Home for Christmas by Annie Groves Page A

without it. You don’t know how lucky you are to have them curls of yours, Tilly.’
    ‘You wouldn’t think that if you had to brush them,’ Tilly assured her fellow worker. Then both of them were grimacing as the wail of the air-raid siren began, quickly reaching for their bags before hurrying to join the trudge down to the basement hospital shelters.
    Tilly was still thinking about what Kit had told her that morning, as they made their way along the corridor, and then down the stairs – it was forbidden to use the lift during an air raid – and feeling sorry for him. Secretly she would have liked to have played a more exciting role in the war herself, but dealing with unexploded bombs was more than exciting it was dangerous and surely the very last occupation suitable for someone of Kit’s slightly nervous and defensive temperament.
    ‘Three more warnings we’ve had today, and one of them was a false alarm,’ Dulcie complained to Olive and Sally as the three of them sat round the kitchen table drinking the tea Sally had made before she left for her night shift at the hospital.
    ‘At least we’ve got gas, electricity and water here. There was chaos at the rest centre this afternoon when the water went off. Oh, and I heard that Buckingham Palace was bombed today, twice,’ Olive told them, ‘but the King and Queen are all right. How does your ankle feel, Dulcie?’
    ‘I’m all itchy,’ Dulcie told her.
    ‘That’s the plaster,’ Sally told her knowledgably, adding in a no-nonsense voice, ‘I hope you’re still wiggling your toes every hour or so, like I told you to do.’
    ‘Yes, Nurse,’ Dulcie responded with a grin and a cheeky look, before sighing, ‘I’d give anything for a proper bath.’ She’d been told not to get the plaster wet under any circumstances and was having to make do with a soaped flannel and a good scrub.
    Itchy and bored, by the look of her, Olive thought sympathetically, Dulcie wasn’t the stay-at-home sort.
    ‘Tilly and Agnes will be going to their St John Ambulance class tonight – why don’t you go with them? There’ll be a lot of young people there and it will be more fun for you than staying here,’ Olive suggested.
    Dulcie opened her mouth to tell her that attending a St John Ambulance class was not her idea of fun, and then closed it again. Olive meant well, she admitted, and at least it would get her out.
    There was a large public shelter not far from the hall where the classes were held, so Olive had no fears about the girls going.
    ‘I’d better get on with tea. Agnes and Tilly will be back soon. It will have to be fried Spam fritters tonight with cold boiled potatoes, just in case we get an air-raid alert before I’ve managed to get it ready.’
    ‘I’d better go,’ Sally announced. ‘I want to leave a bit of extra time so that I’m not late going on duty.’
    Sally had always taken her work seriously, but since Matron had told her that she was planning to promote her to the rank of Sister Theatre Sally had been determined to repay Matron’s faith in her. She wanted to succeed for herself, but most of all because she felt that it was something she could do for her late mother: a way of repaying all the love her mother had given her, and of showing the world the gifts her mother had passed on to her. Not that Sally would ever have voiced those emotions and thoughts to anyone – that just wasn’t her way.
    ‘I don’t blame you,’ Olive agreed as she opened her store cupboard to remove a tin of Spam. ‘There were yellow “diversion” notices on so many roads today that I thought I’d never get us back from the rest centre.’ She paused. ‘Those poor people queuing there, I felt so sorry for them. Some of them were saying that they’d rather trek out to Epsom Forest every night than stay in the city, and others are talking about going down to Kent, to the accommodation they use when they go hop picking.’
    Pulling on her cloak, Sally headed for