Elsie pedalled so fast along the promenade her calf muscles burned. To onlookers, she was a blur against the sky and sea, like a smudge on a painting.

‘Oi slow down!’ yelled the pony-ride man at Boscombe Pier when she flew past him. ‘You nearly knocked out m’ pony!’

‘Codswallop!’ she yelled in reply, wishing she hadn’t worn her red knitted cardigan over her uniform of black knee-length dress, stockings and black smart shoes, but there was no time to stop and unbutton. She was thirteen minutes late (and counting) for her shift in the Needlework Department at Beales Department Store, and had already been warned twice about her punctuality.

When pressed for a reason for her lateness, she would blame the mechanical failings of her ancient Raleigh bicycle. How could she explain the truth? That her mother, Violet, whose legs were growing weaker by the day, but who was too pig-headed to ask the doctor for proper treatment for her condition, insisted on carrying on in the house with the aid of her cane as if she were still perfectly able. Today, washday Monday, when her list of household chores was as long as her arm, the porridge had been spilled over the red kitchen floor tiles, taking the porcelain milk jug and sugar ration with it. Elsie had no choice but to clean it up and salvage what she could of the sugar, while her mother thumped the kitchen table in bitter frustration, making the teacups dance in their saucers.

‘Do not pity me!’ she declared, her cheeks flaming red. ‘Pity will kill me, not these legs!’

‘I don’t pity you, Mother!’ Elsie retorted. ‘I only wish you would let me knuckle down and help more. Or that you would speak to a doctor!’

‘He has better things to worry about now the war’s on,’ she said. ‘I’ll not waste his time. Leave that be, you have a job to get to. We can’t do without your earnings.’

Elsie had looked around the kitchen of their small home in Avenue Road, Southbourne, in dismay. With a house to run and Elsie’s ten-year-old twin sisters June and Joyce to look after, her mother clearly needed more help – the legs of the kitchen table were uneven and made steady with folded newspaper, the curtain on the window of the back door had come away from the hooks, the chairs sagged in the middle and a gigantic pile of washing waited to be washed and pegged out to dry on the clothes line in the garden. But whatever Elsie tried to do to help – and she did whatever she could when she wasn’t working – Violet warned her off, taking the offer as a criticism of her abilities.

‘Leave her, flower,’ soothed her father, Angelo, taking Elsie aside before he left for work at the barbershop, a fresh egg (laid by their family chicken) in each pocket of his jacket for his favourite customer. ‘Violet can make her own mind up in her own time.’

Now, Elsie’s thighs ached as she headed up Bath Road (a hill so steep that when the bus was packed the driver would sometimes ask passengers to get off, walk up the hill and meet him again at the top), towards the Bath Hotel, a beautiful white building that stood overlooking the sea like one of Audrey’s intricately iced celebration cakes. Elsie yanked on her brakes and came to an abrupt stop at the quite incredible sight of hundreds of soldiers approaching, in a swift-moving cloud of khaki brown.

‘Good grief,’ she said. ‘What’s this?’

Everyone on the street stopped to watch the spectacle. A young woman pushing a pram and holding the hand of a small child waved her hanky at the men, and a man wearing a soft cap and leaning on a stick called out, ‘Welcome home, boys.’ Then he turned to Elsie to explain: ‘They’re evacuees from Dunkirk. They were in the sea waiting to be rescued by our boats for hours. That water must have been colder than the hinges of hell! T’others didn’t get that far, poor blighters.’ The man shook his head. ‘As if we didn’t have a gutful of this in the Great War.’

‘They look like they’ve been to hell and back,’ Elsie said, climbing off her bicycle, the creased skirt of her dress fluttering against her legs, tendrils of her raven hair sticking to her damp forehead. Her mother would throw her hands in the air in horror at the sight of her eldest daughter, but Elsie was too busy staring at the soldiers to care. For all the news in the Bournemouth Echo and on the wireless and the thousands of military personnel in the town, this sight made war tangible. These men were exhausted. Their faces were covered with dirt or dried blood, their uniforms shabby. Some had blankets thrown over their shoulders, or makeshift bandages wrapped around their limbs, or strapped over their eyes. Several limped along using sticks to help them walk, or leaned against another man’s shoulder. Many still wore their protective tin helmets and some were without any kitbag at all.

‘I’ll bet that was exactly what Dunkirk was like,’ the old man said. ‘Hell!’

Women ran from the front doors of the houses and businesses on the road, bursting out of their doors like the tiny model figures of a decorative weather vane, offering armfuls of items to the troops. Player’s cigarettes, Cadbury’s chocolate bars, Palmolive soap, razors, sleeping bags – even hot baths and beds.

‘We’ve landed in paradise,’ she heard one young soldier say, accepting a half bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky produced from the pocket of a grandma’s housecoat, as seagulls squawked and swooped above as if in fanfare.

And then, as she searched the faces of the soldiers as they passed her, Elsie froze when she glimpsed a familiar set of shoulders and caught sight of a jaw that could only belong to one man. A man who could play a tune on his mouth harp more mournful and beautiful than she’d ever heard. With her heart furiously pounding in her chest, Elsie strained to get a better look, but just as quickly as he was in view, he was swallowed by the crowd.

‘William?’ she called in disbelief, letting go of her bicycle’s handlebars and, as it crashed to the pavement, trampling over the spinning wheels to join the soldiers.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, squeezing in through the men, the pungent smell of unwashed bodies assailing her, pausing to wolf-whistle to get his attention.

Soldiers turned to face her as she whistled, then pushed through the crowd, their expressions quizzical. The crowd of men allowed her through before closing in around her again until she was entirely surrounded by uniforms, as if they were the flesh and she were the red beating heart. Almost within reach now, she trembled; she could just about see William, his strong shoulders even broader than she remembered, his neck dirty and sunburned. Finally she was close enough to touch him. He had his back towards her and was moving swiftly forward, so she grabbed his arm with her fingers, her eyes blurry with tears.

‘William!’ she exclaimed, her face exploding into a tearful smile. But as the man turned, she staggered backwards. The man, though identical to William in stature and with the same strong jawline, was a complete stranger. Close up, he looked nothing like the man she loved. Her hand flew to her mouth as she retreated from him in embarrassment, utterly crushed by disappointment.

‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘My name isn’t William.’

‘Bet you wish it was William,’ his mate said. ‘If the shoe fits…’

The man smiled kindly at Elsie as she stood frozen, unable to speak. ‘Looks like you’ve had a shock, miss,’ he said gently. ‘What’s William’s surname? Maybe I know him.’

‘Private William Allen, 2^nd Dorsets,’ Elsie said shakily, but the soldier shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know him, but thousands of men were evacuated and have been sent all over. You should have seen what it was like when we first got to the docks – people working flat out to give us tea, food and a space to rest. They didn’t have enough tin mugs for us all to have a cuppa – when we left the station the railway man shouted “sling ’em out”, so we threw the mugs out the window. It was raining mugs!’

‘Rather them than bullets,’ said his mate.

The soldier and his friend smiled at one another, in a stunned sort of way – and Elsie shivered, lost for words. She nodded in thanks and turned to go back to her bicycle, her entire body shaking. The old man she’d talked to picked up her bike for her, and gave her a gentle pat on her shoulder.

‘This war is hard on everyone, home and away,’ he said. ‘Keep your chin up, darlin’, you never know what tomorrow will bring.’

She smiled a weak smile and felt for the ring William had given to her. Rather than wear it on her finger, she’d strung it onto a necklace around her neck, waiting for him to propose to her in person and place the ring onto her finger himself. She missed William so much – she physically ached with longing for his arms to be around her – but there was nothing she could do about it. Those pre-war bicycle rides to Highcliffe Castle, eating cream horns from Barton’s on a blanket in the dunes, were a dim and distant memory. She shook her head at her stupidity at thinking she’d seen William.

‘Daft cow,’ she admonished herself. ‘Now I better get on and get to work, else I won’t have a job to go to.’

She cycled on to Beales Department Store on Old Christchurch Road, feeling hollow.

‘Morning,’ she mumbled to the other girls already manning their counters, as she drifted past the rails of satin overblouses, printed silk dresses and velvet gowns in the Womenswear Department. She staggered through to Needlework, pinning her hair back up into place as she moved, and forced herself to adopt the shop-assistant smile. What had she been thinking? It would have been some sort of miracle for William to be standing there in the street just yards away from her, she told herself – the impossible daydream of a girl in love.