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“Do you think there will be officers there?” asked Grace, who was walking with Nancy.

“I’m counting on it,” Lottie sang out as she looped her arm through Amelia’s and the pair of them fell back into line with the others.

“I’m hoping for one of those Americans Alexandra and Izzie spotted,” said Amelia with a laugh.

“Wouldn’t that be a treat?” said Molly dreamily.

Alexandra nudged Izzie. “Do you think we should demand a finder’s fee?”

Izzie smiled a little but didn’t say anything.

“You aren’t nervous about seeing the staff sergeant again, are you?” asked Alexandra in a low voice.

“I’m thinking about Sylvia’s letter.”

Her sister’s latest letter had been a strange blend of apology and explanation, and it had disturbed Izzie. The things her sister wrote about, she couldn’t remember. Not a bus ride to her grandparents’ house, not meeting them in the drawing room. And try as she might, she couldn’t recall Mum telling them about debt or that their life would be different from that day forward.

And yet, while once she might have dismissed the letter outright, there was something in Sylvia’s words that made her pause. A balance. An acknowledgment of the good of Mum that Izzie could always cite and the bad that she never would say out loud because it sounded too much like a betrayal.

But it was the lines at the end of the letter that had really taken Izzie’s breath away. The business might not survive the war if things didn’t change. It was, she realized now, what had caused the low, hollow dread in Izzie’s stomach for months before Mum’s death. It was all there, from the appointment book that looked more open than ever before to the orders for one dress and one skirt from customers who only two years before might have ordered two dresses, two skirts, two blouses, and a coat in one fell swoop.

But perhaps the most startling realization had been that what Sylvia wrote sounded plausible because she hadn’t pointed to any one disastrous decision. Mrs. Shelton’s was in a slow decline that you could almost miss if you weren’t looking.

“Izzie, can you stop worrying about the shop for a couple of hours and enjoy yourself at a dance?” asked Alexandra gently. “I promise there is nothing you can do from the Assembly Hall.”

“You’re right,” Izzie said.

“Besides,” said Alexandra, giving her a nudge, “what could be more fun than walking into a dance with a partner already singled out?”

“Alexandra…”

“Don’t Alexandra me. I saw how you looked at that American staff sergeant,” her friend teased.

“How did she look at him?” asked Grace.

“Like he was the sun and she was a sunflower,” said Alexandra.

Izzie laughed and gently whacked her friend on the arm. “Tosh.”

“True,” Alexandra pushed.

It was true that a certain tall, handsome American staff sergeant whom she’d stumbled into had flitted into her thoughts from time to time over the past four days. There was something about his easy, casual smile that made her want to turn to it, and it didn’t hurt that he had the full, rich voice of a film star. Not that she would ever give her balloon girls the satisfaction of knowing that. She would never hear the end of it.

“He probably won’t even be here this evening,” she said.

“I hope he is and that he has six good-looking friends with him,” said Lottie with relish.

“That’s the spirit,” said Alexandra as the Assembly Hall came into view. The white-painted front glowed in the moonlight, and even from a distance Izzie could make out a steady stream of patrons moving between the dance hall and the pub next door to it. Although the windows and doors were covered in accordance with the blackout rules that were especially crucial in an area that was such a target for air raids, music pulsed from the building, beckoning them closer.

After the balloon girls had all piled through the front door, past the blackout curtain, and paid their admission, they walked into the dance hall to a sea of couples swaying to “The Way You Look Tonight.”

“Look!” Lottie pointed to the small stage at the far end of the dance floor upon which stood a WAAF in uniform in front of a microphone. “They have a singer!”

“Where should we sit?” asked Nancy, looking around.

“Sit? We’re not going to sit tonight,” said Amelia.

“You’re going to be too busy dancing,” said Lottie with a laugh as she stuck her arm out into the crowd and stopped a man with a flying officer’s single stripe on his uniform.