Home Front Girls

must have realised how I feel about you. But I have a secret too, so much worse than yours, and it would be you who wouldn’t want me if you knew what it was, believe me.’
    Despite being so upset, she was intrigued now. ‘If it’s about your mother dying in a mental asylum, Lucy already told us about that,’ she whispered.
    ‘Huh, but she only told you half the story,’ he answered, and then squeezing her hand, he asked urgently, ‘Do you think you might ever have been able to care for me, Annabelle, even a little, if I had been someone else? Someone from your own class with a bit of money?’
    ‘None of that matters now.’ She squeezed his hand in return. ‘That’s one thing this war has taught me. When you love someone, nothing else matters. But what’s this secret that’s so terrible?’
    Shutters suddenly seemed to go down across his eyes. ‘That’s something I can never share,’ he told her. ‘Just know that while Lucy is alive, I can never leave her for anyone.’
    Annabelle was shocked. ‘What? You’re telling me that you’ll never leave Lucy?’
    He nodded, his eyes bleak, and without another word she quietly rose and left the room. It seemed that there was nothing more to say. In one breath he had told her that he had feelings for her – and in the next that he would never leave his sister. None of it made any sense.
     
    Miranda saw a distinct change for the better when her daughter returned home for a two-day leave the following week. Annabelle didn’t seem so stand-offish any more, and within minutes of being home she had enquired if there had been any news of her father. The Red Cross had been trying to track him down for months.
    ‘Actually there is,’ Miranda told her, ‘although I’m not sure if it’s good news or bad, to be honest. He’s in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and we all know the horror stories we read in the papers about those places. I just pray that he’ll survive.’
    ‘He will,’ Annabelle told her with conviction. ‘And once the war is over he’ll be home, you’ll see.’
    Miranda raised a smile, hoping her daughter was right. ‘Dotty and Lucy should be here soon,’ she told her. ‘That’ll be nice. I’m so looking forward to seeing them. How is Joel, by the way?’
    ‘He was transferred to a convalescent home in Watchet, in Dorset yesterday,’ Annabelle said, and there was something in her tone of voice that made her mother raise her eyebrows.
    ‘That’s good,’ she replied cautiously. ‘It must mean that he’s on the mend.’
    Annabelle nodded and without another word, lifted her small case and went upstairs to put her things away as her mother watched her go with a bemused expression on her face.
    When the other two girls arrived they were all shocked to see the change in Lucy. She had lost so much weight that her clothes hung off her, and there were dark circles under her eyes. However, they all tactfully said nothing as Dotty proudly handed them copies of her new book hot off the press.
    ‘I can hardly wait to read it,’ Miranda told her, thinking how well Dotty looked. She was a complete contrast to Lucy and seemed to have filled out a little. Her skin and her eyes were glowing, and it was obvious that she was happy.
    ‘I’ve just got to pop out to see Mum’s solicitor in a while,’ she told them apologetically within minutes of arriving there. ‘But I shouldn’t be long and then I’ll stay until the morning, if you don’t mind, Miranda.’
    ‘It would be a pleasure to have you,’ Miranda said sincerely. ‘But I thought you’d dealt with all the legalities now?’
    ‘I have,’ Dotty agreed. ‘But Mr Jenkins wrote to tell me that he needed to see me about a personal matter.’
    ‘Then you’d better go and find out what it is and put us all out of our misery,’ Miranda teased her.
     
    An hour and a bus ride later, Dotty was shown into Mr Jenkins’s office. The kindly gentleman rose from his desk to greet her, and shook her hand warmly.
    ‘May I say how well you are looking, Mrs Brabinger?’ he smiled. ‘Married life must be suiting you.’
    ‘It is,’ Dotty answered. ‘But I’m very curious as to why you want to see me, Mr Jenkins.’
    ‘Hmm.’ He steepled his fingers as he sat back down and regarded her over the top of them. ‘I sincerely hope that you won’t think that I’m an interfering old fool,’ he said quietly. ‘But the thing is, as I’ve come to know you over the last months, I’ve