their work was secret. She had translated propaganda posters from Germany, transcripts of conversations and notes from the enemy, intercepted and squirrelled away until they fell into her hands. She had quickly gone from wishing she was more directly involved in the war effort to realising that by providing understanding of the enemy’s written materials and conversations, she was indeed doing her bit. Molly had translated direct orders from Berlin to destroy food-supply ships in an effort to make England and her allies starve. Evasive measures had been taken and this had been in no small part down to the work she had done.
She thought now about the cold cut of pressed brawn and pickles that awaited her at home, no doubt already on the kitchen table with a linen tea towel thrown over the top of it for preservation. She then pictured her mother, or rather the angry, critical shell of this woman who used to be her mother, wandering from room to room as if in search of something – or someone, who would not be coming home. Molly remembered when this veil of despair had descended: the day they had buried her father. It was as if, when the final clods of earth banged against the engraved plaque on the lid of his polished wood coffin, her mother knew she didn’t need to pretend any more, not now the very worst thing had happened. Molly drew breath. Even the thought of having to find her bright voice and holler ‘Hell-llooo!’ as she stepped over the shiny brass step of their Victorian terraced house on Old Gloucester Street, Bloomsbury, was almost more than she could stand.
Unlike her mother’s beloved brother Max, who had been blown into a thousand pieces by an artillery shell at the Battle of the Somme, her father had survived the Great War, only to find his life blighted by two things: the memories that haunted his nightmares and his wheezing lungs, which had been irreparably damaged by the noxious mustard gas he had breathed in in the trenches. It was as though he had been spat out far from the battle zone and landed in his chair by the fire in his study, his face pinched, eyes hollow and with a lift to his nose as if the very scent of death still lingered. Her father thought he had been one of the lucky ones, dodging the bullet with his name on it, while those around him fell like dominoes in a line, the first having been pushed by the sharp finger of the Hun. The truth was, however, that he had not dodged it, not at all. His bullet had merely been delayed, delivered slowly. It had taken years for him to finally drown in his own bed without so much as a drop of water within reach.
‘Come on, Moll! Don’t let a girl down!’ Geer whined again.
Molly sighed. ‘All right then, one drink. And I mean it, one.’
‘Come on – we need some fun after today!’ Geer linked arms with her friend and the two swept along the corridor with their gas masks nestling in khaki canvas boxes slung across their bodies. ‘You’re going to love Johan. He’s an absolute hoot!’
‘Is he? Oh good,’ Molly offered sarcastically as they made their way along the street with the chill of winter turning every breath crisp, heading for the Army and Navy Club in Pall Mall.
‘Who knows, we might feel a bit of that old Christmas spirit!’ Geer said.
‘Darling, it’s two weeks away and you obviously didn’t get the memo: Christmas is cancelled again this year. Bloody war!’
‘Yes, bloody, bloody war!’ Geer shouted.
The girls huddled close together for warmth as they walked. Molly had got used to travelling at dusk without the comforting glow of streetlamps or the golden light pooling on the pavements from people’s homes, her eyes now far better attuned to a world where windows were darkened with heavy blackout curtains or cardboard and paint to hide signs of life from the enemy. Crews of fire watchers gathered on corners, guarding hand-pulled carts with water pumps and extinguishers, in wait for the sudden siren that signalled incendiary bombs or the urgent cry of ‘FIRE!’ that would send a shiver through to Molly’s very bones, knowing it meant devastation for great swathes of the capital’s residents, rich and poor alike. Hitler’s bombing raids were indeed the great leveller, in every sense.
Nearly every man on the street was in uniform: both those walking