“You could sell mine.”
Her laugh this time was full and loud. “Made from what, hospital sheets? And who’s going to spend money on a wedding dress if food gets really scarce like they’re saying it will? Or if bombs are dropping every night? Don’t they teach you current events in school?”
“School’s not in session. And war makes brides as easily as it makes widows. You told me that yourself.”
“But not as plentifully. I’ve had no customers yesterday or today, except for the young woman who bought that veil.”
“Give your cousin the sketches, Mrs. Crofton. Please? I promise I will come back as soon as I can. War or no war.”
She exhaled heavily. “All right.”
“And you’ll let me know when he returns to London.”
Mrs. Crofton nodded. “Send me your address when you’re situated.”
They stood there for a moment looking at each other.
“I don’t have any work for you today, Emmeline,” Mrs. Crofton finally said.
“You can teach me how to line a bodice.”
She lifted up the corners of her mouth in a half smile. “I almost envy you. Getting out of here like you are. Away from all this. You don’t know how good you have it.”
“I’ll trade places with you.”
Mrs. Crofton laughed gently. “If you were my daughter, Emmeline, I would do the same as your mum. I’d send you away to safety, too. I had a daughter once, you know.”
Emmy didn’t.
Mrs. Crofton stared at the wall behind her as if it were a window to the past. “She died of a fever when she was six.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Crofton.”
Her employer hovered there, on the edge between the present and past, and then she turned toward the wall and plugged in the electric teakettle that sat on a little table by the door to the loo.
Emmy waited to hear more about the daughter who had died, but Mrs. Crofton only said she was terribly sorry that she’d run out of sugar and there wasn’t any more at the grocery.