The Light Over London(6)

“And to think they called this the Phony War. Well, it wasn’t so phony after Dunkirk.” Mrs. Moss crossed her arms over her purse and nodded to herself. “We had another letter from Gary. He mentioned you.”

“Did he?” she asked, keeping her eyes down as she folded the sugar into a brown paper package.

“He doesn’t know when his next leave will be. I told him he should’ve joined up with the navy, but the army was all he wanted.

“Have you been doing the accounts for the shop for long then?” Mrs. Moss asked, taking one of her abrupt changes of conversational tack.

Louise looked up and saw the lady eyeing the abandoned account book. “Yes, when Mrs. Bakeford hired me, I mentioned I was good at maths in school. She’s had me look over the books every week.”

Mrs. Moss nodded approvingly. “That’ll do well for you when you’re married. Household accounts are at the heart of good housekeeping, I always say.”

Louise winced and prayed the lady wouldn’t begin her unsubtle campaign of nudging and prodding Louise about Gary. Neighbors separated by just a few streets, the two had grown up playing together, and while he was a kind man, he was also Gary. He had no greater ambition than to return from the war, read law, and go to work for his father just as he’d been told to do since birth. Gary would live in Haybourne for the rest of his life, a dull, predictable man well suited for a dull, predictable village. It was not the life Louise longed for—not that she knew exactly what it was she wanted.

Hoping to rush Mrs. Moss and her implications out of the shop as quickly as possible, she began to count out the bacon coupons. The first two ration books were fine, but when she flipped to the page where the bacon coupons should have been in the third, there were none.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Moss, but how much bacon did you want?”

Mrs. Moss toyed with a bit of string hanging off the cuff of her blouse that peeked out from under her coat. “A pound, please.”

“Mrs. Moss,” Louise said slowly, “I’m afraid you don’t have the right number of coupons. I can only give you half a pound with these.”

Something flickered in the lady’s eyes as she looked down at the coupons, but just as quickly Mrs. Moss flashed a brilliant smile that showed off the cracks around her mouth where her lipstick had settled. “You can overlook things this one time.”

Louise closed the ration books and slid them back toward Mrs. Moss. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The bite in Mrs. Moss’s voice straightened Louise’s spine even as she pressed her hands flat on the counter to keep them from shaking. “Mrs. Bakeford is very strict because the fines are so high.”

“Louise Keene, your mother—”

The door crashed open and a figure wrapped in a bright yellow rain slicker and a matching bucket hat stomped in. “Lovely day for a stroll, darling!”

Kate. Louise could’ve run up and kissed her cousin, wet clothes and all.

“Oh!” Kate started when she whipped off her hat. “I didn’t realize you had a customer. How do you do, Mrs. Moss?”

“Very well.” Mrs. Moss sniffed. “My sugar, please, Louise.”

“Would you like the half pound of bacon as well?” Louise asked.

“Just the sugar.”

Biting her lip, she wrapped the sugar in a second sheet of waxed paper to help protect it from the rain and handed it over. Mrs. Moss slipped it into her shopping bag, half opened her umbrella, and threw the door open to the storm.

A gust of wind swept in and banged the door hard enough that the shopwindow rattled. Kate sprinted over and slammed it shut. Pushing her hair back from her face, she laughed. “What was it that put that sour look on Mrs. Moss’s face?”

“Kate . . .” Louise knew the censure in her voice would fall flat. It always did when it came to her cousin. Vivacious, bubbly, and just a touch glamorous, Kate was impossible to be angry with. For as long as Louise could remember, Kate had had a circle of friends orbiting her. In the spring of 1937, when both of them turned sixteen and Kate had transformed from pretty to beautiful, the ranks of her little group had opened to include most of the boys in Haybourne and some from the neighboring village of St. Mawgan.

“If Mrs. Moss doesn’t want anyone to gossip about her, she shouldn’t be such a busybody.” Kate pointed at Louise. “And I won’t hear a word of you defending her.”

Louise pursed her lips and gave her cousin a small smile.

“Good. Now then,” Kate said, spreading her hands wide on the shop counter, “what are you doing Friday evening?”

Louise blinked a couple of times at the improbable question. “What I do every Friday—closing the shop down.”

Kate sighed. “And after Bakeford’s closes at five?”

“The accounts.”

Kate flipped the account book around to face her and skimmed her finger down a column of numbers. “Looks as though you’re a bit ahead of yourself this week.”

“You’re going to get it wet.” Louise snatched the book out from under her cousin’s fingers, snapped it closed, and shoved it under the counter.

“Come now, darling,” said Kate.

“Do stop calling everyone ‘darling,’ Kate. You sound ridiculous.”