with a straight back and a meaningful stare, working on home soil to keep the nation safe, and those giddy, lopsided, leaning on a mate, no doubt home on R&R, wearing the cocky grin of the inebriated and with a soggy Woodbine hanging from their lower lip and a hat or beret askew. Girls not unlike her and Geer, similarly dressed in winter coats and sturdy brown shoes, tripped along the pavements arm in arm, always in twos or threes: the days and nights of feeling safe to wander the streets alone were a dim and distant memory. Her world, like everyone else’s, was thoroughly changed, and the speed with which that change had happened was the most terrifying thing. It felt like mere weeks between the day her friends went from whispering the word ‘war’ and wondering if it could happen again to picking their way through rubble-strewn streets and turning up for jobs deemed unsuitable for women – unsuitable, that was, until all the men had grabbed a tin hat and a gun and gone off to do their bit, when suddenly they were very much in demand. Not that Molly was moaning about that.
She would never admit to feeling cheated, not when there were so many suffering, so many fighting.
‘Evening, darlin’!’
Molly heard the call from one of the only unaccompanied women in the street, a street worker loitering between a shop doorway and the edge of an alley, with smoke curling from a cigarette and the cloying scent of cheap perfume hanging around her in a pungent cloud. The darkness was kind to her trade, hiding the grimy, age-etched face of the poor woman, who, like everyone else, needed to put food on the table.
‘I was chatting to Beryl in the ladies earlier,’ Geer said, pulling her close. ‘She reckons Marjorie’s chap is back home tonight.’
‘I didn’t know Marjorie had a chap.’
‘Nor me – she’s a dark horse, that one, don’t you think?’ Geer raised her eyebrows. ‘But according to Beryl, she caught her reading a letter in the stationery cupboard and then squirrelled it away in her bra when she heard Beryl come in. How sweet is that!’
‘Terribly. And it does explain her eagerness to get away and her unusually pleasant demeanour over the lunch table.’
Molly didn’t have a fella of her own. This was at times an irritation, as she was keen to explore sex, wanting to unravel the great mystery of the physical, but sadly this adventure, too, would have to wait to launch, as all the eligible men were busy fighting. Unlike most girls of her age, she did not see her virginity as the jewel in the crown, nor was it a chip with which to bargain. Within the walls of their Bloomsbury home, sex and all its vagaries were completely taboo. Molly had once been on the receiving end of a stern stare and a not so subtle tut when she had casually mentioned her menstrual cycle. A crime she had dared not repeat, keen to avoid her mother’s censorial gaze on all matters physical.
‘She never really chats, does she, Marjorie?’ Molly found Marjorie either quiet and thoughtful or, on occasion, spiky and intense. There didn’t seem to be much space in her for fun or friendship.
‘I think she feels a little out of place, truth be told.’ Marjorie’s strong cockney twang was in stark contrast to the rounded vowels of the other girls. ‘And I don’t think she has an easy home life.’ Geer kept her voice low.
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, you know, she’s from the East End.’ Geer pulled a face. ‘One of six, apparently, and I heard a rumour there’s only two of them bringing in a wage. Her mother was French and died when she was young, and the father took to drink, by all accounts.’
‘Good Lord . . . Think I would, too, if I was left with six kids!’ Molly sighed. ‘She’s a bloody good translator, though – thorough. And if she’s half French, that explains her fluency.’
‘Well, I hope she has a nice time with her fella.’
‘How could she not?’ Molly winked and they both giggled. ‘Any news from Richard?’
Richard, Geer’s beau, a friend of her cousin, was currently serving in North Africa. He was a wonderful letter writer. With his gift for penmanship, Molly loved to hear his second-hand protestations of devotion and the small snippets he was able to share of his life on deployment in such a hot, barren place. She was