she had been home. Most nurses didn’t get the luxury of Christmas Day off once they were on the wards, so she was making the most of this chance while she was still training.
It felt good to be able to relax back into the comforting familiarity of home. The kitchen was cosy and festive, festooned with bright paper chains and sprigs of holly. A welcoming fire crackled in the grate, filling the room with light and warmth. Dora and her mum had been busy cleaning all day to get the house ready for Christmas, and now as they sat down to prepare the tea, the air was filled with the smell of Mansion Polish, mingling with the delicious aroma of mince pies baking in the oven.
‘When will they be ready?’ Bea asked for the third time. She was playing schools with Little Alfie in front of the fire. He was her only pupil and she was bossily making him do his letters on an old piece of slate.
‘Give us a chance, they’ve only just gone in!’ her mum laughed.
‘But I’m hungry!’
‘You’re always hungry. I dunno where you put it all. You must have hollow legs,’ Nanna grumbled.
Little Alfie looked up suddenly, his round face anxious. ‘Father Christmas?’ he said hopefully. At two years old, he was just getting used to the idea of Christmas and stockings and presents.
‘Not yet, Alfie.’ Josie ruffled his hair. ‘He won’t come till you’re fast asleep. You have to leave a pillow case at the end of the bed, and then while you’re asleep he’ll come down the chimney and bring your presents.’
‘I’m not sure he’s real,’ Bea announced in a loud voice. ‘Terry Jacobs at school says he’s just made up.’
‘If he hears you saying you don’t believe in him then he definitely won’t come,’ Dora warned her.
She and Josie smiled at each other. She was relieved that her worries about Alf getting his hands on her sister had been for nothing. Josie was the same happy, carefree girl she’d always been.
‘I reckon we’ve all heard enough about what Terry Jacobs thinks,’ her grandmother put in.
Rose smiled across the table at Dora. ‘I bet this must seem like a mad house, after that nice, quiet nurses’ home of yours?’ she said.
‘It’s different,’ Dora agreed. ‘But I’ve missed being here.’
‘Do you have to work really hard?’ Josie asked.
‘Well . . .’
‘Hard work, my backside! Sitting at a desk all day isn’t what I’d call real work,’ Nanna Winnie said.
‘It’s not just sitting behind a desk, Nanna. We have to practise all sorts of stuff, too. Taking temperatures, and samples, and changing dressings.’
‘The glue factory. Now that’s what I call real work,’ Nanna grumbled on, not listening. ‘You spend ten hours a day boiling down animal bones, then you’ll know you’ve done a hard day’s graft.’
‘Go and put the kettle on, Mum, for Gawd’s sake. I’m spitting feathers.’ Rose rolled her eyes at Dora as Nanna shuffled off. ‘Take no notice of her, girl. She’s as proud as punch about you being a nurse. You should hear her telling all the neighbours. I don’t think there’s a single person in Bethnal Green who doesn’t know you’re the next Florence Nightingale!’
Dora was silent, thinking of her textbooks. She was barely scraping by in the weekly tests through lack of studying, and Sister Parker had more or less told her that if she didn’t get her books within the next two weeks she would fail preliminary training completely. She’d been pushing the thought from her mind, but she knew she had to do something about the problem soon.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Her mother was watching her anxiously.
Dora forced herself to smile. ‘It’s nothing, Mum.’ She refused to allow her worries to ruin anyone’s Christmas. There was nothing she could do about them anyway.
Nanna Winnie brought the tea in, and as they drank it Dora told them all about the other girls in her set.
‘They all sound a bit posh to me’. Nanna Winnie sucked on a digestive biscuit. Her false teeth had been giving her gyp again.
‘They are a bit,’ Dora admitted. ‘One of the girls I share a room with is an earl’s daughter.’
‘Never?’ Nanna Winnie stopped eating, her biscuit halfway to her mouth.
‘It’s true. Her name’s Lady Amelia and she lives in a castle down in Kent. Her father owns a lot of the hop farms down there, too.’
‘Imagine that! I bet we’ve been hopping down on one of his farms, don’t you, Mum?’ Rose said.
Nanna