Free Scandal in the Secret City by Diane Fanning

couldn’t – answer even the most innocuous questions. That certainly didn’t make me popular with the women in the building.
    Dr Marc Bishop’s daughter, Ann, was an exception, probably because of the way we met. She was secretary to the managers of the Y-12 facility. Both of us thought we were the only person using the women’s restroom in our section until I walked in one day and heard her crying in a stall. At first, I wondered how a Calutron girl had got past security to find this lavatory. The anguish in the unseen woman’s voice, however, pushed that concern out of my mind.
    ‘Hello,’ I said, raising my voice to be heard over her wailing. ‘Can I help you?’
    ‘I’m way past help.’
    ‘What happened?’ I shouted through the door.
    ‘He’s dead.’
    ‘Your boyfriend? Your husband?’
    ‘Noooo. I knew him all my life.’
    ‘Your father?’
    ‘Noooo. My favorite cousin. He was like a brother to me.’
    ‘Did he die in combat?’
    All I got in response to that question was a deep moan.
    ‘If you come out,’ I urged, ‘it would be easier to talk. I lost a close cousin at Pearl Harbor.’
    Sniffles followed by the loud honk of a blowing nose leaked out of the cubicle, followed by the sound of rushing water when the toilet flushed. Then the door creaked open.
    To my surprise, instead of the neck to ankle overalls that the Calutron girls wore, she was dressed in a brown-and-white checked dirndl skirt and a tucked front white blouse with a lace collar. ‘Where did you come from?’ I asked.
    ‘In there,’ she sniffed and pointed back to the stall.
    ‘No, I mean, do you work here? And where do you work?’
    ‘Oh. I’m a secretary for a bunch of scientists,’ she said and paused to blow her nose again into a piece of toilet tissue. ‘My dad got me the job. I’m Ann Bishop. He’s Dr Bishop. Do you know him?’
    ‘Yes, I do. I work for Dr Bishop, indirectly anyway. My supervisor works under him. I’m Libby Clark. How long have you been here?’
    ‘About a month. Are you new?’ Ann asked. ‘What do you do?’
    ‘I’ve been here about a month, too. I’m a chemist.’
    ‘A chemist? But you’re a woman.’
    ‘Yes, I am, that’s why I’m using the ladies’ room.’
    ‘I didn’t know there were any lady scientists here. That’s really swell.’
    ‘I didn’t know there were any women in Y-12 except for the Calutron girls.’
    ‘I think I’d go loco working over there. All that time sitting and staring at dials with a bunch of girls. No thank you.’ Without warning, she burst into tears again.
    I put my arm around her. ‘There, there, I know how much it hurts. It gets better with time. It still makes me sad and sometimes makes me angry that my cousin died so far from home but it doesn’t hurt quite so much now. How did your cousin die?’
    ‘His plane crashed in the Mediterranean somewhere,’ she said with a sniff.
    ‘Was he a pilot?’
    ‘No, he was a gunner. They said he went down firing,’ she choked on her words and sobbed. ‘Like that did him a lot of good. And they won’t even tell us how it happened or who shot him down or anything.’
    I patted gently on her shoulder. ‘I know, I know. My cousin died in Pearl Harbor but I don’t know how. And was he on a pier? On a ship? Walking down the road? I have no idea.’
    I suppose it was our shared loss that broke down the barriers and formed a bond that strengthened as we went to lunch together a few times each week. Ann didn’t particularly understand me but was clearly fascinated by my different outlook. One day at lunch she said, ‘I never considered doing anything but finding a husband, getting married and having babies. Whatever made you even imagine doing something else?’
    ‘I guess I was pushed in that direction by the circumstances following my father’s death, Ann. But I am happy I was. I wouldn’t mind having a male companion, but men … They all want to shove you in a mold of their own design. It might