if they see him here, they’ll bring him straight home.’
Diana smiled. ‘Sometimes it feels like our world is being torn apart, doesn’t it, the longer this goes on? It’s not just buildings being destroyed by bombs and all the fires. It’s as though Hitler is trying to destroy our families too by putting us all under so much stress, but he won’t get us. We’re stronger than that. He doesn’t know how bloody-minded the British can be.’
The girls hugged, and Diana made her way quickly to the train. When she got into Birmingham, she was shocked at the devastation. She had left before the Birmingham Blitz, and everything had been intact then. Now, the bomb damage to the city centre itself was horrendous.
Strolling across town to get her bus, she felt so much sadness. So many memories she had: the times she’d been up here with her mother shopping for clothes, birthday parties, walks in the park. Many famous landmarks in the city had been damaged. On the bus home, she gazed out of the window, seeing the familiar and unfamiliar; houses she knew along the way, and substantial bomb craters where other homes no longer stood. Diana considered how different she felt. She couldn’t believe it had only been a few months since she’d gone away. She’d changed so much in that time and viewed her world so differently now. It wasn’t that she didn’t see the value in hairdressing any more, but living, breathing and working with people who put their lives on the line every single day for her – as she put hers on the line for them – had changed the way she thought about her world and service in general.
She wasn’t sure she could go back to being a hairdresser when the war was over. She thought about Len and the relationship that was just beginning with him. She was saddened by the knowledge that she couldn’t tell her parents about him. She just knew they would be disappointed. He was from London and they would want her to marry someone from Birmingham.
When the bus came to a stop, she got off, and as she walked down the street, she spotted one of her friends she’d grown up with, pushing a baby in a pram.
‘Hello, Diana. How are you?’ Her friend hugged her, and then launched into a long account of her life as Diana tried to mediate her two worlds. As the woman droned on about nappies, teething and local gossip, Diana tried to reorientate herself to this world when she had been living with such a different intensity and speed. It was as if her own world was bigger now, and trying to squeeze it into the world she had come from felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable. It wasn’t that Diana saw this world as lesser. In fact, she envied her friend’s more traditional life. But Diana had seen so much and been through so much that she knew her own life would never be the same, and in that way, she couldn’t relate to what her friend was telling her. It was a new, unexpected feeling for her and she didn’t know what to make of it.
Leaving her friend, she was thoughtful, thrown off-kilter by the experience.
Then she saw her home, thankfully still intact. As she opened up the green wooden gate that led up the path to her house, it creaked on its hinges with its familiar squeal, welcoming her back, and she suddenly felt excited. Her heart skipped with the joy of being home. Putting the key in the lock, she opened the door to a familiar world. The same smell of lingering pipe tobacco and lemony waxed flooring that her mother liked to buff to a shine.
‘Anybody in?’ she called down the hall.
As always, Jessie was in the kitchen. ‘Diana,’ she said, the joy unmistakable in her tone as she bustled down the hallway to greet her daughter. ‘We weren’t expecting you home.’
‘When you told me Dad was laid up in bed, I wanted to come and surprise you both. It’s been a while. They gave me twenty-four hours’ leave.’ Diana found herself enfolded by the soft, flowery embrace of her mother, the scent of lavender as always on her mother’s hair. She followed her into the kitchen, which was where Jessie spent most of her time. Horace tended to dominate the front room, and the other sitting room was kept pristine and untouched, especially for guests.
‘I’ll put the