The man approached me almost silently and I ran my bike straight into him.

‘Christ,’ the voice said furiously. He bent down, rubbing his leg. I think the wheel nut must have caught his shin. ‘For heaven’s sake, if you can’t ride the thing, at least walk it along the kerb so you don’t do anyone else an injury.’

He had his collar turned up against the damp air and his face was in shadow, but I knew that voice immediately. Not wanting him to recognize me, I murmured ‘Sorry’ and quickly wheeled past him, my heart pounding.

‘I should damn well think so!’ he shouted after me.

I wanted to get away from him as fast as I could. As I pressed on up the street I had a strong, horrible instinct as to what he was doing there. Kemp’s stood among a collection of factories several streets away. Alec Kemp always travelled there by car, and Stanley Street was not, by any stretch of the imagination, on his way home.

Part Three

Chapter 18

At dawn it was quiet, except for the dripping trees. And then the bells: church bells so long silent, the sound of them ringing across the city all the more jubilant when unheard for so long. 8 May 1945. In the night there had been a storm, thunder and lightning like the nudge of something supernatural, ending the war just as they had begun it.

The day before we had spent waiting, confused. In the morning there was a news blackout and it wasn’t until three in the afternoon that they announced Germany’s surrender. War in Europe was over.

I went to church that morning with Mummy and Gladys and the children. The building was packed and they were promising to put on extra services. Between us we kept the children amused and reasonably still.

‘Now thank we all our God.’ Gladys’s clear voice rose and fell beside me as it had when she was scrubbing our floors. I knew, sadly, that she wouldn’t be with us much longer. During the prayers Mummy knelt with her eyes closed. I assumed she was thinking of Daddy and giving thanks that William would be coming home safely. But thoughts of what we had lost came more forcefully to me. I tried to bring Angus’s face before me, feeling panic and shame when I could barely picture him.

‘Whatever’s happened to you, I love you,’ I told him silently. ‘If you are alive, come back to me, please, my darling. And if you’re not, rest peacefully knowing I’ll love you always. Always.’

Many of us were in tears, especially when we stood to sing the last hymn, ‘Jerusalem’, the combination of joy and loss too much for us.

Afterwards, everyone was on the street, hugging, shaking hands. There was a dazed look to people, euphoria and disbelief combined with a residual irritation at the confused way in which the news of the final surrender had been relayed to us. ‘They could at least have let us know what was happening . . .’ But now it didn’t matter. It was over.