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“Is it sentimental to want to spend time with one’s husband?” she asked.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“I’m not sure I do.”

He sighed, and disappointment crashed down on her. No matter what he’d done, he was still her husband, still the man she had fallen in love with and given up so much for. He might have drifted from her, but this was his home. He should want to be here. With her.

“I could ring Claire and a few other friends and see if they would like to join us at the club tomorrow,” she offered, fighting to keep the naked hope from her voice. “I’m afraid Rupert’s still in Scotland, but it would still be jolly.”

He tapped the folded newspaper against his palm once, twice, three times. She thought for a moment she had convinced him, but then he shook his head.

“I must change into my dress uniform,” he said.

Then he walked out of the room, leaving Sylvia staring at the empty doorway.

Chapter Nine

Izzie awoke on Wednesday morning with a start. It took her a moment to realize that it hadn’t been the harsh ringing of her alarm clock that had woken her but rather a vehicle in the road.

“The newspaper,” she muttered, falling back onto her pillow.

She considered for a moment pulling the covers over her head and retreating to the land of nod, but she knew it was unlikely she’d get any more sleep. Already she was thinking about the day ahead. Two women were coming into the shop for fittings and—with any luck—Mrs. Evesham would finally come by and pay her bill and collect her winter coat, as she’d been promising for the past week and a half.

With a groan, Izzie swung her legs out of bed and slid on her slippers and quilted navy dressing gown. It was cold in the flat even for the third of December, but she was loath to light the fire in her bedroom. A reliable source of coal was hard to come by, and she needed whatever she could find for the dressing room downstairs, because it wouldn’t do for customers to shiver.

She yawned as she shuffled to the door of the flat and let herself out onto the landing. Half awake, she tried to remember what was in the larder for breakfast.

At the bottom of the stairs, she walked past the door to the shop and to the flat’s front door. She opened it and stooped to pick up the morning’s edition of the Daily Telegraph. Dad had subscribed to the newspaper, and Mum had kept the subscription long after his death, although she’d rarely had time to read it. Izzie glanced at the headline as she often did, clucking her tongue as she read:

BRITISH REINFORCING LIBYAN ARMIES

NAZIS BREAK THROUGH TOBRUK CORRIDOR

It seemed that every bit of good news these days was accompanied by something negative.

She stepped back inside, but just as she was reaching to close the flat’s door, a headline on the far-right column of the front page stole her breath. Underneath an advertisement for Gordon’s gin, it read:

UNMARRIED WOMEN TO BE CONSCRIPTED

20 TO 30 AGE GROUP

“No,” she murmured as her eyes quickly scanned the text.

All unmarried women between 20 and 30 are to be conscripted. Married women will not be compelled to join the Services, though the power to direct them into industry will continue, the article read.

Izzie read it twice, desperate to find some loophole. There was the possibility of exemptions, the article said, but only in the case of extreme hardship, if a woman was caring for children or dependents, or in the case of conscientious objectors. Apparently there were special penalties for women who refused to comply with the new rules.

In the road behind her, someone honked their horn, reminding her she was standing in her dressing gown and slippers for all the world to see. With a shaking hand, she shut the door behind her and sagged against it.

“What am I going to do?”

She was twenty-eight years old, unmarried, and with no children or elderly relatives to care for. She was healthy and physically capable of serving in one of the military’s women’s auxiliary services or doing farm work for the Women’s Land Army. She would have to go.

Panic began to climb up her chest. What would happen to Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions if she was conscripted? Miss Reid had never expressed an ounce of interest in the business of the shop, refusing to see clients unless it was for a fitting. Maybe she could apply to a committee, arguing a hardship case because she was the sole proprietor of her family’s shop.

Except she wasn’t.

Sylvia owned half of Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions.