The female recruiter always browses the tea dresses for a good twenty minutes before she comes over to speak to me. I like Violet a lot. I don’t know what she has done in the war because she won’t tell me. Her footsteps in the shop are my favourite ones. I have given notice to my landlord; in three days’ time, I will leave No. 10 Luckenbooth Close and not return. I prayed to God to give me an opportunity and he has granted it to me. My brother was sent to a work camp. It was the recruiters who explained to me what that really means. Now I can go to war with a clear conscience. I know exactly why I want to do this. My brother is not the only person we know who is gone. We had an aunt who was building bombs in a factory in the Highlands. She lost her hair and then all of her teeth. Her skin began to blister. She died at the end of the summer. It has happened to a lot of bomb-making women in northern Scotland. Our neighbours have lost three boys. My old English teacher was killed in service. So was the man from the chemist. In Edinburgh (and across the whole country) we count up our dead as the year goes on.

Like water in a flood – the numbers keep rising.

I will be fine!

Other girls do this.

The Night Witches fly with two pilots, in formations of three planes.

There is no room for parachutes and they do up to eight missions per night.

One plane up front.

Another two either side, just behind it.

Polikarpov U-2 biplanes are made of wood and hold only two bombs.

They idle the engine on approach so only wind noise can detect them.

The Nazis say it sounds like witches’ broomsticks overhead.

It’s said they only hear them at the very last minute – just before a bomb hits.

They fly at a different speed to the Nazi planes – much slower – and it makes the Night Witches hard to shoot down. I wonder what they do after a night of bombing. Do they sing along to the latest record they love? Do they dance in the mirror? Does all that stop? Do they gouge little strikes for all of the dead on their headboards? I would. I will. I will tally my death count up on my headboard, or carve marks into the underside of my shoe.

The Night Witches are the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Force.

I am not Russian or Ukrainian so I cannot join them.

I am half-French though.

Raised to speak best in my mother’s tongue.

It’s why the recruiters came to see me. I can pass for wholly French, and I usually do.