Netta fingered the dummy, feeling the pile of the cloth body, her mind drifting back to that happy, strange time when she had peered through a crack in the door, watching the firelight flickering in the parlour as the Blooms held their makeshift Sabbath meal each Friday evening. The smell of the lit candles on the tiny brass menorah, the scent of herbs in the pot, Vida Bloom with a scarf over her head speaking a foreign language and Arnold’s capped head bent in prayer.

No sewing work was done until Saturday night, however many orders Vida had promised for the following week. The folds of dressmaking materials were tucked away out of temptation, the long dressing mirror stood facing the wall and baskets of threads, Arnold’s clarinet case and music were piled neatly away.

When Sabbath ended work began in earnest again accompanied by music from the Third Programme on the small wireless. Peg complained much of it sounded like two cats howling in a dyke. Netta smiled to herself when she thought of the Blooms, shut away in their own private world and Peg huffing and puffing at their religious customs. Then she recalled that first wedding dress in all its glory and the faces of Stratharvar as the bride paraded to the kirk. That was when the sewing magic first began, when she and Vida were allies before all the threads of their past got knotted together in a fankle.

Dressing Miss Forsyth, June 1942

In that make do and mend world where everything was rationed, couponed or in short supply, the idea of a grand wedding in Stratharvar was a prospect to savour amongst the drab everyday routine of farm life. Of course, it was a patriotic duty not to flaunt regulations. Peg Nichol and all the other members of the Rural Women’s Institute wondered just how their Chairwoman, Mrs Daphne Forsyth, would see to it that her only daughter, Aileen, went down the aisle to meet her Squadron Leader bridegroom in traditional attire without looking as if she was away off for a job interview in her best two-piece suit.

At the make do and mend demonstrations they had discussed the merits of parachute silk and nun’s veiling over net curtaining and fine sheeting cotton to make the wedding gown. ‘Why should she be beaten by Mr Hitler or coupons?’ was the common consensus at Brigg Farm.

‘A bride ought to spend her precious extra coupons on a decent woollen coat and sturdy shoes rather than a bridal dress,’ declared Peg, thinking about her own modest rigout.

Mrs Bloom smiled sadly. ‘A coat you can wear any day but a bride can only wear white once in her life, don’t you think?’

Netta agreed, imagining herself on the arm of a Squadron Leader in airforce blue and medals, floating down the aisle like a snow princess, just like the accounts of Society brides in the Galloway News.