Home Front Girls

way she was glad that he was gone. He wasn’t at all the sort of chap she usually went out with, and nothing like the sort of husband she had always envisaged for herself. She wanted someone tall, dark, handsome and very, very rich – and Joel was none of those things. And yet she was forced to admit to herself that there had been an attraction between them from the start.
    She read the letter through twice more before stuffing it into the back of a drawer. There was no point in thinking about it now. Joel might never come home for all she knew, so it was perhaps as well they hadn’t grown too close. But still it was hard to forget him as she tried to turn her thoughts to other things.
     
    On Thursday morning, Dotty was waiting for the train when it drew into Coventry station and she glanced expectantly into the carriages as it slowed. And then there was Robert walking towards her with an enormous bunch of flowers clutched in his good hand and her heart did a somersault.
    Without being able to stop herself she raced towards him and then stopped abruptly in front of him feeling a complete fool. What must he think of me? she asked herself. It’s hardly the way for a friend to behave. Yet deep down she knew that she thought of him as much more than a friend now, even though her feelings would never be returned.
    He hugged her to him with his short arm while holding the flowers out to her with the other.
    ‘Th-they’re lovely,’ she managed to stutter, deeply conscious of the passers-by who were smiling at them indulgently.
    ‘Not half so lovely as you,’ he answered, then it was his turn to blush as he took her arm and led her across the smoky platform to the exit.
    It was on the bus to her flat that Dotty began to wonder if she had done the right thing in inviting Robert to her home. What would he think of it? It was so different to what he was used to – but it was too late to do anything about it now.
    The smell of stale cabbage assailed them as they stepped into the hallway and she glanced at him apologetically. Unfortunately, it always smelled worse in the warm weather but there was nothing she could do about that either. The residents’ staple diet nowadays seemed to consist mainly of Spam and any vegetables they had managed to grow in the small garden at the back of the house. The sight of a lush green lawn was a rare sight now, in this area at least, as everyone was using every available inch to grow food to supplement their rations – when they could fit them around the Anderson shelters, that was.
    ‘It’s up on the top floor,’ she told him, avoiding his eyes, and they began to climb the steep narrow staircase.
    As they passed Mrs Cousins’s flat they heard the baby crying and Dotty whispered, ‘A widow lives there with her three young children. It’s very sad – she lost her home when she lost her husband, and I know that she struggles now.’
    ‘How awful for her.’ Robert looked genuinely concerned as Dotty led him up the last flight of stairs.
    ‘Phew, no wonder you’re so thin,’ he teased breathlessly as she finally put her key in the lock. ‘That’s quite some climb.’
    ‘Well, we can’t all have lifts,’ she told him with a grin and she then beckoned him into her little home.
    He looked about with interest before saying, ‘You’ve got this really comfortable, Dotty. Very cosy, in fact. You have the same flair for home-making that my mother had.’
    She looked around, trying to see it as he must but could see nothing very special about it, although she did keep it as neat as a new pin. Today she’d made an extra-special effort because he was coming. Every single thing in the room was second-hand but she had made it her own with cheerful cushions and a few cheap ornaments that she had bought from the market. The curtains had come from a rummage sale at the church hall and she had found the rug lying in front of the fire in a pawnshop.
    ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ she said, and hurried across to the tiny kitchenette to put the kettle on. She’d saved up her food coupons for the last three weeks and now the smell of a lamb casserole slowly cooking wafted around the room. The oven was a very hit-and-miss affair, working when it felt like it, and she offered up a silent prayer of thanks that it hadn’t let her down today.
    ‘Something smells good,’ he commented when she came back a few minutes later with a pot of tea. She knew that Robert had a sweet tooth so she