Wartime Sweethearts by Lizzie Lane

bit of experience, I won’t be taken in so easily the next time I get involved with a bloke. So? What’s it to be?’
    ‘I’ll have to think about it.’
    ‘Please,’ Ruby implored.
    Silently Mary shook her head and backed away, suddenly desperate to breathe the fresh air outside the bakery, to see a patch of sky as she thought things through. ‘I don’t know. Let me think about it.’
    Even after coming in from her short sojourn in the garden, she still hadn’t made her mind up. It was
her
apple loaf. Could she bear to let her sister take the glory – if it won, that is?
    She thought further about it as she took two mugs of tea to her father and her brother who were engaged in placing the second batch of bread into the oven. Her apple loaf was out cooling with the first batch of bread.
    ‘It’s a winner. I’m certain it is,’ said her father, his face red with the heat from the oven.
    ‘And our dad is always right,’ Charlie added cheerfully, his cheeks just as red as those of his father.
    Mary set down their tea on the table in front of them together with a plate of almond-and-coconut-flavoured biscuits. ‘Well, that’s three of you think so, but it’s the judges’ opinion that matters.’
    ‘Let’s hope they know something about bread,’ grunted Stan Sweet. ‘None of them women who know how to throw a pie or a Victoria sponge together know anything about bread. I hope they’ve got proper bakers doing the judging.’
    Stan Sweet was right to be concerned. In past years the baking had been restricted to fruit cakes, Victoria sponges and iced fancy cakes. Bakers were coming from miles around to enter their best and most imaginative breads. This year there were three classes in the bread alone: best batch-baked bread, best plaited and the third category was for a speciality loaf that is made from an unusual combination of ingredients.
    Mary felt her father’s eyes on her. ‘I hope you gets what you deserves, me girl,’ he said softly, wiping his floury hands in his apron and laying them on her shoulders. There was affection in his face, gentleness in the touch of his hands.
    ‘Dad,’ she said, shaking her head and smiling up at him. ‘What are you on about?’
    ‘About winning,’ added Charlie, leaning back as he opened the oven door to check the loaves.
    Stan Sweet frowned. He loved his children to the extent that he’d made sacrifices with his own life on their behalf. He’d never remarried after his wife died and said he never would.
    ‘I wish you well, love, but I can’t say I’m keen on you going down to Bristol, winning that, and running away to London. When you’ve tasted the big city, you might not want to come back.’
    Mary beamed her biggest smile at him. ‘Of course I will,’ she said. She loved the village, loved her family and could never envisage ever leaving, not forever anyway. ‘I love baking bread. I love cooking and I’ve never wanted to do anything else. Besides, I can’t possibly leave my old dad to himself can I?’
    She realised she was speaking the absolute truth. Being away from the bakery for any length of time made her feel anxious.
    Stan gave a big boisterous laugh that made his shoulders shake. As he did so he saw Mary’s resemblance to his wife. Both twins were very alike and very much like their mother.
    ‘That’s not the point,’ he said, the light of knowledge and ultimate abandonment alternating in his heart and in his eyes. ‘It’s not the city itself; it’s what you might find there. Your mother found me here, and even though she was brought up in Bristol, she left city life behind and came here to be with me. That’s what I’m thinking about you. You might find somebody that really bowls you over. When it comes to you like that, you’re left with no choice. That’s the way it is. Shame, because you’re a natural baker. Better even than your brother here and soon …’
    His brow became more creased with frown lines as he contemplated