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trouble – it ate their tea when they dashed into the shelter, leaving the half-eaten meal on the table. And last night the dog – a manic terrier – got in the shelter with them and spent the night pouncing on their arms and legs, mistaking them for rats. Gladys, with her chesty laugh, was always full of stories and kept everyone cheerful.
    Today, though, Molly was barely listening. She laughed when everyone else laughed, smoked, and drank the strong, sweet tea, but already she felt miles away from them all. As soon as she’d decided about joining up – the army, the ATS, that was the place for her – she felt different and strong, the strongest she’d ever been, as if she could do anything. What her mother had told her, the awful, revolting truth, was folded away in her mind, not forgotten, just pushed aside. Rather than wallowing in the shock and shame of it, instead she had picked out an escape route. She felt she was standing in a high place, way above them all, Iris and Joe, Bert, and William Rathbone, her dead grandfather, the whole foul bloody shower of them. But she was going to get out, oh yes she was! The way she felt now, she could stride across the world like a giant!
    Em’s family were still in the same house in Kenilworth Street where they had always lived, just down the road from the school Molly and Em had attended, and almost opposite the Buttons’ place, where Jenny Button was still struggling to run a bakery from the front room, using the brew house to bake in.
    When Molly stood on the Browns’ front step, it always brought back to her being seven or eight years old again and going round to ask Em to play out, always steeling herself against being rejected. It brought back vivid memories of knocking during those dark times when Em’s mom Cynthia was sent away to the asylum, when Em, a scared waif, would peer out through a crack in the door, terrified in case it was the School Board man. She’d been kept away from school to run the house for Bob and her brother and sisters when she was scarcely tall enough to see over the scullery sink. Molly wondered what state Cynthia was in now – she was up and down in cycles, had been ever since, poor woman. She never did anyone any harm though, just sunk into herself, and she was always all right to Molly.
    It was Em who answered her knock. She had very straight, mousy hair which she tried to tease into waves and curls, but by this time of day they were always dropping out and her hair fell in straight hanks on her shoulders. She was slim, like a reed, always fragile-looking and pale in the face. It was Molly who had grown up taller, big and robust-looking like Iris, but without Iris’s thuggish features.
    Em gave a wary smile. ‘Molly! All right are you? What’re you doing here?’
    ‘Just come to see you,’ Molly said. ‘I’ve got summat to tell yer.’
    She could see Em sizing her up and deciding she was sober enough to be let in. Molly had only the vaguest memory of what had happened on Saturday night, though she knew Em had been in it somewhere. But she was too excited to get embarrassed about that now.
    ‘You’d best come in,’ Em said, standing back to open the door. ‘I’ve not got long – I’m just getting my tea down me before I go on duty. It’s Molly!’ she added, calling through to the family. ‘She’s just popping in for a minute.’
    They went through to the back, where the family were all round the table – plus Norm, Em’s young man.
    ‘Hello, Molly,’ Cynthia greeted her kindly. ‘How’re you, love? We haven’t seen you in a while.’
    Cynthia was looking well, Molly saw, smiling back at her. She met Molly’s gaze; there was a pinkness to her cheeks and her dark brown hair was pinned up, the fringe waved back from her forehead. Things were all right. Over the years they had all learned to read the signs. When she was feeling bad, Cynthia looked pale, her face twisted with inner pain, her hair usually unkempt, and