Free The Girl on the Beach by Mary Nichols

meant being friendly when I was feeling lonely. I’d never been out of Scotland before, except for childhood holidays with my parents, and it was all rather nerve-racking .’
    ‘Yes, I felt like that when I left the Coram and went to work. It was such an enormous change.’
    ‘The Coram?’
    ‘An orphanage. I was left on the doorstep when I was a tiny baby.’
    ‘Poor you! Don’t you know who your parents were?’
    ‘Not a clue. The authorities were my parents. When I was old enough I went to work for Sir Bertram Chalfont as a domestic.’
    ‘Sir Bertram who owns the factory?’
    ‘Yes.’ The kettle boiled and she made tea and they settled down at the kitchen table to drink tea and talk while George slept in his pram.
    ‘Is that how you met your husband?’
    ‘No, I met him before that.’ Julie went on to recount how she had first met Harry and how she had met him again later. ‘We’ve been married two years in March.’
    ‘How romantic!’ Rosie said. ‘And now you have a home of your own and a darling baby.’
    ‘What about you? Have you left a boyfriend back in Scotland?’
    ‘No. Perhaps I’ll meet someone like your Harry down here.’
    By the time Rosie left they were firm friends and promised to meet as often as they could. Julie never knew quite when she would turn up because of the shift system at the factory and she almost always brought supplies with her: a tin of condensed milk, a bag of sugar, a bar of chocolate. Sweets weren’t rationed, but the shortage of ingredients meant many of the factories had been turned over to producing more important things. At first she refused to take money for them but on Julie’s insistence she allowed her to pay for the items. They were more expensive than anything bought through normal channels, but if it meant she could feed Harry and George better than by sticking to the letter of the law, she was prepared to pay. She did not tell Harry about this because she had a feeling he would disapprove. It was the first time she had ever kept anything from him, and she salved her conscience by telling herself it was in a good cause.
     
    Harry was battling with his own conscience, as more and more men left the factory bench to join up and their places were taken by women. How could he sit at home when others, including his brother and brother-in-law, were in uniform? His only uniform was an armband anda tin hat with ARP painted on it in white, which he put on to report to the warden’s post every evening when he was not at the factory, and to patrol the streets around his home, looking out for telltale chinks of light from ill-fitting blackout curtains and shouting at anyone having the temerity to light a cigarette in the street after dark. He had to know the names of everyone on his patch and where they lived so that the dead and injured could be identified in bombed buildings. The siren had wailed several times making everyone rush to the shelters, but nothing much had happened, except road traffic accidents and people walking into lamp posts in the dark.
    When he was at the factory he had to take his turn on the fire-watching on the roof. They were supposed to report if a raid was getting close and give warning, so that the workers could stay at their posts until the enemy aeroplanes were overhead, then they would troop to the shelters in orderly fashion. The fire-watcher’s other task was to put out incendiaries with stirrup pumps. So far neither had occurred.
    He decided to defer a decision until after their wedding anniversary, which they celebrated quietly at home. Julie managed to put on a celebration dinner, even though meat had been put on the ration that same week; he did not ask her how she did it. The dreadful winter had gone and daffodils were blooming in the garden beside the happy gnome. Looking at it through the kitchen window, he smiled, remembering their honeymoon and how perfect it had been. And now everything was being spoilt by the war and an