As the women welders were making their way to the ferry landing, happily bobbing around Gloria, excitedly fussing over her baby girl, DS Miller was hurrying down the embankment to Thompson’s.
His eyes were frantically inspecting the area for any bomb damage and searching all the faces coming in and out of the yard’s main entrance.
When he spotted the women he stopped abruptly. And when he made out the side profile of Rosie, his whole body sagged with sheer relief.
‘Thank God,’ he muttered. Rosie was alive and unharmed after the town’s unexpected midday air raid. That was all he needed to know.
As he watched the women from a distance, he automatically took off his trilby hat. Gloria had had her baby. And, judging by the almost ethereal aura coming from the little group of women, all was well with both mother and child.
DS Miller felt that there was a part of him that knew Gloria, as if he shared a peculiar kind of closeness to her, even though they had never met.
As he watched the women board the ferry, he saw Rosie take the tiny baby from Gloria’s tired arms and cradle it in her own, carrying it carefully on to the steamer for the new-born’s first trip across the Wear; a maiden journey celebrated by a fanfare of squawking seagulls circling excitedly overhead.
The rest of the women helped an exhausted-looking Gloria, who was wearing a brand new pair of overalls pilfered by Angie from the yard’s storeroom, on to the boat that was now churning water ready to head back over to the south dock.
There was something about the vision of Rosie, though, as she rocked the baby gently in her arms, that deeply affected him. He didn’t know if it made him feel incredibly sad, or incredibly happy.
What he did know was that he wasn’t going to give up on this woman. There was something special about her, and he was not prepared to simply walk away.
What they clearly felt for one another was just too precious. He knew he couldn’t let that go, or relinquish all hope of them being together.
For whatever reason, Rosie had given up on him, and he wondered if she had also given up on love. But whether or not that was true, he wasn’t about to follow suit. It might take time, but he was a patient man. He could wait. There was no other woman for him.
‘I don’t want you to slip through my fingers – nor am I going to let you,’ DS Miller said aloud.
Rosie had caused him no end of sleepless nights – from first meeting her after her uncle had been pulled from this very river, she had both intrigued him and mystified him. He felt instinctively that she cared for him, and was also attracted to him. There was most certainly a chemistry there, whether she would admit it to herself or not.
His guess was that there was something stopping her from allowing herself to be with him – and preventing her from experiencing love. But exactly what that was, he just didn’t know– not yet, anyway. But he would find out. No matter how long it took him. He was determined.
He was a detective, after all.
As the ferry dragged itself across the breadth of the river, DS Miller watched as the woman he had fallen in love with disappeared from view and all he could see was a thick trail of white foaming surf.
As Polly stood leaning against the side of the ferry’s iron railings, she looked at Rosie cooing down at the baby she was gentling swaying in her arms, and at the rest of her workmates, who all looked exhausted but also incredibly happy, and she realised just how much these women meant to her.
If it hadn’t been for their support after Teddy had died, and their quiet understanding and words of comfort, she would have struggled to keep her head above water. Gloria might feel as if they had saved her, just as Rosie felt her women welders had rescued her from the murderous hands of her uncle, but they had all saved each other, just in different ways. Martha had come out of her shell and was no longer cut off in her own private world. Hannah had made a new home for herself and was now doing a job she liked and was good at, and which had finally given her a sense that she was being of some use to the war effort. And Dorothy had got what she had always craved – a strange kind of surrogate family; it was something she felt was also the case for Angie.
They were all true friends, who could rely on each other, and help each other out – and would always be there for each other in times of need.
As the ferry gently bobbed on the water, now a little choppy as there was a slight wind coming across from the North Sea, Polly watched Stan the boatswain go and take a peek at the baby. He made a funny face, and she could see the tiniest of hands reach up to touch his weather-beaten face.
She recalled her thoughts earlier on in the year, not long after they’d received notification of Teddy’s death, and how down she had felt, and how hopeless life had seemed; how she’d felt her brother’s death had somehow signified the inability of the Allies to overcome Hitler and his evil.
She did not know whether it was because she had just witnessed new life coming into the world, but now she really had the feeling they could win this war. That they had right on their side. Light could overcome darkness. And that, more than anything, there was hope.
Death, she mused, might feel like the end, but in a strange way it also heralded a new – and often different – life.
She thought about the little baby they had just brought into the world and how it had taken its first breath at the exact same time that others, just half a mile away – fatalities in this most recent air-raid attack – had breathed their last.
Polly’s mind wandered to Bel, and how the death of her husband had thrown her into a terrible state of anger and despair, but she had managed to free herself from that dungeon of deep depression, and forced herself to start living again. Albeit a different life. And one without Teddy.
She just hoped that her sister-in-law could see that not only could she live after Teddy had died, but that she could also love again.
Polly wondered how long it would take her sister-in-law to realise she had feelings for Joe. Polly had seen how Joe’s love for Bel had slowly patched up her broken heart, but would Bel admit to herself the love she felt in return? And, if she did, would she allow herself to love again?
Polly hoped so.
As she looked across to Thompson’s yard, sitting proudly on North Sands, she spotted the magnificent steel ship whose keel they had watched being laid at the ceremony at the start of the year.
It was now sitting, looking almost majestic, as it waited in the fitting-out quay ready to be launched and to start its new life out at sea.