When Sam was four she spent half of August with Uncle Carleton and Aunt Julia so her mother could have a rest. Uncle Carleton's parish was so high that he wore vestments for communion, and it was a family joke for years that Sam had asked her father, when he came to collect her, why he didn't have a shiny green dress like Uncle Carleton's. Sam didn't remember saying that. She remembered her skirt sticking to the backs of her knees as Daddy talked very seriously about form and substance, and being sick out the door of the car.
When Sam was in training with the MTC, some of the other girls called their uniforms 'a horrible muddy brown' but Sam thought they were more olive than drab. For all that she'd hoped to join the WAAF, she thought the green MTC tunic was absolutely beautiful.
When Sam was assigned to the Ministry of Aircraft Production she sometimes very nearly missed Lyminster. She always quickly assured herself that she didn't really; it was only that the blank walls of factories she wasn't allowed into, and the blank faces of men with briefcases full of blueprints she wasn't allowed to ask about, got a bit tiresome. Still, when the word came from the Regional Commandant that there was a special assignment for someone with knowledge of the South Downs, Sam's heart gave a thump at the thought of green hills on either side of a road before her, and she spoiled a sheet of notepaper in her eagerness to send in her name.