Audrey opened the bakery shop window blind to a sky so blue and spit-shine spotless, for a fleeting moment she could almost believe there was no wretched war to worry about. Living with the blackout these last months made daylight all the more sweet. Unlocking the door of Barton’s Bakery, the brass bell merrily jingling, and releasing delicious wafts of sweet-smelling fresh bread into the neighbourhood’s nostrils, she suppressed a deep yawn. Up since before dawn, scaling and moulding the dough for loaves and buns, and preparing the counter orders; another busy day lay ahead.

‘Morning,’ she called to two scrawny evacuee boys from Portsmouth – no more than six years old – who were leaning their backs against the bakery wall, the bricks warm after the night’s baking, waiting for a spare crust, like sparrows searching for crumbs.

‘Mornin’ miss,’ one boy said, his gaze fixed on the young delivery boy, Albert, who was wobbling on the delivery bicycle down the street with the neighbourhood’s orders of warm, fresh and perfectly golden tin, Coburg and bloomer loaves stacked in the basket, a hungry seagull above tracking his route. Albert would be gone for hours – some of the spinsters he delivered to looked forward to their cup of tea with Albert more than the bread itself! ‘I spend more time doing odd jobs and drinking tea than I do delivering bread,’ he’d told an amused Audrey last week. Knowing how lonely some folk were, Audrey was glad of Albert’s patient nature and friendly open face.

‘Keep up the good work, Albert,’ she’d told him. ‘You make some people’s day.’

Audrey stood for a moment blinking in the early sunlight, like one of the sand lizards in the dunes, trying not to feel disappointed that the cramps of her monthlies had arrived last night, regular as clockwork. Another door to motherhood slammed. After five years of trying to fall pregnant, she should know better than to expect any different. It’s not meant to be, she thought, busying herself watching Fisherman’s Road, the street in Southbourne in east Bournemouth she lived in, coming to life.

Barton’s Bakery was on the south side of Fisherman’s Road, part of a bustling parade of shops including the chemist, dairy, shoemaker, stationer, draper, café, grocer and the Post & Telegraph Office. The grocer, Old Reg, opposite Barton’s, was opening up and wiping down the enamel Red Seal Toffees sign outside his shop, whistling a Gracie Fields song. Since rationing had started, Old Reg said he had aged twenty years. He had many a story to tell about disgruntled customers forgetting to bring in their ration books, or who expected Reg to have precious oranges saved ‘behind the counter’ for them, at which point he’d gesture to his shelves filled with jars of loose biscuits, tins of Fray Bentos soup and gooseberry pie filling, OXO cubes and the slab of cheese and cheese wire on the counter and say ‘This is your lot! Like it or lump it!’ It wasn’t easy being a shopkeeper these days. With Hitler’s U-boats attacking shipping bound for Britain, limited imported goods and raw materials were getting into the country.

‘How are you, Reg?’ she called to him as he knelt down to polish his front step, as he did every morning, until it shone like a new penny.

‘I’m all right, Audrey,’ he said. ‘It’s just the rest of ’em that ain’t!’

Audrey smiled but the smile quickly vanished from her face when she caught sight of Mabel, the postwoman. Giving a small wave, Mabel shook her head regretfully and cycled on by without stopping. Audrey’s stomach twisted into painful knots. They hadn’t heard from her brother William since February when he was posted overseas after he’d completed his military training. With all that was now going on in the war – there was news of the German forces invading Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg by air and land, and, according to the new Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a German invasion in Britain was now a real possibility – the war felt very close to home. Just to hear a word from William, even if only ‘Okay!’, would be a blessed relief. For a letter to arrive for next week, when it was Elsie’s birthday, would be perfect timing.

‘No news is good news,’ Audrey told herself, taking a lungful of fresh air. You could taste the sea salt on the breeze today blowing in from the Channel, she thought, tucking an escaped strand of hair behind her ear. Audrey was forever thankful for where she lived – one-hundred yards from the cliff top where sweet-smelling yellow gorse and sea pinks were flowering, and down steep stone steps, or a zigzag path, to the water’s edge. On hot summer days when the shop had closed, she would sometimes wade into the water up to her ankles and cool off, scrunching the wet sand between her toes. But that was before the war. Now, with the pillbox lookout posts, concrete ‘dragon’s teeth’ anti-tank obstacles and rolls of barbed wire to deter the German army from landing on the coast, even the beautiful beaches seemed threatening. Many of the hotels across the town, formerly enjoyed by holidaymakers, had been requisitioned for military accommodation or were closing down too, and there had recently been talk of all the entertainment on Bournemouth pier being cancelled – a sad thought.

‘Audrey?’ she heard Charlie’s voice from behind her. ‘Morning goods ready for the shop! The boy’s taken the delivery order. I’ll take the van out for the final deliveries. Come on, love, the night shifters will be here soon for their breakfast rolls! You know how they love their hot rolls.’

Biting her lip, she tried to ignore the irritation in Charlie’s voice. She knew he was exhausted after baking and tending the ovens most of the night and needed his rest – he lived on four hours’ sleep a night – but his recent short temper shocked her. She turned to face him, wondering whether to tell him about the disappointing arrival of her monthlies, her eyes taking a moment to readjust to the darkness in the shop. With a sigh, she decided against it. However tender she was towards him recently, it was as if he had locked the door to his heart and thrown away the key into a dark pond. Audrey felt she had waded into that pond and was tangled in the weeds.

Charlie, using a hessian sack to protect his hands against the heat, placed the tray of hot baked goods onto the service counter and then wiped his brow with his handkerchief. He managed a tired smile. His dark hair and eyelashes were powdered with flour and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to expose muscular arms. The job of a baker was hard physical work. Charlie had young Albert helping out with deliveries and his uncle John, a proud, semi-retired baker with a belly as big as a bloomer, working alongside him part-time, but John was fifty-nine now, with joints that creaked like old floorboards.

‘Oven temperature’s fallen enough for the rock cakes,’ Charlie said, picking up the long-handled wooden peel that he used to put cakes into the oven. ‘I’ll put them in. Don’t forget Mrs Common’s order is to be kept behind the counter for her until she comes in at midday,’ he continued, rolling his shoulders to release the knots. ‘The tins’ll need scraping, coke brought in and I’ll need to do that paperwork today. The Ministry of Food want every bag of flour and every ounce of fat accounted for.’

Charlie stifled a yawn and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs.

‘We’ll be counting out the currants to go in the rock cakes soon!’ Audrey said, only half-joking. ‘You should get some rest Charlie, you’re tired.’

‘Don’t fuss, there’s nothing wrong with me except that the day’s not long enough!’ he said. ‘Did you hear on the wireless that they want men to join the Local Defence Volunteers? They need any man aged between seventeen and sixty-five. I could join if John does a few more hours here at night.’

‘You can’t take on any more, Charlie, you’re breaking your back in here already,’ Audrey said, gently pushing the ginger cat, Marmalade, off the counter where he’d left floury paw prints. She flicked through her order book. ‘Do you know I’ve had three more orders for wedding cakes. Trouble is, thanks to rationing, I don’t have anywhere near enough icing sugar to ice them. I’m going to have to get creative and use something else. I’ve heard some confectioners are making moulds from plaster of Paris, would you believe?’

Charlie didn’t reply. He disappeared through the floral-patterned curtains that covered the entrance to the small, stifling hot bakehouse out back, leaving her alone in the shop, an anxious crease across her forehead.

She patted Marmalade’s head and sighed. When war was declared, Charlie had immediately gone to the recruiting station and tried to join up, only to be informed that his occupation as head baker was ‘reserved’ and that he had important food production duties to attend to at home. Audrey was quietly relieved, but when she’d intimated as much to Charlie he had sternly told her: ‘I’m willing to put my life on the line for peace. I would go if I could.’

Audrey wanted to point out there was nothing peaceful about war, but doubted if Charlie would ever talk to her about his feelings of frustration. He was a man best left to his own devices when he had something on his mind, channelling his feelings into his bread. He’d always vowed you could tell which baker had made what bread and you could taste his temperament in each loaf. The mood Charlie had been in recently, customers would likely break their teeth on the crust.

Glancing at the clock, Audrey ran through what she had to do, as Maggie, the young girl who helped in the shop, would arrive at 8 a.m. She stood for a moment, hands on her hips, feeling a familiar sense of pride. The shop, though small in size and modest in yield, always looked chocolate-box beautiful and smelled divine. With the golden loaves lined up in the window and a big wicker basket piled with rolls, alongside cake stands and wooden trays displaying Swiss rolls and delicate jam tarts, it wasn’t like the fancy big bakeries in the centre of Bournemouth, but it had for years served the immediate community with a lovely crust. Charlie knew his cast-iron oven inside out and had mastered the perfect dough to make a light and porous bread – some customers said they wouldn’t eat anything else but Barton’s bread. Compliments didn’t come much higher than that.

Straightening the price tickets, Audrey felt a sense of determination about the day ahead. With Hitler obsessed with wreaking havoc on the world, it was easy to feel helpless, but she was trying her best to help keep up morale. It was her belief that it was the everyday things, like buying bread, talking to one another and preparing a pie, that kept people sane. If all you did was think about the horrors going on in the world, a person could easily lose their way.

After quickly sweeping away crumbs from the black and white tiled floor with a broom, she glanced through the window, where the word ‘BAKERY’ had been hand-painted onto the glass in elegant gold lettering by the signwriter, and saw two small noses pressed up against it. Quickly, she grabbed a couple of halfpenny buns from the window display, popped her head out of the shop and dropped them into the boys’ hands with a smile and a wink. She heard the voice of her mother-in-law, Pat, in her head as she did so: ‘This is a business, not a charity!’ But she took no heed. She couldn’t see a child go hungry, no matter what.

‘Thanks miss!’ the boys said, immediately picking apart the warm bread with their little fingers and pushing it into their mouths before scampering off to goodness knows where. She’d seen them jumping on the corrugated-iron roof of an air-raid shelter earlier in the week, making a terrific din – the little ruffians!

‘Go well,’ she said kindly, a ghost of longing gripping her heart and squeezing it. ‘Go well.’