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to St George Housewives Group. St George was a suburb of Bristol and thus most households were more dependent on shops rather than farmland for their food. With that in mind, she’d devised a pie made from vegetables and Spam. Tins of Spam were becoming quite commonplace on the shelves of grocery stores, thanks to the American allies.
    She’d also devised a pie recipe using snoek – a variety of dried fish imported from South Africa.
    The last items were loaded into the wickerwork hamper just as her father came in from the bakery.
    â€˜I’m parched. Is that a fresh brew?’
    Ruby reached for the pot. ‘I’ll pour one for you.’
    â€˜I thought you had to be off?’ Stan Sweet knew his daughter’s schedule off by heart; in fact, he made a point of being well informed about all his family.
    Ruby placed the cup of tea in front of him. ‘Dad. It’s our Frances. I wanted to warn you before she gets up.’
    It was not yet six thirty. Stan Sweet regularly got up at five to bake bread. Ruby or Frances would take over once the bread was baked and cooling, ready to be transferred to the shop.
    Stan looked at his daughter over the rim of his teacup. He took a big slurp. ‘What’s wrong?’
    Ruby took a deep breath. ‘She wants to find her mother.’
    Slowly and thoughtfully, her father placed his cup back into its saucer. For a moment, he was totally silent as he mulled over what Ruby had said.
    â€˜That’s bad news. Come to that, her mother was always bad news.’
    â€˜I told her I had no idea where her mother was. I told her to ask you.’
    Still silent, eyes downcast, Stan nodded in his usual thoughtful way. ‘I suppose the day had to come.’
    Ruby eyed her father, wondering when it was that he’d began to look old, when his hair had started thinning, when the loose skin of his jowls had become so wrinkled.
    She hesitated before finally asking whether he really did know the whereabouts of Mildred Sweet, Frances’s mother.
    â€˜Yes. I do.’
    A wary look came to Ruby’s face.
    Pushing his teacup away, Stan asked, ‘Why now? She’s never shown much interest before.’
    Ruby shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but as you’ve just said, the day was bound to come.’
    Her father got up from his chair. ‘Leave it with me. Say nothing about this until I’ve thought it over.’
    Ruby nodded, then glanced at her watch. ‘I have to go. Will you check the post for me? Just in case there’s a letter … or something.’
    Her father’s smile was sad but understanding. He knew his daughter was asking him to check if there was anything from Johnnie Smith. Ruby checked every day, hardly giving the mail a chance to fall through the letterbox before pouncing on it. So far, in all this time, there’d been nothing.
    Later in the morning, leaving Frances to run the shop, Stan and his grandson Charlie made their way to St Anne’s church.
    The weather was dull and overcast, droplets of rain sprinkling from bushes each time the north wind blew. Once they were in the churchyard, Stan used both hands to draw his coat collar up around his neck.
    Finding he was no longer constrained by his grandfather’s firm grip, Charlie broke into a tottering run, gleefully laughing as twigs and leaves blew across his path.
    Stan headed for his wife’s grave, pleased to see that Michaelmas daisies were in flower. As was his habit, he settled down beside his wife’s headstone, just as he might if she’d been lying in the marriage bed they’d shared for such a few short years.
    This was where he came to speak his mind, gather his thoughts and ask questions he wouldn’t voice to anyone else – even to his good friend Bettina Hicks.
    He called out to Charlie not to wander off before voicing what was in his mind.
    â€˜Sarah. The war goes on. All our family are safe and sound, at least for