Home Front Girls

was serving tea to the homeless and Dotty was cradling a child of no more than five years old in her arms as he cried pitifully for his mother.
    And then the door opened and two Army corporals appeared carrying two small children who lay limply in their arms. The men’s faces were blackened with soot and one of them was crying unashamedly.
    Miranda instantly turned to another WVS worker and once she had taken over binding the man’s leg, Miranda crossed to the curtain at the end of the room and held it aside as the soldiers carried the little bodies behind it.
    Dotty saw them from the corner of her eye and vomit rose in her throat as she hastily passed the child she was nursing to the woman nearest to her. She hurried across the room and as the soldiers gently laid the children down with the rest of the dead, she began to cry.
    ‘It’s Mrs Cousins’s other two children,’ she choked. ‘But wasn’t there a woman with them?’
    One of the soldiers answered her wearily. ‘If there was, we haven’t come across her yet.’ He looked ready to drop with fatigue. ‘But we’re still digging, so we could still find her.’
    Dotty squeezed her eyes tight shut, knowing full well that if she hadn’t gone to Annabelle’s for tea she too might well have been lying with the bodies behind the curtain. And then suddenly a woman erupted into the hall and began to wail.
    ‘My babies . . . where are my babies?’
    Dotty blinked, scarcely able to believe her eyes as Mrs Cousins staggered towards her. She was dressed in her Sunday best although she looked decidedly dishevelled now, and when she saw Dotty she grabbed her arms and began to shake her.
    ‘Did yer get the message I left taped to yer door?’ she asked desperately, her eyes wild. ‘An’ what have yer done with the kids? Are they safe?’
    Dotty stared at her in confusion. ‘I didn’t go home after work tonight,’ she told her as calmly as she could. ‘So I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mrs Cousins. But I’m afraid . . .’ she gulped deep in her throat before forcing herself to go on. ‘I’m afraid the children are all in here. These soldiers have just brought the older two in.’
    The woman pushed past her and as her eyes settled on the two little broken bodies she started to shake as she dropped to her knees at the side of them.
    ‘And the baby?’
    ‘I’m afraid she is here too. Over there.’
    ‘This is all my fault,’ the woman muttered brokenly. ‘I had to go out to earn some money, see? Otherwise the kids would have had nowt to eat tomorrow. So I thought, if I go now, young Dotty’ll keep her ear open for ’em when she gets in.’ Her head wagged from side to side in shocked disbelief. ‘But Dotty didn’t come in, which meant the kids would ’ave been all alone when the raid started. They must ’ave been so scared! An’ when the warnin’ went off I were over the other side o’ the city, but I told meself, “They’ll be all right, Dotty’ll get ’em into the shelter.”’ When she looked Miranda in the eye, Miranda saw the light of madness shining there and she took the woman in her arms as tears started to her own eyes. What comfort could she give her under such horrific circumstances?
    ‘I might as well ’ave killed ’em meself,’ Mrs Cousins said in a voice barely above a whisper, and then she laughed – a horrible, grotesque laugh that grated on the nerves of everyone who heard it. ‘I left me kids to die alone. What sort o’ mother does that make me, eh?’
    ‘I’m sure you had good reason for doing what you did,’ Miranda soothed. ‘But now please come away. I’ll get you a nice hot drink.’ The words seemed so inadequate. This poor woman was almost beside herself with grief, and quite understandably so. It would have been tragic if she had lost one child – but to lose all three? Miranda couldn’t even begin to imagine the suffering she must be going through.
    Mrs Cousins allowed Miranda to steer her through the sea of people as if she were in a trance, and Dotty watched with tears pouring down her grimy face. Poor Mrs Cousins. First she had lost her husband and now her children. Knowing how much the woman had loved them, Dotty wondered how she would bear it. If only she had gone straight home after work and seen Mrs Cousins’s message, she might have been able to get the children into a shelter.
    ‘Someone will have to fetch more water from the stand-pipe,’ one of the volunteers shouted