“Are you!” Janet pictured Sheila in a canteen. “I think that’s a very good idea, definitely under the heading of ‘comforts for the forces’. I’ll bet there’ll be some pay squandered.”

Sheila opened her eyes.

“What d’you mean?”

“Oh, come off it! Are you going to help me get supper?”

“I suppose I must, but I do think I ought to be spared domestic work as much as possible, seeing I’m going to do nothing else for the rest of the war. I was altering my hair. We wear uniform and I’m afraid they won’t let me wear it long.” She looked at herself in the glass, and Janet came in her line of vision. She swung round and stared at her. “What have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you just teach Iris all day?”

Janet felt awkward under Sheila’s searching eyes.

“No, as a matter of fact I went with Mr. Sheldon to the town this afternoon to buy Iris’ lesson books and things.”

“By car, I suppose, while I had to go to the Labour Exchange on a bus.”

“I’d take a bet you got a lift both ways.”

“Well, actually I did, but that doesn’t alter it that I was meant to go on a bus. D’you like Donald?”

Janet, to her annoyance, felt her cheeks flushing.

“He’s all right, I suppose.”

Sheila glued her eyes on her.

“You better watch your step, if you’re going to fall in love with him, because Gladys means to marry him.”

“How can you be such an idiot!”

“I’m not an idiot. I’d be an idiot if I didn’t see that you look quite different to how you looked this morning. Actually, I think it’s a very good thing; you needed to fall in love. You were beginning to look like somebody who’s never been kissed. You don’t now.”

Janet got up. She gave Sheila a half-embarrassed, half-playful shake.

“Shut up! I hardly know Mr. Sheldon.”

Janet gave her arm a pull.

“Come on and get supper. I tell you he’s almost a stranger, but if I had been kissing him, I can promise you that you’d be the last person I’d tell about it.”

“You don’t need to, I’ve eyes in my head, but you take my advice and be careful. I like Gladys, but she’s the sort to be an awful cat if she got jealous. She was frightful to me when she first saw me, and when she thought I was coming to teach Iris, but actually Donald isn’t my type. I simply can’t be bothered with him. She saw that, of course, and she’s been all right ever since.”