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young cadet members, her ‘responsibilities’ had included running errands and doing other jobs for local elderly people, and generally making herself useful. Grace still called to see Miss Higgins, a spinster in her late seventies who lived in the next street, knowing that as well as liking having someone to run her errands, the elderly lady enjoyed the opportunity to talk about her youth and to gossip about her neighbours.
    Now, as a fully qualified first aider, Grace got to wear a navy-blue drill overall and an armband printed with the words ‘First Aid’, in addition to being issued with a steel helmet, but tonight it was so warm that she had removed the helmet whilst she and the girl partnering her prepared their ‘patient’ for her ambulance journey to hospital, having been on hand when she was ‘rescued from a bombing incident’.
    A splint secured the patient’s leg, and several bandages had been applied to her torso. Moving the deliberately unhelpfully inert body of their patient in the heat of the enclosed space of the church hall had left Grace’s face flushed and damp, and now she sat back a little anxiously on her heels, awaiting the inspection of her work by one of the senior nurses from Mill Road Hospital, who had volunteered to come to teach the volunteers all the basics of first aiding.
    Sister Harris’s approving ‘very nice Campion’ had Grace’s face glowing for a far more satisfactory reason than the heat of the church hall.
    ‘I hate this bit,’ her partner groaned when, their work inspected and passed, they set to carefully removing and rewinding the bandages. ‘Do you think it’s true, like Lucy says, that it’s going to be war now, Grace?’ she asked worriedly.
    ‘I hope not, Alice,’ was all Grace could say, but she couldn’t help dwelling on the concern she had seen in her parents’ eyes over tea and her father’s keenness to listen to the BBC news, and the heaviness she had heard in her father’s voice earlierwhen he had told her about the developments in Russia.
    ‘If there is then I don’t know about you but I’m going to make sure I do my bit. I’ve got a cousin who’s thinking of joining the WRNS and I’m considering going along with her. They’ve got the best uniform of the lot, she reckons, and she should know, her dad being in the navy. You’ve got a brother, haven’t you? What service is he going for?’
    ‘Luke’s going into the Salvage Corps, like our dad,’ Grace told her automatically and then flushed. There was something in the other girl’s expression that made her feel defensive and protective on her brother’s behalf, although Alice hadn’t come out and said anything.
    ‘It’s every bit as dangerous as joining up,’ she felt obliged to say.
    ‘I dare say it is,’ the other girl agreed but she didn’t meet Grace’s gaze, and Grace noticed how, as soon as their patient was back up on her feet and the bandages and splint had been returned to their correct places, Alice didn’t linger to chat, going instead to join some of the other girls.
    ‘Campion, I’d like a word.’
    Grace looked apprehensively at Sister Harris. Was she too going to quiz her about her Luke’s plans?
    However, when Sister Harris had drawn her into a quiet corner of the hall what she did have to say was so surprising that it drove all thoughts of Alice’s comments out of Grace’s head.
    ‘You’ll have heard the news about Russia, nodoubt,’ Sister Harris began, barely waiting for Grace to nod before continuing. ‘No one wants war but since it looks like we’re going to have it, it makes sense to be prepared. Captain Allen tells me that you work in Lewis’s?’
    ‘Yes, Sister.’ Captain Allen was the retired army captain in charge of their St John Ambulance Brigade unit.
    ‘Have you ever thought of enrolling to train as a full-time nurse?’
    Hearing Sister Harris saying those words, and so matter-of-factly, was such a shock that Grace couldn’t speak. But