Ma and I have been job hunting but there’s nothing around so we do our best, cooking for the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service. They’ve even tried to teach me how to knit socks and woollies for ‘our boys’ but I’m hopeless and keep having to unravel everything and start again. Perhaps crochet is the best thing for me, although the very word makes me feel like an ancient maiden aunt.

Your letter made me laugh. I can just imagine the ‘hobgoblins’ in the pub. The encyclopaedia I looked up in at the library says they’re ‘a mischievous and ugly fairy, sometimes portrayed as small, hairy little men’. Come to think of it, there are plenty of those in the pubs around here, too.

Fondest regards,

Kath

Ever since they’d started corresponding, she had struggled to find the right words for her sign-off. ‘With regards’ was too cool. ‘With love’ was too warm. ‘Best wishes’ was too distant, and sounded like a birthday card. He had cleverly chosen ‘Your friend, Vic’, which seemed to strike exactly the right note. She plumped for ‘Fondest regards’, which also seemed to work well.

Apart from that day on the Cliff Walk, neither of them had ever mentioned love, not in any serious way; but she missed him more than she’d ever imagined.

PART TWO:

WAR

18

May 1940

It was Dunkirk that really brought home to Kath that they were properly at war.

Although the wireless news reported on the progress – or lack of it – of the Expeditionary Force, and the number of casualties seemed to be mounting, somehow it all felt very far away. As far as she knew, none of her friends were over there.

Dunkirk was different. Fishermen left Felixstowe and Harwich in their little boats and returned as heroes, but two of the crews never made it home. They were the first local civilian casualties of the war, and the Ferry Boat Inn flew its flag at half-mast. No matter how the politicians tried to play it, everyone knew it had been a disaster.

Lately she’d begun to recognise the faces of lads she’d known at school returning to the town, war-weary and aged beyond their years. Ma’s nursing friend said the convalescent hospital was full of them, and some were so badly injured – with missing limbs or facial disfigurements – you knew that their lives would never be the same. It was shocking to see them hanging around in the park, clasping bottles of booze concealed in brown paper bags. Some even resorted to begging, a pitiful sight. At midday, just before opening time, they could be found queuing outside the pubs, eager to spend the proceeds of the townsfolk’s generosity on drinking their memories into oblivion.

One day, when walking home through the park, she spied a face she recognised, although the thick-rimmed spectacles she remembered had been replaced with sunglasses.

‘Adam Merriweather? Is it you?’ As he turned, she saw the terrible red, distorted skin on the other side of his face and the bald patch over half of his skull. Burn scars.