Violet put down the trug of tomatoes on the kitchen table. ‘There you are! Aren’t they beauties?’
Dolly beamed. She’d been impressed with her daughter-in-law’s skill at gardening and this was the best crop yet. ‘What a lovely smell they have as well. We’ll have to bottle some of them to make them last through the winter. Make sure we have our vitamins, like the government says.’ She picked one up to admire it. ‘Is this the last of them? Surely they won’t go on for much longer.’
Violet wiped her hands on her pinafore, which bore traces of the victory garden all over it. ‘Well, we deliberately chose some late-cropping varieties. Old Mr James from the allotments told me how to do that. So they should keep going a bit longer yet, as long as we have enough sun to ripen them. I’ll make sure Rita has some to sell in the shop.’
‘What’s that?’ The door opened and Rita came in, catching her own name as she did so. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Sell some of these,’ Dolly said, automatically reaching for the kettle so that her hard-working eldest daughter could have a welcome cup of tea. ‘You sit yourself down, love. Let me fetch you something to eat, you look as if you need feeding up.’ She regarded Rita critically, aware of how much weight she’d lost over the past few months. ‘You’ll be wasting away to nothing and we can’t have that.’
Wearily, Rita sank into a chair. She hadn’t got the energy to argue. She’d been run off her feet at the hospital yet again, even though there had been no major bombing incidents for weeks. That meant more patients were being transferred to them to recuperate, at the same time as emergency nurses were being sent to areas where they were most needed, leaving her ward short of staff. She knew in many ways it was sensible, and yet for her it made a difficult task nearly impossible.
Georgie ran towards her. ‘Reet!’ he shouted joyfully, and Rita bent over to pick him up. She kept to herself how much she missed the only other person to call her by that name. He hadn’t had any leave all summer, and from his letters she couldn’t work out where he was – which was only right, but it meant she worried at any news of convoys being struck, fearing that Jack might be among the injured. She buried her face in her nephew’s hair to hide her fears, and the action reminded her – as it always did – of how much she missed her own children.
‘Look what Auntie Violet has brought us,’ said Dolly, showing the little boy the tomato. ‘Shall I make you a sandwich?’ Georgie jumped off Rita’s lap and held on to his grandmother’s skirt, looking up at her with devotion. ‘Mmmmmm,’ he said.
Dolly turned to find the breadboard. ‘We could do with more butter,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any trips planned to the farm, Rita? Pop can take you next time if you like.’
Rita shrugged. ‘I’m not sure when I can go next. They’ll welcome us at any time so that’s not a problem, but we can’t spare anyone from the ward at the moment. I’d love nothing more but I’ll have to see.’ She picked at the frayed edge of her cardigan. ‘This is coming undone again. It seems like no time at all since I last sewed it up.’
Dolly considered the colour. ‘I’ve probably got something like that in my make-do-and-mend basket. Let me finish doing this for Georgie and I’ll fetch it.’
Rita sat back and for a moment closed her eyes, letting the comfort of being in her mother’s kitchen wash over her. How tempting it was just to stay here. Then another voice shook her out of her reverie. Nancy swung into the room, calling out to Georgie. ‘Oooh, what have you got there? Did Grannie make it for you? Why don’t you let Mummy have a bite?’
Typical, thought Rita, without rancour. Taking food from her own child’s mouth. That was enough to beat the band, but Nancy could get away with anything.
Dolly didn’t rise to it. ‘Sit down, Nancy, and leave the poor boy be. I’ll make you one of your own. There’s plenty of tomatoes to go round. Salt and pepper?’
Nancy nodded eagerly, her beautifully styled rolls of hair bobbing. ‘I missed lunch, I’d love one. Here, Georgie, have it back and finish it up like a good boy.’
‘Missed lunch?’ asked Violet. ‘Were you busy?’
‘I was! You’ll never guess,’ said Nancy. ‘I’m going to help with the WVS. They’ve got a canteen in the city centre doing refreshments for visiting servicemen. They need all the help they can get, you know, posted in a strange town and sometimes in a strange country. I’m going to be really doing my bit from now on, so you can’t tell me I’m not contributing any more.’ She gave Rita a glare before taking a huge bite of her sandwich.
‘Well, now, that is a surprise,’ said Dolly, who’d spent the past two years or thereabouts trying to get Nancy to join the local branch of which she herself was such a mainstay. ‘Are you sure you have to go all that way, pet? You could come along with me and then you wouldn’t be away from Georgie so much.’
Nancy nodded vigorously. ‘I appreciate your concern, Mam, but they said they were really short-handed and so I don’t mind making the sacrifice, I really don’t.’
Rita bit her lip. Trust Nancy to get the position where she’d be in the prime place to be chatted up by all the troops, and also right near the shops that remained open. She could spot her sister’s ulterior motives a mile off, though her mother often seemed to have a blind spot where Nancy was concerned.
‘That’s very good of you, Nancy,’ said Violet, knowing full well that it would be her and Dolly who’d be looking after Georgie in his mother’s place. But she didn’t mind in the slightest. It would be good practice for when she and Eddy had their own children – whenever that might be. He hadn’t been home for months, and often she went without a letter for weeks at a time – and then several would arrive at once. She knew she mustn’t grumble; there were so many worse off than herself.
Rita got to her feet, unable to put up with Nancy’s brazen behaviour a moment longer. ‘I’d better be off. Thanks for the tea, Mam.’
‘You know you don’t have to thank me,’ said Dolly, impulsively giving her eldest girl a hug. ‘You’re all skin and bones, Rita, my goodness me, whatever are you eating? Not enough to feed a bird. You want to take care of yourself, we don’t want Michael and Megan to have a skeleton for a mother.’
Rita tried to raise a smile. She was too tired to eat half of the time, even if she could grab a moment for a proper meal.
‘Wait, let me give you those tomatoes,’ said Violet, hurrying to separate some of them into a tin. ‘You take these. Shall I bring some more over tomorrow when I come to work?’
‘Only if you can spare them,’ said Rita. ‘I’d love to have them, they’re very popular.’ She took the tin and left, grimly thinking that there was less and less to sell in the shop, popular or not.
Ruby was waiting for her when she went through the door to the shop, which had been closed since teatime. This wasn’t unusual these days, but Rita was brought up short by the sight of all the account books spread over the counter. She set down the tin and stared at them.
‘What are you doing, Ruby?’ She couldn’t believe that the young woman would be able to make any sense of them. They were complicated, with figures all over the place; she’d struggled to understand the system herself when she’d first encountered it.
Ruby looked up, her expression solemn. ‘There you are, Rita.’ She paused, as if summoning her nerve to continue. ‘Rita – the shop isn’t making enough money, is it?’
Rita gasped in surprise. ‘Whatever makes you say that, Ruby? We’re fine, we’re absolutely fine,’ she hurried to reassure her.
Ruby shook her head. ‘We aren’t, Rita. Look at these sums. We’re losing money and it’s all draining away. You should have said something before.’
Rita stared at her in amazement. ‘But how can you tell, Ruby? Those sums are very difficult. I’ve been doing them for ages now and I still get confused. You shouldn’t worry, you’ve probably not understood, but I can’t say I blame you.’ She couldn’t bear to think that Ruby was worried. The young woman needed protecting from a world that had treated her cruelly and in which she struggled to cope – the last thing she needed was to face the reality of the business’s finances.
Ruby stood her ground. ‘You don’t have to pretend to me, Rita. I don’t want you to pretend any more. It’s making you worried, isn’t it? But I can help.’
‘Ruby, Ruby.’ Rita felt despair wash over her. It was so kind of the girl to offer, but she could have no idea of the complexities of running the place. It would be far, far beyond her limited understanding of how the world worked. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. It’s generous of you to say it. But really, don’t worry.’
Ruby came around the counter and put her hand on Rita’s arm. Her large pale eyes were steady and determined. ‘I told you ages ago, Rita. I can see patterns. It’s not a lie.’
‘No, no, I never thought you were a liar,’ Rita said hastily. ‘That’s not what I meant. But this isn’t like playing snap or something like that.’
‘It’s patterns in numbers,’ Ruby insisted. ‘I can see them, I don’t know how. I can see them in these books. I can help. You must trust me, Rita. Don’t you trust me?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘See here,’ said Ruby. ‘This is where you have paid extra all summer, isn’t it? You pay a bit more money to this person, and they are meant to put it towards the big sum you owe.’
Rita stared in astonishment. It was the only way she’d been able to keep supplies coming in, even though it was chipping away at what slender reserves she had. She’d had to include those figures in the overall totals, but how anyone other than herself could have noticed it was beyond her. ‘Well done,’ she breathed. ‘Yes, that is what those numbers mean.’
Ruby looked at her sadly. ‘But here is what you still owe,’ she said. ‘It isn’t changing like it should. If you meant to make the big sum smaller, it isn’t working.’
Rita stared even harder. That was a fact she hadn’t wanted to face. It had been eating away at her, but as she hadn’t known what else to do, she was carrying on as if all was going to plan. How come Ruby had spotted it?
‘What do you suggest, then?’ she asked, scarcely able to believe she was saying this to Ruby of all people. Jack, yes – he was clever with numbers. Or Danny; everyone knew that he’d got his new job because he was smarter than anyone realised. But she had far too much pride to ask them, even if Jack were here or Danny had the time. She would be too ashamed to admit she had failed to keep the shop in profit.
‘I think I should take these books and read them very carefully,’ said Ruby slowly. ‘I don’t want to talk to the people you owe, I don’t think that would do any good. But if I check all the sums, then I could tell you what you could manage to pay to make a proper difference. I could do that. That might help, mightn’t it?’
Rita gazed at the young woman almost as if she were a stranger. This unexpected new turn of events was unlike anything she could have predicted. Ruby certainly didn’t talk like an accountant, and her huge eyes made her look like a child as usual; but she might be on to something. Rita felt a little flutter of something she hadn’t known for a long time: hope. Well, why not give Ruby a chance? It couldn’t do any harm, and it might just help them all turn the corner.
‘Ruby, thank you,’ she said, giving the strange young woman a hug. ‘Thank you. I would love it if you could help.’