‘Redcaps!’ Bobby hurried to the window as fast as her large frame and sore ankles would allow her.
Lilian was right. There were four military policemen on the doorstep, all wearing grim, set expressions. The sergeant at the front gave another urgent rap.
‘What do we do?’ Lilian whispered.
‘We have to open up, don’t we?’ Bobby whispered back. ‘Otherwise they might break the door down or something.’
‘What can they want with you and Charlie?’
‘I have a hunch,’ Bobby muttered darkly. ‘Just follow my lead, all right?’
Hastily she chucked Jake’s bedding roll and kitbag into the bedroom, then went to answer the door.
Bobby tried to make sure she looked good and pregnant before opening up. The fact there were only two women here, one of them in the most vulnerable of conditions, meant the men would be less likely to force entry.
‘About time,’ the sergeant at the door said gruffly. But his scowl lifted when he saw who had opened it. ‘Oh. Sorry, Miss.’ He whipped off his cap.
‘It’s Mrs, as I thought would have been obvious,’ Bobby said coldly, one hand on her stomach.
‘Yes, well, you never know these days. No offence meant, Miss— er, madam.’
‘It’s Mrs Atherton. This is my sister, Mrs Scott.’
‘May I speak with the man of the house?’
‘He isn’t at home,’ Lilian said. ‘Can we help you, Sergeant?’
The sergeant looked irritated that he would have to deal with a woman, as if he thought he might have to speak extra slowly.If Bobby hadn’t been so keen to get rid of him, she would have made him repeat himself a few times just to teach him a lesson.
‘Either of you ladies know a Private Jake Bancroft of the Royal Engineers?’ he asked. ‘We were told he had family at this address.’
‘He’s our brother.’ Bobby tried to adopt a surprised expression. ‘Oh goodness, he isn’t in any trouble, is he?’
‘I’m afraid to say he is. Can we come in and look round?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t, if you don’t mind. Our husbands are away from home, as I said. There’s only me and my sister in the house.’
‘Not that we’re suggesting anything improper, Sergeant,’ Lilian said, with the arch smile that had always won her admirers in her spinster days. ‘It’s only that my husband can be rather jealous. I wouldn’t want it to get back to him that I’d been seen entertaining four handsome soldiers the minute he left me alone.’
The flirting seemed to pacify the sergeant a little. His mouth almost moved, although it would be a stretch of the imagination to call it a smile.
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to upset a lady as is expecting,’ he said, with a glance at Bobby’s stomach. ‘Can you tell me when you last saw your brother?’
‘Not since last summer,’ Lilian said, exuding guilelessness. Bobby was glad Lil was here. Her twin was much better at this sort of thing.
‘Any letters giving his current whereabouts?’
‘We haven’t had a letter in weeks,’ Bobby said, glad that this question, at least, she could answer truthfully. ‘Why, what is it he’s done, Sergeant?’
‘I don’t suppose you girls know what being absent without leave means, do you?’
Bobby tried not to let her annoyance show. Aside from the fact she had been in the WAAF for six months and Lilian had spent nearly a year in the Wrens, who nowadays didn’t know what ‘absent without leave’ meant? This was someone who patronised women simply because he could.
‘We’re familiar with the term, yes,’ she said coolly.
‘All right, then I can tell you that your brother had a late leave pass Thursday night after the expiration of which he failed to return to barracks. That makes him officially AWL as of 2 a.m. Friday morning.’
Bobby and Lilian both tried to look shocked.
