‘She should be here, helping you, not muck-raking and milking cows! This is supposed to be a family business, after all,’ Anna said bitterly.

‘You know your sister has never been suited to working in the bakery. Not like you.’ Her mother smiled. ‘You were the one who inherited your father’s gift for baking.’

Anna unhooked the towel from the nail to dry her hands. ‘Then why won’t you let me give up nursing and come back to work here full-time? I could run the kitchen and you could—’

But her mother was already shaking her head. ‘We’ve been through all this, Anna,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to give up nursing.’

‘But I never wanted to be a nurse!’ she protested. ‘Papa always meant for Edward and me to run this place together …’

‘I said no!’ She started at her mother’s sharp tone. ‘I won’t hear of it, Anna. Now stop talking about it, please.’

‘All right.’ Anna retreated into sulky silence. She had never known her mother to speak so abruptly to her. She must be very tired indeed, she decided.

As she stooped to take the lid off the earthenware flour tub under the table, she heard her mother sigh.

‘I’m sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s been a rather trying day, that’s all. I’ll go and put the kettle on, shall I? Make us both a cup of tea.’

Anna looked at her mother, the tired smile that didn’t quite reach her faded blue eyes. ‘That would be lovely,’ she said. ‘I – what’s this?’

She straightened up, the flour scoop in her hand. It was heaped, not with the usual pure white flour, but with something else. It was greyish-brown, coarse, and when Anna sifted it between her fingers it felt gritty.

Dorothy Beck turned, taking off her apron. ‘It arrived this morning. It’s all we could get,’ she said. ‘You know what it’s been like recently, what with the German blockades in the North Sea, and no food getting through? Well, the Government has issued us with this flour instead.’

‘You call this flour?’ Anna sniffed it. ‘It smells like sawdust.’

‘It might well be, for all we know. But it’s supposed to be very nutritious.’

Anna frowned. ‘I don’t know what Papa would make of it.’

‘I don’t know what the customers will make of it, either. But I suppose we’ll all just have to get used to it, like everything else about this war.’

Dorothy went to make the tea, leaving Anna to finish off kneading the dough. But no sooner had she put the bowl to prove than her mother returned with two letters in her hand.

‘Before I forget, these arrived for you this morning.’

Anna took the two thin blue envelopes. One bore Edward’s even, looped handwriting; the other an equally familiar spidery scrawl.

‘You’re still writing to Tom Franklin, then?’ said her mother, looking over her shoulder.

‘I promised I would.’ Anna looked back at her. ‘We owe him so much.’