‘My name is Mrs Lester.’ The lady indicated one of the chairs. ‘You’d better sit down.’ She sank thankfully onto another one herself. ‘I run this establishment with my husband, Mr Lester,’ she explained. Molly thought she had seldom seen anyone look so pale. The blue of Mrs Lester’s veins showed through at her temples and her skin looked clammy. ‘Unfortunately I am not always in the best of health, since those dreadful days of the war, and I am finding it all too much for me. The mornings are especially bad.’ She seemed to suppress a sob.

Molly began to feel as if the walls were closing in, though she did not feel dislike for the woman.

‘So my husband suggested that I should enlist some help. You see, some days I’m perfectly all right, and then on others . . . And today is not a good day – I find that I can scarcely get around. You look a good, strong girl,’ she commented, looking Molly up and down. She had a nervous way of blinking her eyes.

‘I s’pose I am, yes,’ Molly said. She had her hair up today, thick and blonde and piled up in a way that suited her, and she felt energetic and ready for anything.

‘Can you cook?’ This seemed to be the greatest source of anxiety. ‘I need help with generally running the house, of course – changing the beds is really too much for me, and now the summer is coming, there’ll be more visitors. People are so longing to get back on the sands, aren’t they?’ She smiled faintly. ‘Such a blessing, all that clean fresh air. But you see, it’s the cooking. We provide breakfast and an evening meal, and I do find it so hard to keep up. Breakfast is a struggle.’

‘I trained as an army cook,’ Molly said. ‘I know it’s not quite the same, but I’m sure I could manage.’

Mrs Lester’s eyes widened. ‘You were in the army? The ATS? How brave of you.’

‘I was on an ack-ack battery.’ Molly was anxious for her to know that she had not just done cooking. ‘In fact we were stationed here for a bit of the time. But I did start off as a cook.’

‘Well, that sounds suitable. I’m so pleased.’ To Molly’s astonishment, Mrs Lester suddenly reached out and grasped Molly’s hand. Hers felt very cold and froggy, as if her circulation was poor. Molly felt very large and robust in contrast to her. ‘Could you start straight away? You’d live in and have your board – I can’t pay you a great deal, but there’s a nice little room at the top of the house.’

‘Yes,’ Molly said, her spirits soaring. Fancy her getting a job so quickly!

‘Until my husband gets back later, I can’t give you the final say-so. He is the head of the household at The Laurels, after all. But I have a strong feeling it will be all right. May I ask you one thing?’