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ring still shone richly, the diamonds in her engagement ring sparkling in the sudden ray of sunlight that broke through the greyness of the December afternoon.
    She was a widow now, of course, and not a wife. She had lost her husband to one of Hitler’s bombs. Not that she missed or mourned him. Not one little bit. Why should she after the way he’d treated her, taking up with that stupid ugly Trixie Mayhew and telling people that he wanted a divorce from her so that he could marry.
    Bella could just see the baby inside the shabby pram, a little girl obviously, seeing as she was dressed in a well-washed faded pink knitted jacket and bonnet. Bella could see the darkness of the baby’s hair showing through the pink bonnet. She would have had a baby if it hadn’t been for Alan trying to push her down the stairs. The too-familiar pain that she wished would go away, but which refused to do so, had started up again. Her mother didn’t like her talking about the baby. She said that it was best forgotten and that it had probably been for the best. Her mother was probably right. Just imagine if she’d ended up having a plain nasty-tempered baby like its father?
    Her mother had interrupted her monologue to complain sharply, ‘Bella, you aren’t listening to me. I was just saying that I wish that Charlie would let me know what he’s planning to do for Christmas. I’ve written to him twice now.’
    Bella couldn’t stop looking at the baby. She had huge brown eyes and a wide smile. If she’d been her baby she’d have had her dressed in something much better than washed-out and faded hand-me-downs. Was the mother too poor to buy her child decent clothes or did she just not care?
    ‘I want to go into Lewis’s, Bella.’
    The road outside the main entrance to the store was busy with Christmas shoppers. There were no Christmas lights, of course, on account of the blackout, but the people of Liverpool were still trying to put a brave face on things and make the best of the festive season. The young woman with the pram stopped beside a man selling roasted chestnuts from a brazier. She looked cold and hungry. Bella huddled deeper into her good thick coat with its fur collar, and a label inside it that said that it had come from a famous store in New York. The coat had been a present from her parents and had come into the country as a ‘special order’ put in by her father to one of his many contacts in the Merchant Navy. Bella’s father had a business that fitted the pipe work into naval and merchant vessels and their household seldom went short of anything, rationing or no rationing.
    ‘I still don’t know why you’ve gone and ordered a turkey, Bella. After all, you’ll be coming to us for your Christmas dinner.’
    ‘I told you, Mummy, the turkey’s for the billetees.’
    Vi’s mouth thinned with disapproval. ‘If I’d been you I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of buying a turkey for them.’
    ‘I was just trying to do the right thing, Mummy. You’re always saying how important it is, with Daddy being on the council and everything.’
    Vi, who had picked up a carrot from the vegetable barrow in front of them, put it back without examining it to tell Bella sharply, ‘There’s doing the right thing by people, and there’s being overgenerous. If you ask me there’s no reason why that Jan shouldn’thave got a turkey for his mother and sister himself. After all, he’s in the RAF, as he’s so fond of telling us all, so it’s not as though they’re destitute.’
    ‘Mummy, I’m getting cold standing here,’ Bella protested, stamping her feet in her boots and hugging her arms around herself as she changed the subject. She didn’t want to talk about her billetees. She wasn’t quite sure herself why she had gone to the trouble of ordering a Christmas turkey for them, as well as letting them practically have the run of the house, as she had done these last weeks. At least she would be at her mother’s for