The older woman pulled on her gloves, ready to face the bitter wind outside the small corner shop. ‘Everything that is available, anyway. Such a treat to find some Oxo. Thank you, dear. I know you do your best. I expect it’s even more difficult with your Rita so near her time, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, we manage all right, don’t we, Ruby?’ Violet turned to the shy figure behind her. ‘I put out the stock and serve the customers and Ruby does the books – she’s clever like that.’

Ruby raised her head, shaking her cloud of pale blonde hair which made her look so much younger than she was. ‘That’s right, Mrs Mawdsley.’ That was enough polite conversation for Ruby – she found it excruciatingly hard, so she turned back to the long columns of accounts spread out before her.

Violet kept her cheerful smile in place as Mrs Mawdsley left, banging the squeaky shop door behind her, and then she slumped down on to the hard wooden stool by the counter. She knew her customer meant well – she was one of Dolly’s best friends and had nothing but goodwill for the Feeny family. Violet herself had long since been accepted as one of them, as she’d married Eddy Feeny and come to live with her in-laws while Eddy was away serving with the Merchant Navy. She loved living with them and she enjoyed helping out in the shop, but her feelings about Rita’s new baby were plaguing her.

Violet longed more than anything for children of her own. Yet she and Eddy had been married for over three years and there was no sign of anything happening in that department. It wasn’t for lack of trying – Violet’s long face broke into a smile at the thought of that – but they hardly ever saw each other. His spells of leave were so rare, and so short when they did come, and then by the time he’d seen everyone he wanted to see and who wanted to see him, they had precious few moments on their own. Eddy was a quiet fellow – certainly compared to his more extrovert big brother Frank and middle sister Nancy – but he was very popular, and now he’d been doing his duty in the dangerous Western Approaches he was hailed as a hero every time he came home. Violet couldn’t argue with that – he was her hero, no doubt about it, and he’d already been a serving seaman when she’d met him, so it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what their life together would be like. But it was so hard.