Home Front Girls

she couldn’t have a big do for her twenty-first? Annabelle could still on occasion be remarkably selfish and self-centred, although she had mellowed considerably during the time they had known her. Dotty refrained from mentioning that her own twenty-first birthday had passed without acknowledgement the week before, except from Miss Timms, who had bought her a lovely silver charm bracelet. She hadn’t even bothered to tell anyone about it, since the way she saw it, there wasn’t much to celebrate. They were all tired and the war was still raging on. Everywhere they looked, posters had been pasted up warning them that Careless Talk Costs Lives or urging them all to Make Do and Mend. Kindertransport trains containing Jewish children who were fleeing their homelands were pouring into the country and the tales of the persecution of the Jews who couldn’t escape were horrendous. Norway had been overrun by Hitler’s army, as had Belgium and Holland, and thousands of men had been slaughtered on the beaches during the Battle of Dunkirk; the country was still reeling from the shock of it.
    There had been over 370 siren alerts in Coventry although only forty-one actual raids had taken place, and everyone’s spirits were low with no prospect in sight of the war ending.
    Only Dotty was managing to stay cheerful as she had now been to London twice to see Robert and Paul Parsons, Laura’s husband, who was the senior editor at Huntes Publishing House, who were going to publish her book. Paul’s disability did not prevent him from being a force to be reckoned with: Dotty found him to be a real live wire.
    ‘I might decide to write under a pseudonym,’ she told them one day during their afternoon break. ‘Dorothy Kent is so boring, isn’t it? What name should I write under?’
    ‘Something completely different and romantic,’ Annabelle told her stoutly. ‘If you’re going to change it you may as well go for something glamorous. What about Genevieve Moriarty or something like that?’
    Dotty had dissolved in a fit of laughter as she tried to imagine what Robert would say if she suggested such a name, but happy times like these were getting scarcer now.
    They moved on towards Cheylesmore, each lost in their own thoughts, until Lucy noticed a stray dog scavenging in a dustbin just ahead of them. Strays were an all too regular sight across the city now as people’s homes were blown to smithereens and their pets were left without anyone to care for them.
    Lucy scrabbled in her bag for the remains of the sandwich she had bought in the staff dining room that day and not bothered to finish. She had the appetite of a bird nowadays. ‘I bet he’d enjoy this. It’s only bloater paste but he looks as if he’s starving. Here, boy.’
    ‘Ugh, don’t encourage the scabby thing,’ Annabelle said, horrified. ‘He might have the mange or any number of different diseases. Just look at the state of the mutt. He’s absolutely filthy!’
    ‘So would you be filthy if you were forced to live on the streets,’ Lucy retorted as the creature took a step towards her. He seemed reluctant to come too close but when he saw the food in Lucy’s hand his hunger overcame his fear and he lurched forward, snatched it off her, gulped it down, then wagged his tail as he looked at her expectantly.
    ‘Ah, he’s still hungry,’ Lucy said sadly.
    ‘So what?’ Annabelle retorted cold-heartedly. ‘So are the hundreds of other strays roaming around the city. And we can’t feed them all, can we?’
    Dotty dug her in the ribs then and glowered at her, and Annabelle piped down. Dotty meanwhile was thrilled to see Lucy showing an interest in something again, even if it was only a stray dog.
    Lucy had bent to stroke him by then and his tail was going ten to the dozen as he lapped up the attention. He wasn’t the prettiest of animals, she had to admit. In fact, he was a real mongrel. He was of medium size with legs that looked too short for his thin body, which was short-haired whilst his long ears and his tail were bushy. It was hard to decide what colour he was too under all the layers of dirt, but when he looked up at her from trusting soulful brown eyes Lucy felt something inside her stir into life. He was helpless and vulnerable just as Mary had been, and in that moment she knew that she was going to take him home and care for him.
    ‘I’m going to adopt him,’ she stated and Annabelle almost choked.
    ‘Adopt him? You must be mad! If you