‘We’re ’aving to cook on the fire at the moment,’ Mrs Cotton told him as she pushed the kettle onto the coals. ‘All the gas pipes were blown up. Still, we’re better off than mo—’ She stopped abruptly. She could feel the boy’s eyes burning into her back and was dreading what she was going to have to tell him, poor little mite. The way she saw it he’d had a raw deal of it one way or another. Although she noted that he’d put weight on and was looking a lot healthier than when he’d been evacuated. Not surprising, she supposed, since that father of his had always spent every last penny he could get his hands on an ale.

‘M-Mrs Cotton … me ma?’ His voice came out as a squeak but again she didn’t tell him anything, instead she hurried off to fetch a loaf of grey-looking bread from the pantry and began to scrape it with margarine. It was hard to get good white flour now, as it was most things. People were having to make do with what they could get their hands on and every day she thanked God that her own children had been evacuated to the country, despite missing them every minute.

She added a dollop of jam to the bread and pushed it in front of him, while she pottered off to make the tea but suddenly he had lost his appetite as he sat and stared dumbly at it.

‘’Ow ’ave you got back ’ere anyway?’ she asked presently as she prepared two cracked mismatched cups. The explosions in the street had knocked most of her treasured china off the shelves and all she had left now was what she had managed to salvage.

He simply stared back at her from frightened eyes. After the extreme cold outside the heat in the room had made his face glow and his hands and feet were tingling painfully as the feeling returned to them, but he was oblivious to the discomfort and she realised that she would have to tell him the worst now. There was no point in putting it off any longer. She just wished that her Bert were here with her to help her, but he was out digging for survivors with the rest of the ARP wardens.

‘The thing is, son …’ She gulped and licked her lips. ‘Both your ma and your dad were in the house when the bomb dropped … I’m so sorry but they didn’t stand a chance. They were pulled out o’ the wreckage two nights ago.’

Bobby sat as if he had been turned to stone. His ma and dad gone, dead … just like that!

‘Wh-where are they now?’ he asked eventually as he rapidly blinked back scalding tears.