‘Do sit down, Mrs Kerrigan, you haven’t stopped all day,’ advised Mrs Moyes. She’d often had her doubts about her youngest recruit, but today she had to admit the girl had done her share and more, nipping between the tables to collect used crockery, dispensing tea with a wide smile that never wavered, staying just on the right side of friendliness before it tipped over into flirtation. ‘Why don’t you have some soup? We ought to get rid of it anyway before we have a fresh batch for tomorrow, so you’d be doing us all a favour.’

‘Oh …’ Nancy could barely get out a sentence as she sank heavily on to a wooden chair, the cushion for which had long since vanished. She knew full well that the soup could equally well be heated up again, but she wasn’t going to turn down the offer. ‘I’d love some, Mrs M. That will put me right back on my feet in no time.’

‘Then I’ll fetch you some,’ said Mrs Moyes, thinking how wan the girl looked today once she let the cheerful mask slip. Perhaps she was worried about something – maybe her little boy was sick again. Children picked up everything at that age, she remembered from her own brood.

Nancy threw a quick glance over her shoulder towards the rest of the room, and then raised her legs to rest her feet on another chair, almost groaning as the pain in her stubbed toes eased a little. That would teach her. She’d be back in her low brogues tomorrow. In some ways she hated them, they were such a dull brown and screamed ‘sensible’, but her feet couldn’t take another shift like this. She’d have to bathe them in warm water when she got back. She took her mind back to her pre-war, pre-Sid days, working at the big George Henry Lee department store, and the fabulous lotions for sale there – what she wouldn’t give for a bottle of one of those to ease her throbbing feet.

‘Miss Kerrigan? It is you, isn’t it?’ A voice came from behind her.

Swiftly she threw herself round, feet back on the ground, and looked up. For a moment, with the light streaming in the open door and window behind him, she didn’t recognise the figure. He was tall and well set, in the uniform of the US Army, and had an easy, relaxed bearing. Then the penny dropped.

‘Mr Trenton, or Staff Sergeant Trenton, I should say.’ She took a swift glance at his chevrons and counted them to check she was right – she’d become an expert at reading the different insignia by now. She stood up, her weariness gone. ‘Well, fancy seeing you here.’