Home Front Girls by Rosie Goodwin Page B

few bits they’ll go off before I can eat them. I thought you might be able to make use of them. You’d be doing me a favour and if you can’t I shall have to throw them away.’
    ‘Then in that case I’d be glad to take ’em off yer hands.’ The woman flushed. She guessed that Dotty had bought them especially for her and thought what a lovely young lass she was. It was a shame that she didn’t seem to have any friends though. She had never once seen anyone visit her since the day she had moved in, apart from a woman who Dotty had told her used to look after her in the orphanage, and she tended to keep herself very much to herself. But then she was a quiet sort of girl and happen she wasn’t one for gallivanting about like most girls her age did.
    ‘Thank you very much,’ she said as she took the brown paper bag from Dotty’s gloved hand. ‘Would yer like to come in fer a warm an’ a cuppa?’
    ‘I won’t, if you don’t mind. I’m just longing to put my feet up, but thanks for asking,’ Dotty replied as she headed for the last set of stairs.
    Once in the privacy of her own little flat she hurried to light the gas-fire and put the kettle on to boil. She had quite enjoyed the day and having someone to talk to for a change during the breaks and the lunch-hour. She grinned as she thought of Annabelle and Lucy. They were as different as chalk from cheese but she liked them both, especially Lucy, with whom she somehow felt an affinity. Admittedly, Lucy had a family, or at least a brother and sister, but there was something sad about her eyes that made Dotty feel that Lucy was no stranger to heartache. She could remember as a child how she would try to imagine what her own family was like, and her young imagination had run riot. Perhaps she was the daughter of a princess who had been stolen away by a jealous godmother? And maybe one day, her mother and the prince, her father, would come and find her. Soon after that she had started to write, and invariably her stories were of abandoned children who eventually made good. Sometimes the stories had been so touching and heartfelt that they had moved Miss Timms to tears when Dotty showed them to her, and from then on the kindly woman had encouraged her to write at every opportunity.
    Dotty had never given up hope that one day her natural mother would come back to claim her and she would be whisked away to a life of happiness, but as the years had passed and Dotty saw other children at the orphanage being chosen for adoption by loving families, her dreams had dimmed to a dull flicker of hope. She could well understand why the other children had been chosen over her. Most of them were pretty and cute, something that Dotty could never claim to have been. Once Miss Timms had found her crying about it and she had wrapped her in her arms and assured her that it was always the ugly ducklings that turned into swans and that Dotty was beautiful inside. But that had been a poor consolation. One day in her early teens, Dotty had spent her meagre savings on face cream, powder and rouge and plastered it on in front of the little mirror in her dormitory, but all it had done was make her resemble a clown, so after that she gave up and accepted herself for what she was. Her thoughts moved on to Annabelle, who was everything that Dotty longed to be – pretty and confident. A little full of herself admittedly, and undeniably spoiled – but then who could blame anyone for spoiling Annabelle?
    Sighing, she lifted her writing pad and soon all the sad thoughts disappeared as she became lost in the story she was writing.

Chapter Six
     
    ‘Good morning,’ Dotty said the next morning as she made a beeline for Lucy who was hanging her coat up in the staff cloakroom. ‘Is Annabelle not here yet?’
    ‘Well, if she is I haven’t seen her.’ Lucy glanced around before grinning. ‘And between you and me I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t come back. I don’t think she much enjoyed