It was late when Audrey and Mary returned from the hospital; clouds had gathered above the setting sun, turning the sky shades of purple and pink normally seen in a flower bed, over a flat, silver sea. Not that Audrey noticed. She was too concerned about poor Uncle John’s ill health and how long he’d been hiding his problems from her.

‘Hello?’ she called, letting herself and Mary into the back door of the bakery, but there was no reply. The entire building was empty and quiet; Lily and Joy had gone to Elsie’s house for tea and she didn’t know where William had got to.

‘Gosh, Mary,’ said Audrey, ‘there’s an awful lot to do in the bakehouse now that John’s been taken ill! Let’s get a cup of Ovaltine and some toast before your bedtime. Then I shall have to see to the dough. I think John had mixed the ingredients before he was taken ill, bless his heart.’

They’d left John being cared for by a young nurse called Ida, sweet and fresh as summer rain. Audrey had spoken to her and discovered that she had been overseas in France, helping injured soldiers, but had been returned home for some reason she clearly wasn’t willing to share. Audrey had thought John would be happy to have a young lady take care of him, but he lay there wearing a furious expression, not meeting Audrey or Ida’s eye, through fear, she suspected, of showing how upset and shocked he’d been by his collapse. Some men seemed to think they were invincible, thought Audrey, an image of Charlie popping into her head, making her miss him suddenly and dreadfully, like a punch in the stomach. She hoped to God that Charlie was invincible.

‘Why have you brought me in here?’ John had complained, trying to sit up, but breaking into another hacking cough, until he was breathless. ‘There’s nothin’ wrong with me. I just need a nip of port and brandy and a breath of sea air. That will see me right. What you told me about Maggie threw me, that’s all.’

Ida had told Audrey a different story in private. The doctor suspected John was suffering from ‘baker’s lung’ – an occupational hazard all bakers feared but often ignored until it was too late – and he needed rest and recuperation. When Audrey thought back over recent years, she realised he’d been coughing for a long time. Trouble was, John had nobody to take care of him. His wife, Hazel, was dead – they’d had no children – and John point-blank refused to stay with his sister, Pat. ‘Much as I love ’er,’ he said. ‘I’d rather stick a pitchfork through my eye than stay with ’er. It was bad enough when we were nippers.’

Audrey heated some water on the range, feeling exhausted. Her mind was working ten to the dozen, trying to think how she could organise the sleeping arrangements so that John could stay with her, at the bakery. If he was under the same roof as Audrey, she could keep an eye on him at least, and make sure he was really getting the rest and nourishment he needed.

‘I don’t know what we’re going to do without old Uncle John,’ she said to Mary, trying to sound cheerful. ‘The bread’s not going to bake itself.’

Though it was one of those warm summer nights when the air smelled of the flowering geraniums and rosemary bushes growing in pots outside, Audrey shivered. For a moment there today, she’d thought the worst, that John was dying, and it had deeply shaken her. For as long as she’d known Charlie, John had been a part of the bakery furniture, like the worn and weathered trough he used to hand-mix the dough. With his warmth, wit and loyalty, he had become rather like a father to Audrey. Since her own beloved father, Don, was dead having died from tubercular meningitis, and her stepfather, Victor, had rejected her, she had grown close to John and enjoyed spoiling him rotten with a warm, freshly baked scone and a spoonful of home-made blackcurrant jam. Seeing him struggling and vulnerable had made her realise how precarious the survival of the bakery was. Without him working the dough, how would she manage to do everything? The thought was too bewildering to contemplate.

Reading the worry scrawled across Audrey’s face, Mary ran to her side and clutched hold of the skirt of her dress. Audrey rested her hand on the little girl’s shoulders and smiled down at her, struck by the fear in her dark brown eyes. She was so quick to feel afraid, poor dear.

‘Is Uncle John going to die?’ said Mary, her little voice high and thin.

Audrey’s heart went out to Mary, whose bottom lip was trembling. In all the years of trying and hoping, a child of their own was the one gift that she and Charlie had not been blessed with, and she was privately greatly saddened by the fact she’d never be a mother, but beginning to wonder if it had been somehow mapped out in the stars that she and Mary would find one another instead. She loved the little girl dearly, as much, she imagined, as if she was her own daughter.

‘Come and sit here, love,’ she said, sitting on a chair at the kitchen table and lifting Mary onto her lap. ‘He’s just a bit poorly, that’s all. He’s got a bad cough from all the flour. It gets stuck in his lungs, a bit like how snow sits on branches in the winter.’

‘But is he going to die?’ said Mary, eyeing Audrey suspiciously.

Audrey smiled kindly; she had always been honest with Mary, even though that had at times been difficult.

‘No,’ said Audrey. ‘He just needs to rest, he’s been working too hard. Speaking of which, I need to get the dough proved and knocked back or we won’t have any bread tomorrow. Then what would we do? The customers would be up in arms! Can you take yourself up to bed, love? Don’t forget to brush your hair.’

Mary lingered in the room and Audrey looked at her questioningly.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Do you want a drink?’

Mary shook her head. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Though Mary had been speaking again for six months, there was a lot she still couldn’t find the words to say.

‘I won’t be able to sleep,’ said Mary. ‘I’m frightened.’

Audrey kneeled to Mary’s height and held her around her waist. ‘When I can’t sleep,’ she said, ‘I think of a mossy pebble in the bottom of a clear stream, rolling along with the water. In my mind, I listen to the gentle trickle of water and to the birds singing in the trees by the stream. Why don’t you climb into bed, close your eyes and try thinking about that pebble? I’ll wager you’ll fall asleep sooner than you know it. I’ll be up to check on you shortly and to tuck you in. I must get on with the bread, else people will have nothing on their plates tomorrow. Some folk depend on having bread to eat, see? They might only have bread and perhaps a bit of potato or carrot to go with it. Not much else. We can’t let them go hungry, can we?’

Mary nodded in understanding, smiled a tiny smile and disappeared upstairs, light-footed as a fairy, leaving Audrey alone in the kitchen, which had been thrown into gloom. She went through what she needed to do to get the bread out, and felt a creeping sense of unease. Yes, she’d helped Charlie out on countless occasions with the main bread-baking, as well as being responsible for the counter goods and the shop service. Yes, she knew the process like the back of her hand, but getting it right was a physical challenge and a huge responsibility. Not everyone could bake good bread, it was a highly regarded skill.

She yawned and stretched her arms up towards the ceiling, feeling the knots in her back spasm. Catching sight of her reflection in a small mirror, from which hooks held various sets of keys, she channelled all the young women who were rising up and stepping into the jobs of men who had gone off to war, and pushed aside her fears, headed into the bakehouse, rolled up her sleeves, and got to work.