‘It’s so cold,’ Nell Wiseman, one of the girls, complained. Nell was from Earlsdon in Coventry and was a sturdily built girl with straight, mousy hair and a spattering of freckles across her nose. Of the four other girls she had started training with, Nell was Livvy’s closest friend. With Nell so tall and plump and Livvy so petite and delicate they looked an unlikely duo but nonetheless they had hit it off as soon as they’d met.

‘I would have thought you’d be used to it by now,’ Livvy responded.

Amanda in the next bed snorted. ‘How is one ever expected to get used to living in such appalling conditions,’ she complained as her straight, white teeth chattered like castanets. Unlike Nell, who came from a very working-class background, Amanda, who was the only child of wealthy parents, had been brought up in Bristol and had had the best education that money could buy. Her father owned a string of restaurants – a fact she never tired of telling them. In the next bed was Susan, a farmer’s daughter from Yorkshire. She was a sweet-natured girl with flame-red hair who was so homesick that she cried herself to sleep every night. And finally, in the very end bed nearest the draughty door, unfortunately for her, was Pauline. She hailed from London where she had been brought up in an orphanage. There had been six of them when they started but Pat had injured her ankle during the first week of physical training so that had been the end of her WAAF career.

Now Susan extricated her arm from the blanket and glanced at her wristwatch. ‘The NAAFI should be open any time now for some cocoa and supper,’ she commented as Livvy rose to throw some more wood onto the stove that stood in the middle of the room. It was a temperamental thing, often throwing out more smoke than heat.

‘Ouch!’ Livvy cried as she opened the door and it spat at her. ‘I swear this ruddy thing waits for me to do that!’ She hastily threw the log she was holding in and slammed the door shut, causing smoke to billow into the hut and make them all cough.

Amanda quickly took out her compact and applied lipstick and powder to her nose, then fluffing her hair up she asked, ‘So who’s coming then?’

As they had all discovered, Amanda hated being seen without her make-up, whereas the rest of them were usually bundled up in layers of clothing just intent on keeping as warm as they could with no thought to how they looked.

They all rose and when Nell opened the door a gust of snow blew in at them.

‘Ugh! Bloody weather,’ Susan grumbled as they stepped out into the raging blizzard. ‘Perhaps we should have put the kettle on the stove and made our own drinks tonight!’