When the Lights Go on Again by Annie Groves Page B

Holborn Office of the Postal Censorship Department, that Gina had expected to marry another young man before she had met Leonard. That young man had been killed in action and it had taken courage on Gina’s part to risk loving another man in uniform.
    ‘What about you and Eddie?’ Gina challenged her. ‘After all, one day he will inherit his father’s title.’
    Katie laughed and shook her head. Eddie was Leonard’s younger cousin, Leonard’s mother and Eddie’s father being sister and brother. Like Leonard, Eddie was also in the navy. Terrific fun and an equally terrific flirt, Eddie made Katie laugh and she liked him as a friend, but that was all.
    ‘Eddie and I are just friends. I’m glad that you’ve asked me to go with you,’ Katie responded to Gina’s initial comment. ‘I know this sounds selfish of me but it will be a pleasant change to go out and be a guest instead of being the one running around after others.’
    ‘You, selfish?’ Gina scoffed. ‘You are the least selfish person I know, Katie. You’re working fartoo hard, you know, all day at the Censorship Office and then nearly every single evening at Rainbow Corner. I thought you were only going to be there three nights a week?’
    ‘I was, but they’ve got so busy with all the Americans being brought over that they’re desperately short of volunteers.’
    ‘Do you think it’s true, Katie, what everyone’s saying about the Forces getting ready to invade France?’ Gina asked.
    ‘Well, we shall have to if they’re going to defeat Hitler,’ Katie answered.
    ‘I know,’ Gina acknowledged, ‘but after what happened to the poor men in August last year when the invasion of Dieppe failed and so many men were killed and wounded…’
    The two girls exchanged sad looks. The young men who had gone so bravely to their deaths had all been Canadian volunteers from overseas, who had wanted to do their bit for the country with which so many of them had family ties.
    ‘I’ll come to you for six o’clock, shall I? Then we can walk round to the American Embassy from your billet?’
    Katie agreed.
    ‘I’m hoping to visit Leonard’s parents next weekend,’ Gina told her as they both stood up. ‘I promised Leonard that I’d try to go and see them and the children as often as I can whilst he’s away.’
    Leonard had two children from his first marriage to a Frenchwoman, a son and a daughter of four and three. Odile, their mother, had been killed in acar accident with her lover, and the two children lived in the country with Leonard’s parents.
    ‘The children are so sweet,’ Gina confessed. ‘Little Adam asked me ever so seriously the last time I saw them if he and Amy could call me Mummy. Poor little things. Leonard told me that Odile didn’t have much time for them. I’ve never thought of myself as maternal, but now…I’m really beginning to miss them when I’m in London.’
    ‘I think that they are very lucky to have you as their stepmother, Gina.’
    ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Gina protested, but Katie could see that she was pleased.
    ‘And Tommy’s housemaster at the Grammar School has said as how he thinks that Tommy is a very bright boy and that I should be thinking about him perhaps going on up to Oxford if he works hard. He says that Tommy’s got a really good ear for languages.’ Emily couldn’t help boasting a little as she worked alongside the other women on that week’s rota for doing the church flowers, at Whitchurch’s historic Queen Anne church, St Alkmund’s.
    ‘He’s a lovely lad and no mistake, Emily,’ her friend and neighbour Ivy Wilson agreed loyally. ‘Looks ever so smart too in his uniform.’
    The Grammar School divided its pupils into four houses, each house represented by its own uniform colour. Emily had been lucky enough to have been told by the dressmaker, who altered her own clothes, that she had another customer whose son had just finished school and who no longer needed his