Molly had joined up early in 1941 to get away from her family. Her childhood in Birmingham had been poor and full of suffering at the hands of her drunken mother, Iris, and sexually predatory grandfather, William Rathbone. Just before Molly joined the army, Iris had told her, with a sadistic kind of pleasure, that William Rathbone – the man whom she had loathed as a grandfather – was also her father, since he had also preyed upon Iris, his daughter. This news along with the fact that Bert, her thieving, cheating brother, lived with them had led Molly almost to a state of despair, which she hid from herself by drinking heavily. She was a big, attractive blonde who always had men buzzing round her, but her relationships with them usually turned sour. On those sickening, hungover mornings when she looked in the murky mirror in her bedroom with a splitting head, she had known that she was beginning to go the same way as her mother.

The army had saved her, given her a place to belong, where she felt safe and where, at least for some of the time, she was recognized as being capable of things – of far more than she had ever dreamed. She had wanted it to go on forever.

But now it was over. There would be a few ATS continuing work for a time, but after that the army would only be for men again. A terrible kind of silence seemed to fill Molly even as she walked through the busy railway station. She made her way slowly out to New Street, oblivious to everything around her, the bomb-damaged streets, the people who weaved around her. All she could see was the greyness of it all. It felt as if life – the life she now knew and wanted – had just dropped away from her, and she was left stranded and alone in a barren place where the colour had seeped out of everything. Only now it truly came home to her. This was it: the war was over, her time in the army was finished and it no longer wanted her. For a moment she stopped, dizzy at the thought. She was back here. Birmingham: where she had begun. In those seconds she felt as bad as at any time she could remember. It felt as if her life was finished.

The ride on the trolleybus did nothing to cheer her. It was still an overcast day, neither raining nor sunny. Everything looked smaller, meaner and more run-down than she remembered. The streets appeared narrower and the bomb scars still looked raw and a mess. She looked out of the murky window, catching glimpses of children playing on the bombsites, of underfed people who looked washed out and harassed after all the months of shortages and worry. Everything looked drab. She was so caught up in looking out at it all that she almost missed her stop and had to push through to get out, causing people to mutter in annoyance.