Maggie perched on a wooden stool in front of her dressing table, one of the few pieces of furniture that had escaped being chopped up and burned for fuel during the freezing winter months. Taking the turquoise and gold hairbrush and handheld mirror from the silk-lined vanity set her sweetheart, Pilot Officer George Meadows, had gifted her, she brushed through her cloud of strawberry blonde hair one hundred times and applied a bright slash of lipstick to her lips. Sitting on the floor were her two younger sisters, Nancy and Isabel. Nancy was darning the heel of her stockings, while Isabel was cutting the toes off her shoes to make them into sandals.

‘When I get married to George,’ said Maggie dreamily, ‘I’m going to wear my hair like Veronica Lake, to the wedding. You know, her “one-eyed do”. Like this.’

Isabel put down her shoe and smiled in admiration at her older sister. ‘Oh, you’ll look so pretty, Maggie,’ she said. ‘If only I had half your good looks, maybe I could find a husband and wouldn’t be condemned to spend my life working in that rotten laundry.’

Maggie left one side of her shiny hair tumbling over her left eye and pouted her lips, resting her hands on her crossed knees. Though her sisters might be called plain-faced, she knew very well how pretty she was, and wanted to stay lovely for George. But it wasn’t just her sparkly eyes and white teeth that had won him over. No, she believed he had fallen in love with her determination not to give in to the misery of wartime. Some women – and her grandmother, Gwendolen, who she lived with was a shining example – wore the grave hardship of wartime on their faces like a slap and had a fit every time there was an air-raid siren. But Maggie made sure to stay fresh-faced and bright whatever she came up against.

Looking more closely at Isabel, she frowned. There was a bruise on her sister’s cheek that hadn’t been there last time she looked.

‘Is that boss of yours giving you a hard time?’ said Maggie. ‘Where did you get that bruise?’

Isabel’s hand shot to her cheek and she blushed, pulling her brown hair over her face and staring down at the shoes she was working on.

‘He’s got a temper on him all right, but it was my fault for being clumsy,’ said Isabel quietly. ‘He pushed me because I wasn’t working fast enough – jabbed me between my shoulder blades – and I tripped and hit my face on the corner of a shelf, that’s all.’

‘That’s all?’ said Maggie, pinning back her hair. ‘How dare he! If he lays a finger on you again, Isabel, you come and tell me. I’ll not have anyone hurt you.’

Maggie and Nancy shared a concerned glance. Whereas Nancy could look after herself, Isabel was vulnerable and always had been. The youngest sister, she’d had her pigtails pulled at school and stones thrown at her by the neighbourhood boys, just for being shy and awkward. In truth, she was a gentle and loving soul, and whenever she was on the sharp end of their grandmother’s tongue, Maggie tried to protect her. Maggie knew Isabel hated her job at the laundry, but she also knew the family desperately needed all the girls’ wages. Keeping your job – even one with a cruel boss – was paramount.

‘And what will you wear for a dress, Maggie?’ said Nancy, deliberately changing the subject. ‘Your bakery overall? You can borrow my dungarees from my night shifts in the aircraft factory, if you like.’

‘A beautiful wedding dress of course, made with the finest silk and handmade lace!’ said Maggie, winking at Isabel. ‘No, but it will be lovely, if I can get enough coupons to buy some decent fabric, that is. Rationing has made it difficult, but I have my ways…’

Clothes had been rationed on 1 June 1941, as supplies of wool and cotton had fallen, with an announcement on the wireless from the President of the Board of Trade, Oliver Lyttelton. You were allowed sixty-six clothing coupons per year and you could spend them how you wanted, but with a mackintosh taking nine coupons and a woollen dress eleven coupons, women were panicking about their wardrobes. It was a good job, thought Maggie, that she had a plan in place.

‘You could make a dress out of parachute silk,’ said Isabel, looking relieved that the conversation had moved on from her bruise. ‘Some girls are doing that, y’know. Last time a parachute came down in Bournemouth the silk was stripped off it in seconds. I could get you some, probably, though it might be bloodstained.’

Maggie pulled a face. Isabel was talking about enemy pilots crash-landing, but German landmines were also dropped on silk parachutes, so when locals got wind of one landing, they’d be at the site in minutes, just for the fabric, undeterred by danger.

‘No, thank you,’ she said in disgust. ‘No, I’m going to have a gorgeous gown made from the best fabric I can buy. I’ll not have gravy browning down my legs either, but real silk stockings, and my shoes will be—’ She paused and put her finger to her lips, while dreaming of her shoes.

‘Wooden clogs?’ giggled Isabel. ‘Like you wear to work?’

Maggie stared at her in mock disapproval.

‘Has he even asked you to marry him yet?’ said Nancy, frowning. ‘Does he even exist? You’ve never brought him home.’

‘How can I bring him home?’ Maggie said wearily, putting the brush and mirror back into the leather vanity case, closing it and pushing it under her bed, the only place it would be safe from her grandmother’s beady eyes.

She looked around the room that she shared with her sisters: the floral wallpaper peeled, and damp crept across the walls like ivy, the creaky beds complained every time anyone climbed onto the thin mattresses, empty candleholders were lined up on the windowsill, waiting to be refreshed. The two-up, two-down cottage that the girls lived in with their grandmother since their parents had passed away was a poor excuse for a home.

Their grandmother, Gwendolen, squandered money on homemade alcoholic concoctions such as dandelion wine, nettle beer or ethyl alcohol mixed with hawthorn berry juice, illegally sold by a shady neighbour, and each day they only just managed to put food on the table. Maggie’s job at the bakery helped; Isabel earned a pittance in the laundry and Nancy worked at the aircraft factory. But Maggie was fed up with scraping through. She wanted a better life and believed that George Meadows was the key to that. Since they’d met, she had worked hard to give the impression that she was from a good, well-educated family, who had a nice house in a decent area of Bournemouth. She couldn’t tell him the truth – that her grandmother loved the drink and they were completely poverty-stricken.

‘He hasn’t asked you yet, has he?’ said Nancy and quickly held up her hand to catch the powder puff Maggie was hurling at her. ‘You’re not going to do much damage with that!’

Regaining her composure, Maggie smiled briefly.

‘No, he hasn’t asked yet,’ she replied, ‘but I can sense it’s only a matter of time. Look, I better get to the bakery. See you tonight, girls. Isabel, if that man touches you again, come and tell me. I’m not afraid to tell him what I think of him. When I’m married, Isabel love, you can go into that laundry and tell him he can stuff his job!’

Isabel beamed at Maggie, and Maggie silently vowed she would improve her sisters’ lives, no matter what. She blew them a kiss and headed down the narrow staircase, pausing at the door of the room where their grandmother slept in an ancient rocking chair, her woollen stockings rolled at the ankles, revealing sharp and knobbly, vein-ridden knees. Maggie shivered; sometimes her grandmother resembled a corpse.

‘Goodbye, you old bag,’ she whispered. ‘It won’t be long until I say goodbye for good.’

A shadow of guilt passed over her as she left the house and stepped into the street. She thought of the clandestine meetings she’d had with the neighbourhood’s women in alleyways to ‘trade’, some with their loot hidden in prams alongside their babies, but she shrugged off the guilt as quickly as it had arrived. You didn’t get anything by waiting, not in wartime. She would pay back everything she’d ‘borrowed’ one day, but for the time being, she had one goal: George Meadows, her ticket to a better life.

Walking quickly down the street, she took off her cardigan and carried it folded neatly on her arm. It was a hot day – women would be hatless and stocking-less – but not Maggie, whose standards would remain high, no matter what other women did.

Arriving at the bakery at 8 a.m., the front step sparkling clean, the gold ‘Bakery’ lettering on the window polished, and a row of honey-coloured loaves already on display and the scent of fresh bread in the air, she slowed down when she heard raised voices from inside. It was Audrey and a man having some kind of heated discussion. Maggie frowned. Heart thudding, feeling suddenly paranoid, she gingerly opened the door, releasing the jingly bell, and went inside.