The thick-framed glasses were unknown to me. But the face. You could hide Lorelei’s red curls under a side-parted gamine wig but you couldn’t disguise her delicate face. ‘That do you?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, hardly able to speak. ‘Thank you.’ I began to leave but, as I was crossing the threshold, I turned to speak to him. ‘By the way, do you know anyone called “Crispin”?’

‘ “Crispin”?’ He paused. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘All right. Thank you.’

Outside, the woman opposite was in front of her shop again, still smoking. She was even more striking-looking than the previous day, with immaculate make-up, a silver cameo choker on her neck and a large glittering mother-of-pearl comb in her hair. And, even though she was wearing a simple sort of white dress, there was something about the way she wore it. ‘You’re very glamorous,’ I said, before I could stop myself.

She hooted with laughter. ‘Nice of you to say that, love.’ She reached out and took my hair in her fist, rubbing it between her fingers. ‘You know, you could be a pin-up if you just paid a bit more attention to your make-up and did something with this. A wave. Bit of a tint. I’ll do it for less than a quid.’

I looked behind her and realized that her shop was a hairdresser’s. ‘Like yours?’

‘If you like.’ Nick and I were going to the theatre that evening, and I thought it would be jolly to have my hair done for it. I was about to step in when something caught my eye: a line of men marching past the end of the street, clad in overalls. It was a work party of Germans on their way to dig up the road. Their guards were armed with guns and batons, and we watched them pass, some looking dejected, some angry and swearing in German. There were rumours that the Department of Labour was considering taking our own reported Parasites and putting them into these work details so they would learn the happiness of labour – I hoped that was just talk, though. ‘Don’t feel sorry for them. Not one bit,’ said my new friend, watching them coldly. ‘Me brother was at D-Day. He saw them shooting his mates on the ground after they had surrendered.’

People were often reticent about D-Day. Some claimed that it was Blunt himself who had supplied Stalin with our plans, and the Soviets had passed them on to Hitler so that our offensive would fail. The Red Army, they said, had stayed out of the War precisely so that we and Germany would knock each other to pieces, and they could then sweep through Europe when we were both so weak that we could hardly stand. Blunt didn’t come across as that underhand, but how could you really tell?