‘There’s only one smell I like more than fresh bread,’ said Maggie, as she pulled on her spotless white apron and tied it around her twenty-one-inch waist, fluffed up her wavy white-blonde hair, checked her eyebrows (drawn on with the end of a burnt matchstick as advised by Woman & Home magazine) and puckered her lips (tinted with beetroot juice), checking her reflection in the back of a silver cake tray, before she began to serve with a radiant smile and a flutter of black lashes. It was hard to believe she was a girl of fifteen who had only just left the local Catholic school – she had the allure and confidence of a woman, a spirited one at that. Most of the customers, especially the men, loved Maggie’s charm and optimism – and Uncle John joked that she had more sugar in her than the cakes she served – but the queue now snaked out of the bakery and into the street and Audrey, sensing the impatience of some of the older women in their thick overcoats and sturdy black shoes who spent whole mornings standing in various shop queues for their rations, worked quickly, sorting loaves and boxing cakes and repeating orders, while shaking her head at Maggie in mock despair.

‘I dread to think,’ she said to Maggie. ‘Enlighten us, why don’t you?’

‘Well it ain’t these gas masks,’ said Florence, a middle-aged woman at the front of the queue, patting her gas mask case hanging over her shoulder. ‘The smell of rubber gets up my nose and turns my stomach. Oven-bottom loaf please Audrey.’

There was a murmur of agreement in the shop. The gas masks were a vital necessity – and everyone had to carry one – but were horrible to put on. One of Audrey’s customers had said her daughter was physically sick with claustrophobia when they tried wearing them for a gas attack drill at school. Everyone was supposed to practise wearing them for fifteen minutes a week, and Audrey had been frozen to the spot recently when she’d witnessed the chilling sight of a class of five-year-olds walking across the playground in their masks.

‘Is it 4711 cologne?’ Florence said, leaning on the counter as if to steady herself. ‘I haven’t smelled that in months, not since my boys left for military training.’

Audrey gave Flo’s hand a brief squeeze. Flo’s sons were serving in the Royal Navy but seemed barely old enough to have left home, let alone be in battle.

‘It’s got to be figgety pudden on Christmas Day when it’s snowing outside,’ said Mrs Cook, a customer Audrey adored. ‘Audrey’s figgety pudden at that. I’ve never tasted another as good and I’ve tasted a few in my time.’

Audrey beamed at Mrs Cook in acknowledgement of the kind praise. An elderly lady, with a face so deeply lined it held a library of stories, Mrs Cook had been talking about Audrey’s Christmas puddings ever since Audrey started making them when she first got a job at the bakery, six years ago. One of her favourite times of the year was Stir-up Sunday, when she made the Christmas puddings to her grandmother’s recipe. If she could bottle the delicious aroma of the mixed fruit, nuts, brandy and treacle, she would.

‘No,’ said Maggie, shaking her head, giving Florence her loaf. ‘My favourite smell is… the slag heaps of Barnsley!’

‘You daft thing,’ said Florence, while the rest of the women in the queue cracked up laughing.

‘And why might that be?’ Audrey said, turning around to get another loaf from the shelf and placing it on the counter, for the next customer.

‘I went to Barnsley as a small child to live for a bit while my ma learned hairdressing,’ Maggie said, deftly working while she talked. ‘My Aunty Fanny was the sweetest woman on earth. She made home-made lemonade for me and shortbread and let me pick the plums from her tree and sell them out front. And so that smell reminds me of her and those visits. Course she’s dead and buried now. Consumption.’

‘You’re as mad as a brush, Maggie.’ Florence shook her head, chuckling, as she turned to leave the shop.

‘How’s your “vaccee”, Flo?’ Elizabeth, next in the queue, asked before she left. ‘Any lice? Mine’s a bed-wetter poor mite. He’s frightened of the dark. The washing’s going to be the death of me, let alone the war. Oh it’s plain drudgery, that’s what it is.’

The women in the shop laughed again as Audrey spotted one of her regular ladies, Mrs Collingham, leaning against the shop door frame looking as if she could barely stand. Audrey rushed out from behind the counter and led Mrs Collingham into the shop and onto a chair she kept on hand for the older customers who liked to stop for a natter.

‘Maggie,’ she said quietly. ‘Can you carry on serving for a moment? And can you pass me the Phospherine?’

‘Here you go,’ said Maggie. ‘Blimey, Mrs C, you do look fagged.’

The bottle of Phospherine, which carried the slogan ‘makes life worthwhile’ on its label, was a tonic that steadied nerves. Audrey knelt down next to Mrs Collingham, offering her the recommended ten drops on the tongue, while Maggie pasted on a bright smile and dealt with the queue. Mrs Collingham was a woman in her late forties, and Audrey knew that her only son, George, a gunner with the Royal Artillery serving with the B.E.F., was overseas and that her husband – George’s dad – had been killed in the Great War.

‘What can I get you?’ she asked, putting a hand gently on Mrs Collingham’s arm, after she’d taken the Phospherine. ‘Do you need a doctor, or would a nice cup of tea help?’

A hush descended in the bakery and Audrey could feel the concern from the women waiting in the queue.

Mrs Collingham shook her head, but her eyes misted over. ‘I can hardly talk about it,’ she said in a ragged whisper. ‘It’s George. I got word of him… and there was a picture of him in the Echo last night. Did you see it?’

Audrey shook her head. Mrs Collingham pulled out a crumpled copy of the Bournemouth Echo from her bag and showed Audrey the page where her son’s photograph was in a row of images of young men’s faces under the headline ‘THESE LOCAL MEN ARE PRISONERS OF WAR IN GERMANY’. Underneath the image was a short description of each man and where they were being held.

Audrey gasped, grabbing Mrs Collingham’s hand tightly.

‘It says he’s been captured and is in a prisoner of war camp in Germany,’ Mrs Collingham continued, telling the other ladies who were listening in. ‘I’m scared I’ll never see him again, that I’ll not hear his cheerful voice or hear him sing silly songs while he makes tea. That I’ll never make him another dinner and pour him extra gravy, or give him the bone marrow from a Sunday joint on the handle of a teaspoon – the best bit. How will he cope? He never even wanted to join up! He was shaking like a leaf when those call-up papers came.’

Audrey held onto Mrs Collingham’s hand, but the poor woman was openly weeping now, tears splashing down her cheeks and onto her collar. Audrey noticed she’d left a curler in the back of her hair and her heart broke a little while she gently and discreetly removed it. She felt for a clean cotton hanky in her pocket and handed it to her.

‘I feel so helpless,’ continued Mrs Collingham. ‘I can’t do a single thing to help him! Oh I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be holding you up when you’re so busy running your business, I’m sorry ladies…’

‘You’re not holding us up,’ soothed Audrey. ‘There will be better days, Mrs Collingham, you have to believe that. George will be thinking of you and that will help him get through. The war can’t go on forever. Maggie, pass me two of those buns there. I think Mrs Collingham needs to go home for a sit-down and a rest and have a cup of tea and a bun. Shall I walk you home, Mrs Collingham? Are any of your girls at home?’

Maggie filled a bag with sweet-smelling, warm rock cakes and pushed them into the bottom of Mrs Collingham’s basket, along with her order of a loaf.

‘They’re at work, but honestly, I really must get going to the butcher for my ration, and then I’ll have a rest. I don’t think I slept at all last night with worrying,’ said Mrs Collingham, standing up too quickly and steadying herself on Audrey’s arm. ‘Oh dear Audrey, I’m a silly old fool…’

The blood drained from Mrs Collingham’s face and her skin looked oddly sweaty, then bright red blood suddenly started to ooze from her nostrils. Audrey grabbed her arm and guided her back to the chair, feeling in her pocket for another hanky. She gave it to Mrs Collingham to soak up the blood and the women in the shop came closer, gathering around Mrs Collingham, offering more hankies and words of comfort.

‘Maggie, can you go over the road and fetch Mrs Short from the stationers,’ said Audrey. ‘She used to be a nurse.’

‘Oh there’s no need,’ said Mrs Collingham faintly. ‘Don’t bother the woman on my behalf.’

‘Please let me through,’ said a voice from the bakery doorway. ‘I can help.’

At the sound of the woman’s voice, Audrey looked up to see a young woman, at once familiar and yet strange. Her red hair beautifully pinned up and carrying a budgie cage and a small brown suitcase, her bright blue eyes darted from Audrey to Mrs Collingham. Audrey’s eyes widened into perfect circles.

‘Pinch the top of your nose,’ said the young woman. ‘And lift your chin up. That should stop the flow.’

Mrs Collingham did as she was instructed, and as the bleed slowed, she managed a weak smile and an embarrassed roll of her eyes. Stuffing bloodstained hankies in her handbag, she muttered a stream of apologies.

Finding herself unable to stop staring at the red-haired young woman, think straight or speak, Audrey’s heart raced as memories flashed and spun inside her head, like tickets in a tombola drum.

‘Audrey?’ said the young woman, nervously smiling. ‘Do you recognise me? It’s your stepsister Lily. Otherwise known as “Copperknob”!’

‘Lily!’ Audrey said, incredulously. ‘Lily, is that really you?’