Lily was upstairs in her bedroom, fastening the safety pin on Joy’s nappy – who was blissfully quiet and distracted by Bertie, Lily’s budgie, fluttering around the room – when she heard the muffled sound of Audrey’s raised voice from the bakery shop below. There was a male voice too, but it was quieter and she couldn’t work out to whom it belonged.

‘Whoever can that be?’ she said, frowning. Audrey was rarely het up and never did she raise her voice to a customer. Indeed, she gave every customer her personal attention, ensuring they were completely satisfied.

For a split second, Lily imagined that the old Home Guard man from the beach had come back with a police officer in tow, to arrest her for being a bad mother and ‘abandoning’ Joy. A wave of guilt washed over her as she was struck again by her careless behaviour on the beach. Her porcelain white cheeks turned pink at the memory: how could she do such a thing? What if the ARP warden had sounded the gas rattle when she’d been in the sea? Baby Joy would have been left exposed on the beach, with no one to fix on her gas mask – an awful great thing that looked like a diving helmet. The hairs on the back of Lily’s neck bristled at the thought.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered to Joy, who was furiously pedalling her little legs in the air. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’

There was a side to her own character that Lily couldn’t quite fathom; the same recklessness that had got her in this situation the previous year with Henry Bateman, who, unbeknownst to Lily, was engaged to be married. Any girl with a sensible head on her shoulders would have refused to become intimate with Henry without the security of a ring on her finger, or at least an assurance that he was single. But seventeen-year-old Lily hadn’t been cynical enough to question or doubt him, and besides, she wasn’t interested in marriage. As far as she could tell, it meant a life of domesticity and Lily had never wanted that. She had also wanted independence and freedom from her father, Victor’s, watchful eye. Well, that particular wish had come true in spades: her father had refused to meet baby Joy and accept Lily’s indiscretion, no matter what. Though she had written to him in London several times since the child’s birth, he hadn’t even replied. Thank goodness for Audrey, who had welcomed her into the bakery family and given her a home.

‘Your silly grandfather is an old curmudgeon,’ she said to Joy, her playful words belying the sadness she felt. In truth, she missed Victor dreadfully, and despite thinking she would manage motherhood without his support, privately knew that she was struggling. Keeping Joy was her choice, she thought, kissing her baby’s soft cheek. When Joy was born, Lily realised she could never have given her up for adoption. She loved her deeply and wanted to protect her and be a good mother and, with Audrey’s help, it had seemed altogether possible. The problem was – and Lily wouldn’t admit this to anyone – fear that she was a complete and utter disappointment to her own baby gnawed at her confidence. All the crying Joy did, the fitful nights and the refusal to sleep, felt to Lily as if she was saying: ‘You’re hopeless, you’re getting it all wrong, you never wanted me in the first place.’

Lily’s eyes pricked with tears and she sighed, shaking her head. I’m losing my mind, she thought.

Lifting Joy and placing her on her hip, where she seemed to fit like a jigsaw piece, Lily opened the bedroom door to listen to the raised voices coming from the shop. Heading down the stairs, she hoped it wasn’t another customer with bad news about one of their relations on the front line. Some of the outpourings of grief she’d seen in the shop took her breath away. Audrey, however, seemed to take it all in her stride and have limitless love and compassion for all her customers, neighbours and friends. The shop overflowed with warmth in more ways than one.

‘Gracious me,’ she said, stopping dead when she reached the bottom step of the stairs and the voices became discernible. The blood drained from her face and her heart thudded in her chest when she recognised the male voice. She could hardly believe her ears. After swearing he never wanted anything more to do with Lily or to see her again and making her promise she would never contact him, it was Henry Bateman.

‘I want to see her, Mrs Barton,’ he was saying, his voice firm. ‘I do have a right to see her and you can’t stop me from doing so.’

Panicking, Lily squeezed shut her eyes and held Joy closer to her chest. Flickering images, like the end of a film reel at the pictures, flashed across the insides of her eyelids. Henry in the office at the Ministry of Information, holding her around the waist and staring adoringly into her eyes. Henry telling her he was engaged, his expression unreadable. Henry drunk, shouting at her, telling her that her unborn baby was a ‘dirty little secret’. Henry’s well-spoken wife, Helen, immaculately turned out, looking down her nose at Lily in that way that said: you will never have what I have.

Hearing footsteps approaching, she pulled opened the store cupboard door and wedged herself and Joy inside, crouching by the bags and boxes of dried fruits and nuts, cinnamon, spices, sugar, butter, cocoa powder and chocolate. The fragrance was intoxicating. Her heart thumped as the footsteps came nearer and the door was flung open.

‘Whatever are you doing in here?’ Audrey asked, her expression thunderous, then immediately softening into an amused smile. ‘Come out, will you? He’s gone, but would you believe he thinks he can just walk in and demand to see you? It beggars belief! I told him he was most unwelcome at this bakery after how he treated you last time he called, but he insists he wants to bury the hatchet and to apologise for his actions. He asked me to give you this.’

Audrey passed Lily a handwritten note. She accepted it and held it in her fingertips as if it might explode.

‘He says he’s changed,’ Audrey said quietly, peering into the store cupboard and frowning. ‘I’m all for forgiveness and second chances, but I have to warn you, Lily, some leopards never change their spots.’

---

‘What can I get you, Mrs Cook?’ Audrey asked, back in the shop, serving customers. ‘Your normal order of half a dozen rolls, is it?’

The door was wedged open to let in the breeze, and Mrs Cook flapped a copy of the Echo in front of her face. The grim headlines caught Audrey’s eye and made her heart sink: SOUTH COAST IS NAZI TARGET: CHILDREN AMONG THOSE KILLED. Behind the counter and out of the customers’ sight, Audrey sighed and stepped out of her wooden clogs for a moment, cooling her hot feet on the floor tiles.

‘Yes, please, Audrey love,’ replied Mrs Cook. ‘And a dozen egg custards would be nice.’

Audrey, putting the headline out of her mind, let out a laugh. ‘You’ll be lucky!’ she said. ‘Now wouldn’t that be lovely, egg custards back on the menu? I for one can’t wait until this war is over and I can go back to making some of my favourites. No iced buns, no meringues, no egg custards – what’s the world coming to, eh?’

‘Hitler has a lot to answer for,’ said Mrs Cook. ‘If he turns up on my doorstep, expecting me to surrender, I’ll tell him what for, that’s for sure.’

‘You say that,’ said Flo, another customer in the queue, ‘but look at the poor folk in the Channel Islands. Those that didn’t evacuate before invasion didn’t have a choice! The German army marched in and took their cars, their food and their documents, paraded down the high street, threatened to arrest or shoot anyone who tried to escape to England and that’s it! What can you do?’

‘This,’ Mrs Cook said, lifting up her handbag and swinging it violently through the air.

The women laughed darkly as they contemplated the awful prospect of invasion.

Audrey loved her customers – despite the shocking headlines and the bad news from the eastern battlefront, their humour and resilience never failed to impress her. Listening to their gossip, she continued to serve the fourteen-strong queue and thought about Henry Bateman. Though she was pretending to be calm about it, his arrival at the bakery had shaken her up no end. Last time he’d been near, Charlie had threatened him never to return or else he’d throw him in the bakery oven, but Charlie wasn’t there to wave his fist this time, was he? Besides, Henry had insisted he must see Lily to make amends, and what could Audrey do about it?

‘Any word from Charlie?’ Mrs Cook asked, interrupting Audrey’s thoughts. ‘I can taste the difference in the bread, you know. It’s still good, but there’s a lightness to Charlie’s bread and the crust is perfect. I miss him.’

Audrey smiled and rested her hands on the counter. She’d heard this numerous times from customers; some disgruntled that their baker had gone to the front line, others full of admiration. Thinking of her husband and suddenly missing him terribly, she twirled her wedding ring around her finger.

‘He occasionally writes, but he doesn’t tell me an awful lot. He’s a man of few words, as you know. In his last letter, he asked me to send him a Dorset apple cake in the next comfort package,’ said Audrey, smiling. ‘By the sound of it he’s missing his home-cooked food. I sent him the cake, of course, wrapped in brown paper and packed in a tin. Heaven knows if it’ll reach him.’

‘That’s his way of saying he’s missing you, Audrey love,’ Mrs Cook said gently. ‘My son Richard says that when he’s in battle, he thinks about me sitting in the garden, sunning my face and enjoying the chrysanthemums. I wanted to write back and ask him when he thinks I have time to sun my face, what with turning the garden into a vegetable patch and running around after eight grandchildren, shopping, queuing, juggling the rations with an empty larder, and dashing to the air-raid shelter every other night, but if that thought helps him get through, then so be it. And how’s that brother of yours?’

Audrey opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment Maggie’s sweetheart, Pilot Officer George Meadows, came into the shop, causing a stir in the queue. His hair was cropped close to his head, framing a smooth tanned face and grey eyes that crinkled around the edges when he smiled. He was straight off the silver screen.

‘Morning, beautiful,’ George greeted Maggie, offering her a paper bag filled with aniseed balls. Sweets hadn’t been rationed yet, but there had been rumours that it wasn’t long before they – and chocolate – would be.

With her mouth in an ‘ooh’ shape, and with delicate fingers, Maggie took a sweet and popped it in her mouth.

‘Here he is,’ she said, beaming, ‘my knight in shining armour.’

The ladies in the queue were transfixed.

‘He’s lost his white ’orse by the look of it,’ muttered Flo, rolling her eyes.

‘No, he ain’t,’ said Maggie, dashing out from behind the counter. ‘Horse and carriage are waiting outside, aren’t they, George?’

George laughed heartily as she draped her arms around his neck and quickly kissed him on the cheek, coquettishly kicking up her right leg behind her. He took off his hat and pretended to faint, which caused a murmur of laughter and tutting in the queue.

‘Well I never!’ said Elizabeth, another regular customer. ‘I only wanted bread, not a night at the pictures.’

Maggie delved in her pocket and held out some smelling salts under George’s nose, which he pretended had revived him. The ladies in the shop were enjoying the show, but, aware of Audrey staring at her, Maggie quickly resumed her position behind the counter and got back to serving, while George leaned on the edge of it, chin resting in his hand, admiring the woman he was obviously smitten by.

Maggie leaned over and asked him: ‘Now, what can I get you, sir? A rock cake, carrot cake or a jam tart?’

‘I can think of many things I’d like to try,’ said George flirtatiously.

The queue gasped. Hands were flapped in front of faces and eyes rolled.

‘Gracious, it’s hot in here!’ said Mrs Cook.

‘You should make an honest woman out of our Maggie,’ called out Flo. ‘We could do with something to celebrate, couldn’t we, ladies?’

Other customers in the queue murmured their agreement and George raised his eyebrows before taking a bow.

‘It just so happens,’ he said, ‘that I have a certain question to ask a certain girl. I’m to be posted overseas soon. So, Maggie Rose, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

The women gasped as Maggie’s hand flew to her chest, where she pointed, as if to say, Me?

George nodded, laughing once more.

‘Yes!’ Maggie squealed. ‘Yes, I will!’

Running out from behind the counter again, this time followed by the saucer-shaped eyes of the customers, Maggie jumped up at George and he spun her around. With her head nestled in his neck, both of them fell about laughing, before they stopped spinning and locked lips, causing a spontaneous round of applause from the waiting women.

‘Bless us and spare us,’ muttered Mrs Cook.

She and Audrey exchanged a good-humoured glance while Maggie jumped up and down on the spot, like an excited child. Uncle John, who had come into the shop from the bakehouse to see what all the fuss was about, broke out into a hacking cough, quickly disappearing again.

‘I expect you two lovebirds will be needing a cake?’ Audrey asked, walking out from behind the counter to hug Maggie. She was such a slight thing and so young, but clearly so happy.

‘Oh yes, please,’ said Maggie, clasping her hands together. ‘Three tiers high, iced with pale pink icing, and those beautiful roses you make from royal icing resting on the top, please.’

Audrey laughed, as they both knew iced cakes had been banned, but she wished she could fulfil Maggie’s wishes. She’d do anything to protect her joy. In fact, she wished she could bottle it. In wartime, happiness was a precious commodity. One had to snatch it, however fleeting, hold on to it and refuse to let it go.