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Despite all of the routine and the strict rules around when we are meant to do things, we do have some free time. We have a “make do and mend” period in the afternoons when we are meant to care for our uniforms and generally ensure that our bunks and hut are kept clean and tidy.

Now, I hope that you will agree I have written a great deal about my time here on base—enough even to satisfy your curiosity. Will you please do me the favor in return of telling me how things are faring at the shop? Which customers have been in recently, and what have they ordered? Have you managed to smooth things out with Miss Reid? I know she is a prickly character, but Mum always insisted that she has a heart of gold.

Please send me news. I’m desperate to know what is happening at the shop.

Sincerely,

Isabelle Shelton

Chapter Twelve

Sylvia stood in the shop’s inventory cupboard, clipboard in hand, surrounded by bolts of material. It was, she knew, a luxury to have so much fabric already on hand given the extreme restriction on rationing. However, thanks to Miss Reid’s explanation, she’d learned that all of this fabric posed two problems for Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions:

The Board of Trade’s restrictions precluded them from selling garments made of certain materials like silk, which was meant to be used for parachutes.

All of this beautiful fabric represented money that was sitting in the shop’s inventory that could have been used elsewhere.

Sylvia hadn’t intended to find herself anywhere near the inventory cupboard when she’d agreed to help Izzie mind the shop. It certainly hadn’t come up in her sister’s training. However, she’d spent most of Christmas all alone in her flat with only her thoughts and the wireless for company. Finally, on the twenty-seventh of December, as London began to emerge from its Boxing Day haze, she’d dressed and boarded a bus for Maida Vale. She’d unlocked the shop, closed the door behind her, and breathed deep, taking in the scent of wool and beeswax polish. Then she’d pushed off the door and returned to her mother’s office to continue tackling the monumental task of sorting out the mess of paperwork.

Almost without thinking, Sylvia had come back the next day, and then the next. When Miss Reid had returned to work after the New Year, the seamstress had raised a brow at the sight of Sylvia using the wide cutting table to sort out receipts and invoices from years past. Sylvia had waited for the inevitable comments and criticisms to start, but instead Miss Reid had gone to her machine and begun working on seaming a gray wool dress.

Two days later, Sylvia had found a post office savings book stuffed in the back of her mother’s lower desk drawer and, after opening it and seeing the balance of just over £462, a sense of dread had washed over her. Years ago, when she’d taken over doing the books at Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, Sylvia had insisted that her mother stop mingling her business and personal accounts.

“You might think it’s easier now, Mum, but just wait until the taxman comes asking to look at the shop’s books,” she’d argued.

Maggie Shelton had pulled a face, but Sylvia had finally convinced her to go to a bank and open an account just for the business. Then, each week, she’d walked her mother’s profits to the bank to make a deposit, earning her mother’s grudging thanks when it had come time to work out and pay the shop’s taxes that year.

She’d assumed that system must have remained in place, but when she saw such a high balance in the post office savings book, that old fear crept in again. Had Maggie been blending her accounts?

Sylvia continued to search, separating bills for the electricity and water from materials, empty envelopes with totals written on the front of them that she feared had once held notes and coins from scraps of old women’s magazines she suspected had been kept for inspiration. A few loose sketches went with a clothbound sketchbook that had been stuffed into a bookshelf.

It was while organizing invoices by year that she quickly realized she had no idea how her mother or Izzie had kept track of what fabric they had in-house and how much had been used on various orders. The shop, she was learning, was like a jumper: pull one loose bit of yarn and the whole thing could unravel.

She checked a tag on a bolt of burgundy bouclé wool and noted down the starting and remaining yardage of the material. She remembered standing on a stool at about twelve years old, reading off the markings to her mother as they performed this task. She’d been desperate then to do anything to please her mother.

“Mrs. Pearsall?” came Miss Reid’s voice from outside the closet.

“Yes?” she called back.

Miss Reid stuck her head around the door. “Are you still taking inventory?”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t know the last time it was done.”

Miss Reid looked around her at the disordered cupboard. “Mrs. Shelton used to insist on it being done each month.”

“And how long ago did she stop?” she asked.

Miss Reid pursed her lips. No doubt unwilling to criticize the good mother in front of the bad daughter, the seamstress said, “You asked me to let you know if Miss Keynes telephones.”

“I did,” she said.

“Well, she’s standing in the front now, wanting to pick up her order.”

“I see.” Sylvia set her clipboard down. “Thank you, Miss Reid. I’ll take it from here.”

“May I ask what exactly you are planning on doing?” Miss Reid asked.

“I’m going to have a discussion with Miss Keynes about her outstanding bill.”