Goodnight Sweetheart. Annie Groves

that Hitler is,’ Nellie announced tactlessly.

      ‘Why don’t we try and catch up with Frank’s mam?’ Molly suggested hurriedly to June. ‘Then you could ask her how she’s going on.’

      ‘What’s to stop her asking how I’m going on?’

      June challenged Molly, before adding miserably, ‘Oh, our Molly, I’m missing him that much. I never thought it’d be like this.’

      Molly squeezed her hand sympathetically.

      They had reached the church now and instead of going straight inside as usual, people were gathering outside to talk in angry and anxious voices.

      ‘It seems so quiet without the children,’ Molly murmured, echoing Nellie’s earlier sentiments. She loved hearing the little ones sing every Sunday.

      Almost as soon as she had finished speaking she saw Pearl Lawson hurrying towards the church, defiantly holding the hands of her two children, the expression on her face both mutinous and challenging as she came over to Molly, whilst her husband, George, hung back slightly.

      ‘I heard as you was down at the school yesterday ’elping with the evacuation,’ she announced to Molly. ‘Sally Walker told me. No way was I letting my two go, not once I’d heard as how they would be mixing with that lot from down the docks,’ she sniffed disparagingly. ‘My kiddies have been brought up to mind their manners. They know how to behave proper, like.’ Ere, Georgie, get that finger out of yer nose,’ she commanded the younger of her two sons crossly, before turning back to Molly and continuing, ‘It’s not right, sending decent respectable kiddies off wi’ the likes of them – Gawd knows what they might pick up. You should be ashamed of yourself, helping to send them away. Mine is staying right here wi’ me.

      ’Ere, Sally, are you all right?’ she demanded as Sally Walker walked slowly towards them, one hand pressed into the small of her back.

      ‘Just a bit of backache, that’s all.’

      ‘How long now before you’re due?’ Pearl asked her sympathetically, deliberately keeping her back turned towards Molly to emphasise her disapproval of Molly’s role in the evacuation.

      ‘Another two weeks.’

      She looked pale and tired, and Molly’s heart went out to her. It must be so hard for her with her husband so far away, and no family of her own to speak of.

      The vicar gave a longer than normal sermon, and when his sonorous voice began to read ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’, audible sobs could be heard from the mothers amongst the congregation.

      ‘Fancy choosing to read that out,’ Nellie Sinclair complained to Molly once they were all outside again, adding forthrightly, ‘Daft bugger. He should have known it would set all the mams off crying. Did I tell you I saw old Bert this morning? Getting himself in a real state, he is, on account of Alf Davies telling him that he’ll have to have that dog of his put down, dogs not being allowed in air-raid shelters in case they goes wild and bites folks. Thinks the world of it, he does, and who can blame him, since it’s all he’s got? Here …’ She broke off in mid-breath to frown at the sound of a bicycle bell being rung loudly and continuously as a young lad pedalled frantically towards the church, skidding to a halt.

      ‘It’s war,’ he yelled breathlessly. ‘It’s just bin on the news.’

      Immediately Alf grabbed hold of him to question him, whilst the rest of the congregation turned to one another in uncertainty and fear.

      Several of the women were crying, including Elsie, Molly saw, whilst the men looked anxious and uncertain what to do. Out of the corner of her eye Molly noticed that Frank’s mother was standing on her own, her face white and set. This was a time for families to be together and automatically Molly started to go over to her.

      She had just reached her side, when Sally Walker suddenly collapsed.

      ‘Oh my Gawd, it’s the shock, it’s gorn and killed her,’ someone said dramatically, whilst one of the other women snorted derisively and said, ‘Don’t talk so daft.’

      ‘Let me have a look at her,’ Frank’s mother said sharply, and Molly discovered that she was somehow holding Frank’s mother’s handbag and gloves, as the older woman crouched down beside Sally, who was now groaning and moaning and clutching her belly.

      The men had stepped back, allowing the women to take over, and were standing together looking slightly embarrassed.

      ‘Looks like she’s gorn into labour,’ Pearl announced knowledgeably. ‘We’d better get ’er to the hospital.’

      ‘Her labour’s too far advanced for that,’ Frank’s mother responded, standing up. ‘We’ll have to get the men to carry her to my house.’

      ‘Well, she did say as how she’d bin having pains,’ Pearl added, ‘but the little ’un isn’t due for another two weeks.’

      Molly saw Frank’s mother’s mouth compress. She certainly looked every inch the fearsome hospital ward sister she was known to have been as she instructed some of the men to carry Sally to her house.

      ‘I’ll need some help …’ Doris Brookes announced.

      ‘You’ve been havin’ some first-aid lessons, haven’t you, Molly?’ Elsie offered.

      Apprehensively Molly started to shake her head. It was true that all the new WVS were being taught first-aiding skills and that she now had her basic first-aiding certificate. She could clean and dress minor wounds, splint broken limbs, and she knew what to do in the case of gas poisoning or minor burns, along with shock and lack of consciousness, but childbirth was not something that had been included in the course.

      But before she could say so, Frank’s mother was commanding her sharply, ‘Very well, you’d better come with me then.’

      Molly looked imploringly at June but her sister shook her head, her mouth set. Even for Sally, June wasn’t prepared to come to Molly’s assistance and willingly spend time with her future mother-in-law.

      Reluctantly Molly followed the small procession being marshalled by Frank’s mother, who was walking alongside Sally whilst the men carried her.

      ‘You’d best take her up to my Frank’s room but don’t put her on the bed until I’ve covered it with a rubber sheet,’ she warned them. ‘And you – Molly, isn’t it? – you’d better come up as well.’

      Obediently Molly followed the men upstairs, into a spick-and-span room with a good-sized bed and gleaming furniture.

      ‘All right, you can put her down now,’ Doris instructed the men, quickly stripping off the jacket of her suit and then rolling up the sleeves of her blouse.

      Sally was lying on the bed with her eyes closed, moaning and whimpering. The men were just straightening up when the sound of an air-raid siren filled the room.

      For a few seconds all of them were too shocked to move, and then one of the men said urgently, ‘’Ere, isn’t that that air-raid siren Alf’s been blethering on about? The one he said as meant we had ter get into them ruddy Anderson shelters?’

      The men looked at one another and then at Doris.

      ‘Best get her downstairs again,’ one of them said uneasily.

      Sally suddenly screamed loudly.

      ‘You lot best go,’ Doris told the men calmly, her attention focused on Sally as she bent over her.

      The siren was still wailing and Molly longed to clap her hands over her ears to blot out the terrifying sound. The men looked at her but she shook her head.

      In the silence that followed the men’s departure, Molly could hear the sound of them running down the street. Terror and panic engulfed her. What if one of the bombs landed right here on Frank’s mother’s house? Cold sweat ran in beads down her face whilst she shivered in fear.

      ‘Still