I dedicate this book to the brave men who fought in India and Burma, and the stoic women who kept the home-fires burning as they waited for them to come home.

1

Cliffehaven, May 1944

It was Saturday morning and all was quiet at Beach View, except for sounds of activity in the scullery. Peggy Reilly was attacking the last of the mound of washing that had accumulated over the past week. Her evacuees, or her chicks, as she liked to think of them, had seen to their own and the elderly Cordelia’s laundry the day before, but having changed the beds and gone through her father-in-law, Ron’s, tip of a room in search of discarded underwear, dirty towels and shirts, there had been as much as ever to get through, and half the morning was already gone.

She filled the stone sink with hot water from the copper boiler, added a spoonful of soda crystals, and, having waited for them to dissolve, began to rinse out the sheets before feeding them through the wringer and into the basket. Each dip of her hands into the hot water and every turn of the wringer’s handle reinforced her yearning for a proper twin-tub washing machine. Her older sister Doris had been lucky (and rich) enough to buy one before the war. Peggy knew for a fact that once it was loaded it made short work of a week’s washing, and then all one had to do was transfer it into the second tub where it was rinsed and spun, ready to be hung out on the line. Yet, as she and Doris had fallen out yet again, there was no chance of using it, even occasionally.

Peggy switched off the copper boiler, dumped the last sheet into the basket, hauled it onto her hip and carried it into the back garden. She’d thought that by earning her own money at Solly’s uniform factory she could have put down a deposit and paid it off weekly; but it turned out that things like washing machines, electric kettles, fridges and irons were as rare as hens’ teeth, and so here she was, once more forced to carry on the weekly ritual which ate into her precious weekend off.

The two washing lines were strung across the width of the garden from poles attached to the neighbouring fences. Long, forked wooden props stood at intervals underneath the line, keeping the laundry from dragging across Ron’s vegetable beds, which had replaced the lawn beyond the paved area beneath the kitchen window. There was a good stiff breeze which snapped and flapped the washing already pegged out, and the sun was bright when it appeared intermittently between the scudding clouds, so at least everything would be dry and ready for ironing before teatime.