The evening before, Lily had journeyed to Bournemouth by train. Hoping to travel clandestinely despite her copper hair, she’d cursed her decision to bring Bertie, her budgie, in his cage; he was attracting her fellow passengers like iron filings to a magnet. But stroking the feathers of the little green and yellow bird was her one comfort in the turmoil she’d found herself in. Leaving London for Bournemouth had been a hastily made plan, snatched out of thin air like catching a fly in her fist, when she found herself in desperate need of escape.

‘I’m going to stay with Audrey,’ she had decisively told her father, Victor, and stepmother, Daphne. ‘She’s expecting me, and it’s all arranged. You can’t change my mind.’

Audrey wasn’t expecting her, indeed she had no clue that Lily was coming, but Lily had needed to think on her feet. So, while Lily had packed clothes and her latest Agatha Christie novel, her stepmother and father had waited downstairs, silently fuming, her father refusing to speak to her, but pushing a ten-bob note into her hand before she left. Now, Lily thought of the letter she’d hurriedly scribbled and posted before she left London and her stomach sank. Her words in black ink on white paper meant there was no going back. She had been so sure she was doing the right thing – but now she was riddled with doubt.

‘Don’t look back,’ she told herself, as the train had stopped at towns en route to Bournemouth and she fought the urge to disembark, tempted by the possibility of starting afresh in a town where she didn’t know a single soul. But something kept her seated – whether that was faith or fear she wasn’t sure.

‘Where’s a pretty girl like you travelling to at this hour?’ an older gentleman sharing her carriage had asked, when she’d helped put his suitcase in the storage rack.

‘Bournemouth,’ she’d said, with as much confidence as she could muster. ‘I’m staying with a relative to help with the evacuees for a little while. Doing my bit for the war effort.’ Her cheeks fired with the lie and, as she averted her eyes from the man’s gaze, she wished he would stop looking at her. Her stepmother, Daphne, had told her that good looks were a curse and a blessing in equal measure your whole life but so far they had only been a curse.

With her locks styled into what the Daily Mirror called the ‘Gas Mask Curl’, with a centre parting for the strap and curls either side, she was beautiful, if unconventionally so. Between her two front teeth was a gap almost wide enough to slot a penny, and she had skin so pale it was almost translucent. In a very bright light the thin blue veins on her eyelids were visible, like contour lines on an Ordnance Survey map.

Anyway, it was brains more than beauty that mattered to Lily – not that her brains had helped much in the horrible row she’d had with her father. In fact the answering back had only made it worse. She trembled at the memory of his attack, lifting her hand to just above her left eye where he had struck with the back of his hand, his wedding band nicking her skin. A violent purple bruise had bloomed around the cut and she was going to have to lie about how she got that too. Should anyone ask, she would say she had fallen over in the blackout. It was a genuine problem in the city. Despite the posters warning people to ‘Look Out in the Blackout’, a lot of milk bottles had been kicked over, let alone the car accidents.

‘Ah of course,’ the gentleman replied. ‘A reception area isn’t it, Bournemouth? A lot of children evacuated from Southampton too, poor things must wonder what’s happening to them. That town must be teeming with children. Good job there’s a beach, though it’s probably off limits now, what with that lunatic Hitler on the horizon. Good luck to you, miss. Good luck to us all.’

Chugging through the New Forest in the fading light, where wild ponies and deer sheltered in the trees, Lily had watched the landscape change before eventually reaching the coastal town of Bournemouth where the air smelled of hot fish and chip suppers sprinkled with salt and vinegar. This was the first time she’d been so far away from home alone. A moment she had previously yearned for, it was not at all how she’d imagined it would be.

Scribbled on a scrap piece of paper were two addresses, one of a bed and breakfast where she was booked for a night and the other, Audrey’s address. Though she had written to Audrey a handful of times, trying her best to keep in touch, she hadn’t seen her in six years, not since their stepfamily had been snapped in two like the fingers of a Rowntree’s Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp bar. Shifting uncomfortably in her seat at the memory of the day Audrey and William left home and never returned, she sighed regretfully. Now was she following in their footsteps?

Oh it was a fine mess all right, she’d thought miserably, looking down at her heeled lace-up shoes and polka-dot day dress that seemed to belong to a different life. Only two months ago she was employed doing important war work, as a typist at the Ministry of Information headquarters in the city. When the war had broken out, her father had got her the job with a cricketing acquaintance of his, a twenty-five-year-old Assistant Publicity Officer called Henry Bateman, who worked on various propaganda poster campaigns. Henry had eaten with Lily in the work canteen several times and lavished her with words such as ‘potential’, ‘smart’, ‘bright future’ and ‘capable’. He’d bought her tickets to see the new Technicolor, 21 Days Together, a film about a secret love affair starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, guiding her to her seat with his hand on the small of her back, and loaned her Agatha Christie paperbacks that she’d devoured. Out of all the girls in the office, it was seventeen-year-old Lily he asked for an opinion when the artists’ illustrations for the campaign posters arrived at the office in beautiful black portfolio cases. Making comments like ‘eye-catching’ and ‘strong’ made her chest puff with pride and her chin lift a modicum higher than it perhaps should have done. He had made her feel special and admired, loved even, but all that elevation had all too quickly come crashing down. She swallowed at the memory of Henry’s treacherous words that crushed her after their working relationship had become something far more intimate. You are a distraction to the war effort. Waves of panic rolled over her at the thought of the secret she carried.

Lily, don’t you dare think about that now, she instructed herself.

‘Bournemouth Central,’ the guard had called, as the journey finally came to an end. With clammy hands and a pounding head, Lily climbed from the train carrying her case, birdcage and gas mask box. Thus far she had been buoyed on by a fierce determination not to crumble in the face of the mess she’d got herself into, but in her heart she carried debilitating fear. Her plan depended on Audrey welcoming her into her life, giving Lily time to work out what to do – but would her stepsister be so accommodating?

‘Good girls dance and sing through all difficulties,’ she muttered, the motto she’d long ago learned in the Girl Guides, as she moved along the unlit station platform.

Outside the station, the streets were completely dark. In blackout it was an offence even to strike a match and there were no signposts at all – she’d heard all road signs had been removed or painted out to confuse enemy parachutists. It was silent too, since the Control of Noises Order had been introduced. She stood still in the quiet night, trying to get her bearings by the light of the moon, when torchlight flashed into her face. She blinked and shielded her eyes.

‘You need to be careful in blackout, darlin’,’ an elderly man in uniform told her. ‘There’s been some awful accidents, people tripping over and getting run down by motorcars, or some halfwits even falling into the river! You ought to have a luminous band or luminous button badge on your coat. Don’t you have a torch?’

He was kindly and gave Lily his spare torch with a home-made tissue paper cover, so she’d set off in the darkness with the muted torchlight dancing along the kerb, following the white line that had been painted on to the edge of the pavement to compensate for no street lighting, and avoiding the trees that also wore belts of white paint. Fear fingered her spine, a sensation that someone was following her making the blood rush into her ears. At one point she called out in a quavering voice, ‘Is anyone there?’ into the quiet, but there was no reply.

Later, relieved to be in her room at the bed and breakfast, she sat on the single bed and kicked off her shoes. She had no idea what the next day would bring, or how Audrey would receive her after all these years, but at least she was away from London and her father’s critical glare. Still fully dressed, with Bertie in his cage beside her, Lily lay on the bed in darkness, not daring to think of what she’d left behind or what turmoil might lie ahead. Or of the letter she’d written in a moment of furious indignation, silently winging its way like an enemy parachutist into Henry Bateman’s life.

---

Now, Audrey held open her arms and pulled Lily firmly into her chest.

‘Copperknob!’ she exclaimed, laughing at the memory of Lily’s nickname. ‘It’s really you!’

The sweet scent and silkiness of her stepsister’s hair against her cheek brought memories of their life in Balham, south London, flooding back. Audrey had spent hours brushing and plaiting Lily’s hair in the bedroom of their terraced house when Lily was a young girl, telling adventure stories – all with a flame-haired heroine – while eating bread smothered with Golden Shred. When their parents had married, soon after Audrey’s father, Don, had died of tubercular meningitis, Audrey had immediately adored Lily’s spirit – and loved Lily as her own sister. She could never understand how Lily’s father, Victor, in contrast, could be so very cruel and do everything in his power to alienate her and William. Once Audrey’s mother, Daphne, was his wife, he’d made it absolutely clear that he wanted to eradicate the memory of Don from their lives. He treated Daphne like a pet, never letting her off her leash, and it hadn’t taken long for Daphne to acquiesce and to put his wishes over those of her children. That was deeply hurtful, but Audrey knew it didn’t do her any good to dwell. She’d sworn to herself that when she had a family of her own, she would always remain fiercely loyal to her children, no matter what. Not that she’d had the opportunity to shower love on a child yet.

‘Yes,’ replied Lily, interrupting Audrey’s thoughts. ‘It’s really me.’

Audrey held Lily out at arm’s length to take her in. Lily had grown into a feminine and lovely young woman, with a neat waist and slender ankles. She had an unconventional but beautiful face and, Audrey noted, tried to smile with her lips closed to conceal the gap between her two front teeth – but when she did smile properly it was as if the lights had been switched on in a dark room. Her intelligent eyes were the palest blue and framed with thick black lashes. Her skin was porcelain pale, and her copper hair reminded Audrey of the orange frosting on her marmalade cake. Tucking a strand gently behind Lily’s ear, Audrey noticed an ugly bruise next to her eye.

‘Your eye is bruised… have you been hurt?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Is Mother… and your father… goodness, has something happened?’

When war was declared, Audrey had written to Daphne to tell her that William was joining up, but Daphne never wrote back and, hard as it was, Audrey just had to accept that her mother obviously didn’t want to be involved in her children’s lives. Lily shook her head.

‘Your mother is in good health,’ she said. ‘I tripped over in the blackout. I needed to see you. I…’

Audrey frowned as Lily struggled to finish her sentence, her eyes sliding to her shoes. Despite having brains, the girl was a terrible liar and always had been. She noticed something – guilt at her lie perhaps – cast shadows over Lily’s pretty features. She would find out more later, when they were alone.

‘Where are you staying?’ Audrey asked, changing the subject. ‘You must stay here with us. We live above the shop. We have room.’

‘Thank you,’ started Lily, but was interrupted.

‘Uh-oh, Audrey,’ called Maggie from behind the counter. ‘Pat’s on the warpath! Can you feel the ground shaking under those sturdy brogues? Pat should be on the front line – Jerry would run a mile!’

Audrey stifled a laugh and pulled a face at Maggie, watching her five foot nothing, but mighty as a giant, mother-in-law march into the shop and stand with her hands on her hips, her ancient fur stole draped over her shoulder.

‘Audrey Barton,’ said Pat, lifting her chin. ‘I do believe your queue is halfway down the street. Our friends and neighbours are waiting with their baskets and bellies empty. You’ll be the talk of the town!’

Audrey was used to this kind of intrusion and it didn’t faze her. Even if she’d swilled the shop clean and polished the floor on her hands and knees until it was spotless and her fingers bled, Pat would kick at a crate, dispense crumbs and not be able to resist clicking her tongue. ‘I’m sure they have more important things to discuss, Pat,’ quipped Audrey, quickly resuming her post behind the counter. ‘My stepsister Lily has just arrived and Mrs Collingham felt poorly. I couldn’t very well ignore them.’

Looking down her nose at the budgie cage, Pat nodded once at Lily but obviously had something more important on her mind. She cleared her throat and then addressed the queue. Pat relished being at the heart of things and though she ran the drapers, with Fran, one of her two daughters, Charlie’s eldest sister, she made sure to call in to each shop on the street at least once a day to give a report on what was going on, despite the government’s insistence that ‘loose lips sink ships’ and that one should ‘keep a still tongue in a wise head’. Charlie often made gentle fun of her, asking: ‘Who needs the wireless when there’s Mother?’

‘Ladies, I’ve just been informed that all our services are needed at the local schools,’ Pat said now, suddenly serious. ‘You might know that our troops have been battling the German army on the northern coast of France. Well, the situation has become very grave indeed, so thousands of soldiers have been evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk under heavy shellfire, and have been billeted here. The men have been arriving in Bournemouth by train with nothing but the clothes they’ve worn in battle. I’ve been told that some men stood in the sea shoulder-deep for hours being attacked from the air, while waiting to be evacuated. Warships and boats of all kinds were apparently sailed over from our shores to help rescue the men, but it seems there have been many thousands of lives lost…’

Pat paused to take a breath and to wipe her eyes with her hanky. The women in the shop stood frozen to the spot. Because of a media blackout, news of the situation in Dunkirk, where in a procedure called ‘Operation Dynamo’ Allied soldiers were being evacuated from the beaches after being trapped by the German army, was only just coming in, so it had been virtually impossible to know what was really happening.

‘During their train journey here, people have gathered at wayside crossings to fling chocolate and cigarettes and cheer the soldiers on, but their morale is low, they’re desperately hungry, exhausted and some are wounded,’ she continued, her voice faltering. ‘The Mayor of Bournemouth was on the wireless asking families to take a soldier in for a few days, for respite during their short leave. You’ve a spare room here, haven’t you Audrey? I’ve already offered my house, I have two empty bedrooms for goodness sake.’

The women in the queue spoke amongst themselves, worrying about loved ones, or devising ways to help.

Pat clapped her hands together, standing taller and increasing her volume. ‘Any woman with any time on her hands,’ she said, ‘should get to the school and offer to help. They’re going to need homes in the coming days – clothes, warmth, kindness – and I’ll wager, bread for sandwiches, Audrey.’

‘Of course,’ said Audrey, calculating what she could throw together quickly. ‘I’ll arrange sandwiches and cakes, we have socks and trousers and Charlie has spare boots… there’s a stack of hessian sacks we can take down and I’ll offer accommodation.’

‘We should take those boys some postcards,’ said Mrs Collingham, standing now, wearing a determined expression. ‘Then they can send a note home to reassure their families they’re safe… and if there are French soldiers here, they’ll need someone who speaks French.’

‘I can speak a little French,’ piped up Lily. ‘I can help translate.’

Audrey smiled at Lily, whose very presence surprised her, let alone her ability to speak French. Despite the handful of letters she’d received over the years they’d been apart, there was so much about her she didn’t know. How William would love to see her. William.

Oh goodness, what if…? thought Audrey. What if William was one of those soldiers at Dunkirk? What if her dear brother was one of those left on the beaches or in the sea being mercilessly attacked? She knew he was overseas, in France somewhere. Momentarily she felt too weak to speak.

‘We will welcome a soldier here,’ said Audrey, finding her voice. ‘My door is open to anyone in need.’

‘I can stay somewhere else if you need the room,’ Lily began, but Audrey raised her hand to silence her.

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ she said. ‘We can accommodate you and a soldier, even if I have to sleep on the floor. We’ll go to the school shortly with supplies. In the meantime, why don’t you put on an apron and help me serve this queue? Might as well get stuck in now you’re here. You’re family after all!’