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empty rooms were being used as billets.
    There was usually a houseful of family and lodgers, but since Julie, her last evacuee, had returned to London, there was only Fran, Suzy and Rita billeted on the attic floor, and the elderly, bird-like little Mrs Finch, who was her permanent lodger, on the first floor next to the bathroom. Her youngest daughter Cissy was a secretary on the nearby RAF base, but rarely managed to get home on leave any more, whilst Anne, her eldest, was down in Somerset with her own baby, keeping her little brothers company.
    Anne’s husband, Martin Black, was a Spitfire pilot with over twenty sorties under his belt. Although he’d recently been promoted to Air Commodore in charge of setting up new airfields, he was clearly frustrated by this new posting where he spent his days in an office dealing with paperwork and pen-pushers. To Anne and Peggy’s great dismay, they realised he was champing at the bit to climb back into a plane, andwith so many young men being killed, it was almost a foregone conclusion that he’d soon get his wish.
    She tried to keep these worrying thoughts at bay as she looked down from her window at the long, narrow garden which sparkled with frost in the moonlight. The back gate opened onto a twitten that ran between the terraces and led eventually to the open grasslands and farms that lay to the north of Cliffehaven. The flint wall had been damaged long ago in an air raid, the makeshift repairs leaving it looking rather woebegone, but Ron’s vegetable garden was already sprouting a few green shoots beneath the thick cover of straw he’d put over it to protect it from the frost.
    Peggy regarded the ugly hump of the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, the sagging washing lines that were strung between the neighbouring fences, the outside lav, the shed and the chicken coop. The first few birds had been gifts from a group of Australian soldiers who’d come to tea almost two years before. Over the ensuing months Ron and Jim had somehow managed to increase the flock – though no one questioned their method, all too aware they might not approve of the answer – and now there was a cockerel in charge of a harem of ten hens. This cockerel made the most fearful racket every morning, but the number of eggs his hens laid more than made up for that.
    Peggy let the curtain drop back over the window and returned to bed, keeping Jim’s dressing gown on for a while longer until the sheets warmed again. Shelay in the darkness and listened to the soft snuffle of her sleeping baby, the comforting scent of Jim’s shaving soap drifting from the dressing gown. Her eyelids grew heavy and, with a long sigh of contentment, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
    Mrs Cordelia Finch was feeling rather sprightly this morning, despite the fact that there was ice on the inside of the windowpanes, the milk on the doorstep was almost frozen solid, and her hearing aid was making the most annoying buzzing sound. At seventy-something – she’d lost track and no longer cared how old she was as long as she continued to enjoy reasonable health and kept her wits – she was still capable of taking over the reins from Peggy and getting downstairs in the morning to cook breakfast. In fact, it was the knowledge that she could still be useful that was making her feel so chipper.
    As she clutched the cold milk bottles and rather damp newspapers, she resisted the longing to pop in and see Peggy and the darling baby, for she could hear the murmur of Jim’s voice behind the closed door and didn’t like to intrude.
    Leaving the hall, she hobbled into the kitchen and abandoned her walking stick in a corner. With the milk and newspapers safely on the table, she slipped her arms into Peggy’s voluminous wrap-round apron and tied the strings at her tiny waist. Her arthritic hands fumbled a bit as they always did in the cold weather, but once she’d stirred the fire back into life in theKitchener range,