A Store at War. Joanna Toye

up the stairs with a toss of her head. ‘But it’s beside the point. If it had been another staff member, even someone senior to yourself – well, that would have been one thing. Bad enough, but we could have dealt with it internally. But a customer …!’

      Lily hung her head. Was she going to break all records at Marlow’s, and not in the way she’d hoped? The first person to be sacked before they’d even completed a full day’s work?

      ‘I shall have to take it to Miss Garner. As I said, it’s beyond anything I’ve ever had to deal with before.’

      ‘I’m really sorry if I did wrong, Miss Frobisher,’ said Lily again.

      ‘And she’ll have to take it to Mr Marlow, I should think. Oh, Lily. And I really thought I could perhaps make something of you.’

      Looking down now into her cocoa, Lily bit her lip. She’d let everyone down, her mum, Sid, Gladys, herself. It’d be the laundry or the Fox and Goose after all. And thinking about the opportunity she’d lost somehow unfroze everything she’d been keeping in. Her lip wobbled and tears dripped into her cup.

      ‘She’s washed out, Mum, get her to bed,’ Sid took away the mug. ‘She’ll have to be up again in a few hours.’

      Dora put her arm round her daughter, regretting her previous outburst. She’d only spoken that way because of the fear and the worry. Why did anxiety so often come over as anger?

      ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry,’ said Lily obscurely, apologising not for the park, but for something her mother didn’t even know about.

      ‘Don’t be silly. I’m sorry for going off like that. It was only because … oh, never mind. We’re all a bit beyond ourselves, aren’t we?’

      Lily nodded.

      ‘Bet this feels like the longest day of your life, eh, Sis?’

      Sid patted Lily’s shoulder and she nearly crumpled. Please don’t be nice to me, she thought, forcing her eyes wide to stop the tears, or it’ll all come out!

      ‘Tell you what. You can sleep in with me tonight, love,’ offered her mum. ‘Would you like that?’

      Lily nodded dumbly.

      ‘Yes, please,’ she whispered.

      She didn’t imagine she’d sleep much, wherever she was.

      Miss Frobisher had told her not to go down to the lockers the next day, but to take the service lift up to the third floor, the floor where Miss Garner – and Mr Marlow – had their offices. The floor where only a week ago, Lily had had her interview, and had left with such high hopes. She wasn’t sorry not to have to mix with the others, to see the stares and the nudging. She was sorry not to see Gladys, to say goodbye if nothing else, but never to see Beryl again could only be a blessing.

      She had to squash into the lift with a cage of gents’ socks and caps steered by a grizzled man with a moustache, presumably on his way up to the stockrooms. He manoeuvred his load wordlessly aside so Lily could get in with her gas mask and bag, which contained the contract of employment she’d signed only yesterday and hadn’t had the chance to drop off at the staff office. Nice waste of paper and ink that had been!

      ‘It’s you, in’t it?’ the man said as they creaked up past the first and second floors. ‘The little miss who slapped that other little madam down the shelter last night?’

      ‘Don’t, please.’

      ‘No need to apologise, love. There’s plenty on the staff who’d love to land one on a few of our customers, and without the excuse of a Jerry overhead! And on a few of the management, come to that! You only did what no one else dared. It raised a smile with some of us, I can tell you.’

      ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then!’

      ‘Sorry, chick. I didn’t mean … you’re new, ain’t yer?’

      ‘Newer than new. Yesterday was my first day,’ Lily confessed.

      ‘Dear oh dear! Start as you mean to go on, eh?’

      ‘I don’t think there’ll be any going on,’ said Lily sadly.

      Her new friend shook his head.

      ‘That’s a pity. Even more of a pity there’s no union here that might fight your corner. We’re trying to set one up, but these family firms …’ He tutted and rolled his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t be able to join till you was sixteen, of course, but at least a union’d look out for you if you was in trouble.’

      ‘Well, that’s good to know. For other people,’ said Lily. ‘But it won’t come in time for me, I’m afraid.’

      ‘In that case you’ll have to stick up for yourself, won’t you? You don’t seem backward in coming forward.’

      ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Lily sadly as the lift clanked to a halt at her floor. ‘That’s what got me into trouble in the first place.’

      ‘My forms from yesterday, Miss Garner.’

      Lily placed them on the desk.

      ‘I’d already signed them, I’m afraid. I’m sorry about the waste of paper. But I know you wanted the paper clip back especially.’

      ‘I did, Lily. Thank you.’

      Miss Garner was still trying to come to terms with all she’d learned about the events of the previous evening from Eileen Frobisher, who’d sought her out to explain the situation. This was, of course, precisely the sort of thing Miss Garner had dreaded with the type of girls she was having to take on. She’d anticipated most things – or thought she had. Slapdash appearance, grubby fingernails, slatternly habits, dropped aitches, mispronunciations … chatting amongst themselves or, worse, over-familiarity with the customers … that was as far as her imagination had taken her. Assaulting the customers had never occurred to her. But …

      ‘The thing is, Lily,’ she said, ‘I’ve had a telephone call. From Mr Marlow.’

      So he knew as well! Lily’s cheeks flamed.

      ‘And he …’

      Miss Garner removed her treasured paper clip from Lily’s forms and stowed it in a little japanned box on her desk.

      ‘He’d had a telephone call from Mrs Tunnicliffe. Violet Tunnicliffe’s mother,’ she added, inscrutably.

      Lily bit her lip. Hard. Was Miss Garner going to deliver the killer blow, or would Lily be passed on to Cedric Marlow? Would he rant and rage? She didn’t somehow think that would be his style. More a sort of sad disappointment that she’d turned out so badly. Either way, it’d end with her being shown the door.

      But Miss Garner was speaking again.

      ‘It seems that Violet’s very highly strung. They’ve had trouble with her before in air raids. The doctor prescribed a bromide, but they didn’t have any with them yesterday.’

      ‘That’s awful,’ said Lily. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Yes, well, it gets some people like that, doesn’t it?’

      The little japanned box had a picture of a temple or a palace or something on it, brilliant in gold and turquoise. When the sun poked through the taped-over window, it throbbed with colour. Miss Garner saw her looking at it.

      ‘My brother sent it to me. He’s out in Syria. Perfect for paper clips.’

      ‘I see,’ said Lily automatically, though she couldn’t believe they were talking like this, about paper clips of all things.

      Please. Get on with it, she thought. Why are you dragging it out?

      ‘The fact is’ – Miss Garner couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice – ‘Mrs Tunnicliffe’s actually rather grateful to you. She can’t do anything with Violet when she gets like that. If it had