‘That’s about right. I’m old and decrepit, you see.’ His slight smile faded back to his normal grimmer expression. ‘But you know I still have to be a bit snide about it. Especially now – they’re talking of putting a political officer in every station so we’re a bit on edge. Anyway, there’s a chance we’ll get stopped somewhere along the line – coppers or the Secs. If it happens, just let me do the talking. I’ll say you’re a friend and we’re looking for a relative of mine who I lost track of during the War. Keep it vague.’

‘What if they don’t believe us? If they check up on it.’

‘Well, if it gets serious, I can throw myself on the mercy of my inspector, say it’s a personal thing I want to keep to meself. We go back, me and Jim. And I know a thing or two about him too.’

‘Will that really work?’

‘To tell the truth, I don’t know.’

‘All right.’ I was more than happy for him to do the talking. If I had had to come up with some excuse for our enquiries on the spot, I would probably have gone to pieces anyway.

‘So Miss Burton lives in King Henry Road,’ he mused. ‘Won’t be that for very long.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A bit too Royalist, isn’t it? They’re renaming all the relic streets.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, looking around me as if I could see the changing names. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

It seemed strange to be getting to know each other on a personal level now, after we had been through so much together already. ‘Herne Bay.’

‘Nice. I used to go there with Elsa and Julie. Did you ever come up to the smoke when you were young?’

I told him how my parents brought me up for a day when I was ten or twelve. We had walked through Mayfair, what my dad had said was the poshest of London’s neighbourhoods. ‘I thought the big houses looked like palaces from a fairy tale.’

‘The Jerries did for a lot of them. Real pity.’

‘Oh.’