donny’s green eyes widened. ‘Annie Poulson? Didn’t her lads come through Dunkirk?’

‘That’s right, Terry and Joe. It was in the Bootle Times.’

‘I don’t halfhope I see some action like that!’ He actually sounded envious.

Eileen puffed on her cigarette, suddenly angry. ‘I reckon your mam would do her nut if she could hear you. Poor Annie nearly went out of her mind with worry while the lads were in France.’

‘Well, women don’t take to war like men,’ he said loftily.

‘That’s ’cos they’ve got more sense,’ Eileen replied in a tart voice.

Instead of being hurt at the put-down, Donny felt a sense of exhilaration at the fact that Eileen Doyle – he couldn’t remember her married name – actually considered him mature enough to engage in a proper philosophical discussion about the war. He’d had the same discussion often with his mam, though it usually ended up with her in tears when she was quite likely to give him a swift backhander, uniform or no uniform.

‘But we’ve got to stop Hitler,’ he ventured. ‘If we don’t, the whole world will end up under the heel of the Nazi jackboot.’ He felt sure she’d be impressed with that, which he’d read in the Daily Herald.

‘I know,’ she said tiredly and clearly unimpressed. ‘But there’s no need to get so much enjoyment out of it.’

‘I’d certainly enjoy killing a few Germans,’ Donny said with relish.

‘I’m sure you would. Our Tony’s just as bad, and he’s only six. He goes to bed every night with a toy gun under his pillow.’

‘I won’t have a gun of me own, seeing as I’ve trained to be a signalman.’

He sounded wistful, and Eileen hid a smile as she began to sip the whisky. ‘Never mind. Signalman sounds very responsible, probably one of the most important jobs on the ship.’

‘I reckon so,’ he said, nodding gravely. ‘Drink doing you good, like?’

‘I think it is.’ The whisky felt warm and rather comforting as it slipped down, and she began to relax.

‘Take a good mouthful,’ Donnie advised, so she did, and he began to imagine telling his mates when he went on board ship next day about the lovely blonde, a real stunner and married to boot, whom he’d taken out the night before. ‘We had a few drinks, then . . .’ He stopped, because he couldn’t visualise Eileen Doyle doing anything other than finishing the drink and going home. Still, he could make up a good story by tomorrow to impress them all. He began to wonder exactly what was wrong. What was she doing on the Docky when she’d just been to a wedding, and why had she been standing outside the pub looking so lost and alone? She’d nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke.

‘I was planning on moving house today,’ she said suddenly. ‘A friend of mine’s got this lovely cottage in Melling – that’s where I work,’ she explained, ‘in Dunnings, the munitions factory. I was hoping to get away from the air-raids.’ ‘I’d hate to come back and find you and Tony weren’t here for me,’ Nick had said when she protested she didn’t want to leave her family.

‘Why didn’t you?’ asked Donnie.

‘I missed the train,’ she said, then, as if realising this wasn’t an adequate explanation, added in a tight anguished voice, ‘Something came up.’ She finished the whisky in a single gulp.

‘Would you like another?’

‘No, ta,’ she said firmly. ‘Me head already feels as if it belongs to someone else.’

Donnie began to run his finger anxiously around the top of his glass. ‘I won’t half be worried about me mam and dad and our Clare when I’m away at sea, what with the raids getting worse and worse. There were three hundred killed in London last Saturday.’ According to his mam, a night hadn’t passed without the siren going since the beginning of September. ‘That was a right old pounding Bootle got on Tuesday.’

‘Well,’ said Eileen with a hard smile, ‘that’s merely another aspect of the war which you men are so fond of.’ She didn’t wait for his reply, but went on, ‘I have a friend, a scientist, who had a good deferred job in Kirkby. He would have been quite safe till the war was over. ’Stead, he insisted on joining the RAF. The last few months he could have been killed any minute . . .’ She broke off. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of young pilots had died as the Luftwaffe tried to wipe the British Air Force off the face of the earth in a terrible battle of attrition, but not Nick. At least not so far. He was, for the moment, quite safe and sound in Melling, perhaps still hoping she’d turn up.

Donnie had been well to the fore in the queue when brains were handed out, and he began to put two and two together. She had a ‘friend’ with a cottage in Melling, and another who’d joined the RAF. Some sixth sense told him the friends were one and the same person and Eileen Doyle was almost certainly having an affair, which gave her an added air of mystery and only made her more seductive in his eyes. He glanced at her keenly. The whisky had brought a flush to her smooth cheeks. She was a bit too wholesome to be termed beautiful; there was a touch of the farmer’s daughter in her fresh, regular features and creamy hair which she wore in an unusual style, not permed like most women, but dead straight and in a fringe on her forehead, though her dad, big Jack Doyle, had probably been no nearer the countryside than his own. Her soft violet-blue eyes were moist, as if she might cry any minute. He felt a strong rush of sympathy and thought, somewhat wryly, that even if Eileen Doyle undressed on the spot and offered herself to him, he would turn her down, because she was too upset to know what she was doing and probably slightly drunk. He racked his brains to remember who she was married to. What was he like? Well, there was no harm in asking.

‘What does your husband do, Eileen?’ he enquired casually.

‘Me husband?’ She looked slightly startled, as if she’d forgotten she had one. ‘Oh, Francis was in the Territorials when the war started, like, so he was called up straight away. The Royal Tank Regiment were sent to Egypt last February.’

Francis! Of course, Francis Costello, who worked for the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board and had a seat on Bootle Corporation. Donnie remembered the chap distinctly. He was one of those silver-tongued Irishmen with the gift of the gab who was great mates with Jack Doyle. Everyone spoke highly of Francis, though Donnie, more astute than most, hadn’t taken to him much. He seemed a bit of a fake, insincere, as if everything he said was only to impress people.

‘I suppose you miss him, like?’ he probed.

‘I suppose,’ she replied listlessly, which Donnie took to mean she didn’t miss him at all, though she missed the ‘friend’, the one with the cottage in Melling who’d joined the RAF. She gave a funny, cracked laugh and seemed to pull herself together. ‘I’m not exactly cheerful company, am I, luv? Anyroad, I’d best be going. I only came out for a breath of fresh air, like, and I’ve been gone for ages. It’ll take half an hour or more to get back, and me feet are killing me in these shoes.’

‘I’ll walk with you,’ he said with alacrity, wishing he was big enough to carry her, which he would have offered to do willingly if she’d let him. ‘In fact, I might call on your Sean. I haven’t seen him since I got me uniform.’

‘Well I never!’ she said in surprise as soon as they were outside. ‘The sun’s come out.’

The dark clouds which had appeared when she left the house, as if in sympathy with her mood, had completely disappeared and the sky was a dusky blue. The sun itself was out of sight, but the tops of the ships anchored behind the high dock walls were suffused with an unnaturally vivid light.

A cart passed them, drawn by two horses, magnificent beasts, their sleek bodies as black as coal and with tumbling silken manes. The wooden wheels bumped on the uneven surface of the road, and the driver held the reins loosely in his hands, as if fully confident the animals needed no directions. His shoulders were hunched and he looked tired, as well he might, for he’d probably begun work before the crack of dawn.

‘I love the Docky,’ Eileen said with a catch in her voice. ‘When we were little, me and our Sheila used to come and meet me dad when it was time for him to hand in his tally. I was a bit scared in those days. The high walls made me feel as if we were walking on the very bottom of the world.’ She also loved the smells, even if some weren’t exactly pleasant; the aroma of oils and spices, of carpets and tea and coal, and all the million and one imports and exports that came from and went to places all over the world. The atmosphere was alien, slightly mysterious, and even now, at this late hour, there were scores of black, brown and yellow faces around, and the gabble of a dozen different tongues.

‘Me dad said Liverpool Docks are the next to biggest in the world,’ Donnie said, as proudly as if he were the owner.

Eileen nodded. ‘That’s right, only those in Hamburg are bigger.’ They began to walk in the direction of Bootle. ‘Have you finished your training, Donnie?’ Eileen asked.

‘Oh, yes.’ He squared his shoulders importantly. ‘I take up me first posting tomorrow. I’m on a corvette guarding a convoy of merchant marine all the way to America.’

‘Our Cal, that’s Calum Reilly, our Sheila’s husband, he’s a merchant seaman and due back from America any minute, God willing.’ She crossed herself briefly, the way his mam often did. It wasn’t only in the air that the battle for survival was being fought. The carnage at sea, the loss of life and tonnage of ships being destroyed, was getting more and more horrendous by the day as German U-boats prowled the Atlantic in their search for prey. She looked down at him quickly. ‘You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you, Donnie?’

‘Oh, you can bet your life on that!’ he said cockily. He couldn’t wait to serve his country and give old Hitler the promised kick up the arse. On the other hand, although he did his best not to think about the dangers that lay ahead, sometimes, alone in the middle of the night, he felt quite scared. You had to be devoid of imagination completely, and Donnie had more imagination than most, not to visualise the ship being torpedoed and him tossed into the icy waters of the Atlantic and struggling to stay above the waves. Or, perhaps worse, trapped by fire in the signalroom and roasting, ever so slowly, to death. There were half a dozen of his mates who’d already lost their dads or older brothers at sea, and his mam behaved as if Donnie had already had a death sentence passed on him. He was only eighteen, thought Donnie, panicking suddenly, and didn’t want to die. There were all sorts of things he wanted to do with his life, and dying young wasn’t one of them. One day, he’d like to meet a girl like Eileen Doyle and get married . . .

To Donnie’s horror, he felt his eyes fill with tears and he prayed Eileen wouldn’t notice. He’d been trying to impress her as a man of the world, and here he was on the brink of crying in the street like a little boy.

‘Just a minute, I’ve got something in me eye.’ The tears were by now coursing down his cheeks.

The lie didn’t work.

‘Oh, luv!’ She pushed him into a doorway and took him in her arms and there they were, in the clinch Donnie had been imagining ever since they met, but there was nothing romantic about it as she patted his back like a baby and said, ‘There, now. There.’

‘I went into town this avvy to buy me mam and dad and our Clare their Christmas presents,’ he sobbed, ‘in case I was dead by the time it came. Then I walked home along the Docky, because it’s where I used play when I was a kid and I thought I might never see it again.’

When he was a kid! He was little more than a kid now, thought Eileen in despair. What a terrible world it had become, when lads of eighteen expected to be dead by Christmas!

‘I’ll say a special prayer for you every night, Donnie,’ she vowed. ‘Perhaps you can drop in and see us whenever you’re home, just so’s I know you’re all right, like.’ He was a kind lad, and had been a tremendous help that day. ‘Come on, now, luv, dry your eyes and we’ll go home.’

‘I don’t think I’ll call on Sean,’ he sniffed. ‘I’ll go back to me mam and dad and have a game of Snakes and Ladders with our Clare. It’s me last night . . .’ He stopped and gave his nose a good blow on a rather grubby handkerchief.

‘That’s a good idea,’ she said comfortably. Anyroad, knowing Sean, he’d be out with one of his never-ending stream of girlfriends.

They scarcely spoke again the rest of the way as they turned off the Dock Road and walked passed the Goods Yard and through the warren of narrow streets of two-up, two-down terraced houses where they lived. Eileen seemed lost in thought and Donnie felt too embarrassed to say another word. What on earth would she think of him, breaking down like that?

‘This is our street,’ he said awkwardly when they reached the Chaucer Arms, and she came to, blinking, as if she’d forgotten he was there. He almost wished he could run away without another word.

‘Take care,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget, I’ll be praying for you.’

‘Ta.’ He shuffled his feet awkwardly. ‘I hope you come through the raids all right, and . . .’ He wanted to say he hoped her RAF friend would come through, too. Instead, just to be polite, he said, ‘And I hope your husband comes home safe and sound.’

To his surprise, she gave a little bitter laugh. ‘There’s no need to worry about Francis, he’s quite safe, if not entirely sound. He arrived back unexpectedly this afternoon and they’re going to discharge him from the army. He’s home for good.’

Eileen waited on the corner for Donnie to wave goodbye. But she waited in vain, for the small hunched figure merely crossed the street and went into the house without a glance in her direction. No doubt he felt awkward bursting into tears like that, she thought as she continued towards home. She reckoned, somewhat sadly, that she’d probably never see Donnie Kennedy again unless they met by accident.

It had been four o’clock exactly, and she’d been about to slam the door on 16 Pearl Street for the final time, already late for Nick, having missed the train through no fault of her own, when an ambulance turned into the street, bringing Francis Costello home to his family. Eileen was put in the worst predicament she’d ever known; how could you walk out and meet your lover when your husband had returned injured from North Africa?

Sheila thought she should have gone and let Francis look after himself. ‘I would have, if it was me.’ His head was heavily bandaged and he’d lost the sight of his left eye, but he could walk and talk and indeed had seemed quite cheerful when he arrived. ‘You owe him nothing, Eileen,’ Sheila cried. ‘Nothing!’

By not going, she was letting Nick and Tony down, Sheila added, working herself up into a proper lather. Tony couldn’t wait to live in Melling in the cottage with black beams on the ceiling and roses around the door and apple trees and strawberries in the garden. He’d been looking forward to sleeping in the room with the new curtains which Mr Singerman had made on the window. Most of all, he was looking forward to having Nick for a dad, because his real dad made him feel unhappy most of the time.

‘For Jaysus sake, girl,’ Sheila said scathingly, ‘there’s a war on. You should snatch at happiness if it chances to come your way, ’cos by this time next week you might be dead. The most important people are the ones you love,’ which all seemed strange to Eileen, because Sheila was the religious one, not her. She couldn’t have just walked away. She couldn’t have lived with Nick, or, more importantly, with herself, if she had. She felt split in two, utterly divided between love for one man and responsibility to another – though if she’d caught the train it might have been different. She would never know how she would have felt, once ensconced in Melling with Nick before she’d learnt Francis was home.

She imagined Nick sitting in the cottage alone. What was he thinking? How was he feeling? She’d slipped along in her dinner hour yesterday and set the table with a new white cloth and freshly polished cutlery ready for today’s tea, so the place would look homely and welcoming when they arrived for the start of their life together – not that Nick would be there for long. He had a fortnight’s leave due to a broken wrist, but once the time was up, he’d be back to the damn Spitfires he loved so much. In the meantime, there was a tin of salmon in the larder, along with a pound of home-grown tomatoes bought from a woman in the village who grew them in her own greenhouse, plus her and Tony’s entire week’s butter ration. Unlike them, Nick hadn’t been brought up on margarine, and claimed it tasted like petrol.

If only she hadn’t missed the train! The thought of what might have been ‘if only’, of lying in Nick’s arms that night, his lovely brown eyes smiling into hers, caused an ache so fierce she felt as if a knife had been driven through her.

She must have been walking in a dream, because she didn’t hear the music, and all of a sudden found herself in Pearl Street, when she’d meant to avoid everyone by going down the entry of the neighbouring street and entering the house by the back way.

Although Annie and Chris had left for their honeymoon hours ago, the reception was still in full swing and most people remained outside as if trying to squeeze as much enjoyment as they could out of the occasion, for Pearl Street loved nothing more than a party. The women wore their best frocks, as befitted a wedding, though the men who clustered around the King’s Arms on the corner with their pints of ale had lon