Annie Groves - Daughters of Liverpool

‘We can have a proper chat when we knock off to go to the canteen for our dinner,’ Carole told Katie now. ‘I’d better show you how we work otherwise we’ll have one of the supervisors down here. They sit over there at those desks you can see on that bit of a dais,’ she added, jerking her head in the direction of a railed-off raised-up section of the room where people sat at single desks instead of around a table.

‘Going home for Christmas, are you?’ Carole asked as she passed a small pile of opened letters to Katie. ‘Only I was thinking that I could get us both tickets for the Grafton’s big Christmas Dance. I’ve seen them advertised, and I reckon if we don’t jump in now it could be too late.’

Again, without waiting for Katie to reply, she rattled on, ‘Now what you do with these ’ere letters is you read them and if there should be anything in them that doesn’t quite gell, like, then you tell me for now.’

Dutifully Katie started to read the first letter, in which its writer referred to having been in London and having danced at the Savoy Hotel to the sound of Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Orpheans.

Katie had often heard the Orpheans play and an unexpected wave of homesickness hit her. At home right now her father would just be getting up, grumbling about the noise from the street, which would have woken him up, complaining that no one seemed to realise that those who worked into the early hours of the morning needed to sleep in.

Her mother would be sitting at the kitchen table wearing one of her theatrical, and totally unsuitable for a shabby London terrace, ‘robes’ and before too long the pair of them would be bickering.

‘Summat up? Only you’ve been staring at that letter for nearly five minutes.’

Shaking her head in answer to Carole’s query, Katie put the letter to one side.

She was just over halfway down the pile when she found it: a letter written in bold spiky handwriting, in which, out of the blue, the writer referred to Gracie Fields singing ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, when surely everyone knew that it was Vera Lynn who sang that particular song. It could simply have been a mistake, of course, but it made sense to check.

‘I’ve just noticed this,’ she informed Carole, pointing out the error.

Carole grinned at her. ‘Good for you. The top brass always check out newcomers by giving them a little test to see if they are as on the ball as they’ve made out.’

Leaning across Katie, she waved the letter in front of Anne and told her triumphantly, ‘She spotted it straight off.’

‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ Anne smiled. ‘We’ve been desperate for someone to fill in for Janet since she decided to join the ATS.’

A bell suddenly rang, making Katie jump.

‘Don’t worry, it isn’t one of Hitler’s bombs. It’s only the bell for the first sitting for lunch,’ Anne reassured her. ‘Carole, you and Katie can go first sitting today, but make sure you’re back on time,’ she warned them.

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