It was almost a month now since Dunkirk and she had heard nothing from Nicky. Surely if something terrible had happened to him she would have heard? So why didn’t he write? Was he still in France, his whereabouts kept secret for reasons of security, or was he amongst the ‘missing’? Viv thought she would go crazy not knowing. But then the whole of her life seemed to have taken on a nightmare quality these days. The war that had once seemed so distant now seemed terrifyingly close. From the south-facing cliffs it was easy to see the pall of black smoke hanging over the French coast as the retreating Allies burned their oil dumps; the Jersey Defence Volunteer Force were busy drilling up at Fort Regent and a whole army of British troops had arrived, digging trenches, erecting fences and mounting anti-aircraft guns in the People’s Park. The schools were closed to allow the children to help with the potato harvest – with so many young men away fighting the farmers were desperately short-handed.
