feet back inside the painful pretty shoes and chewed her bottom lip. It was complicated, and she’d never be able to explain it to him, not so that he’d understand, but it was Jimmy’s feelings she was trying to spare. He didn’t belong here at the canteen, just as he didn’t belong at number 7 Campden Grove or behind the red cord at the 400. Not like Dolly did.
She glanced over at him, eating his soup. They’d had such fun together, the two of them—the other night at the 400 and afterwards in her room; but the people in this part of her life couldn’t know they’d been together like that, not Vivien and certainly not Lady Gwendolyn. Dolly’s whole body burned with anxiety imagining what would happen if her old companion found out about Jimmy. The way her heart would break all over again if she feared herself at risk of losing Dolly, just as she’d lost her sister …
With a troubled sigh, Dolly left the counter and went to fetch her coat. She was going to have to have a talk with him; find a delicate way to make him understand that it was best for both of them if they played things a little cooler. He wouldn’t be happy, she knew; he hated playing pretend; he was one of those terribly principled people with a habit of seeing things too rigidly. But he’d come around; she knew he would.
Dolly was almost starting to feel positive when she reached the storeroom and slipped her coat from its hook, but then Mrs Wadding- ham brought her spirits right back down. ‘Taking an early mark, are we Dorothy?’ Before she could answer, the other woman sniffed suspiciously and said, ‘Is that tobacco smoke I smell back here?’
Jimmy sneaked his hand inside his trouser pocket. It was still there, the black velvet box, just as it had been the last twenty times he’d checked. The whole thing was becoming a bit of a compulsion, really, which was why the sooner he put the ring on Dolly’s finger, the better. He’d been over it countless times in his head, but he was still nervous as hell. The problem was he wanted it to be perfect and Jimmy didn’t believe in perfect, not generally speaking, not after everything he’d seen, the broken world and all its death and grief. Dolly did though, so he was going to do his best.
He’d tried to make a reservation at one of the fancy restaurants she mooned over these days, the Ritz or Claridge’s, but it turned out they were fully booked and no amount of explanation or appeal could convince them to give him a table. Jimmy had been disappointed at first, and the familiar old feelings of wanting to be better established, richer than he was, came to the surface. He’d pushed them aside, though, and decided it was for the best: he didn’t go in for all that fancy stuff anyway, and on a night as important as this one Jimmy didn’t want to feel he was pretending to be something he wasn’t. Anyway, as his boss had joked, with rationing as it was you could expect to be offered the same Woolton’s Pie at Claridge’s as you’d get at Lyons Corner House, only dearer.
Jimmy looked back at the counter, but Dolly wasn’t there any more. He supposed she was fetching her coat and fixing her lipstick, or one of the other things girls thought they had to do to be beautiful. He wished she wouldn’t; she didn’t need make-up and fancy clothing. They were like veneers, Jimmy sometimes thought, concealing the essence of a person, the very things that made her vulnerable and true and therefore most beautiful to him. Dolly’s complications and imperfections were part of what he loved about her.
Idly, he scratched his upper arm and wondered what had been going on before, why she’d acted so strangely when she saw him. He’d surprised her, he knew, turning up at the kitchen like that, calling out to her when she thought she was alone, hidden away with a cigarette and that distracted dreamy smile on her face. Dolly was usually thrilled at being taken unawares—she was the bravest, most daring person he knew, and nothing made her jumpy—but she’d definitely been nervous when she saw him. She’d seemed a different girl from the one who’d danced beside him through the streets of London the other night, and then led him back