The Grafton Girls. Annie Groves

her? Why should we help her?’ Emily demanded.

      ‘Well, it doesn’t look as though anyone else is going to, poor soul. Come on, Em, and you too, Lucy. She’s in a bad way.’

      ‘Well, it’s her own fault.’

      Somehow between them they managed to get her into the ladies’ – and only just in time.

      ‘Gawd, if she don’t stop heaving soon, I’m going to be doing the same meself,’ Lucy complained.

      ‘Go and tell them at the bar that we need some water, Lucy,’ Jess commanded.

      ‘It’s all right, you’ve just had a bit too much to drink, that’s all,’ she tried to comfort Diane, who was now moaning weakly.

      ‘A bit too much!’ Emily muttered firmly. ‘More like a bloody hell of a lot too much.’

      Diane shivered. Her stomach and her throat ached from being sick, but her head was starting to clear. She heard what Emily said and she shook her head. ‘All I had was a shandy,’ she told her.

      ‘A shandy? Give over, a shandy never got anyone in the state you’re in, staggering all over the dance floor and then trying it on with that RAF chap. No wonder that GI was giving you a right dirty look.’

      Diane stared at her. She had no memory of any of that. ‘I can’t…are you sure it was me?’ she protested.

      Emily laughed. ‘Hark at her. Of course it was bloody you. Why the hell do you think Miss Save the World here,’ she nodded in Jess’s direction, ‘forced us to bring you in here?’

      ‘You and your friend was sitting with a table of GIs and they was passing a bottle around,’ Jess offered, seeing how distressed Diane was becoming. ‘Maybe they slipped summat into your shandy.’

      ‘I…I don’t know. My friend brought me the drink…’

      ‘Here, I’ve got her some water,’ Lucy announced breathlessly, bursting into the cloakroom. ‘There’s a real to-do going on out there, wi’ some folk saying as how she ought to be told to leave, and others saying it were them GIs fault for giving her the drink in the first place.’

      Diane looked apprehensively towards the door. How could she show her face out there? She was so ashamed.

      ‘How are you feeling now?’ Jess asked her as she handed her the glass of water.

      ‘A lot better.’

      ‘We came here to have a good time, not stand around in the cloakroom playing at nurses,’ Elsie complained.

      ‘If you’re feeling a bit better, then why don’t you come and sit wi’ us for a while? Your friend must be wondering where you are.’

      The last thing Diane wanted was to go back into the dance hall, but she didn’t have the energy to protest.

      Five minutes later she was being urged into a chair, with Jess standing protectively at one side of her and Ruthie uncertainly at the other.

      ‘Mind you drink plenty of water to flush your insides out. That’s what my dad always used to do when he’d had a skinful,’ Jess told her firmly. ‘And no dancing neither.’

      Diane shuddered and closed her eyes. She never wanted to see a dance floor again, never mind take to one, not after what she had been told she had been doing. Vague flashes of memory were starting to seep back: an RAF uniform, an angry male face, an angry American male voice. The major…

      Jess reached across and gave Ruthie’s hand a shake. ‘There’s a GI on that table over there bin watching you for the last five minutes, Ruthie. Bet you he comes over and asks you to dance.’

      ‘No,’ Ruthie protested in a panic. ‘No, he mustn’t. I can’t dance.’

      ‘Don’t be daft, of course you can. He looks a nice lad, an’ all.’

      The girls turned to look at the table in question, where upwards of a couple of dozen GIs were crowded together, either seated or standing.

      ‘Give him a bit of a smile, Ruthie,’ Jess urged her.

      Tongue-tied and blushing, Ruthie could only shake her head.

      ‘Well, he’s coming over anyway,’ Jess laughed.

      ‘And he’s not on his own. He’s bringing another chap with him as well,’ Lucy announced.

      Ruthie could only make a small breathless sound when she realised that Jess was right, and the earnest-looking young GI in front of her, with his clean scrubbed face and tow-coloured hair was actually asking her to dance.

      ‘Of course she’ll dance wi’ you. She’s just a bit shy, that’s all,’ Jess answered for her before turning to smile warmly at his companion.

      ‘If you’d be kind enough to do me the honour, ma’am…?’ he asked Jess hesitantly.

      Jess smiled at him with almost maternal approval. His manners were as meltingly flattering as the look in his eyes.

      ‘I certainly will,’ she told him.

      Diane watched as one by one the other girls were asked up to dance. One of the men looked as though he was about to ask her, but Jess told him pleasantly, ‘She isn’t feeling very well – no offence.’

      This was her chance to slip away unnoticed, Diane decided, if only she could find Myra to tell her that she was leaving. Where on earth was she?

      ‘What do you mean, no?’

      Myra looked up into Nick’s face. When he had suggested they slip outside ‘for a bit of fresh air’ she had nodded her head, letting him take her down a quiet side street, where, in its shadows, he had placed his hands on her arms and pushed her back against the wall. Now those hands were resting on the wall either side of her head, virtually imprisoning her. She smiled inwardly. Nick might think he knew all the moves and had the advantage, but she wasn’t stupid enough to let him have what he wanted out here up against a wall, like some floozie. Oh, no, all he was going to get tonight was a little taste of what he was after. Just enough to keep him eager for more, Myra decided smugly.

      ‘I’d better go back. My friend is going to wonder where I am.’

      ‘Let her wonder,’ Nick told her as he moved closer to her and bent his head towards hers.

      Quick as a flash Myra ducked under his arm and moved away from him.

      ‘What the…?’ he began angrily.

      ‘Like I said, I’d better go back. After all, we only came out for a breath of fresh air, didn’t we?’

      ‘What is this?’ Nick demanded roughly, trying to grab hold of her arm. ‘Don’t you go playing games with me, honey. You were coming on to me like there was no tomorrow.’

      ‘Coming on to you? Is that what you thought?’ His anger had her body tensing warily but Myra wasn’t going to let him see that. ‘No such thing,’ she told him, shaking her head. ‘I was just being friendly, that’s all.’

      ‘Like you were being friendly to that sucker who gave you the stockings,’ Nick challenged her.

      Myra drew in her breath. This wasn’t the way she had expected things to go. She had expected her refusal to encourage Nick to press her for a proper date, not make him angry.

      ‘Like I said, I was just being friendly,’ she insisted. ‘It’s our duty to welcome our allies.’ Conveniently she was choosing to forget just how she had come by her stockings. They didn’t matter now, nor the man who had given them to her, not now that she had met Nick. But he mustn’t be allowed to think she was some sort of pushover. Men like Nick didn’t respect women they thought would give them everything they wanted the first time they asked. That was something she knew instinctively.

      ‘I’m going in,’ she told him.

      She