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work,’ she retorted.
    ‘But it’s work most of them choose to do. Wouldn’t you like to be free to make that choice?’
    ‘Pigs might fly.’
    ‘I mean it. Did you tell Miss Paterson why you were sacked by Lady Chalfont?’
    ‘Of course I did.’
    ‘And have you told her you were meeting me today?’
    ‘No, but I will. I didn’t want to say anything in case you didn’t turn up and I’d have looked a fool.’
    He laughed. ‘Don’t you know me better than that?’
    ‘I hoped I did. Now you are here, what have you been doing? Are you still working at Chalfont’s?’
    ‘Yes. We’ve turned part of the production over to radios for aeroplanes. They will be needed if there’s a war.’
    ‘You think there’ll be a war, then?’
    ‘It looks more and more like it. Everyone at the factory thinks there will be and we’re working two shifts a day and my father spends all hours there. Mother worries about him and about Roly, who’s in the RAF now.’
    ‘Mrs Thornby is full of gloom. She lost her husband in the last war and keeps telling everyone how awful it was. All those thousands of men killed. My father might have been one of them. I shall never know for sure. It must be terrible for the fighting men and just as bad for those at home waiting for news. I know I should be worried to death if it were you.’
    ‘Would you?’ He reached out and took her hand and appeared to be studying it.
    ‘Of course.’ She looked down at their joined hands, one strong and beautifully manicured, the other red and angry with broken nails. How different they were, how indicative of the different lives they led.
    ‘Julie,’ he began. ‘I don’t know if this is the right time to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. I love you very much and I couldn’t bear to lose you again, and the only way I can be sure is to ask you to marry me.’
    She stared into his face in disbelief. ‘What did you say?’
    He laughed and repeated it. ‘So what do you say? Will you marry me?’
    ‘Do you mean it? Really, really mean it?’
    ‘Of course I mean it, silly. I think we were meant for each other, right from the beginning when we met on the beach. Why else was I on hand when Ted Austen attacked you? Why else did I find you again after I thought I’d lostyou for good? I was on my way to work when I spotted you yesterday. I usually go on the Tube but for some reason I decided to walk. It is fate, our destiny, whatever you like to call it. Don’t you feel it too?’
    ‘Yes, oh, yes.’ Her eyes were shining and she was very near to tears.
    He lifted her work-worn hand, opened the palm and put it to his lips. ‘Then I shall tell my family, and next week I shall take you home to meet them and we can arrange a wedding.’
     
    ‘I shouldn’t have said yes,’ she told Miss Paterson, when she went home that evening and related what had happened over supper. ‘I didn’t stop to think. He’s posh and I bet his family will look down on me and I shall feel such an idiot.’
    ‘Julie Monday, I despair of you. You’ve been pining for that young man for months, don’t think I haven’t noticed, so why the sudden doubts?’
    ‘I never thought he would ask me to marry him. It’s such a big step and I don’t know anything about being married. I shall get it all wrong, I know I will.’
    Grace Paterson laughed. ‘No doubt he will set you right.’
    ‘Did anyone ever ask you to marry him?’
    ‘Yes. I was engaged once but he was killed in the last war, so I don’t know anything about being married either. I took to teaching instead.’
    ‘I didn’t know that.’
    ‘Of course you didn’t. It’s not something I’d teach in class, is it?’
    ‘Do you think there’ll be another war?’
    ‘I don’t know. I pray not.’
    ‘If there’s a war, Harry might have to fight.’
    ‘He might. Does that make a difference to how you feel about him?’
    ‘No, nothing could make a difference to that. I was wondering what it would be