Robert didn’t come back that night. When it had got so late that the blackout blinds were pulled down, the firewatchers were out on duty and the Mitchell children’s eyes couldn’t keep from closing, Audrey made up beds for the three of them in with Mary and Joy, with any spare sheets and hessian flour sacks she could lay her hands on. Although they were so tired, they probably could have slept standing.

Audrey then gave Lily and Betty her bedroom to share and, despite their protests, made up a bed for herself in the living room, while William and John went back into the bakehouse to knock back and prove the dough. Before climbing into her makeshift bed, Audrey rubbed some camomile lotion into her sun-kissed cheeks and rested her hand on her bump to feel the reassuring movement of the babies kicking.

‘I’ve barely had time to think today,’ she whispered, imagining that the twins were listening. Not that she spoke to them out loud every day, of course, but occasionally she would comment on what was happening around them, imagining that she was preparing them for what their life might be like once they were born. Born. Gosh, was it really just a matter of weeks until they arrived? Audrey’s heart burned with excitement – and also trepidation. Looking after those dear little Mitchell children made her realise once again the importance of protecting the innocence of children as much as you possibly could. She would be the best mother she could, but it would be a whole lot easier if Charlie was here.

‘Oh Charlie,’ she muttered before finally turning onto her side to sleep. It was the early hours. ‘I wish you were here with me.’

Her thoughts drifted to Betty and the three little children upstairs. She hoped that they would wake up refreshed and that the clanking of the bakery tins at dawn wouldn’t disturb them.

Just as she was finally feeling her body relax and the soft, inviting arms of sleep envelop her, the horrible, haunting wail of the siren burst into the room. She woke with a jolt. Unable to sit immediately upright any more, she turned onto her side and pushed herself up to sitting, feeling the skin on her tummy straining over her bump as she moved.

‘Gracious me,’ grumbled Audrey, her eyes aching as she blinked in the darkness. ‘I must have been asleep for all of a second! Must get those little ones up and out to safety.’

Standing in her long nightdress, disorientated and feeling nauseous with tiredness, she knew she must act quickly. There were five small children in the house and they all needed to get to the safety of the shelter as soon as possible. Yanking on her dressing gown, which barely stretched around her these days, and grabbing her gas mask case, she lit an oil lamp and moved into the hallway, where she met Betty, Lily, Mary, Joy and the Mitchell children, wrapped in blankets, tripping over one another in the darkness.

‘I’m just in from work,’ Elsie said from behind them, still in her clippie outfit. ‘Who are all these children? Are they evacuees?’

‘In a way,’ said Audrey. ‘I’ll explain. Let’s get down to the shelter. Is William in the bakehouse with John?’

Elsie nodded, and Audrey picked up Dora and helped steer the other children out into the backyard and dive into the Anderson shelter for the several hundredth time since the war started.

‘Come on, children,’ she said, hurrying them in. ‘It’ll be a squash, but at least we’ll be warm, like little birds in a nest.’

A feeling of dread settled into her heart as she realised it was the early hours of Whit Monday and remembered how, during the Whitsun holiday the previous year, Bournemouth had taken a beating from the Luftwaffe. The date had been deliberately chosen to wreak havoc on the town when people would be visiting for their holiday, or at least a breath of sea air. Before slamming shut the door, to block out the terrifying threat of enemy attack, Audrey noticed flares in the sky above the town, briefly lighting up the skyline and German pilots’ targets, leaving many people with nowhere to hide. Once inside the shelter, they all stared at each other in desolation as the sound of aircraft and machine guns roared overhead. Audrey’s head hummed with worries. Not only did she have all these kiddies to take care of, she needed to get back into the bakehouse before dawn to prepare the counter goods, so that they were ready for 7 a.m. deliveries. She willed the All Clear siren to sound, flinching at the explosions in the near distance. She shuddered, gripping her bump with her hand. What if an incendiary bomb hit the bakery again, as had happened last year? No point in thinking about the ‘what ifs’, she told herself firmly.

Maybe it was a case of ‘wartime’ tummy, associated with bad nerves, but a pain ripped through her and she closed her eyes, clenching her teeth to avoid crying out and alerting the others. When the pain subsided, she opened her eyes and wondered if she had any of that stomach powder left that the chemist had given her when she’d described the heartburn and acidity trouble she had. She remembered the logo on the side of the box. Funny what went through your mind in the shelter, when you were exhausted.

‘Where’s Daddy, Miss?’ Cyril asked, interrupting her random thoughts, his enormous eyes shining with fear.

‘He’s probably in another shelter,’ said Mary, taking hold of his hand and squeezing it in hers.

‘Yes, she’s probably right,’ said Audrey, her heart swelling with pride for Mary. ‘There’s plenty of public shelters in Bournemouth. He will have dived into one of those, I’ll bet.’

She hoped she was right and that Robert was safe. Whispering a silent prayer for Robert and Pat and all their family, friends and neighbours, she racked her brain for ways to lift everyone’s spirits a little.

‘Why don’t we sing?’ she said to Elsie and Lily. ‘Something to get the little ones back off to sleep?’

‘“You Are My Sunshine”,’ said Elsie. ‘Jimmie Davis.’

Audrey nodded, noticing how worn Elsie seemed and vowing that she’d find a way to cheer her up tomorrow. Stroking Dora’s hair as her eyes began closing, Audrey counted the girls in, one, two, three:

‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,’ sang Audrey, Lily, Betty and Elsie, their voices sweetly soft yet unshakeably strong, a unified sound of defiant hope and love against the backdrop of wartime death and destruction.

---

When the All Clear sounded just after dawn, the townspeople emerged, sleep-deprived and shivering, from their shelters. Rumour had it that the raids by the Luftwaffe on some areas in the town, including the beloved Upper Pleasure Gardens and along the coast, had been intense and severe. Old Reg had been first with the news, filling Audrey in over the garden fence.

‘All those years of growing flowers and pruning in the Pleasure Gardens and it will have been destroyed and burned to smithereens,’ reported Audrey to Lily, Elsie and Betty. ‘Sewers have been smashed and buildings damaged. It’s just causing more disruption for folk. There are craters thirty feet wide and fifteen deep, apparently.’

‘Reg said a firewatcher was hurt too,’ said Lily. ‘Lucky that nobody was killed.’

Helping the yawning, quiet children up to the kitchen, Audrey put the kettle on the range and stared out of the window at the sea, massaging her lower back. Angry dark clouds were gathering over the water, and she squinted at a strip of pale light far away on the horizon. A gap in the clouds perhaps, but far, far, away and well out of reach. She sighed again, before checking her pocket watch and realising that, despite being sleep-deprived, she must get on with the day.

‘Lily, Betty, can I leave you to take care of the little ones for now?’ she said. ‘I need to get my overall on ready for work and Elsie, if you’re free, could you give me a hand? Often when there’s been a raid like this, extra bread and cakes are needed for the bombed-out at the rest centres and I need to be prepared.’

‘Yes,’ said Elsie, stifling a yawn. ‘Of course. I’ll freshen up. There’s something I want to talk to you about too.’

---

Elsie’s bones ached and throbbed with tiredness after the uncomfortable night in the shelter, but, as she helped Audrey sort out the buns and put the scones in to bake in the cooling oven, she didn’t utter a word of complaint. How could she? With Audrey heavily pregnant but still working like a carthorse, and William and John up all night baking the bread, risking their lives throughout the air raid for the good of the local community, she owed it to everyone to stay upbeat. Inside, though, she was burning to confess to someone what she’d done. As she kissed William briefly on the lips before he went up to their bedroom for a nap, her thoughts went, for the hundredth time, to the letter she’d written and sent to David’s mother, Alice Fielding. Despite Audrey warning her not to contact the woman, she hadn’t been able to stop herself. Perhaps it was the Italian blood in her, a sense of loyalty to William’s good name, or simply caring deeply about someone, but she passionately believed in doing everything in her power to help right a wrong. After their awful visit and despite Alice’s intense grief, Elsie was determined to tell her that William was not to blame. Taking a deep breath, she decided to tell Audrey.

‘I wrote to David’s mother,’ she said quickly as they worked side by side in the shop, stacking loaves on the shelves and in a line up against the window. ‘I just had to, Audrey. The words wrote themselves, really.’

Audrey stopped what she was doing and bit her bottom lip.

‘Has she replied?’ she said quietly.

Elsie shook her head and felt a lump forming in her throat. She wished that Alice would reply, but so far, there hadn’t been a single word from her.

‘What did you say in your letter, Elsie?’ Audrey asked tentatively. Elsie couldn’t tell if Audrey was annoyed with her – she seemed distracted more than anything.

‘I just told her how sorry I was for her loss,’ said Elsie, ‘and I told her how much William was hurting, that he hadn’t visited her for forgiveness, but to share her heartache and grief.’

Audrey shook her head. ‘Oh gracious me,’ she said, paling.

‘What?’ Elsie said. ‘What is it?’

‘I wrote to her too,’ said Audrey.

‘You never did!’ said Elsie, clapping her hand on her mouth.

‘I did,’ said Audrey. ‘I wanted her to know that we all feel her pain. Through William’s condition, we feel her loss, but we know that he’s suffering too. Poor woman probably feels under attack. Oh gosh, why did I go against my own advice?’

Elsie and Audrey stood for a moment contemplating their actions, until the jingle of the doorbell sounded and a man entered, his face smudged with black soot. Audrey instantly stiffened.

‘Robert, you’re back,’ she said. ‘Let me call Betty. She’s upstairs. Betty! Where did you go?’ She turned her attention back to him. ‘You know your three children were terrified last night and didn’t know when or if you were coming back? I expect you went off to drown your sorrows in a pint of ale, but I can tell you this for free: ignoring your troubles only makes them worse.’

‘Listen, lady,’ Robert said. ‘I haven’t had my nose in a pint of ale or anywhere near one. I went for a walk, to think, and walked miles. Then, on my way back, the siren went off. I found myself near to where the bombs exploded and I got involved in a rescue.’

‘Did someone say “rescue”?’ asked Flo, who had arrived in the shop with Elizabeth to collect their bread. ‘Is this about last night?’

Both women, closely followed by Pat, crowded around Robert to listen to his tale. Basking in their attention, he raised his voice.

‘I had to dig out the occupants of a house that had been turned into a crater,’ he said. ‘In another house a grandfather, father, mother and a boy were in the basement when it was hit. I pulled them all out alive and they went off to the rest centre, but the old man was injured. Their neighbour was an elderly woman and she refused to leave her home – she wanted to stay with her husband, who was paralysed – but eventually, with my help, we got them both out.’

‘You were in the right place at the right time, son,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Thank goodness for you.’

‘I’m not all bad,’ he said, turning to Audrey.

‘I’m sorry, Robert,’ said Audrey. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did.’

Betty came in with Vera, who ran towards her dad and flung her arms round his legs. He lifted her up as if she was lighter than a feather and kissed her cheek. Elsie shared a glance with Audrey, who wore a guilty expression, but her expression changed to one of concern when a police officer came into the bakery.

‘There you are,’ he said to Robert. ‘Finally caught up with you. Sorry, ladies, but this man was seen thieving from a property bombed out last night. He needs to come into the station with me for questioning. Has he been bothering you? Had his hand in the cash box?’

‘Thieving?’ said Betty, her jaw dropping. ‘Whatever next, Robert?’

‘I…’ Robert stuttered, placing Vera gently back down on the floor. The next moment, quick as a flash, he shoved Audrey out of the way so hard she stumbled backwards and fell to the floor, where she lay spread-eagled.

‘Oh Audrey!’ said Betty, crouching down by her side. ‘Are you all right? Robert wouldn’t want to hurt you. I’m so sorry!’

‘It’s not for you to be sorry,’ Audrey managed, wincing in pain. ‘He was scared, that’s all.’

Everyone was so shocked and concerned for Audrey’s welfare that Robert had a clear run to the door, which he flew out of. He legged it down the street. The police officer, an older, overweight chap, ran outside and shouted Robert’s name, but he didn’t stand a chance of catching him. Elsie knelt down next to Betty to help Audrey up, but she yelped and screwed her eyes shut.

‘Is it the babies?’ Elsie asked and Audrey nodded, clearly in agony.

‘I think they’re coming early,’ she said. ‘Someone will have to watch the shop for me, I can’t…’

‘Betty and Lily can watch the shop,’ said Elsie. Betty nodded. ‘I’ll help you upstairs. Pat, you’ve had babies. You’ll know what to do.’

Elsie searched Pat’s face, hoping that Audrey’s mother-in-law was as tough as she seemed.

‘Let’s get you upstairs right away,’ Pat said in a gutsy voice. ‘And get these Barton babies born.’