At the house, Dot and I shut ourselves away in my old bedroom. Mum and Aunt Joy were busy cooking, and Mrs Thompson from next door had come over to help. The house was as clean as I had ever seen it. Mum had spent the last week beating rugs, mopping floors and scrubbing tiles. Everyone was coming over after church for the reception—a restaurant was too expensive. There wouldn’t be a lot of room, but it’d be cosy. Fred and Dad were in the front yard cleaning the truck because they didn’t know what else to do.

When Mum brought us sandwiches for lunch we had finished our hair and were both in our underslips. Dot had a bridesmaid’s dress that her friend wore to her sister’s wedding—green crepe with a satin bow—and we only had to make a few adjustments with Mum’s sewing machine for it to fit perfectly.

‘Are you alright, Sar?’ Dot asked, when the machine was silent. ‘You seem quiet. Not yourself.’

I told her about the card from Roy’s mum, about wishing I’d never said yes in the first place.

‘Oh, Sarah, it’s only natural to feel that way. My mum told my sister every girl gets cold feet the day of her wedding. It’s just all new, but at least—you and Roy, you’ve already…?’

I shook my head.

She put her hand to her mouth. ‘It’ll be fine. I don’t know why I thought—I suppose we don’t all have your virtue!’

‘We’ve nearly. But that’s not what worries me, Dot. It’s what comes after.’

She rubbed my back through the cotton slip, so it rustled against my skin. Her hands were warm and she smelled so familiar, as familiar as Roy. Why was it the friends we had to leave and the men we had to follow?

‘You’ll be right,’ she said quietly, but she didn’t look like she believed her own words.

We fastened our dresses and put on our powder and lipstick, and finally the two of us were ready. Mum came in and blinked fast at her tears.

‘You look, Sar…that dress.’

Dot fixed Mum’s hair into a fancy twist, then we walked to the church together—Mum, Dad, Fred, Dot and I. Everyone we passed turned to watch, cars honked; it was something, what a dress could do. Fred wore his uniform and was walking with only one crutch now. He was looking less gaunt since he had been home for a few weeks—I knew that Mum fed him at every opportunity. It was only Jack missing, and there had been no news of him in three weeks. It cast a shadow that we did our best that day to ignore.