Heartaches and Christmas Cakes: A wartime family saga perfect for cold winter nights by Amy Miller

Author:Amy Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786812353
Publisher: Bookouture

Chapter Sixteen

‘I will never again eat porridge for breakfast,’ RAF flying instructor George Meadows told Maggie, taking a bite out of his lardy cake. ‘Not now that I have discovered this bakery. My uniform is going to get tight around the middle if I’m not careful though, Maggie.’

He tugged at the waistband of his trousers, which fitted his slim and muscular torso perfectly, and winked at her. He was incredibly handsome; chiselled features, sparkly-eyed, kissable lips.

Maggie dissolved into fits of giggles, while the eyebrows of the older ladies in the queue moved skywards. Maggie didn’t care. She was sick to the back teeth of all the worrying around her and the drone of aircraft ahead, and entranced by the RAF airmen in their smart uniforms, some of whom were in barracks in Bournemouth in one of the many hotels requisitioned for army personnel. George Meadows was as medicinal as a strong cup of tea when he strode into the bakery. Just his gigantic smile and the fragrance of the lotion he wore made Maggie feel happy to be alive. All she heard at home from her grandmother, who she lived with in a tiny terraced cottage with her three other younger sisters, was complaints about being penniless, rationing and pessimism about the future. There was even a small bottle of poison waiting on the mantelpiece in readiness for her grandmother to swallow if there was a German invasion.

It wasn’t much better at work. Poor Audrey was struggling to stay positive about the wedding since Elsie’s dad had been taken to a prisoner-of-war camp and Elsie had been questioning whether she should get married at all. Though he was now ‘safely’ on the Isle of Man, there’d been sickening news about how a requisitioned cruise-liner, the Arandora Star, taking Italian and German internees to Canada, had been torpedoed by a German U-boat just after leaving the Liverpool docks. Eight hundred and five people had lost their lives. Elsie and her mother had taken this news very hard, understandably, but Maggie didn’t know how to ease their suffering.

She also knew the bakery secret, that Lily was in a fix, as she’d heard Charlie and Audrey arguing about it. That was juicy gossip, if she was the sort to gossip, but she wasn’t.

‘How would you like to step out with me some time?’ George asked her, in front of a shop full of gaping women. ‘We could go for a walk on the promenade, or go to a dance at the Pavilion?’

Maggie enjoyed theatrically winking at the customers. Being a shop girl was sometimes like being an actress.

‘I think we know what the answer will be,’ said Audrey, smiling up from the accounts book she was writing in.

‘I thought you’d never ask!’ said Maggie.

George laughed his rich, robust laugh and Maggie grinned. He was exactly the sort of chap she needed to be spending time with. Fun, loud and good-looking.

‘You could be my plus-one at a wedding I’m due to go to at the weekend,’ said Maggie.

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