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Alex screwed her nose up slightly, thinking on this. ‘I do find myself laughing a lot with him and I would hate it if suddenly he were not there. Does that count?’
‘Of course. Does he make you feel like it’s hard to breathe?’
‘No.’ She laughed. ‘But whenever I do see him or especially when I’m with him, I feel immediately happier for it.’ Alex shook her head. ‘It might be the opposite for me; I think I’ve been moving through my days like you describe, Nel. Everyone else is in one world and I’ve been in another. Except Matthew’s focused me again and I feel myself returning.’ It was her turn to lift a shoulder. ‘Well, it’s like I belong once more and my life is jubilant for him being in it.’ She could see Nel didn’t understand a bit. ‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is perhaps my heartbeat does feel wonky, as you say.’
They both giggled. Peggy arrived.
‘Well, I’m glad to see the laughter isn’t stopping your progress, Nel,’ she remarked.
‘It’s my fault,’ Alex admitted, aware that the supervisor preferred not to single out their esteemed volunteer.
‘How are you finding this repetitive work, Miss Frobisher?’
‘I’m enjoying myself enormously.’
The older woman blinked and Alex read this to be confusion. ‘It’s our pleasure to have you here. Thank you for helping.’
‘No, thank you for having me. Oh, here comes a new batch,’ she said, noticing two women arriving with trayloads of tins for stuffing.
‘I won’t keep you,’ Peggy said and moved away.
Alex caught Nel’s attention and mouthed Sorry.
Nel grinned, nodding towards the fresh tower of tins being placed before them, and Alex fell silent and into her thoughts again. She pondered Nel’s description of love and wondered if one day she would experience that sense of dislocation from everyone else, cleaving to Matthew, with her mind dominated only by thoughts of him and the tilt of his head, the ease of his smile, the slope of his shoulders. No, she couldn’t imagine it. Wasn’t she supposed to feel all that at the outset, or could it creep up, developing as love grew? She shook herself clear of these questions. She certainly liked the idea of being his wife and the honesty of their relationship. It would do.
The morning break came and went and it was just before lunchtime as the clock drew two minutes to noon when Nel whispered that they’d be making way for the next shift. ‘I’ll take these over to the next station,’ she said, heaping her last tin onto the top of a tray, which she lifted onto a second tray.
‘Nearly done,’ Alex promised, reaching for the final tin she would pack for today. She glanced up towards the clock.
‘One more minute, ladies,’ Peggy called out.
Alex would never know why that warning felt so prophetic, or even why it might have prompted her odd move. In that moment she acted entirely on impulse, with no idea from where it stemmed; later she would smile to herself and wonder at the curious decision, shaking her head with private embarrassment that she was surely in a whimsical frame of mind, profoundly affected by her fondness for Matthew. Whatever it was, at one minute to noon on her first day at the factory, her only day in the packing role, and in her opinion her first day back into a happier existence, she reached for one of the stray pencils and a small oblong of torn-off paper that had been used as a separator for the company notelets. Looking over her shoulder, she checked no one was close, especially Peggy; it would be her only chance and, hardly daring to believe she was doing it, she scrawled a quick message.
Come home safely. With love . . .
Alex blinked. She couldn’t use her real name but she didn’t want to lie either. In this moment, suddenly feeling both romantic and romanced in her life, she wanted to share it. She wanted the fellow in the trench who opened this tin to know that someone – a stranger – was thinking of him and caring about his survival and his life . . . and to feel loved, even by someone he didn’t know. She wanted to be true to him and so in a moment of recklessness she added the fond childhood name her brother had called her. Kitty.
She folded over the paper and slipped the handwritten note beneath the firm’s printed piece. She’d toyed momentarily with slipping it between the postcards in the cunning ‘fake bottom’ that had been fashioned in the tin but the twins were checking all those elements carefully and she could be found out, whereas she’d heard they wouldn’t need to check where the chocolate was kept. Without thinking it through further, she snapped the lid closed as Nel arrived behind her. There would be no reason to open that lid again, she was sure. She held her breath, hoping she had not misjudged; her daring to flout the rules would cause a horrible stink, she was sure, if discovered.
‘Here, I’ll take those, Miss. You’ve worked very hard today.’
Alex watched the tin join the horde of others and cross the room on a tray to be lost among a host of identical tins. She followed them being unloaded and could no longer pick out her special tin. That was how it should be.
A random note, at a random time, into a pair of hands of a random soldier. She grinned, feeling as though fate was guiding her life right now. She would become Alex Britten-Jones while a soldier in a trench would scratch his head over a note from someone called Kitty and she hoped he would smile and feel the affection and sense of romance she was feeling at this moment. She stood and stretched.
‘Thank you, ladies, for a solid effort.’
A chorus of farewells followed and, sighing happily, Alex began untying her apron.
‘Follow me, Miss,’ Nel offered. ‘I can walk you to the gate if you’d like? Are you going over to the dining hall?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I hadn’t planned. I’m meeting someone, actually,’ she admitted. ‘Maybe tomorrow? But definitely let’s walk to the gate together, thank you.’
The whistle blew shrilly and Peggy called the morning shift to an end. ‘Enjoy your luncheon, ladies.’
Peggy arrived once again as the two girls were saying their farewells to the others.
‘Thank you for your help today, Miss Frobisher. Tomorrow I gather you will be handling your new role?’
