‘This will be the last time I do this,’ whispered Maggie to herself, at the end of the working day when she crept into the store cupboard, while Audrey was bagging up the ‘stales’ in the shop to sell off for a penny. Straining to reach the top shelf, her dress brushing against the back of her knees, she knocked her knee against a wooden crate and snagged her stockings.

‘Blast,’ she said, staring at the run. ‘Not another pair ruined!’

Ever since George’s proposal that morning, her mood had been sky-high, but now, with a shiny future dangling precariously in front of her like a new penny on a string, it was more important than ever that she didn’t trip up. This was her chance to get away from her sour-faced grandmother and live a better life with the man she loved, wasn’t it? No more shabby clothes, no more rinsing out her sisters’ one pair of stockings every night in cold water so they could wear them again the next day, no more burning the furniture for fuel in winter, or suffering their grandmother wasting the girls’ earnings and cursing her luck. She’d have to see to it that her sisters were looked after too, particularly Isabel, who wouldn’t cope alone. Hopefully George wouldn’t mind if they came to stay, wherever they chose to live. He came from Hampstead in London, so when the war was over, she’d no doubt live with him there, where she imagined them taking dinner at the Savoy, or going to the Lyceum Ballroom in her finest glad rags. Oh, it would be so very exciting!

‘I love you, George Meadows,’ she sighed.

Carefully, with light, nimble fingers that trembled just a little, she cut a hole in the bottom of a packet of sugar with a sharp knife, and held her empty gas-mask case underneath it, watching the pure white grains silently flow into it. When the bag was half empty and the box almost full, she adjusted its position on the shelf to stem the flow. Heart thumping in her chest, she quickly sealed the case shut: done.

It’s not that bad, she reasoned with herself, as she swept up a few spilt grains with her hands.

Spotting a half-empty tub of beautiful red glacé cherries on the shelf above her, she quickly lifted the lid, took one and popped it in her mouth, letting the gorgeous sugary sweetness burst onto her tongue. She closed her eyes and chewed, pushing away the guilt that was pressing against her brow. Besides, as she understood it, whatever stock Audrey reported to the Ministry of Food as sold one month was allocated again for the next month, so it wasn’t as if the bakery was losing out, was it? What the spivs and drones were doing in London made her activity seem harmless. She’d heard from a friend of a friend in the city that when a high-explosive bomb had hit the Café de Paris ballroom in March, rescuers found that looters had got to the site before them and were pulling jewellery off the revellers’ bodies. Now, that was wrong. That was downright shameful. Borrowing a bit of sugar and some dried fruit to sell or swap for real or ‘buckshee’ clothing vouchers was all she was doing. The war made you have to do things you wouldn’t normally do, didn’t it? You had to be crafty. If she waited until peacetime again to get what she wanted, she might be waiting a lifetime. Besides, she’d do pretty much anything to keep George Meadows, and was more determined than ever to collect enough coupons to keep up appearances during their courtship and be a proper bride on their wedding day. So far, she’d managed to keep him away from her home and there was no way she could let him meet Gwendolen, her grandmother.

When she’d mentioned George to her, she’d asked: ‘What on earth does he see in you?’ – no less than Maggie had expected. If there was one person who had taught her you had to look out for yourself in life, it was her grandmother, but she’d done that without even meaning to.

‘Maggie?’ said Audrey quietly, suddenly standing behind her in the store cupboard, where the door had silently swung open. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘Oh, I…’ said Maggie, turning on her heel, stunned, the gas-mask case slipping from her fingers. Hitting the hard, tiled floor, the box flew open and the sugar spilled out. Flushing bright red, her eyes wide with terror and fury at being discovered, Maggie left the mess on the floor and shoved past Audrey. Without collecting her things, she ran through the shop and out into Fisherman’s Road, where people were scurrying home past the sandbags heaped along the shopfronts, the windows criss-crossed with bombproof tape. She looked left and right and saw, in the far distance, George Meadows walking towards the bakery. He’d arranged to meet her after work, to take her for a fish and chip supper.

Head down and walking in the opposite direction, she caught sight of her reflection in the butcher’s window – make-up running down her cheeks like railway tracks. He couldn’t see her like this! But if she wasn’t at the bakery when he arrived, Audrey might tell him what had happened, and then what? George was an honest, respectable man. If he got wind of Maggie’s lies, the engagement would be off. Blast, she thought. Damn and blast.

‘Maggie!’ she heard Audrey call from behind her. Without answering, Maggie changed direction again and made off up the street towards George, hot tears pricking her eyes. Using her thumbs to clean the make-up from under her eyes, she pinched her cheeks for a makeshift blush, whipped off her apron to reveal a pretty frock she’d traded with a neighbour for a few ounces of sugar, and plastered a smile on her face, before running headlong towards the future, into George’s outstretched arms.

‘Maggie Rose,’ he said, holding her tight, ‘where is your gas mask and why are you in such a rush?’

---

Audrey stood with her hands on her hips in the bakery doorway, watching the figures of Maggie and George melt into the distance. ‘Well, blow me down,’ she said, biting her lip and looking up at the postcard-perfect, blue sky. ‘I would never have expected that to happen. Not in a million years.’

It was the most beautiful evening, she thought, following a swift’s flight over the tops of the houses and watching a group of schoolboys having a raucous piggyback fight in the street, but you couldn’t trust the sky. It seemed innocent enough, but as Audrey knew only too well, at any moment a formation of planes could appear on the horizon, as they had done all through the Battle of Britain, carrying and dropping bombs to blow apart people’s lives.

Trust, thought Audrey, picturing Maggie’s horrified face when she’d been discovered in the store cupboard. She had thought she could trust Maggie – and now look what had happened. She’d caught her red-handed, stealing sugar from right under her nose.

Shaking her head in dismay, Audrey changed the shop sign to CLOSED, feeling upset rather than angry. Hadn’t she always treated Maggie well? Hadn’t she packed her off home at the end of the week with her wages and a fresh loaf? Didn’t she involve her in all the bakery’s comings and goings – at knitting parties and clothes mending evenings, or simply for a slice of pie and a cup of hot tea, treating her like one of the family? Hadn’t she offered to bake her a wedding cake that very morning?

Wishing that Charlie was there to talk to, she went into the kitchen and put the nettle soup on the range to heat up. While it bubbled in the pot, she looked out of the window into the courtyard garden, where Mary was sucking the sweet nectar from a white nettle flower, while William was on his knees, weeding the small patch of garden they’d turned over to growing vegetables. John, she knew, would be in the Carpenter’s Arms, enjoying an ale and discussing military operations, before returning to the bakery later. Audrey wished William would go with him – it would do him good.

Averting her eyes from the stump that used to be William’s right foot, she ran her gaze over his wooden crutches, which were leaning against the bakery wall next to the delivery bicycle. At least he was out of his bedroom – that was something to be grateful for. But she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Elsie since the other evening when she’d run out of the bakery after the argument with William. And now Maggie had run off too. Everyone was running away, it seemed. She was going to have to do something about that, wasn’t she? It was up to her to keep her ramshackle family together and safe through this war, and she wasn’t about to give up. Thinking about all the people she loved, her throat thickened with sudden emotion.

‘Gracious me, this won’t do at all,’ she tutted, cross with herself, stirring the nettle soup, then pulling herself together and throwing open the window to call to William and Mary: ‘Soup’s ready.’

---

‘What do you think I should do?’ she asked John, after dinner, when William had gone to talk to the ARP warden about his fire-watching rota, and Mary was back outside, petting her rabbit. She’d had no intention of talking about Maggie’s pilfering to anyone, but found the words rushing from her lips before her brain caught up.

John’s mouth was agape, revealing gaps where several of his teeth once were. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and leaned his weight on the big wooden table, shaking his head in shock.

‘String her up!’ he said. ‘The little devil! I wouldn’t have pegged Maggie as a wrong’un! Now we know why she’s always laughin’ and smilin’. How dare she? When times are so ’ard too. Folk are eating paraffin cake to get by without luxuries, and she’s got her ’ands in the sugar! Well, I never.’

‘She’s young, John,’ said Audrey quietly. ‘Barely out of school. Maybe her young man put her up to it? He was in the bakery shop proposing to her this morning. Perhaps it’s something to do with that. Maybe she’s in trouble and she’s not letting on.’

‘She’ll be in trouble when I get my ’ands on ’er!’ he said, widening his eyes. ‘If Charlie knew about this, he’d go straight to the police and report her for thievin’, I tell you. Have you ’ad words with ’er?’

Audrey shook her head and felt uncharacteristically lost for words.

‘If you don’t, I will,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe she could be that daft. What’s she taken then?’

Audrey explained what she thought Maggie had pinched over recent weeks.

John thudded down on the baking table with his hands, coughing as he did so, until he was almost doubled over. Gripping the table’s edge, he held his hanky up to his mouth as he continued to cough, the top of his balding head and his face turning boiling red.

Rushing to the tap, Audrey fetched him a tumbler of water, placing it down in front of him on the table. Resting a hand on his back as he carried on coughing, he seemed unable to catch his breath. Audrey’s eyes darted around the bakery, as she tried to work out how to help him.

‘John,’ she said calmly. ‘John, try to take a breath and have a sip of water.’

But John was shaking his head and couldn’t stop coughing, the hacking motion making his body convulse, his face turning a horrible shade of dark purple, his eyes watery and bulging. He was holding his hand up to his neck, loosening the collar of his shirt. Was he choking?

‘It’s all right, John, just try to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,’ Audrey said, her voice quivering. Though she was trying to remain calm, John was in trouble and she didn’t know what to do. Racking her brain, he started to hyperventilate.

‘Oh goodness, try to calm down, John,’ she said, kneeling down in front of him, her eyes huge and wet.

Catching sight of Mary in the doorway, her rabbit still in her arms, Audrey was just about to ask her to get help when John made a wretched gasping sound and keeled over, falling off the chair and landing with a loud thud on the bakehouse stone floor.

‘John!’ Audrey shrieked, holding her fingers to his pulse. ‘Mary, quick! Run to Old Reg and ask him to telephone for an ambulance. Tell him it’s John and it’s an emergency.’

With her rabbit tucked under one arm, Mary fled the bakehouse, rushing to find help.

Audrey crouched on the floor, stroking John’s forehead, trying her best to make him comfortable but fearing that life was slipping from him in front of her very eyes.