Free When the Bough Breaks by Connie Monk

turned it into a home that radiated warmth and comfort.
    â€˜I’m going in now,’ she called to Dennis. ‘Only a few minutes and Jess will be home from school.’
    â€˜Right-o. I’ll just finish this row of broad beans and I’ll get loaded up. Kathie, get us something to eat pretty soon so that it’s ready when I get back from delivering, then this evening I’ll get a few more hours out here. No Terriers this evening, so I want to make the most of the long day with the weather like this.’
    Dennis never missed the chance of an evening with the Territorial Army (or the Terriers as they were known). He had joined when they had started recruiting in Sedgewood about a year after Jess had been born and, although more recently a lot of volunteers years his junior had enlisted – including Stanley Stone and Bert Delbridge who, by that time, had worked for him so long that they had almost become part of the family – he enjoyed the male companionship and the half hour they spent in the Stag and Beetle after their evening sessions.
    â€˜All right, love,’ Kathie answered, ‘say half an hour from now. Will that do?’
    â€˜I reckon I’ll last out that long. What have we got?’
    â€˜A lot of eggs. They’re laying so well. We’ll have cheese omelettes and I’ve cut you a good gammon steak to go with yours.’
    â€˜Good girl. That and a hunk of crusty bread’ll do me fine.’ Then he looked up from his picking, his gaze holding hers. ‘Here a minute.’
    How easy it had become to slip back into that easy companionship that had temporarily been lost when he’d come so close to losing her. He looked at her, remembering the nightmare of those days. There was nothing grey and drawn about her face now. She looked a picture of health, her hair glinting chestnut in the sunshine, her figure as slim as a girl’s. He consciously forced himself to think that way and not face the truth that whereas when he’d first known her she had been attractively slim, now she was painfully thin. He remembered how when she had been nursing Jess she had been so proud of her shapely bosom. All that was changed; now her breasts were shrunk and shapeless beyond recognition. But she was just as full of energy as when he’d married her and, if her complexion had lost the bloom of youth, nothing altered her ready smile or the way her brown eyes looked at him carrying their own message of affection. Perhaps to the outside world Kathie wasn’t seen as a beauty, but to Dennis those wide dark eyes, her short, snub nose and overlarge mouth, fitted perfectly into the woman she was.
    Putting down her loaded basket she came along between the rows of broad beans.
    â€˜Yes? Do you want to show me something?’
    â€˜I was thinking – about us, Kathie. We’re so damned lucky. Can it last? Not just for us, for everyone? When storm clouds build they don’t just go away.’
    â€˜Hitler and all his nonsense, you mean? We must hang on to what Mr Chamberlain told us last year. Hitler has spread his wings as far as he intends.’ Then with a laugh, a laugh that in truth was more bravado than mirth, ‘Your trouble is that you and those chaps you march around with want to flex your muscles and frighten him. But surely everyone has too much sense to let that happen – us and the German people too.’
    â€˜Please God you’re right. You know something Kathie Hawthorne? If everyone had your trust and wisdom the world would be a better place.’
    â€˜Chump.’ And this time there was nothing forced in her laugh. ‘Like you say, Den, we are lucky, so let’s just appreciate what we have. Hark, I hear footsteps, Jess is running along the lane and here am I, still garden grimy.’
    â€˜Send her out to give me a hand. She likes picking.’
    â€˜She prefers peas; she can eat those as she goes. I’ll go and