There, Grace found herself among housewives, some older than her, but many her own age, with husbands and children. She helped them roll bandages while they lamented the toils of dirty nappies, the excruciating delay of the mail with the war on and the difficulties of getting by on their own. Through it all, they offered encouragement and swapped recipes to get through the ration any way they could. Especially after meat was added to the restrictions in March. After all, there was only so much one could do with four ounces of meat.

Viv had always been the outgoing, carefree one in their friendship. It had never bothered Grace before that she was more reserved. At least, not until Viv wasn’t there and Grace found herself in a room full of strangers who remained as such week after week.

And so it was that as April rolled in, Grace began making excuses for being unable to attend the WVS meetings—which Mrs. Weatherford thankfully never protested—and instead curled up in her bed with a book propped in front of her.

When she wasn’t assisting Mrs. Weatherford in their fledgling garden, Grace devoured the rest of Jane Austen’s works before moving on to several novels by Charles Dickens. Then came Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and finally something more current by Daphne du Maurier.

Each and every book Grace enjoyed, she passionately recommended to the customers of Primrose Hill Books. The increase in sales was stunning. So much so that Mr. Evans began loaning Grace books to read. She’d resisted the suggestion at first, until she realized the financial impact of her newfound reading habit, then gratefully accepted Mr. Evans’s generous offer.

Grace had just recommended Rebecca, the latest Daphne du Maurier book she’d read, to a woman she recognized from the WVS—a woman who did not appear to remember her—when Mr. Stokes walked in. Mr. Evans no longer worried about blackout infractions when they saw the middle-aged man with his perpetually furrowed brow, not when he’d become a regular fixture at the store and had a propensity to go through books almost as quickly as Grace.

“We haven’t seen you in nearly three days,” she commented after she’d completed the WVS woman’s purchase of the book she’d recommended. “I assume The Count of Monte Cristo took some time to read?”

Grace didn’t bother to hide her smile. He had asked for a book that would last more than one night. The exhaustion shadowing the skin under his eyes indicated he had likely tried to get through the massive book with haste.