When the sun had risen over the sea and military training exercises had started on the beach, Elsie returned home to see the extent of the bomb damage, and to check that the house hadn’t been looted. Not that the family had an abundance of jewels and treasures, mind, but there were some precious things she wanted to rescue from the rubble if she could: the family photographs, her wedding dress.

‘You wouldn’t reckon on it,’ a fire warden had told her in the night, ‘but some no-good toe-rags around here have been helping themselves during air raids. People leave their front doors open, see. Well, you don’t think to lock your front door when there’s a raid on, do you?’

Despite it being July, the weather during the last few days had been changeable and today a fierce wind blew in from the Channel, and standing on the pavement outside her house, Elsie felt chilled to the bone. She hardly dared look at the unrecognisable smoky stumps that were left of her home, shaking her head in disbelief at the night’s events; how in such a short time everything she held dear could be destroyed. Piles of broken glass and bricks were being removed in a cart, roof slates and tiles were strewn across the pavement and the house stood, open to the street, as if sliced in half, a papered wall with pictures hanging on it, a bizarre sight. A tree had been uprooted and lay on the pavement as if it were just a weed pulled up by a gardener.

We were lucky, she tried to convince herself. We could very easily have been killed.

The bomb had actually fallen in between the two houses, making a huge crater in the ground. ‘Poor Hitler couldn’t even aim straight,’ the fire warden had tried to joke. The explosion had destroyed Elsie’s house completely and half-destroyed Sidney’s home. Blackened beds and wardrobes had fallen into a broken and macabre mess amongst shattered windows, heaps of bricks, plaster and rubble. Chairs lay upturned, burned and broken, blankets and clothes were strewn amidst the wreckage; there was a teddy with its fur burned, and Violet’s careful knitting, unravelled and singed. The family photographs Elsie had wanted to rescue had blown along the pavement in the wind like litter. Elsie managed to stamp on one to stop it disappearing. She picked it up. The photograph was of her, William and her sisters in their swimmers on Bournemouth beach. Handwritten on the back was the date: August, 1938. The sight of William, smiling happily into the camera lens, took her breath away. Memories of his voice and touch came flooding into her mind and the disappointment of yesterday swelled in her throat. That picture had been taken during the second month she’d been courting William – the excitement of being in his company was written all over her face. She positively glowed. Now, it felt like a different lifetime.

‘Just think,’ Elsie whispered. ‘We had no idea what was going to happen. No idea.’

Pushing the photograph into her coat pocket, she turned to see several of her neighbours emerging from their homes to inspect the damage, all of them wearing a similar stricken expression. It could just as easily have been them that got hit.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sidney’s black cat, Silky, who she often petted in the garden. ‘Silky,’ Elsie said in a quiet, high voice, calling the cat, who was covered in dust. ‘Silky, come here Silky!’

The cat wound his body through her legs, purring loudly. She picked him up, burying her face into his warm coat.

‘Oh you poor cat,’ she said, sitting down on the edge of the pavement, still clinging to Silky.

‘You should charge to view the damage,’ said Mrs Eden, the neighbour who lived opposite, gesturing at the crowd who had come to see the wreck. ‘Give it to charity.’

‘Oh they’re all right,’ said Elsie, with a shadow of a smile, setting down Silky. ‘It’s a shock to us all.’

Mrs Eden rested her hand on Elsie’s back, to comfort her. ‘Come in for some tea,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to put the bucket on.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Eden, but I better get back to my mother and the twins,’ said Elsie, wiping her nose on her hanky and managing a smile. ‘We’ll need to find somewhere to stay. Can you make sure Silky gets some food? I doubt Sidney will be able to get here from the hospital.’

Elsie thought of the pot of spilt black sticky liquid she had found in Sidney’s kitchen and shuddered.

‘Wait there,’ said Mrs Eden, rushing into her house and returning carrying a pair of shoes that were Elsie’s size and a beautiful pale pink mac that Elsie knew Mrs Eden kept for best. ‘Have these at the very least. They’re your size. You’ll look a picture in that coat.’

---

‘I’ll not take no for an answer,’ said Audrey, when Elsie went into the bakery later that day to tell her about the raid.

Leaving Maggie and Lily serving in the shop, Audrey had immediately ushered Elsie upstairs into the kitchen, thrown a blanket over her shoulders and plied her with hot tea and toast and a shot of rum, even though Elsie protested at the attention.

‘How dare they bomb you and your innocent little sisters?’ Audrey raged, banging down the cups on the table in fury. ‘You all could have been killed! If Hitler thinks he can take on this family, he’s another think coming. You’ll stay here with us and that’s that. You can share with Lily. Your sisters and your mother can stay with Pat, so she can have a bedroom on the ground floor. They’re only round the corner, you can see them all the time.’

Elsie was touched by Audrey’s choice of words. She’d said ‘this family’ as if Elsie’s family were already a part of her own, though the truth was sadly different.

‘Don’t worry yourself, Audrey,’ said Elsie. ‘You already have Mary and Lily staying. The people at the rest centre said although we’re only supposed to be there for forty-eight hours, people are staying much longer and they’d turn a blind eye if we stayed on—’

Audrey put her hands on her hips, her eyes flaming. ‘What, and live out of a suitcase when you can stay here with me?’ she said, appalled, then turned to open the window and water the geraniums and the cucumbers growing on the windowsill in quick succession.

‘I don’t even have a suitcase,’ said Elsie, feeling suddenly limp. ‘We don’t have anything at all.’

Audrey came over to her and put her hands on Elsie’s shoulders. ‘I can help you replace your things,’ she said. ‘William would want you here. Charlie will speak to Pat and she’ll be happy to welcome Violet and your sisters I’m sure. She’s always saying she rattles around that house on her own.’

‘What are you signing me up for?’ Charlie said, at that very moment entering the kitchen, reaching across the table to kiss Audrey on the cheek. ‘Why aren’t you out in the shop? We’re nearly sold out in there. Hello Elsie. Are you all right?’

Elsie opened her mouth to speak but found herself unable. Exhausted by what had happened that day, she smiled wanly.

‘I’ll explain it all later,’ said Audrey, glancing at Elsie. ‘How was your meeting?’

Charlie, who was holding a bunch of paperwork, explained that he’d been to a meeting for the Master Bakers and Confectioners of Bournemouth and the bakers had agreed they were going to put a notice in the newspaper, requesting that all customers settle their accounts as quickly as possible.

‘Folk are hard up, that’s what it is,’ Charlie said, clearly reluctant to criticise or badger his customers. ‘But without their payments we bakers will be struggling to pay the wholesalers or the gasworks. We’ve also heard from the Ministry of Food that from the end of August we’ll need to change what loaves we sell.’

‘Oh really?’ said Audrey, holding on to the back of a chair. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We’re only to bake Coburg, tin, sandwich and Scotch batch,’ he said. ‘They’re limiting the loaves to the more economical shapes, aren’t they? If you think about it, with a round loaf, your first slice is small and the slice in the middle the biggest. Ministry of Food want the bread evenly cut, so people have a decent slice each day. Makes sense, but there will be some customers who won’t want to give up their cottage loaf—’

‘Goodness,’ said Audrey. ‘Are there to be any other changes?’

‘We’ve swapped some of our delivery customers,’ he said. ‘So that any bakers who have to drive a long way will have to drive less far and so use less fuel. There’s also talk of using a different flour, with added calcium, but we’ve yet to hear more about that. And then there’s the new District Bread Officers. They’re to make sure that we’re delivering what we say we’re delivering but also to make sure if there’s a bombing in Poole or Southampton on the gasworks and the big bakeries are put out of action, the smaller bakeries in the surrounding areas can help fulfil the deliveries.’

‘Good grief,’ said Audrey. ‘It’s all been so well thought through. Shows what value they put on bread, Charlie.’

‘Folk rely on bread,’ said Charlie, nodding. ‘For some families without two pennies to rub together, it’s pretty much all they eat. Bread is the staff of life in war and peace, as Uncle Eric used to say.’

Charlie was interrupted by the wail of the air-raid siren and Elsie leapt to her feet, instantly panicked.

‘Again?’ she said, her face stricken with terror. ‘Quickly. It can happen in seconds.’

‘Good lord,’ Audrey said. ‘Can’t a day go by without the war interrupting?’

She slammed her cloth down on the table as the drone of aircraft sounded above.

‘If there’s anyone in the shop, they’ll have to come to the shelter too,’ she said. ‘Goodness, where’s Mary?’

‘By the time you’ve remembered everything there’ll be no point in going into the shelter,’ said Charlie, refusing to be panicked by the siren. ‘I’ll be in the bakehouse.’

‘I’ll find Mary,’ said Elsie, her heart pounding as memories of the previous night’s attack haunted her. ‘There’s no time to waste. Mary! Mary love!’

Elsie ran through to the storeroom to look for Mary and, peering through the door of the large cupboard where Audrey kept ingredients, saw Maggie, who was bent over, fiddling with the catch on her gas mask case, with her back to Elsie.

‘Maggie!’ cried Elsie. ‘We should go to the shelter urgently.’

Elsie’s voice made Maggie jump and she immediately dropped the gas mask case onto the floor. It landed with a thud, the lid flipping open and sugar spilling onto the floor. Frowning, Elsie peered into the case. Instead of Maggie’s gas mask, it was filled with white sugar.

‘Maggie?’ asked Elsie quizzically. ‘What are you doing?’

Maggie’s cheeks flushed deep red as she quickly swept the spilt sugar into the case, securing the lid.

‘I’m borrowing it and I swear I’ll put it back,’ she muttered. ‘I can explain, but not right now. Please just keep your trap shut for now.’

Confused, Elsie continued out into the courtyard where Mary was standing, trembling. Grabbing Mary’s hand, Elsie joined Audrey, Maggie and Lily in the shelter. It was a crush, but Elsie, whose hands were shaking, found a space next to Lily and Mary on the bench, over which Audrey had hung some dried lavender in bunches under the affectionate roll of Charlie’s eyes. A box filled with all the bakery’s important documents was in the corner, along with a first aid kit and a biscuit tin containing shelter snacks.

‘Here, Mary,’ said Audrey, handing the little girl some earplugs. ‘The ARP are giving these out for free all over town. I think they will help you.’

Mary stuffed them into her ears and for a while everyone stayed quiet, nervously glancing at one another, straining to hear if anything was going to happen. Planes were heard overhead with frequent bursts of firing from anti-aircraft batteries – and then, after a while, it all fell silent. As they waited, breath bated, for the siren that marked the end of the raid, Elsie turned over Maggie’s actions in her head. Why would she be borrowing sugar? Should she tell Audrey what she’d seen?

‘I didn’t get time to lock the bakery door,’ said Audrey. ‘I hope nobody’s got their hands in the till, though if Charlie catches them he’ll have their guts for garters!’

Elsie tried to catch Maggie’s eye, but Maggie stared defiantly ahead.