– Okay, baby girl – let’s do it!

Morag wears a silk scarf tied in a bow and twisted to the side. Palais de Danse is best after midnight. We are early.

– D’ye think he’ll be here?

– That yin fae the gang?

– Aye.

– Morag, ye can do better than him! It’ll be US Air Force and local lads, same old. We should line up with the girls. Let them dance with us.

– No!

– Aye.

I say it firmly.

Hope she doesn’t notice.

We turn onto the pavement outside just as a boy who looks like my brother walks by.

– Oh, Ivy!

– I know.

– Just like him!

Shake my head, numb.

– Craig had such a beautiful face.

– Like yours, my lovely Ivy.

– He was the bravest boy I ever knew.

Morag pulls out a wee bottle of gin and hands it to me.

Take a tot.

– Did you ken Craig was born too little?

– No?

– Aye, he weighed the same as a few bags ay sugar. That tiny wee thing grew strong uhn wily uhn fearless.

I will train harder than a girl has ever trained before.

Tonight is my biggest test so far and I am ready for it. My skin feels electric.

I see the boy across the dance floor.

He looks just as young as Craig did when he left for war.

The recruiters got here before us.

They are in the middle, dancing happily.

They do not look at me. I glance over them like everyone else. They say that boy is thirty, I get a jolt when I look at him as if he might be able to tell what I am to do. He’s been here for three months. I didn’t think it would happen like this. I am meant to be doing this in another country. I am still the me I was before. I am not changed yet. It’s okay to see that he is a person and it’s okay to discount it. That separates me from them. There are those who are good and do not hurt others and then there are those who do so deliberately because they are full of hate and there are those who will only hurt those who have given up the right to live by taking other lives without reason. My hatred is based only on what is right and what is wrong and I suppose he thinks that his is too. I am to leave a little of the good me behind forever on this dance floor. I prayed hard to God to give me strength. I did not want to let my heart be filled with hate for the bad people of this world but it did not work. I hate them with every fibre of my being.

Does it make me no less good?

– Ivy, you look so serious. What are you thinking about?

– Lilias Adie.

– Who?