warned herself determinedly. How could she ever have been truly happy with Luke, no matter how much she loved him, when he refused to trust her?
Once she was inside the building the well-built uniformed guard on duty directed Katie towards the reception desk, where she produced the letter confirming her position. She didn’t have to wait long before someone came to collect her, a calm-looking older girl, as different from Carole as it was possible to be, Katie thought gratefully as the other girl introduced herself as Marcy Dunne.
‘You’ll be on my section,’ Marcy explained. ‘I’m the most senior of us, although not a supervisor. We deal with the mail coming in from and going out to our POWs, and I must warn you that it can sometimes be difficult – we get to read an awful lot of Dear John letters. It looks like you’re moving to a new billet?’ she commented, eyeing Katie’s suitcase.
‘Yes,’ Katie confirmed. ‘I’ve been staying with some friends of my parents, but I’ve been offered a billet within easier reach of here.’
When Marcy said, ‘Good show,’ Katie wasn’t sure whether her approval was because of the billet or because Katie had been careful not to give any details of where or what her billet was.
‘You’ll need to go to Admin first to get yourself sorted out with a pass, and a number to write on the correspondence you deal with.’
Katie nodded. It was the rule that everyone who checked a letter had to write their Postal Censorship number on it.
An hour later, when Katie had been given her pass and her number, Marcy reappeared to take her to where she would be working.
The room they eventually entered was set up very much the same as that in Liverpool, although here the desks were individual, like school desks, rather than long tables. Marcy showed Katie to what would be hers, and then introduced her to the half-dozen or so girls who were already at work – naturally, with it being her first day, Katie had been keen to arrive early – including one named Gina Vincent, who gave Katie a warm friendly smile that made her feel that she was genuinely welcome.
‘You’ll soon settle in, I’m sure,’ Marcy assured Katie. ‘There’s a Joe Lyons not far away, and a decent British Restaurant, although you’ll find that it gets pretty busy, what with so many government departments around.
‘As you’ve done this kind of work before you’ll know the ropes. If anything strikes you as suspect, inform your supervisor. We’ve got fairly senior representatives from all the services here, as well. Any questions?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I’ve put you next to Caroline for today so that you can work together until you get the hang of the way we do things here,’ Marcy added.
‘No doubt Mrs Harper, the supervisor for our group, will have a word with you when she arrives.’
At least she had been able to get a transfer from Liverpool to High Holborn, Katie comforted herself as she diplomatically allowed Caroline to show her how to open the envelopes from the side, so that the letter inside wasn’t in any way damaged, although of course she already knew the procedure. She couldn’t have borne to have had to go back to her old desk, with all its memories, and she certainly couldn’t have gone back to her billet with Luke’s parents. The head of her department at Liverpool’s Postal Censorship Office had told her that her request for a transfer to London would make the London Office very happy indeed as they were short of staff, whilst the return to Ireland, of the young Irishmen who had caused Katie so much heart-searching had also meant that there was no longer an ongoing covert operation to keep a check on any mail they might have sent or received whilst living in Liverpool. She must forget about Liverpool and all the memories it held, she told herself, and try to focus on the present instead. She had a job to do, after all, and worthwhile one.
Because of her experience working in Liverpool and the excellent report she had been given, she had now been upgraded to work on more sensitive mail and cablegrams here in London and, modest as always, Katie hoped that they weren’t thinking she was better at her job than she actually was.
‘I’m sure you’ll like it working here,’ Caroline assured her, having given Katie’s dexterous opening of the small pile of envelopes she had handed to her an approving smile. ‘Our first office was in a converted prison, but this is much better. And conveniently central too. Not that we didn’t have a bit of a time with it during the blitz, mind you.’
Katie nodded, but Caroline’s reference to the blitz reminded her of Luke and his kindness to her when Liverpool had been bombed, and she had to blink away her tears. She was trying desperately hard not to think about Luke or Liverpool, or anything connected with her poor broken heart, but it wasn’t easy. The last thing she wanted to do, though, was to break down completely and make a fool of herself.
Perhaps another kind of girl would have written right back to Luke and firmly put him right by explaining just what had really happened, but Katie just hadn’t had the heart to do that. Not when Luke had made it so obvious that he didn’t trust her. She wasn’t the sort to cling on to a man when she felt in her heart that he had fallen out of love with her and that he was glad of an excuse to break things off.
Emily decided that it was a good job that Tommy, the boy she had found half starved and freezing, living off scraps at the back of the theatre in Liverpool where her good-for-nothing husband was the manager, wasn’t here to see her peering anxiously out of the kitchen window like this. He’d be bound to ask questions. He was a bright boy, was Tommy, and no mistake, and all the brighter too since they had left Liverpool and come to live here in Whitchurch. Happy as larks, she and Tommy were, with their tacit agreement that neither would reveal to anyone else his or her past or the fact that they were not even related, never mind aunt and adopted nephew, as everyone now believed them to be.
Or at least Emily had been happy. Until last week when she had gone and spoiled everything, like the silly fool she was, by going and giving Wilhelm, the German POW who kept her vegetable garden so productive for her, a pair of thick woollen socks she had knitted for him.
Of course he wouldn’t want to come here any more now that she had gone and made a fool of herself – yes, and probably made him feel like a fool as well, embarrassing him with her gift; her, a plain woman who had never been what you might call pretty even in her youth, and who no man, especially a handsome, well-set-up man like Wilhelm, would want to think admired him. A daft lonely married woman, who had no right to be knitting socks for any man other than her husband. Not that he would have welcomed hand-knitted socks. A bit of a dandy Con had always considered himself.
Poor Wilhelm had probably had his fellow POWs laughing their heads off at him on account of her gift. Why hadn’t she just left things as they were instead of behaving so daft and losing Wilhelm’s company into the bargain?
It was over a week now since she had given him the socks and she hadn’t seen him since. Normally he appeared most days, not spending as much time here as he had done in the summer, of course, since it was winter and there was plenty to keep him busy at Whiteside Farm where he and some of the other POWs worked, but he’d been here most days, tidying the vegetable garden and even insisting on doing other little jobs for her, like fixing that loose handle on the back door and sorting out the gutter blocked with autumn leaves.
She’d enjoyed the few minutes they’d usually shared together when she took him his cup of tea and a bit of something to eat – looked forward to them, in fact – and now
