‘About as well as you get on with your sister Doris,’ Dolly replied dryly. ‘Coming down here was a mistake, Peggy. I simply can’t get through to her, and now she’s refusing to talk to me or Frank.’

‘Oh, lawks,’ sighed Peggy. ‘Still, that has to be better than tears and tantrums, surely?’

‘Not really. It just makes for a nasty atmosphere,’ said Dolly briskly. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if I should just leave her to it. Poor Frank will have to deal with her on his own, but with me out of the picture she might buck up and behave.’

‘Please stay a while longer,’ pleaded Peggy. ‘It’s selfish, I know, but we hardly get to see one another, and having you here does ease the burden.’

‘It strikes me you have too many burdens on those narrow shoulders at the moment, Peg. I’m sorry I can’t be here often, or for very long, but while I am, I want you to tell me what’s bothering you. And don’t deny it – I can see it in your eyes and in your demeanour.’

Peggy looked down at Daisy’s head resting on her shoulder. The child had fallen asleep, her thumb in her mouth. ‘Let’s drive down to the seafront,’ she murmured.

Dolly turned the key in the ignition and quickly drove away from the factory and turned left into the High Street which ended in a T-junction, and left again onto the seafront road that ran parallel to the promenade.

She parked and they both stared out of the window to the gun emplacements and ugly rolls of barbed wire that had been strung along the promenade to cut off the mined beach. The pier was an isolated lump of twisted, rusting metal marooned offshore, the remnants of an enemy fighter plane still visible through the shattered roof of what had once been the grand ballroom and theatre.

‘It’s not exactly an imposing sight,’ Dolly remarked. ‘But it looks as if things are still happening over there.’

Peggy watched the planes making their ceaseless journeys back and forth, and could see and hear the barrages of gunfire coming from the warships in the Channel as smoke rose from the distant shores to darken the horizon and throw a veil over the setting sun.

‘Brendon’s out there,’ she said, ‘and so is Rita’s father along with countless thousands of others. My troubles seem very small compared to what they must be going through.’

‘Tell me anyway,’ coaxed Dolly, offering her a cigarette and opening the windows to let the smoke out and the fresh air in. ‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved, as they say.’