With the name and number neatly recorded, she tucked the little book away, accepting that she’d have to make amends, not only to Jack, Cordelia and her mother, but to Rita. There really was no excuse for her being so rude and difficult, even if she was finding it hard to settle back into the humdrum routine of life at Beach View.

It was as if time had stood still here and nothing had changed, whereas she was a very different young woman compared to the naïve girl who’d left this house all those years ago to enlist into the WAAFs. Cissy was aware of the changes that had slowly been wrought on her, and which now set her apart from Rita and the others, and there were times when she wasn’t at all sure she liked the self-possessed, rather cold woman she’d become.

The news about Freddy Pargeter had momentarily shaken her, for he’d been a shining light at Cliffe, forever the life and soul of a party, and the bad boy pilot who took delight in doing victory rolls over the airfield, so low it was quite heart-stopping. To think of all that energy and exuberance being snuffed out … But then so many of the boys she’d come to know and admire hadn’t returned, and it was as if her experiences at Cliffe had formed a protective shell around her heart so that nothing could touch her.

Once she’d found her lipstick and applied it to her satisfaction, her thoughts turned to Ivy and the ghastly news about her family. Cissy hadn’t taken to Ivy at all, finding her loud and coarse and extremely irritating, but she couldn’t begin to imagine what the girl must be going through at the moment. The thought of losing her own mother and baby sister made her shiver. They’d come too close to being killed several times over the last six years, and it was a miracle that Cissy hadn’t found herself in Ivy’s situation.

She pulled a thick cardigan on over her silk blouse and linen slacks. It was chilly in the basement, but she liked the solitude and privacy it afforded her until things were resolved and she had a clearer sense of where her future lay.