He spent as much time as possible out the back in the storeroom spinning his own dreams, jotting down ideas for the article that was forming in his mind about the atomic world, about the nuclear threat and war between the Soviets and America. It was sitting on his own doorstep – the story that would get him out of here. If he could get a couple of pieces published in the local rag, he could take them to the national papers. If he’d learned one thing from service, it was that what was coming would be worse than anything they could imagine – worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The RAF and the rest of the British military were desperate to keep up with the Yanks who, if anything, were even keener on retaliation. But this sinister new war was nothing like the last. It was being fought under a cloak of secrecy and lies. He wanted to tear it down and reveal it for what it was – a deadly game of decimation. His working title: What Nuclear War Means for Us. He should be grateful rather than resentful that he’d dodged military action, but this war wouldn’t be like the last. The enemy was their own government as much as the Soviets. He was scribbling when he heard the bell tingle and then a girl’s voice:

‘Hello? Anyone here?’

In the orange half light of the shop, reflected from the translucent plastic they put in the windows, he blinked at a vision: a girl was standing with a basket in the hazy glow. Muriel. When he thought of Muriel, he still thought of her as the girl on the beach. A scrap of a thing, fair hair blowing about her face, gathering clams in her old net in the shallows, running wild on the mussel beds at low tide. Not much to laugh about, you’d have thought, but she always did.

Mother was nowhere to be seen. Her position was usually at the cash register, where she sat on a stool with her knitting all day long, interrogating the customers, weaving their complaints and stories into her endless scarves for one of her ‘causes’. In an effort to overcome the twin negatives of her married name and the obscure shame of his missing father, she joined everything. Church, WI, parish committee, she did them all.

‘Hello, Arthur, what you gawping at? Never seen a girl afore?’ Curling out from under a green headscarf, Muriel’s hair shone gold, her pouting lips were bright red and her narrow eyes were laughing at him.

He looked down immediately. ‘Sorry.’

‘Are you going to just stand there like a great lummox or are you going to serve me?’

He took her list and her ration book. Close up, he could smell the seasalt on her hair.

Up on the ladder, fetching tins, he felt her sharp gaze on his back and his neck burned.