Blurred faces began to appear, as if someone was slowly turning a dial that controlled the brightness of the room. Haunting faces, staring back at her from the wooden benches that edged the inside. There was a low murmur of conversation, punctuated by the guttural grunt of a group of old men asleep on mattresses raised up on wood in the middle of the floor.
‘Come on,’ Elsie whispered, taking a long route around the obstacles on the floor to the other side, where she had spotted a space to sit beside an old lady, who was gaping out from beneath a thick woollen blanket. Elsie sat the girl on her lap, noticing that she was shivering from the fear and squeezed her tightly.
Her eyes adjusted and she took stock of the place. The four walls, damp with green slime, contained around thirty people blighted by misery. She suddenly leaned forward sharply, touching her back, damp from the moisture streaming down the walls behind her.
‘You get used to it,’ the old lady beside her muttered. ‘She’s a pretty one, your girl,’ the old lady said to Elsie. ‘You look alike.’
Elsie smiled and stroked Barbara’s bright blonde hair. ‘Thank you.’
She closed her eyes and gently rocked the girl back and forth, trying to push back against the torrent of memories that were threatening to invade her mind. But as hard as she tried to think of something else, the dank, fusty air unified with the gloominess and the howling siren, altogether conniving to put her back into the shelter at Hawkinge aerodrome on the 15th August 1940.
But she refused it. Fought it.
‘Are you okay?’ Elsie asked Barbara, by way of distraction.
The girl nodded. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Soon,’ Elsie promised. ‘Soon.’
Then the all-clear sounded, followed moments later by a bright—terribly bright—torch light illuminating the shelter. ‘You can go, if you want,’ the voice behind the torch barked. It was the ARP warden. ‘It’s the all-clear—looks like you were right, madam,’ he said, flashing the torch into Elsie’s face. ‘No sign of enemy aircraft.’
There was a cacophony of cheery, grateful chatter as people rose from the benches and began to follow the path of light across the shelter towards the entrance.
‘Don’t worry about them,’ the warden called, ‘just step over them—they’re homeless…well, this is their home.’
Elsie placed one hand over her eyes and the other over the girl’s eyes as they stepped out into the assaulting brilliance of the day. ‘Thank you,’ she said to the warden, beginning to trek back up the hill towards the house.
She walked in a ghost-like trance, struggling to hear the little girl; memories of that day in August 1940 continuing to attack her heart and mind.
She saw the black Ford outside the house and heard the girl’s comment about it as they walked up the garden path. The front door was already open and Mrs Binney was there. She said something, calling the girl to her and directing Elsie into the parlour.
Two men in long black coats and bowler hats stepped forward.
‘Squadron Officer Finch,’ one of the men said, ‘I am charging you with desertion under the Defence Women’s Forces Regulations of 1941. Please come with us.’
She was back at the Air Ministry building in London. Back inside the very same room in which she had been enrolled in the WAAF four years earlier.
Opposite her were three women. Two whom she didn’t recognise. The third was Jean Conan Doyle, who refused to meet her gaze.
Elsie stared at the floor.
The woman in the centre spoke first. ‘Squadron Officer Finch, we will keep this brief. You have been put up on a charge of desertion. Do you have anything to say for yourself?’
Elsie shook her head. ‘No, ma’am.’
Jean Conan Doyle cleared her throat. ‘Elsie, it might help if you tell us where you’ve been—what happened to you,’ she said softly.
It was pointless. Being absent without leave for eleven months wasn’t likely to get reprimanded with the usual punishments of extra duties or confinement to barracks. She looked at Jean. ‘Is there anything that I can say which would allow me back into the WAAF?’
The answer—immediate—was unanimous: all three women shook their heads, the officer on the left confirming by saying a clear, ‘No.’
‘Then I have nothing to say,’ Elsie stated matter-of-factly.
The lady in the centre shifted in her chair and glanced to each of the women beside her. ‘I’m afraid we have no choice but to serve a four-week prison sentence on you and summarily dismiss you from the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.’
‘You have also lost your right to use the rank of Squadron Officer from hereon in,’ the officer on the left added.
Elsie nodded, accepting her fate.
It was over. She was broken. She had lost everything.
She stared at the floor, wondering how and when it had all gone so utterly wrong.
Chapter Thirty-Two
15th August 1940, Hawkinge, Kent
‘Everything okay?’ a voice suddenly called from outside.
Elsie squirmed in silence, prising at the fingers that were braced around her mouth.
‘Yes, all good,’ William answered calmly.
‘Who are you?’
‘Pilot Officer William Smith,’ he stated.
‘Just you in there?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And the bicycle?’
‘I borrowed it,’ William replied, without hesitation.
Elsie cried out, but the words were trapped behind his fingers. The man—whoever he was—began to walk away, taking with him any hope of her being rescued.
She forced her mouth open fractionally, just enough to bite down on his middle finger. As she sank her teeth in as deeply as she could, he quickly withdrew his hand. She just managed a muffled shout. ‘Help! Help me!’
Quickened footsteps rushed inside the shelter. Then, confusion in the dark. She was pulled off William—or maybe pushed, she wasn’t sure. She fell to the ground. Beside her,
