Out

 Out. The word was metaphorically etched across her forehead. Bare beneath her hearted length, dark hair hanging straight, I have a side of her long face. Three letters written in capital. OUT. At last her 14th birthday loomed The opportunity to leave was finally here.

Irene has been unhappy at home since her mother died eight years before. Her father, a war hero Nursing the scars of the trenches, Had tried his best to raise his remaining children after his wartime sweetheart died in childbirth. But with his sisters ill health and her father’s new marriage and new family, the joy just could not penetrate far enough.

For a time her grandmother had provided the love that was otherwise absent deep in London’s heart, But the new estate in Essex promising homes fit for heroes and fresh air for her ailing sister drew them away. And Irene felt very alone. So today finally the day she could step out into a new future. Today it is finally 1936, And in a few days, she would be old enough to leave.

A position in Service called at a big hospital in the countryside Of Kent. Caring for the nurses while they tended to new mothers and babies. Such a position might even give her some comfort to begin to mend the pain of losing her own mother in childbirth. 

Irenes final School report had been a good one. It noted that she was a polite girl with neatly combed hair so would serve her employer well. The headmaster knew full well what sort of fate really befell young girls of working classes who have no home support behind them, no mother, a father remarried. such girls were seen as cheap as cattle, especially by young men raised in large houses even if the girls’ fathers were heroes of a now long forgotten war to end all wars.

A sharp frost suspended in the air as Irene stepped out early to undertake the journey to Kent. South of the river. Behind her in the now newly completed public housing estate new homes fit for heroes stretching straight after street line after line row after row of neat Holmes each maintained according to the handbook requirements of the handbook and enforced by neighbours that were both meticulous and proud. Well, meaning but interfering. The result was neatly kept lawns and neatly kept fences clean doorsteps freshly painted windows.

Each house had an indoor toilet and was a real boon to the families that had moved here from their Previous homes that were homes to them, but the others called slums. This is why there’s new housing estate the largest in the world built soon after the end of the first world war was hailed home fit for heroes. Previously, their home had been shared with six other families with a single outdoor toilet for all. Irene had lived with her sisters, her mother and father and his mother all in their part of one home in St Pancras.

Irene‘s new home would be a room in the servant quarters as she goes into Service and a large home for nurses who were employed at the mother and baby hospital. Her future could only be brighter as she was so very unhappy at home but the terrible war was long behind them now and as a new year dawned on her birthday promised new freedom the future seemed much brighter.

New page HERE ABOUT WAR PREPARATIONS OVER IN GERMANY OR IN THE WAR OFFICE IN ENGLAND.