Home Front Girls

wife was having none of it. She whipped them off him.
    ‘You go an’ get young Lucy an’ Harry, an’ I’ll stay here an’ take me chances,’ he muttered, groping for the eiderdown.
    ‘Then I’ll stay an’ all,’ she said stubbornly as she leaned back against the headboard and crossed her arms across her plump chest, which made him pull himself up onto his elbow. It was one thing risking his own life, but quite another to risk his old girl’s. Clambering out of bed he pulled his trousers on over his long johns, then snapping his braces into place he told her resignedly, ‘Come on then. But I hope you’ve put some extra blankets in that bloody shelter. It were freezin’ in there t’other night.’
    ‘Happen bein’ freezin’ is better than bein’ dead,’ she told him perfunctorily and he followed her from the bedroom as meekly as a lamb, knowing that she was quite right.
    ‘You give Lucy a knock while I go in an’ light the candles,’ she told him once they were in the yard. It was bitingly cold and he nodded as she hurried towards the shelter.
    Lucy joined them five minutes later, just as the drone of the enemy planes reached them.
    They glanced at each other in the dancing flames from the candles, each wondering if this would be their time to die.
    It was the early hours of the morning before they emerged, feeling dazed and disorientated. It had been a particularly bad raid again, and at one point the very ground beneath them had shaken and Mrs P had started to pray, sure that the time to meet her maker had come.
    Again they saw that the sky above their city was as bright as daylight from the many fires that were burning, and fire engines and Army troops in jeeps were rushing to the worst-affected areas.
    ‘Looks like there’ll be a few more graves to be dug in London Road Cemetery,’ Mrs P said bleakly. ‘Come on, we may as well go an’ have a cuppa – if they ain’t hit the water mains again, that is.’
     
    In London, Dotty was very happy getting used to being Mrs Brabinger and living in newly wedded bliss with Robert. It was just a week now until the release of her first novel, War-Torn Lovers, and she was very excited about it. She was now also happily working part-time in the Woman’s Heart office and still producing her short stories for them on a monthly basis. Sometimes she wished that there were a few more hours in each day.
    ‘You’re doing far too much,’ Robert would scold her. ‘There’s really no need for you to work, Dotty. It isn’t as if we need the money.’
    But she would simply smile and tell him that she enjoyed it, which she did.
    At breakfast this morning she was delighted to find that there was a letter from Annabelle and one from Lucy in the post. She quickly read them as Robert put a tiny bit of marge on his toast and poured the tea. It still gave her a thrill to see the name Mrs Brabinger on the ones that were addressed to her.
    ‘What do they have to say?’ Robert asked.
    ‘Well, Annabelle sounds OK. She says Joel is well on the way to recovery now,’ she confided, ‘Between you and me, I think she and Joel have a little spark between them, although they haven’t admitted it yet.’
    ‘I dare say they will when the time is right, if they’re anything like we were,’ he answered with a grin. ‘And what does Lucy have to say?’
    Dotty glanced at the other letter again. ‘Not a lot really. But then she never does just lately. She just hasn’t been the same since she lost her mother and Mary. She seems to have sort of gone into herself, if you know what I mean?’
    ‘Time is a great healer,’ Robert answered as he scraped some marmalade onto his toast.
    Dotty nodded, hoping that he was right, then lifting the last letter she frowned. ‘It’s from the solicitors,’ she told her husband as she slit it open with the end of her teaspoon. Then as she scanned the page, she went on, ‘He’s asking when I’m next visiting Coventry as he would like to see me on a personal matter. What do you think that might be?’
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ Robert replied. ‘But perhaps he has some papers or something for you to sign?’
    Dotty shook her head. ‘I doubt it. I think I’ve done all that part of it now, and he does say it’s personal.’
    ‘Well, you were hoping to go back to Coventry in the next couple of weeks for a visit anyway, weren’t you? You could perhaps call and see him then.’
    ‘I will,’ Dotty agreed, and then there was a mad