Early August saw the pale skies over the Channel plagued with waves of German raiders attacking the south coast, or dumping their unused bombs after attacking major cities inland on their way back to Germany. There was also the first pamphlet raid on the south coast, where papers containing one of Hitler’s speeches, ‘A Last Appeal To Reason’, fluttered through the air like leaves.

‘Rather them than bombs!’ Charlie had said, throwing a handful of pamphlets into the fire.

Though the RAF continued to valiantly defend Britain, chasing away enemy planes through the clouds, the air-raid siren frequently wailed its warnings. The businesses on Fisherman’s Road did their best to cope with the constant disruptions, some offering their basements as temporary air shelters open to all in the event of a siren. It played havoc with the baking though – whole batches of buns and cakes were spoiled – so it was decided that if Audrey had just put the cakes in the oven when a siren sounded, Charlie would stay by the ovens, using the protection of the strong bakery table as shelter if need be.

‘I didn’t build that Anderson shelter for it to sit empty,’ said Charlie, when Audrey insisted she’d rather stay with him. So Audrey reluctantly used the shelter, often taking ingredients in with her. Grating carrots for the carrot cake mixture was a better use of time than worrying, after all.

Mid-month, when a weariness had set into the bones of the town, a letter came for Audrey, not from Daphne and Victor as she had hoped (and slightly feared), but with a French postmark. Sitting at the kitchen table during a two-minute break, half a sandwich in her mouth, she opened the envelope, which held the hint of an unfamiliar perfume, and scanned the short handwritten note. It was from Jacques’ mother. Thanking Audrey and Charlie for the hospitality they had showed Jacques while he was in Bournemouth, of which he had apparently spoken of with great fondness, she wrote that she thought Audrey would want to know – and that Lily should know – that Jacques was missing in action, presumed killed. ‘My heart is broken,’ his mother had written in pale blue ink. ‘Our family is in ruins.’

Clutching the letter in her hand, Audrey dropped her sandwich and closed her eyes for a long moment. The normal sounds of the bakery carried on all around her, but she sat in silence, a hard ball of grief sinking deep into the pit of her stomach. That beautiful boy is dead, she thought numbly, remembering the startling colour of his eyes: summer skies and swimming pools.

The sound of Lily’s laughter in the shop jolted Audrey from her desperate sadness and she quickly pushed the letter back into the envelope and stuffed it into the bureau drawer where she kept her correspondence and where she’d put Jacques’ love letter for safekeeping.

Pushing the chair into the table and in a trance-like state, she watered the geraniums and the cucumber plants on the windowsill before walking out into the backyard and staring up at the sky, her hands on her hips. She wasn’t a God-fearing woman, but at least if she was, there would be someone to rage and scream at, to shake her fists at in bitter fury. Instead, her sadness about Jacques’ loss had to be controlled, just as she had to contain her fears about the safety of dearest William. As with all the women she knew who had lost their husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbours in this loathsome, detestable war, there was nothing to do and nowhere to go with the pain of loss except bury it deep.

Pushing open the door of the Anderson shelter and closing it behind her, she covered her face as she sobbed silently into a cushion, cursing Hitler and cursing the war. That darling boy was gone. He had loved Lily and she had never known. Audrey had not yet given her his letter.

She snapped up her head when the door opened, to see Charlie’s silhouette, his white apron flapping in the breeze, the Bournemouth Echo in his hand.

‘Audrey?’ Charlie asked. ‘Whatever’s wrong? I was on my way to the privy when I heard you.’

‘Oh Charlie,’ she said in a whisper, her face red and wet with tears, her hair escaping the pins. ‘It’s Jacques. He’s missing in action, presumed dead. That lovely young boy! His life wiped out… like that.’ Audrey clicked her fingers together.

Charlie came into the shelter and sat down heavily on the bench opposite her, shaking his head in shock. He brought the smell of fresh-baked bread with him wherever he went. She leaned over and rested a hand on his knee.

‘I can’t sit here any longer and do nothing,’ he said, pointing to his heart, a tremor in his voice. ‘I’ve too much rage and sorrow in here. We don’t know where William is, the Stringer boys are dead, the Collingham lad is a prisoner of war and now Jacques, who was sharing our table not two months ago. Albert will be signing up soon, when he comes of age and he’s barely out of school. I can’t watch any more of ’em fall, Audrey, I simply can’t do it.’

Charlie’s mouth contorted with emotion and Audrey’s heart broke all over again.

‘Charlie love—’ she said, but he raised a hand.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he said, before standing up. ‘And I don’t want to hear it just now. Sometimes you… you… suffocate me!’

‘But Charlie, I…’ she started, her voice faltering.

‘I need to get on,’ Charlie snapped. ‘Dry your eyes.’

Charlie opened the shelter door to find Lily standing outside holding two envelopes. Her face was whiter than white, her entire body trembling. Charlie patted her on the shoulder and walked past into the bakery, leaving Audrey and Lily together. Audrey knew immediately what had happened. Her mouth fell open and she shook her head in dismay.

‘Oh Lily,’ she started. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I went to put the ledger book in the bureau,’ Lily said, barely audible. ‘And I found these letters. I don’t understand. Has Jacques been writing to me? Have I read this right? Is he dead?’

Audrey dried her eyes and extended her arms to Lily, who looked fit to faint. Audrey talked quickly and quietly, desperate for Lily to understand the reasons why she had kept his letter hidden.

‘Jacques gave me a letter to give to you when he left the bakery to return to service,’ Audrey said, holding Lily’s hands. ‘I thought you had so much on your mind, with deciding what to do about the baby, that his letter would be too much for you to cope with. He didn’t know you were pregnant and you would have had to tell him. I kept it safe and was waiting for the right moment to give it to you. And then the letter came this morning from his mother. I’m so terribly sorry.’

Audrey’s voice broke and she frantically studied Lily’s face for her response. She expected tears but instead a thunderous expression darkened her features.

‘You’re just like my father!’ Lily cried. ‘Keeping me wrapped up in cotton wool! It isn’t up to you, Audrey. You’re not my mother. I don’t even have a mother! If I did I wouldn’t be here, like this, my life in tatters!’

Lily fell to her knees in the soil by the shelter, as she broke down into gut-wrenching sobs. Audrey knelt by her, pulling Lily’s head into her chest and rocking her back and forth, stroking her hair.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Audrey. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I didn’t even get to say goodbye…’ Lily spluttered.

Lily untangled herself from Audrey’s grip and moved away, staggering backwards.

‘How could you do that?’ Lily said. ‘The letter wasn’t for you… you should never have even read it! Why did you read it?’

‘It fell open,’ said Audrey quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have done. I wanted to protect you, Lily. Your young shoulders have so much on them at the moment.’

Lily turned away and Audrey followed her inside, but she ran up the stairs and slammed the door to her bedroom. Meanwhile Maggie was hollering through from the shop floor.

‘It’s like Picadilly Circus in here,’ she yelled. ‘Is anyone going to join me?’

Audrey picked up a cup from the kitchen table and hurled it onto the floor, where it smashed into hundreds of tiny pieces.

‘Damn it!’ said Audrey, wiping the tears from her face with her sleeves, marching downstairs and through into the shop.

---

When Elsie arrived home, after her first day training as a ‘conductorette’ with Dorset and Hants Transport, her brain laden with the rulebook she’d had to master that day, she’d found Audrey in the flour loft, sweeping up flour that had escaped from the hessian flour sacks. Audrey’s dark blonde hair and navy dress were white with a dusting of flour, her skin pink from the exertion of furiously sweeping. On seeing Elsie, Audrey stopped working and leaned one hand and her chin on the broom handle, smoothing down her apron with the other.

‘What’s that broom ever done to you?’ Elsie asked, smiling at Audrey. ‘I could hear you banging it a mile off. Is everything okay? Where’s Lily? I was going to ask her and Mary if they’d like to come to visit my mother and the twins with me. I bought a bag of sweets for them to share and they want to hear all the details about the buses. I’ll have to omit the wolf whistles and the gaping.’ Elsie paused to roll her eyes. ‘Honestly, Audrey,’ she continued, ‘you’d think half the men in Bournemouth had not seen a woman do a day’s work before. One of the old boys there kept saying: “Now that the fairer sex have had to go out to work for a living,” with his eyes burning a hole in my back. Makes me wonder: do men think that women who are at home working their fingers to the bone in the kitchen and raising families do it as a sort of hobby? I know a few who could set ’em straight!’

Audrey smiled, but Elsie knew right away that something was bothering her. She looked seriously upset. Elsie’s thoughts went to Maggie and she vaguely wondered if this had anything to do with her borrowing that sugar? But when Audrey explained about the letter from Jacques’ mother, all the while fiddling with the strings of her apron, Elsie saw that her friend was drowning in guilt.

‘Lily’s put herself to bed,’ said Audrey. ‘I’ve made a mess of this one. I thought I was doing the best thing, but I got it very wrong. I can understand why she’s feeling broken-hearted.’

Elsie shook her head in dismay. Of course she could understand Lily’s anguish over Jacques, but Lily couldn’t blame Audrey, who was clearly distraught about his death. Audrey embodied kindness and open-heartedness, Lily surely knew that Audrey would rather die than do anything to hurt those she loved.

‘Let me talk to her,’ she said to Audrey. ‘She has a tendency to wallow.’

Knocking briefly on the door of the bedroom she shared with Lily, Elsie entered the room with a ‘Hello’ to discover Lily had pulled down the blackout blinds, despite it still being light outside. Sitting in the darkness on her narrow bed and pulling off her work boots, hurling them onto the floor in relief, she waited for Lily to peer out from under the cream blanket. But she didn’t. Elsie frowned. Lily’s shape was visible, but there was no sound or movement. Her slightly scuffed shoes – brown leather with embossed dots – were neatly positioned on the floor by the bed. On the bedside table was a pot of Snowfire Vanishing Cream foundation and the filigree brooch she sometimes wore.

‘Lily?’ she said, peering at her outline more closely. When there was no answer, she gently shook the shape under the blanket, which quickly gave way. Yanking back the cover, she saw that pillows lay where she had thought Lily’s body was. Crossing the room and opening the blackout blind, she scanned the streets below. Then, checking through the few belongings in her drawer, she realised that Lily had taken Jacques’ drawing of her and a change of clothes, but nothing much else. Bertie was still in his cage, nibbling on a small pile of seeds, which Lily must have left for him.

She can’t have gone far, she thought, racking her brains for where Lily might have gone in a town she barely knew. Lily was soon going to be a mother – she couldn’t just run away when the going got tough. Elsie sighed. Lily had a lot of growing up to do – and quickly – and Elsie wasn’t afraid of telling her as much when she found her.