After finishing her tea, Sybil hauled herself up from the table, then made her way warily along the main road in the sweltering heat of the summer morning. On all sides craters and crushed, misshapen girders lurched precariously from former apartment blocks. Sagging gable ends revealed bedrooms where shreds of filthy curtains flapped in the dusty air. Sybil stepped over stinking leaking pipes, jagged concrete slabs and coils of sharp barbed wire that were supposed to fence off the destruction but, in fact, was a menace to pedestrians, hanging loose as it did, gashing the legs of those struggling to pass by. Sybil shuddered; this was not the London she had worked in. Bombs had hailed around Whitehall, but this carnage was a brutal systematic ravaging of homes, families and communities. It was no wonder the Pickles had fled the scene.

Dodging the debris, Sybil continued deep in thought, until she was brought to an abrupt halt by a long queue snaking its way around a department store. Curious, she enquired of a passer-by, ‘What’s going on here?’

‘It’s the WVS,’ a woman explained. ‘They run a kitchen in the air-raid shelter in the basement, free tea and buns, fruit if you’re lucky.’

Just as Sybil was about to sidestep the crowd, she heard a voice that she would have recognized anywhere.

‘Oi, mate! You bleedin’ well just pushed in.’

‘Piss off, you snot-nosed brat!’ an angry male voice responded.

As a skirmish broke out, the crowd stood to one side in order to avoid the flying fists and kicking feet. As the two fighters were revealed, Sybil spotted Ronnie, eyes blazing, punching and hitting out as he was trying to dodge the blows the man was raining down on him.

‘Bastard!’ he cried, reeling from a hard slap around the head.

Incensed beyond words, Sybil boldly stepped forward and cried out in her poshest and most imperious voice, ‘STOP! Stop that immediately!’

As her command rang through the air, the two came to a stumbling halt. Rounding on the man who was easily twice the size of Ronnie, Sybil raged, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

But before she even reached the end of her sentence, Ronnie had started to take flight.

‘Sal!’ he bellowed. ‘Get away from her.’

Sybil did a double-take when she saw little Sally hesitating on the edge of the crowd, who were all goggle-eyed with amazement at the dramatic events unfolding before them. Running as if the devil himself were on his heels, Ronnie bellowed over his shoulder, ‘RUN, SAL!’

With her eyes wide with fear, Sally didn’t move as Sybil slowly approached her.

‘Where’s my mum?’ the child whimpered.

‘She sent me to fetch you,’ Sybil told her softly. ‘She needs you to come home.’

35. Jump for Joy