Wartime for the Shop Girls. Joanna Toye

I’ve said it,’ he added quietly.

      Gladys started to tremble. She turned their joined hands over, stroking the fine, almost transparent, hairs on his fingers. ‘Do you really?’

      ‘Blimey, give a bloke a chance,’ protested Bill, blushing. ‘I just said so, didn’t I? Want me to spell it out in Morse Code? Or flags?’

      ‘No, of course not!’

      Gladys screwed up her courage. She’d wanted to say it for so long, but now the chance had come … Still, if Bill had managed it …

      ‘I love you too, Bill, I do, I really, really do. So much. I only didn’t say, because … oh, Bill.’

      Leaving one hand in his, she sat back and put the other to her chest.

      ‘Ooh, my heart’s hammering! I’m sorry, I don’t think I can eat any more. Do you want the rest of my chips?’

      At the Collinses’ that evening, there was another surprise, though perhaps on a slightly lesser plane.

      There was a new delicacy on the table, something that had sat in the larder all day with Dora peeking at it occasionally as if it might explode.

      ‘They call it Spam,’ she said, as Lily cut into the thick fritter of bright pink meat on her plate alongside the cauliflower and potatoes.

      ‘Special Processed American Meat,’ said Sid, who knew everything, or managed to give that impression. ‘We’ve had it in the NAAFI since last year. But if it’s reached Hinton, I’m telling you, it really has arrived.’

      ‘Well,’ said Jim, chewing thoughtfully. ‘It’s a funny texture. Sort of slimy, like a face flannel. But it doesn’t taste too bad.’

      ‘And at least it brightens things up,’ added Lily.

      The colourlessness of the wartime diet was as much a trial to her as its sheer repetitive blandness. Everything looked beige and tasted beige. Never mind moaning about vanished brands of knitting wool or soap, how she longed for a vivid orange or a banana. She’d even have sucked on a lemon.

      Dora made no comment. She’d acquired this tin quite legally, but Ivy, with her many and various ‘contacts’ about which Dora never enquired (‘Don’t ask a question to which you don’t want to know the answer’ was another of her mottoes) had offered her up to three more, and she was seriously wondering, after the family’s reaction, whether to take her up on it. Best change the subject.

      ‘Still nothing from Reg in the post,’ she observed sadly.

      ‘And it’s been a whole month since they left,’ objected Lily, looking to Sid for his superior knowledge of shipping.

      ‘They’re probably not there yet.’ Sid took a swig of tea. ‘No news is good news. If they’d run into trouble, we’d have known about it by now.’

      Indeed they would: it had been a dreadful winter at sea. Ever since last November, when they’d sunk the Ark Royal, the Germans had seemed unstoppable, and January had been one of the worst months for shipping since the start of the war. German U-boats had sunk more ships than there were days in the month – thirty-five in all.

      ‘Where should his ship have got to by now?’ asked Jim.

      ‘Should be well past the Cape,’ pondered Sid. ‘But they may have had to put in somewhere en route. Refuel, take on supplies, some mechanical fault …’

      ‘So why didn’t he write from there?’ demanded Lily. ‘He might know we’ll be desperate to hear!’

      ‘He might have been a bad boy and not allowed onshore. No, scrub that,’ Sid corrected quickly as Dora looked concerned. ‘Not very likely with our Reg, is it? But maybe someone else was and they all got confined to barracks, well, had to stay on board.’

      ‘That’s not very fair!’

      ‘Nothing’s fair in love and war, Lil,’ Sid chastised. ‘Or, if they were going to be in dock a while, they might have been carted to a camp upcountry. Where the only post’s a forked stick or smoke signals!’

      Dora sighed. ‘We’ll have to be patient, then.’

      ‘Yes, you will,’ said Sid. ‘I dunno why you’re getting so excited. What’s he going to say when he gets there, anyway – “I can’t tell you where I am but there’s lots of sand”?’

      ‘And what would your letters say?’ Lily felt obliged to defend Reg. ‘“I can’t tell you where I am but there’s lots of water”?’

      ‘Come on, Lil! I hope I’m a bit better correspondent than Reg!’

      It was true – Reg’s letters, short and infrequent, were unlikely ever to give Freda, their post girl, a hernia.

      ‘Well,’ said Jim, who was privy to the contents – Sid’s letters were generally read out loud – ‘I admit your last darts match sounded pretty gripping, but let’s be honest, the only thing these two really want to hear about is who you’re courting.’

      This too, was true. With Sid’s good looks he’d never been short of girlfriends, and it was hard to believe he wasn’t ‘up with the lark, to bed with the Wrens’, as the saying had it.

      ‘Crikey, don’t spare my blushes, will you?’ Sid, unusually, seemed taken aback by Jim’s directness. ‘You know me, same as always, taking my chances at village dances.’

      ‘Still no one special, then?’ enquired Dora.

      Sid might not like being put on the spot, but Lily was delighted. Jim was quite right. It was the question she – and her mum, she knew – had been dying to ask.

      Sid opened his mouth to answer, but the back door opened, and a familiar voice called ‘Only me.’

      Lily looked at Jim and Jim looked at Lily, but instead of the eye-rolling that Beryl’s arrival mid-meal (again!) might have caused, their eyes telegraphed concern. It didn’t sound like Beryl’s usual cheery greeting. Nothing like.

      Dora twisted in her chair to call through to the scullery.

      ‘Beryl? Never mind your boots, come on through.’ So she was concerned as well. Normally it was strictly boots off at the door. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’