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when Vera was not aware of being watched. Since Patrick had died, Mother had become even more anxious, worrying about the slightest thing, especially since the war had begun. The worst months of the Blitz had taken their toll on everyone’s nerves, but it seemed to have affected Vera particularly badly. She had kept on her job at Lewis’s and had helped out in the first-aid post in the store’s basement when times were at their worst, until her nerves got the better of her and she had had to stop. She had suffered with a lot of sickness, bouts of gastroenteritis that she was sure were brought on by nerves. Unlike the very tight, controlled mother Katie had always known, Vera had begun having fits of weeping and shaking, which Katie found frightening. If she tried to comfort her, Vera would turn against her and tell her to go away and leave her alone.
    ‘Go on – go!’ she screamed at Katie once during a particularly bad outburst. ‘What use has anyone ever been to me?’
    She had visibly aged, her hair almost completely grey now, her face haggard, though still handsome in its way. Katie felt she always had to be strong and positive, to keep her mother’s spirits up and spare her worry. She did feel sorry for her, and it made her own life easier too if she kept the peace.
    In the winter of 1940, after the worst of the bombing of Coventry, Katie had moved to her new job with Serck Radiators, as it was nearer home. She didn’t have to travel so far to work, which was easier for her, and she knew that Vera worried constantly about her, especially in her previous job, at a firm in Oldbury, which was quite a journey away. A few times the airraid siren had gone off before she had got off the bus and they had crawled into Birmingham or even abandoned the journey, making all the passengers pile off into the nearest shelter they could find. There was one night in November when Katie hadn’t got home and had spent a cold, cramped night with strangers in a factory cellar, listening to the thump-thump of bombs falling around them. She had had to go straight back to work the next morning, knowing that her mother would be beside herself with worry.
    For a short time she had been out with a lad she met at a dance that Pat had talked her into going to, at the Moseley Road Baths. They would lay boards over the pool and use it as a dance floor. Katie was shy of young men and scarcely knew how to dance, or what to talk to them about. The only man she’d ever really known was Uncle Patrick! But her pretty looks soon drew the attention of a slim, dark-eyed young man who said, over the noise of the music and shuffling feet, that his name was Terence Flowers.
    ‘D’you want to dance?’ he asked politely, then added disarmingly, ‘I’m not much good at it, I’m afraid.’
    ‘Me neither,’ Katie confessed. There’d never been a chance to learn to dance, but she wished she could. It looked fun whirling round the dance floor. Was it really that difficult?
    ‘Well, shall we just have a go?’ Terence suggested. ‘Everyone just seems to move their feet somehow – I don’t think it matters.’
    ‘So long as we don’t trample on each other too much,’ Katie laughed. She felt fluttery and nervous. She didn’t know many lads, having no brothers, and had never been out on a date. They were just starting up with ‘Java Jive’ by the Ink Spots.
    ‘I like this one.’ Katie smiled.
    Terence held out his thin arms and gingerly they linked hands, shuffling round the floor. They instinctively liked each other and ended up laughing at one another’s attempts to dance. Terence clowned around, joining in with the lyrics, and he had an impish smile that Katie liked, even though she couldn’t hear much of what he was saying to her. After a couple of dances he leaned close to her ear and said, ‘Shall we sit the next one out?’
    They stood at the side, looking across at the changing cubicles, and tried to talk, though it was difficult