Wartime for the Shop Girls. Joanna Toye

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      Her other brother, Sid, would just have clocked the slippers’ red pompoms, called her Frou-Frou or Fifi – he was always messing about with names – and made some crack about her pinching them off a French sailor. The fact that the British Navy, in which Sid was serving, issued its men with a plain flat-topped cap was a matter of some grievance with him, even though Lily was sure he’d have felt a right cissy in a hat with a pompom on it.

      But Sid was away down south at HMS Northney on Hayling Island, and much as they’d tried, he and Reg hadn’t been able to co-ordinate their leave to get home together. When she gave in to despair, which wasn’t often, Dora, their mum, sometimes wondered out loud when or if she’d ever have her three children under the same roof again. But it was no more than everyone else had to put up with, and as Dora was more likely to be heard to say in one of the many maxims she could produce to suit any occasion – ‘What can’t be cured must be endured.’

      ‘Come on inside, then!’ Lily hung on Reg’s arm. ‘We’ll get the kettle on.’

      ‘I wouldn’t say no.’ Poor Reg looked chilled through. His train must have been delayed – they mostly were, these days, if not actually cancelled – and he’d probably had to hang about on a freezing platform. ‘Where’s Mum?’

      ‘She’s upstairs, trying to keep herself busy and not watch the clock—’

      ‘No, I’m not. I’m here.’

      And there was Dora Collins, expectant in the scullery doorway. She was in her best dress in honour of the homecoming, with a Jacqmar scarf at the neck, no less, her Christmas present from Lily. Ever since she’d started at Marlow’s, the town’s smartest department store, or so it liked to claim, Lily had promised herself that as soon as she could afford it, she’d buy her mum something nice. And when Marlow’s had given every junior a small bonus ‘in gratitude for your hard work throughout the year in these difficult times’, it had been earmarked straight away.

      Lily had only joined the store the previous June. She hadn’t been expecting anything extra in her pay packet, so the few extra shillings had been a very welcome surprise. But Marlow’s was like that. It prided itself on looking after its employees, even though profits must be well down – for the simple reason that as the war ground on there was less and less to sell. Still, the buyers, like Miss Frobisher, Lily’s boss on Childrenswear, did the best they could, and the shop’s reputation meant that if anything did become available, from tea trays to tobacco, children’s coats to combinations, Marlow’s was one of the first places a supplier would contact.

      Reg crossed the yard. Sid, again, would have bounded over and wrapped his mum in a hug, regardless of the rough, chilly wool of his tunic, but Reg, like Dora herself, was more reserved. He looked like her too, with soft brown hair, though his was now cropped short. Sid and Lily, on the other hand, had inherited their father’s mop of fair curls.

      Reg kissed his mum on the cheek before she stood back to let him in.

      ‘Come in, love, out of the cold,’ she urged. ‘And let’s have a good look at you.’

      Only that telltale ‘love’ told Lily, and Reg himself, how much their mum had missed him and how very pleased she really was that he was home.

      In the scullery, Jim was lifting the kettle from the gas and wetting the tea: he was going to make someone a wonderful wife someday, Sid always joked. Jim wasn’t a member of the family, but as their lodger, he was starting to feel like one. He was another employee at Marlow’s, seventeen and already Second Sales on Furniture.

      The arrangement suited them all. Widowed when Lily was still a baby, Dora had learnt to be tough and independent. But with both her sons away, she felt happier and safer with a man about the house – and Jim wasn’t only useful for the odd pot of tea. There was no doubt that the two raised beds in the yard were going to be a lot more productive this year under his watchful eye. Not only that, he’d even built them a henhouse. They now had fresh eggs – gold dust, nectar and ambrosia all at once – and useful as currency for bartering as more and more things went on the ration or disappeared altogether.

      Jim held out his hand to Reg. They’d met once before, in the autumn, when Reg had been passing through on his way to yet another training camp.

      ‘How’s things?’ Jim asked. ‘Fair journey?’

      ‘Oh, you know.’

      It was yet another way in which Reg and Sid were polar opposites. Where Reg was circumspect, Sid would have treated them to a minute breakdown, complete with music hall impressions of grumpy guards and a star rating for the station tea bar.

      ‘Well, the tea won’t be long.’

      Reg slung his haversack down on a chair.

      ‘I’ve been saving some of my rations, Mum. And there’s a bit of stuff from the NAAFI.’

      He unbuckled the straps and took out a couple of lumpy parcels.

      ‘Jam … chocolate … a bit of ham.’

      Lily’s mouth watered, but Dora wasn’t letting Reg get away with that.

      ‘Reg! You shouldn’t have! No wonder you’ve lost weight!’

      Weight loss was a crime on a par with sedition in Dora’s eyes. Though the Army got first dibs when it came to rations, which was partly why ordinary households were having to cut back, she was naturally convinced that her boy wasn’t being fed as well as she could have fed him if he’d been at home.

      Reg gave one of his rare smiles.

      ‘I haven’t lost weight, Mum, far from it. I’ve toned up, put on muscle, that’s all.’

      Dora sniffed disbelievingly.

      ‘Irish stew for dinner,’ was all she said. ‘I’d better have a look at it.’

      She opened the door of the Belling and concentrated on extracting the promising-smelling pot of stew while Lily and Jim discreetly stowed Reg’s offerings in the pantry.

      ‘Thank you,’ Lily mouthed.

      Reg grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

      Lily might not be as close to Reg as she was to Sid, but jam, ham, chocolate or not, she realised just how pleased she was to see him too.

      ‘All right, Mum, you win, hands down,’ Reg conceded as he laid down his knife and fork. ‘There might be plenty of it, Army food, but it’s not a patch on your cooking.’

      ‘Oh, get away with you! You’d eat horse manure if it was wrapped up in pretty paper!’

      Lily bit back a smile. Their mum was no more capable of accepting a compliment than Lily had been of not shrieking her head off when she’d sensed Reg was at the gate.

      ‘There’s no more where that came from, you know!’ Dora added, in case she hadn’t dismissed the praise quite emphatically enough.

      ‘I couldn’t eat it anyway!’ Reg protested. ‘I’m stuffed!’

      Dora’s eyebrows shot up.

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