Home for Christmas by Annie Groves

be overprotective of the sergeant. Not for a minute did she believe a word of what Nancy was implying. She’d seen and heard in his expression and his voice Sergeant Dawson’s concern for and loyalty to his wife. He had certainly never once given her any cause to feel uncomfortable in his company.
    The trouble was that in her widowed state, and given Nancy’s turn of mind, she could hardly leap to his defence without potentially making matters worse.
    ‘Of course, it’s up to a wife to make sure her husband doesn’t stray, and that he gets all he needs at home, if you take my meaning, and from what I’ve seen of her, Mrs Dawson doesn’t have much about her.’
    ‘She’s never got over them losing their boy, Nancy. You know that,’ Olive felt obliged to remind the other woman.
    ‘Well, that shouldn’t stop her coming to church, should it? Many a time I’ve been round there to knock on the door and do my Christian duty by her, but never once has she asked me in. And as for him asking me not to call round any more! I’d give a pound to a penny that’s because he doesn’t want her being put to the wise about what he’s up to. ‘
    So that was it, Olive thought. Nancy was offended because Sergeant Dawson had stepped in to protect his wife from her nosiness and she was now trying to get her revenge.
    Olive was glad when they had finished their tea and it was time to return to their work. She just wished she had someone other than Nancy and her spiteful tongue sitting next to her.
    David shot down and injured. Dulcie put down the copy of Picture Post she had gone back to reading, as she stared round Olive’s pretty kitchen without really seeing it. She had meant what she had said to Lizzie about being better off single, Dulcie assured herself. She certainly wasn’t mooning around over David James-Thompson. She had known right from the start that there could never be anything between them, even without David telling her about his snooty mother. And Dulcie hadn’t wanted there to be anything between them. Why should she? She could take her pick of lads, and that was how she liked it. All she’d wanted to do was get her own back on Lydia for being so stuck up about her, by flirting with David, who she’d known immediately found her attractive. Well, she’d done that all right, what with him waiting for her when she’d finished work, and then giving her that expensive vanity case she’d fallen in love with. Of course, she’d made it plain to him that she wasn’t the sort to do what she shouldn’t with any man, never mind one who was married, but that hadn’t stopped him trying to persuade her – or kiss her.
    Dulcie got to her feet, only to sit down again. She kept forgetting she wasn’t really mobile. What she needed was a good night out at the Hammersmith Palais, where she could dance and flirt and have a bit of a laugh. Dulcie wasn’t given to introspection or examining her own thoughts or feelings. Her confidence in herself was absolute and inviolate, because it had to be if she was to armour herself against her mother’s preference for her sister, so it was easy as well as necessary for her to put the sudden feeling of being helpless to do anything down to her broken ankle, and the way it restricted her movements, and to blame that for those feelings rather than the news about David’s accident. The plain fact was that this war was a ruddy nuisance, Dulcie thought to herself, and they could well do without it.
    *  *  *
    ‘I just hope we don’t have another air-raid warning before we finish work this afternoon,’ Clara, who worked with Tilly in the Lady Almoner’s office, sighed to Tilly as they sat side by side filling in forms for the influx of patients the bombings had brought. ‘It was all stop and start on the train getting to work this morning, and my mum will be thinking the worst if I’m late home. She was going to help me re-do my perm tonight. My hair is as straight as a die