‘Hold still,’ said Violet to Elsie, as she fastened up her borrowed wedding dress. ‘It looks like you’ve lost a few pounds since last year – this is loose on you. Perhaps I should take it in a bit? You want to show off your lovely figure on your wedding day, be the belle of the ball.’

Standing barefoot on a chair in her mother’s living room, in front of a roaring fire, Elsie flicked her black curls out of the way, and twisted round to see how much spare fabric Violet had pinched in her fingertips. It wasn’t enough to make a visible difference. After wearing her ‘clippies’ uniform all day, every day, consisting of slacks and jacket, this dress was feminine enough.

Her little sister June peered up from behind a book she was reading, a leaf from a beech tree that she used as a bookmark falling out and fluttering to the rug, where she sat cross-legged, humming, ‘Here Comes the Bride’.

‘No, Mother, it’ll be fine,’ said Elsie irritably. ‘It’s only a small do, nobody will notice. Be quiet, June!’

June stopped humming and put her nose back in her book.

‘And what will you wear for warmth?’ Violet said. ‘It’s autumn now, you’ll be shivering if you go without a jacket or coat. I have that fur stole you could borrow, or perhaps you could wear a cloak until you get in the church? And what about your hair? Will Maggie be doing it—’

‘Stop fussing!’ interrupted Elsie. ‘I’ll wear my overcoat and I’ll put my hair up myself. I have a little bit of lipstick left and some powder. I don’t want a lot of fuss, Mother, you know that.’

She climbed down off the chair and sat on a chair near the fire, tucking her feet under her bottom, and stared into the embers. Without saying anything, Violet took off her spectacles and came to sit next to Elsie, resting her hand on her daughter’s arm.

‘What is it, love?’ she said. ‘There’s something on your mind, I know it. Is it that your father is away? I know, I miss him terribly and I can’t wait for the day he’s returned home. Or is it something else, probably just nerves?’

Elsie stared at the engagement ring on her finger for a long moment, before lifting her head and meeting her mother’s concerned gaze. Her creamy complexion and rosy cheeks shone in the firelight, and she radiated a natural beauty few girls had.

‘How can I be sure he loves me?’ she asked quietly. ‘He was so distant when he first came home. Even though he says he wants nothing more than to marry me, how can I be sure? There’s something he’s hiding from me, I’m sure of it.’

She thought of the times she’d popped into the bakery and, despite him now working hard in the bakehouse with John, and being more affectionate towards her, William sometimes drifted off into his own troubled world.

Violet sat back in her chair, stretching out her legs in front of her and linking her fingers across her stomach. ‘Do you love him?’ she asked, to which Elsie nodded, in an ‘of course I do’ sort of way. Violet smiled. ‘Marriage isn’t just about loving each other. It’s about understanding, not always easy with menfolk, but he’s clearly been suffering,’ she said. ‘And as someone clever once said: “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”’

Elsie leaned into her mother’s shoulder and digested her wise words, staring into the fire, watching the flames leap and dance in the grate, her anxiety and nerves dissipating and a feeling of certainty growing in her heart.

---

‘I don’t know who it was,’ said Audrey, setting out the ingredients on the kitchen table, ‘it could have been my granny, or it could have been Mrs Simpson for all I know, but someone once said that if a bride ate wedding cake made by a baker with love in his heart, she’d have a long and happy marriage. And if the baker had an empty, cold heart when he mixed the cake ingredients, her marriage would be miserable as sin. I wonder if it made a difference how much she ate?’

Mary, whose hair hung past her shoulders, laughed, while Lily, who was giving Joy the juice squeezed from raw blackcurrants, twisted in her chair to fix Audrey with a quizzical stare.

‘Whatever’s up with you?’ asked Lily, affectionately. ‘You’ve lost leave of your senses!’

‘Wha-at?’ asked Audrey, laughing. ‘I heard that when I was a girl, and that’s the truth of it. Oh, ouch, I have such a headache this evening! Must be a storm brewing.’

‘There you go again with your old wives’ tales,’ said Lily, good-humouredly.

‘In my view there’s none that speak more sense than old wives,’ Audrey grinned and rubbed her temples with her fingertips, waiting for her throbbing head to ease.

She scanned the array of tins and packets of ingredients on the table through narrowed eyes. The wedding was just days away and the customers had talked of little else all day, wanting to wish William and Elsie well, or dropping off small wedding gifts – some of them made from bits and bobs in the home. Mrs Cook had made Elsie a tea cosy out of offcuts of wool, and Mr Newton, the ARP warden, had fashioned a bracelet out of an old silver teaspoon. ‘She can use it to stir her tea while she’s wearin’ it!’ he had quipped when he handed it to a bemused Audrey.

Audrey’s gift would be the food: a spread of cold finger food and, of course, the wedding cake, though, with ingredients now even more scarce and rationing worse than ever, just baking a tasty fruit cake was quite a challenge.

‘Raisins, loganberries, cherries, sultanas and dates,’ she said, tipping the remainder of her dried fruit stocks into a bowl. ‘That’s just about every bit of dried fruit I have left until the next consignment arrives. Mary, could you do the honours with the honey?’

Mary picked up a pot of honey and poured spoons of that into the mixture too, for sweetness, before Audrey handed her grated carrots to add for moisture and gravy browning for colour.

‘Gracious me,’ she said, winking at Mary and thinking of the rich and indulgent, intricately iced celebration cakes she’d made before the war. ‘This wedding cake is going to be unique, I have to admit. Let’s hope it tastes good!’

‘It will,’ said Lily, picking up Joy, who was starting to grizzle. ‘I better get this one upstairs to bed, before she brings the house down.’

But Lily’s dejected expression didn’t go unnoticed and Audrey gently patted her back to make her feel better. She knew that Joy’s crying wore her down, but it wouldn’t last forever. Nothing lasted forever.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Audrey, ‘she’ll grow through it. At least we know she has a good, healthy pair of lungs on her. Why don’t you go up to bed too, Mary?’

Audrey gave Mary a hug and kissed her cheek, conscious that the little girl still needed plenty of reassurance that she was truly loved. When the girls left, William came in and helped himself to a glass of water. While Audrey was finishing off the cake, he sat down on a wooden chair near the fire, his leg outstretched. With his gaze firmly fixed on the flames, he looked deep in thought.

‘Are you well, William?’ Audrey asked, a memory of the conversation she’d overhead, where he had told John he had done some terrible things while away, popping into her head. Was he thinking about that now?

‘There’s been more talk of an invasion this autumn,’ he said, leaning forward to stoke the fire. ‘Churchill has met with Roosevelt, of course, so the Americans are getting involved, but still they warn of invasion. I try to stay positive, but sometimes the news gets the better of me.’

Audrey put the cakes in the range, murmuring her agreement and watching him put down the fire poker out of the corner of her eye. From the expression on his face, she knew he wasn’t in the kitchen to talk about military operations, but of course she would humour him until he was ready to share what was really on his mind. She sat down on a chair next to him, waiting for him to continue.

Pulling his mouth harp from his pocket, William lifted it to his lips and started to play, but then, after playing a few dud notes, quickly stopped and stuffed it in his pocket with a deep sigh. Audrey opened her mouth to talk to him, but he spoke before she could.

‘I need to tell you something,’ he said, lowering his voice. Audrey nodded once and remained silent, her heartbeat quickening, waiting for him to continue. ‘When I was in France, I made a decision I live to regret.’

She nodded again, biting down on her lip. Still looking straight ahead into the fire, he carried on with his story.

‘I came face-to-face with a German soldier and I should have shot him instantly,’ he said. ‘That’s what we’re trained to do. I had the opportunity to shoot him, but I looked into his eyes and I saw a man just like me, no older than me, probably with a fiancée, like my Elsie, at home. I didn’t shoot him, Sis. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, I was too cowardly.’

He pressed his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger and sighed a ragged, exhausted sigh, as if the load he was carrying was crushing him with its weight. Though Audrey wanted to get up off the chair and fling her arms around her brother to console him, she sensed there was more to come. What he needed most, she knew, was to get the problem off his chest and for her to listen, but she couldn’t stand for him to be thinking of himself as a coward.

‘That makes you human,’ she said carefully. ‘It doesn’t make you a coward.’

‘No, you don’t understand,’ he interrupted, shaking his head. ‘That soldier, the man I didn’t kill, the man whose life I saved, ran away from me, before turning around and shooting and killing my friend, David. I watched David die in agony and he died because of me. I was helpless and hopeless. I tried to stem his bleeding as he lay there, but nothing I could do helped. I put the thrupenny coin in his palm, the one you gave me for luck – how futile!’

Audrey’s heart shattered as William broke down in furious tears and sobbed into his hands. With tears flowing from her own eyes, she couldn’t sit still for a moment longer. Standing close to him, wanting to shoulder the burden he carried, she rested her hand on his back and searched for words of comfort.

‘William, you poor soul, I understand that you feel absolutely wretched about this,’ she said, blinking away her tears, ‘but these are exceptionally hard times. Your decision was made out of compassion, not cowardice. You weren’t to know what that soldier was going to do. How could you? You are not to blame.’

Shaking his head, William closed his eyes and set his jaw, refusing to forgive himself.

‘David is dead because of me,’ he said. ‘And his fiancée is left without her true love. I’m marrying Elsie and she knows nothing of this, of my failure to be the man I should have been. You said it yourself “act like a man”. I’ve hardly acted like a man, have I?’

Watching her beautiful brother, once so full of music and laughter and life, in such anguish and turmoil was physically painful for Audrey. She wiped away her tears and stood straighter.

‘You are a man with great integrity,’ she said firmly. ‘What you went through over there, I can’t hope to imagine. Watching your fellow men die in agony in front of you, being so severely injured, and having your foot amputated, your face horrifically burned, it’s—’ She floundered, searching for the words to try and describe what William had been through. ‘It’s been a nightmare, and I’m desperately sorry for David, but his death was not your fault. You have to realise that.’

‘I failed him,’ said William, a tear dropping silently onto his lap. ‘There’s no doubt about that, and I think Elsie should know who she’s marrying.’

Audrey took William’s hands in hers. ‘Elsie loves you, no matter what,’ she said. ‘While you were away, I got to know Elsie like a sister. If you tell her about this, it won’t make a difference to her. And William, it’s not her forgiveness you need, but your own.’