Jane giggled. ‘All right, all right, I’ll do my best to stay awake, only I’ve never really got used to working seven or eight nights on the run,’ she said. ‘What’s showing?’

Knowing her friend’s weakness for cowboy films, Glenys pretended deep thought. ‘Dunno, but there’s bound to be a Western on somewhere. I like a comedy myself, but I’ll go along with whatever you choose.’

When they got back to their hut they found a scene of frantic activity, with girls in various stages of undress screaming at each other and swapping items of clothing, button sticks and lanyards whilst others made vague dusting motions at the floor, walls and windows.

‘What’s up, Daf?’ Glenys asked the nearest girl, who was busily polishing her buttons and humming a popular tune as she did so. ‘No, don’t tell me . . .’

‘Some high-up is doing the rounds and we’ve been picked on for a kit inspection,’ Daf explained. ‘I told our dear leader that we would be on bath parade just as soon as we’d done our PT, but she said we’d been chosen because our section downed three German aircraft over the course of the last fortnight, and we should be very pleased with ourselves. But they’re halving the length of the PT demo, praise be to God.’

Glenys pulled a face. ‘I knew it, I just jolly well knew it! Still, if they really halve the PT demo, that’s something. Thanks, Daf; you always know what’s going on.’ She began to strip the sheets from her bed and square up the blankets, but Daf shook her head.

‘No, dearie, this is a special inspection for some reason. Beds are to be made up so that the visiting officer or whatever believes we are really cosy,’ she said. ‘Apparently we aren’t getting enough new blood in the ack-ack section, so they’re having a recruiting drive and we’re part of it.’

‘Oh! Thanks, Daf,’ Glenys said, beginning to make up her bed again. ‘They’ve not cancelled the bath parade, I trust?’

‘Not so far,’ Daf conceded, holding her tunic up and regarding it critically. ‘Better get your PT stuff together, though . . . glory, what a day!’

Jane, replacing her biscuits – her name for the sections of her mattress, which she had just piled on top of one another – unfolding her blankets and giving a low moan as she searched for unladdered stockings, said she just wished high-ups would descend on the men instead of them, but Glenys, though she laughed, said it was natural, particularly if the visiting officer was a man. ‘Gives them a thrill to order girls about and see their knickers and suspender belts laid out for their approval,’ she said. ‘And we’re better at that sort of thing than the fellers. Oh, drat, is that a step I hear? Stand by your beds, Gunners!’

The kit inspection went well, only one girl having the humiliation of seeing her neatly arranged possessions thrown on the floor because she had not made up her bed, though she had squared her blankets correctly, and the PT session went even better. Glenys thought that the lovely sunshine helped, and when PT was over and the girls were back in their hut getting towels, soap and clean underwear ready for the bath parade, she gave Jane a nudge. ‘Whilst we’re in the city centre this afternoon we might go to Lyons and have sausage and chips. It would make a change from PS.’