Free Wartime Sweethearts by Lizzie Lane

stuff.
    A photographer from the
Evening World
asked if he could take a shot of them holding their respective entries outside the tent on a nice patch of green grass away from everyone else. He insisted they stood close together.
    ‘Like a bride and groom,’ he trilled in a sing-song Welsh accent.
    ‘Hardly,’ said Ruby, her teeth fixed in an insincere smile.
    Once the photograph and names were taken, Ruby’s co-winner turned and said, ‘Something about you reminds me of a Hollywood film star. Jean Harlow perhaps?’
    ‘She’s blond. I’m not.’
    ‘Must be that peek-a-boo style. That’s what they call it, don’t they?’
    ‘Do they?’ Ruby was purposely offhand.
    He nodded. ‘Yeah. As though she’s trying to hide one half of her face.’
    This was too much. Ruby spun away. As she did so she dropped the loaf. At the same time a runaway pig shot past behind them pursued by a gang of giggling, drunken men.
    Michael Dangerfield stepped back as he turned to see what was going on. His foot landed on the apple loaf.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he shouted once Ruby had picked it up and was stalking off back to the tent.
    ‘Sorry? You just might be,’ she muttered.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Stan Sweet frowned and growled noises that sounded like ‘gerrumph’ and ‘errrrmmm’ when Ruby went up to collect the prize rather than her sister Mary.
    ‘That was your bread,’ he said a trifle testily. ‘What the bloody ’ell’s goin’ on ’ere? Our Ruby’s already won the apple pie bake off. What’s she doing goin’ up collecting your prize?’
    Even if she hadn’t been listening Mary could have told by his beetled brow that her father was not amused.
    ‘Well?’
    Mary beamed at him. ‘Whoever wins this goes through to the next round in Bristol, and whoever wins that gets to stay in London for a while.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘You said it yourself, Dad. I’m the baker. I’m needed here. It’s Ruby that wants to leave for pastures new. She needed my help to make it happen. You need me here, and anyway, I don’t want to go.’
    ‘It got stepped on,’ said Ruby when she finally caught up with them in the beer tent.
    Her sister sighed. ‘What happened?’
    ‘I just told you. Someone stepped on it,’ said Ruby in an irritated tone.
    Her father shook his head. ‘Now that’s typical of you. Ruby, you should learn to be more careful.’
    Ruby could have told him that it wasn’t her that stepped on it, but his chastising comment riled her, made her feel as though she wasn’t quite perfect – like the mole she had on her face. Mary was never accused of being careless. Mary didn’t have a mole.
    Even after a supper of thickly sliced home-cooked ham, farm fresh butter and bread still warm from the oven, Stan Sweet was still a bit miffed, though mellowed after a few beers over the road in the Three Horseshoes.
    He stated his last words on the matter after eating another slice of ham, pickles and bread, one foot on the bottom stair. His bed was calling him.
    ‘We’ll speak tomorrow.’
    He saw that Ruby was uncharacteristically quiet, but told himself she’d be fine in the morning.
    The morning light of the first Sunday in September found its way through a gap in the curtains of the big front bedroom the twins shared with their cousin, Frances.
    The bedroom had previously been occupied by their parents before their mother died a victim of the terrible influenza pandemic that had swept through Europe in 1919, as if the deaths in the Great War were not enough.
    Their father slept in one of the small bedrooms at the back of the house, and their brother, Charlie, in the other.
    The really good thing about the arrangement was that the resonant male snoring was kept at bay, thanks to the fact that there were two doors between them, their own and the ones to the rear bedrooms.
    Sunday was the one day a week when no bread was baked and everyone could lie in, though the habit of getting up early was difficult to break.
    Ruby was wide awake