“Well done,” acknowledged Sparks. “Where did they assign you?”

“Office jobs at first,” said Miss Hardiman. “But I presented too much of a distraction, or so they told me, and not for my bombshell looks, which was disappointing. Yes, I’m joking, I know what I look like. No, I was too much of a tiger in a cage. I switched over to the motor pool, which was boring. Finally, I found my true calling.”

“Which was?”

“I was an Ack-Ack Girl,” declared Miss Hardiman proudly. “Started as part of a team, worked my way up to commanding my little squad.”

“Really?” exclaimed Sparks, perking up. “You got to fire the big guns?”

“Oh, yes, and it was glorious! Perched up on the hilltop with the twin 525s, watching the searchlights scour the sky, trying to spot the Messerschmitts coming out of the clouds, calculating trajectories on the fly, bellowing commands at the tops of my lungs! Then BOOM!”

Sparks involuntarily snapped her pencil in two.

Gwen, where the blazes are you? she thought. I need reinforcements.

They were sitting on opposite sides of her decrepit desk in the small office which constituted the entire premises of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. It was a humid Tuesday morning in early July, and the standing fan that Gwen had managed to sneak out of her in-laws’ home pushed the thick London air only a few inches forwards before it gave up, leaving the rest of the office, particularly the space around Sparks herself, unrefreshed.

Miss Hardiman had, since only one of the two proprietors was present, plunked herself down in the single guest chair directly across from Sparks. She was tall enough, even seated, to bring the top of her head in line with the dartboard that hung on the wall behind the door. This gave her the appearance of having a gaudily striped halo, the bull’s-eye perched over the top of her energetically bobbing bun.

Sparks found her eyes drifting towards the bun, her hand itching for a dart.

“One moment,” she said, taking the surviving portion of her pencil and sharpening it. She licked the point when she was done, a habit left from childhood.

“Right,” she said. “Ack-Ack Girl. Any success?”

“Two confirmed, shared a third,” said Miss Hardiman. “Do you know that we were the only women in the services who actually killed the enemy?”

Not the only ones, thought Sparks, maintaining her bland expression.

“How about you?” asked Miss Hardiman. “How did you spend your war?”

Who do you work for? shouted Carlos, his hands around her throat, her own scrabbling for the knife under the pillow …

“Clerical work,” said Sparks. “Nothing as exciting as what you did.”

“But essential, I’m sure,” said Miss Hardiman with more than a touch of condescension.

“Every cog in the machine matters,” said Sparks.

“Is it odd to say I miss it?” asked Miss Hardiman. “It was terrifying, but I felt I had purpose like I never had before. And now, of course—honestly, I envy you.”